and speak into his ear, so I won’t have to yell. “Look, there’s no room here for anyone else to pull over, anyway. It’s too dangerous. Plus, what are they going to do?”
He cradles his helmet between us and studies the hillside. “Lots of dry grass around here just itching to go up in flames. It could explode,” he says.
“All the more reason to get out of here.”
“True.” I can see him assessing the situation, working the possibilities out, like someone playing chess.
“Plus, I really need a drink,” I say, feeling slightly giddy at the thought of that cool vodka tonic fizzing in my throat. “Nobody’s going to stop, anyway.”
“Pretty grim view of humanity,” he says.
“I’ll brighten up soon as you get a little vodka in me.”
We’ve just managed to bungee Medea’s box onto the back of his bike when the bus and everything I own erupts in a loud, surreal orgy of light and heat. I start to laugh. I don’t know why; it’s just the sound my body emits, without any consent. The whole thing’s an omen of some sort, but right now I’m too hot and hysterical to guess at what it all means.
“Come on,” I yell. “Let’s go!” The air is alive with the smell of gasoline, and the waves of heat are so intense it’s like swimming in an ocean just this side of scalding. He looks at me, puts his helmet on my head and says something, but I can’t hear him now because my ears are engulfed in padding. I think I can read his lips, though; I think he’s saying, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
CHAPTER 2
We should have done away with marriage long ago; by now it should be a fuzzy historical footnote, like eight-track tapes.
Unfortunately, knowing this didn’t save me from getting engaged last spring. I’d been a die-hard Amazon since my parents’ divorce, arguing with anyone who’d listen that a girl should never trade her leather bustier for a Whirlpool dishwasher, but in my late twenties, I temporarily forgot. Having sex with the same person on a regular basis can really mess with your understanding of pertinent details, like who you are, for example. I should have known things were taking a turn for the worse when Jonathan, who always prided himself in being wildly original, popped the question on one knee in a nauseatingly sunny and not at all offbeat setting. It was April and we were picnicking at a quaint park; the trees were sparkling after a light rain and toddlers were toddling across the grass and tulips were waving in the breeze, for Christ’s sake. It was mortifying, how Sound of Music it all was—especially when you consider that both Jonathan and I insist musicals are the lowest form of entertainment, right below public lynching.
Why continue submitting to a proven recipe for disaster? Take two cups pressure to conform, equal amounts fear and isolation, add a dash of childhood trauma and you’ve got marriage. Put that in the microwave with sexual urges and animal behavior, cook on high until the whole thing either caves in with apathy or explodes with infidelity. There is no such thing as a genuinely happy marriage, there are just varying degrees of skill in the performance of one.
Cynical? Maybe. I’ve earned my cynicism, though. I wear it like a Purple Heart.
My parents split up when I was eleven. My father, the shop teacher—skinny and slouching, sporting horn-rimmed glasses and pants that showed his blinding white socks—started giving it to a twenty-six-year-old dental hygienist with major cleavage. Simon does Sally. It was a mess. Calistoga (think sleepy, claustrophobic, its only claim to fame a line of mediocre beverages) had a great time laughing about it behind cupped fingers.
After the divorce, my mother moved to Marin County, studied numerology, unblocked her chakras and became an embarrassingly successful hypnotherapist. Her main clients were miserable bleach-blond divorcées driving Beemers and wearing dream catcher earrings. She started marrying with a vengeance, always with an unerring eye for the clod who would make her (and, by association, me) most miserable. I called her a serial wifer. She didn’t need them for their money; she was driven by something much deeper, more compulsive and masochistic. She once said to me, “Claudia, I don’t marry because I want to. I marry because I find it impossible not to.”
As for my father, he married the dental hygienist, who turned out to be a hypochondriac. She got out of her dental career, claiming the drills exacerbated her migraines, and sponged off my father, consuming his modest but carefully stashed savings, until a guy rolled into town who built swimming pools, and she went off with him. It was a weird time in my life, watching the drama of my parents’ love and (worse yet) sex lives unfold with the creepy predictability of a B horror flick. At first I dug my nails into my arm and tried not to scream, but by the time I was into my teens I observed it all with cool detachment, bored by the snowballing disaster of it all.
Cynical? Isn’t observant a little more accurate?
Anyway, now that my Jonathan-induced amnesia is safely behind me, I have every reason to be thrilled that he fell for a jailbait temptress and ran off with her. I should send them a dozen roses with a note: Better you than me. Let them indulge in each other’s flesh until they’re surfeit with sex and kisses and don’t-ever-leave-me-I-love-yous and the slow, torturous monotony of the future stretches out before them like the open ocean before seasick stowaways. I’m done with it all. From now on, I’ll be a warrior for non-monogamy. I’ll fight the good fight, protesting the evil of the bridal industry and romantic comedies wherever they rear their treacherous, sycophantic heads.
CHAPTER 3
Clay Parker takes me to a filthy dive on Mission Street called the Owl Club. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and there are only three customers, two old guys with faces like worn baseball gloves and a woman in tight cords playing pool by herself. She also appears to be having a solo conversation, and since no one’s bothered to feed the jukebox we can hear most of it—something about the FBI and Walter Cronkite, but it’s so complicated I tune her out after a few minutes. I’m feeling really guilty about poor Medea, who’s puffed up like one of those troll dolls after too many twirls, so I bring her in with us and hold her shaking body in my lap, trying to stroke her into submission.
“I guess we should call the cops, or something,” Clay says as he returns from the bar with our drinks.
“Cops?” My head swings toward him too quickly.
“It’s a bad time for a fire like that—could get out of hand,” he offers, but I can see by the way he’s studying me that my panic is apparent.
“I can’t.” I spent most of the ride here trying to concoct a good story, but I’m a rotten liar. I’ve been acting since I was six years old and still I can’t fib my way out of a goddamn dental appointment, let alone grand theft auto and arson, so I’ve resigned myself to telling this hapless stranger the truth. “Look, I hate to get you involved in all this,” I begin, stirring my vodka tonic quickly before downing half of it. “The thing is, I sort of—well—borrowed that bus.”
“Borrowed it?” In the dim light of the Owl Club, I can’t be sure what color his eyes are—somewhere between blue and green—but there’s something remarkably comfortable and familiar about his face. He has a stare that makes you lose your train of thought, and for a long moment I can’t remember what I’m doing here, or what I’m supposed to confess.
“If I seem incoherent, I’m sorry,” I say, looking away. “I’m a little tripped out. God, this is absolutely the most delicious and the most needed vodka tonic I’ve ever tasted.”
