“As in short for Oscar.”
Steve turns out to be chatty. He’s a financial adviser from the Phoenix area and this is his first family vacation in two years. The people who look like his wife and kids are in fact his wife and kids. The way he talks about them, with a kind of shining pride, marks him as one of the good guys even if he can’t pound a stake into the ground to save his life.
After I get the stakes in and the tent upright there doesn’t seem to be much point in hanging around. Steve’s family is bound to return sooner or later and it would be better if I wasn’t here saving the day. Anyway, there’s got to be a less traveled trail I can explore for the remainder of the afternoon. As I’m grabbing some water from the truck and getting ready to head out, Steve calls me back.
“Thanks for the hand, Oz. Listen, I may not be winning any prizes for outdoor survival anytime soon, but I can cook up a mean rib eye on the grill. Why don’t you drop by later and take advantage?”
I have to grin over his earnestness. “I may just do that, Steve. Thanks for the offer.”
When I’m out of the carnival-like camp atmosphere, I pause, check the position of the sun and start heading due east. I’ve got a bit of time before dark sets in and I plan on using it to clear my head. The other night when I drove out of Atlantis, I was just fine for the first hour as I rehashed current events.
I thought I’d climbed out of the shadows and jumped back into Ren’s life just because I needed to see if there was anything left between us. But now I think maybe I wanted to torment her a little in the process. That’s tough for me to admit to myself but it’s true. A good guy, a guy like Steve for example, would have chosen to do it somewhere that didn’t have cameras. I could have done that. I should have done that. Maybe that old grudge was never as distant as I’d thought.
There haven’t been any other hikers in sight for the last half hour. I’m probably several miles from the rim of the canyon but that’s okay. The woods have a special brand of peace all their own. The colors here are faintly pastel, punctuated with thick greenery. I hear a rustling in the leaves to my right and for a split second I’m looking straight into a pair of startled brown eyebrows before the creature – no antlers, a female – bounds off elsewhere.
A few steps later I hear the rolling sound of nearby water and turn towards it. The brook is narrow but moves along at a good clip. The deer had probably paused here for a drink before I scared her off.
Now that Ren is back in my head I can’t get her to leave. What’s more, I keep flashing back to that sex show in the back of my truck. If the idea of using her that way was to get my fill and move on then it doesn’t seem to have worked. At least for me. Maybe it did for her.
All it takes is a quick memory jump, featuring her perky rosebud nipples and her sleek body opening underneath me, and I’m hard as fuck once more, wondering when it’s going to stop. Is this how it’s going to be forever? Is it what’s going to happen next time I’m getting it on with some other girl? Instead of being all pumped up about what’s in front of me I’ll just be comparing her to Ren Savage.
I’ve got to get past this. I’ve got to replace her with something else, anything else.
Yup, I’ll get right on that as soon as I finish kneeling here on the creek bank and punching the clown with my hand while I fantasize about fucking her.
I had her down. I had her conquered. I had her begging for sweet release and willing to get busy in seventeen filthy ways. And even as it stings the edges of my heart a little I can’t stop thinking about it.
When I’m done, I rinse off in the creek and zip my pants up, feeling guilty as a fourteen year old kid who’s dicking around with himself in the bathroom while his mother screeches from down the hall that dinner is ready. For a while I just sit on a wide rock, listening to the water and trying to remember details about one single other girl that I’ve dated or fucked or just had a cup of goddamn coffee with.
And that’s the problem with trying to replace Ren. That’s always been the problem.
In spite of everything, I don’t want to replace her. I can’t.
When I get back to the campground it sounds like a street festival and smells like burnt hot dogs. Sleep may not be on the table tonight. I figure I’ll just make do with the granola I’d picked up at the store and keep to myself. If the spirit of masochism takes over I can check my phone and see what kind of damage I missed over the last few days. I haven’t touched base with Brock in over a week. It might not be a bad idea to let someone know where the hell I am. It’s a pretty safe bet I have about sixty-eight voicemails from Gary and friends reminding me of contracts and other failures. Sooner or later I’ll call him back. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll tell him I’m done answering questions and that I’m not going to interfere with whatever they decide to do with the footage.
I’d forgotten all about Steve and his promise of steak until he yells good-naturedly that I ought to come on over.
Steve blinks the smoke away and offers me a plate. “I took a guess that you’re a man who likes his dinner well done.”
“You guessed right,” I say and confess that once I’ve got the juicy rib eye under my nose I’m suddenly hungry as a bear.
Steve’s wife, Michele, perches on a footstool and eats daintily while asking me polite questions. The boys, who I have started thinking of as Aden 1 and Aden 2, toast marshmallows and make charming messes of their faces until Michele sighs and escorts them to the campground bathroom to get cleaned up.
“You’re not here with any friends?” Steve asks, blotting his dripping chin with a paper napkin.
“Nope. I tend to travel alone.”
Steve doesn’t say anything and I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about inviting some sketchy loner to hang out with his family. He doesn’t let on if anything’s bothering him though. He just starts gathering trash in a plastic bag while I chew my steak.
“First time at the Canyon?” he asks.
“No. You?”
“Drove up here once before, years ago. Day trip. Asked a girl to marry me that day.” He pauses and smiles wistfully at the memory.
“I hope she said yes.”
“She did. I’ve got the boxy minivan to prove it.”
“We should all be so lucky. I just lost my girl.”
What in the god almighty hell made me say that??
Steve is looking at me now. I wonder if he drugged my steak with some sort of suburban truth serum. That doesn’t make any sense though. Especially because what I said isn’t even the truth. Ren hasn’t been ‘my girl’ for a long time. The shit that happened between us during my brief Atlantis intrusion sure can’t count as a relationship. I’m just dehydrated or something.
Michele returns with the two boys, who are now dragging their feet like they are in the throes of a sugar crash. She stands behind Steve’s chair, rests her soft hands on his shoulders and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’d better get these two rascals off to bed.”
“I’ll be inside in a little while,” he tells her and she blows him a kiss before disappearing behind the tent flaps with the kids.
Steve leans over, opens a red cooler and withdraws two dripping cans of beer. He tosses one to me and I’m happy to catch it. It only takes me a few seconds to drain the whole thing. Steve, on the other hand, takes one careful sip and lets the can rest on his knee.
“Sorry,” he says, “about your girl.”
I feel like I ought to correct my earlier statement, about how I didn’t really lose a girl because she wasn’t mine in the first place. But I don’t. I just sigh and lower my head. “Eh, it was my fault. This time anyway. Just couldn’t get out of my own way.”
“That sounds like a bad case of regret.”
I think about the look on Ren’s face when she first saw me pull up to Atlantis. I think about how I played it like a cocky fucker right up until the end even though all I wanted to do was talk to her. It’s never made any sense to me, the way she turned away from everything we had. I have no doubt her parents made some threats but that wouldn’t have stopped the girl I thought I knew. Yet when I finally sought out the chance to get a real answer I couldn’t seem to say one single honest thing. So of course neither did she.