Cool, he said, where are you going?
Twentynine Palms, she said.
Where’s that? he asked.
California, she said.
What for?
To meet our father, she said.
Are you the mother? he asked me.
I’m the aunt, I said.
Then Colt told us a story about how he was a conduit for love, but I’d stopped listening.
Logan woke up and he and Colt politely introduced themselves to each other and then Thebes said we had to see the Grand Canyon. I said I was worried about the van and really wanted to get to Flagstaff. But Logan said yeah, he wouldn’t mind checking out the canyon, and Colt said he wouldn’t mind either, he had a window before he was scheduled to break his girlfriend’s head.
I don’t know what to say about the Grand Canyon that the name itself doesn’t evoke. It’s big and deep and brown. The four of us stood at the edge of it and looked down and saw a line of donkeys with tourists on them snaking along a path at the bottom.
With her underwater camera Thebes took a picture of Logan, Colt and me beside the canyon looking slightly dazed and disappointed.
Let’s get outta here, I said. It gave me the creeps. I snapped at Thebes to back away from the edge. I yelled at Logan when he pretended to push her over, that’s so not fucking funny, and begged Colt for one of his smokes. Yabsolutely!
I glared at a swarm of tourists who were staring like they recognized me from Rosemary’s Baby and flicked my butt into the canyon when I was done.
Logan wanted to drive into Flagstaff, so I let him, partly in a glasnost attempt to make up for screaming at him earlier. Wild West. And mostly he was using one hand, his good one, to drive. Someday he’d have a valid licence and in the meantime he needed to practise. I knew he thought it looked lame to be riding into a new town with his sister and his aunt and I knew he thought Colt was a goof. Ideally he would have had us all duck down and make ourselves invisible while he drove around listening to his tunes, playing it cool, pretending he was something other than a fifteen-year-old Canadian boy in a leaking Ford Aerostar minivan.
We dropped Colt off in a 7-Eleven parking lot. He said he needed to buy a newspaper and a razor and some other things and he could get to where he was going from there.
Not Moralia, said Thebes. Later, skater. She was yawning.
Hey, I said, act nice and gentle, eh? Nice meeting you.
You too, said Colt. Thanks for the ride.
Take it easy, said Logan. They shook hands, awkwardly because of his cast.
Logan peeled out of the parking lot and we drove around looking for a hotel. It was late, around ten, and I’d have to find a garage in the morning. We found a cheap Motel 6 and while I checked us in and Thebes lay down on a ratty sofa in the lobby and read some literature on Flagstaff, Logan carried our stuff to the room. When Thebes and I got there the TV was blaring and Logan was pacing around, fuming.
That fucker jacked my knife, he said.
Colt? said Thebes. The new one I bought you?
Yeah, he said, when I was sleeping. He must have.
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. We’ll buy you a new one, I said. We’ll just keep buying knives and pistols.
Thebes lay down beside me and continued to read her brochures. Did you know that Flagstaff has a disproportionate number of methamphetamine addicts and scam artists? she said.
I didn’t know why a hotel would have a brochure with that kind of information. Is there anything in there about horseback riding or museums or anything like that? I asked. I thought maybe there’d be something fun to do the next day while the van was getting fixed.
Um, said Thebes, it says there’s a psychiatric museum housed in an abandoned mental asylum somewhere around here. Apparently it’s haunted with—
Okay, no, we’re not doing that. Maybe we’ll see a movie or something.
Logan asked if he could take the van and drive around and look for a basketball court.
No, I said. I was an ugly wall of no. It’s late. It’s dark. And I don’t trust the van. And didn’t you hear what Thebes just said? This place is crawling with meth-heads. I was also afraid that he’d try to find Colt to get his knife back, but I didn’t want to tell him that in case he hadn’t actually thought of it.
And can you turn that TV off? I said.
He went into the bathroom and slammed the door and turned on the shower.
I lay on the bed with my eyes closed and tried to calm myself down doing some yogic breathing Marc had tried to teach me as an alternative to Gauloises. Thebes was quiet too. She was tired. She was already under the blanket. Her holster and the tourist brochures lay on the floor beside the bed.
Thebie? I said.
Yo.
Tomorrow you should have a bath. And brush your hair.
Why? she said.
Tomorrow we get to Twentynine Palms, I said. I can help you with your hair if you want.
Tomorrow?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ll be there tomorrow. Tomorrow night. If we can get the van fixed in the morning, I said.
I was waiting for her to talk, to spring into action, to illuminate the room with some Theban fact or question or comment or pronouncement or definition or something, anything. I stroked her hair. I put my arms around her and held her close and she didn’t say a word. I wouldn’t think about it. I wouldn’t think about the possibility of this being our last night together for a long time. I could hear Logan swearing in the shower. I could hear Marc breathing next to me. I could hear my father cracking a lame joke and I could hear Min laughing.
thirteen
I WOKE UP AROUND MIDNIGHT and tried as delicately as I could to extricate myself from Thebes’s Jurassic grip and to get out of bed and find a cigarette in my backpack. I was trying, and failing, for the most part, to smoke only while she was unconscious. And then I noticed that Logan wasn’t in the other bed. And he wasn’t in the bathroom. And he wasn’t in the closet. He wasn’t in our motel room, period. I went to the window and moved the curtain and looked outside at the parking lot.
Yeah, the van was gone. Of course it was.
I know the score, boy, I thought to myself. I’ve run away too. I sat on the edge of the tub in the dark with the fan on and finished my cigarette and then wrote a note for Thebes in case she woke up and wondered why she was all alone.
I wandered down the road and passed a bunch of other cheap motels and cheesy chain restaurants and closed gas stations. If there had been a church I’d have gone inside and prayed. I would have said please bring the little fucker back safe and sound, God, I mean it. But instead the most I could do was say his name over and over. Logan, I whispered. Logan, Logan, Logan. Where the hell are you? I passed a panhandler sitting under a streetlight at an intersection and he had a sign that said Need 37 Million Dollars for Trip to Space. I could get behind that. I gave him two bucks. I headed for a bar across the street and ducked inside to find the pay phone, punched my old Paris number and listened to it ring and ring and ring.
When I went back out to the parking lot some hippies looked up at me from their toke and said hey.
What’s up? I said.
Check out the moon, man, said one of them. He pointed up like maybe I was one of those people who always forgot things like keys and wallets and the location of the moon.
I stared at it for what seemed like a really long time. I didn’t see Logan in any of the moon’s craters or shadows.
It’s really beautiful, I said. And I mean really beautiful. Seriously.
The stoners nodded and agreed and asked me if I wanted to join them.
Thanks, I said. But I can’t. I’m looking for someone.