The brunette appeared not to comprehend. She was frozen with a half smile on her face, waiting for the punch line. The manager’s wall of jowls shook in fury. The waves of warmth and clearness guided B.: she had read somewhere that a bank must honor the mere threat of a weapon; she calculated that Daughtry was too far away for the manager to see his face through the glass door. She was not certain, however, if there were cameras in the parking lot.
The manager glowered at B. She knew: at her soft hair, her belling dress, her small hands.
“The ten thousand dollars now or he’ll shoot,” she said calmly.
The brunette’s face crumpled then. There was a long pause in which B. still felt no fear, only the warm liquid clarity pouring through her. She locked eyes with the manager.
“Get the money, Cindy,” he finally said.
In the car, she told Daughtry, “It’s for your boat.”
He held the wrapped stack of bills in disbelief. “They let you fucking go with this? Just like that?”
“You can have the boat now,” she repeated.
He looked at the money, not moving.
“We should go, Harold,” she told him gently.
No one followed in the side mirror yet. Daughtry was silent. They passed an orchard covered in blight, half the leaves brown and shrunken. But the sight did not disturb B. It seemed a natural part of the new gift of the carsickness, the relentless truth, the laying bare. When the Mustang was on the highway, she ducked under Daughtry’s legs and rounded up the rest of the money. All of her actions clear and natural in her body without her having to understand them. She smoothed the bills into a single bundle.
“It’s better if you keep everything for us,” she explained, handing it to him.
He slid the bundle inside his lapel pocket mechanically. His forehead was ashen with sweat. “You’re different than I thought you were,” he said. “You’re not the other girl at all.”
It was not clearly admiration or disappointment, and B. felt she could only agree.
“I’m a little shaky,” she said. “Let’s drive for a while and get a bottle somewhere.”
He nodded. He seemed too stunned for the moment to argue with her.
It began to fragment here. Beautifully. Her body on one side, apart, abstract. For the first time since childhood. Whether it was appealing or not, adorned or not. Her body now a vessel for the warm light of the carsickness. She thought of worrying and fretting about bare shins or chipped nails or mussed hair and she wanted to laugh.
Daughtry pulled off at a gas station with a convenience store attached. He paused after he cut the engine, put his hand on her knee.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
It was true. In the fragmenting, she was warm and calm and clear. She was not, anywhere in her tissue and nerves, waiting for things to work out. She watched her body in the seat, holding on.
Daughtry didn’t remove his hand. She observed his worn leather cuff on her dress.
“Really. I feel better now.”
He let out a sigh and moved his hand to stroke her cheek. “I’m glad, baby. I’m glad I know you like this.” She watched him go into the store. The hot sun on the car felt no different than the heat all through her. The cuff of his leather blazer worn to cracks against the green poplin dress lingered in her mind. The carsickness — a boon, she was understanding now — laying the dissonances bare: Daughtry was a good man, and he would not succeed; she and he did not belong anywhere, and they did not belong together. The worn leather cuff and the green poplin dress. No one wanted to hear about her basement apartment; her mother was frightened for her; the girls would be free and bare-shinned. The blighted trees stood next to the healthy. This laying bare did not frighten her. She was not frightened.
She would only need to drive now. She would only need to keep going.
Then came another piece of clarity: he would never let her go. He would want her to stay with him, to take care of her, to put headbands in her hair and catch her fish for their soups. Her body in the fragmenting took this in.
Daughtry came back and got behind the steering wheel with a brown paper bag. “This will smooth things out. Then we’ll get on the road. We can make the border by morning.”
“Let’s stop and drink it somewhere first.”
“Naw, let’s drink while we roll. Faster we get going, better I’ll feel.”
“I want to stop first.”
He looked at her defiantly. She felt it beginning. She put on her bedroom eyes for him.
“Okay, alright. Just for a little while, baby.”
From there, she heard and saw pieces in the fragmenting, from inside the carsickness. “Baby, alright, baby.” Fingers at the nape of her neck. A dirt road, a wind break, leaves skimming the ground. Daughtry laying out the leather blazer once more. “Fishing boats, Mexico. . Together. Together.” The smooth sharp steel in her hand, the gash in his arm. Against the pale and black hairs the blood bubbling out. Mouth open, no words. The other hand grabbing for her, squirming, then a flick at his cheek, shallow, more blood. A moan. Moans. The eyes. The sad eyes she could not help. Dirt kicked up, sun flaring.
Back in the Mustang, keys in the ignition, wet stains on her dress.
And then: free.
IV &$9
33
She woke with a crick in her neck and an imprint on her cheek from the backseat of the Mustang. She had no idea how long she had driven or where she had gone, and she knew she must have stopped only from sheer exhaustion. Her throat was dry, a white mucus filmed over her lips. She tasted her own breath. Her head stung and when she reached into her hair, she found the plastic headband digging into her scalp. She cracked it in two and dropped the pieces to the floor.
Somewhere in the night she had put back on the ivory sheath. Somewhere in the night she had thrown the green poplin stained with blood out the window, had rubbed off her makeup. She did not look in the rearview mirror or at the compact but felt the smears on her cheeks. Her cuticles were grimed black.
The Mustang was hidden in trees. She faintly remembered driving into the walnut orchard from the road. Farther and farther up the wide row into the middle. She stepped out and stood in the dust, breathing in the piquant smell of the unripe walnuts. Her body was hot with the spinning and nausea. The warm benevolent carsickness continuing to pulse through her.
She went to the trunk of the Mustang. Her body still understanding before she did what actions to take. She removed her makeup case from the travel bag and one by one tossed its contents, the eyeliner, the mascara, the lipsticks, into the dust.
In the shade of a tree, she took off the bone-colored heels and buried her toes in the dirt. Some of the hard green fruits had fallen and split, the open rinds intensifying the scent, transporting her to a faraway land. Her mind was an even plane inside the warm spinning. Why had she so resisted the truth? She braided and unbraided a strand of her hair, wondering.
When she stood up, she was unconscious of the dried mud all over the sheath, the dust and rind sap on her legs. She went back to the travel bag. The diamond brooch she laid very carefully in the dust, next to the bone-colored heels. Apart from her they were a curious still life, the significance of which seemed important.
Important but not of interest.
34
She lost track of the hours. Several times gazing up into a walnut tree, she was dazed by the sun. This blinding seemed to bloom from the heat in her skull. In it, images came to her. The girl in the suede vest and leather anklet dancing around the circle of stars and moon, chanting, then shaking B. violently. “You should’ve taken it for yourself,” she said. “Why didn’t you just take it?”