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By chris Date: 2006 Feb 19 Comment on this Work [[2006.02.19.20.09.14435]] |
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She stands alone in the desert outside of Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Neveda. The wind blows hard, causing distant clouds of alkali dust to billow up in front of the even more distant mountains. They have no trees. "Where the hell AM I?" She asks to no one in particular, looking around at her surroundings in disgust. It is 108 degrees. She thinks of water and ice, iced tea and ice water. Her hair is shoulder-length and red. Dark red - almost black in some lights. ("Everything's almost black in some lights," she will say with an exhalation of cigarette smoke to the bartender in the Stratosphere Starlite Lounge later that night.) She is the kind of woman who could walk into a casino and get obvious stares even from sober husbands from Iowa playing nickel slots with their wives. Atop the dry mojave gravel around her is the following: a broken cell phone, a still-new leather jacket, a dust-smeared black wingtip - and the body of man in a shallow hole next to a cluster of greasewood. From the passenger seat of her red Mustang she produces a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it. Using a bright pink highlighter she crosses off a name. "Enjoy your new home," she says to the dead man. "Bet you wish you stayed in Seattle now. No coffee shop around here, that's for sure." She laughs. This one fought. Tried to strangle her. The nerve. She managed to pop two caps into him before he could do it, but her throat hurts like hell when she swallows. Hurts like she'd eaten too much butter with the lobster at dinner. Or smoked too much bad chronic. There is still work to do. But she feels oddly elated - all will be fine. The desert does not forgive, but the desert does not remember either. A simple negation. There is a lone Joshua tree near the car, and she reaches out and touches the tip of one of the branches. It jabs her, drawing blood. She jumps back. Didn't realize it was like that. Looked so green and innocent. Her anger flares up - she wants to take the 12 gauge out of the trunk and level the tree - but it quickly goes. She sucks the wound - taste of blood, iron, the earth. She will live. She thinks of truisms - life is a bowl of cherries? No...life is bowl of lemons - easy to peel but sour as fuck. The wind blows. |