To that I say, “Where will we go.” It was supposed to be a question, but it comes off as a statement.
“My sister lives in the middle of nowhere. You’ll like it there. No people for miles.”
I tell him, “Veronica is outside and I need to let her in. She brought me dinner.”
“You’re a strange cat, you know that?”
“Can we let her inside?”
Rios doesn’t say anything.
“She’s at my door.”
Rios turns on some music. He turns it up.
My voice cuts through the music, “Veronica brought me dinner.”
I can hear Rios saying, “Then let her in.”
I look out the passenger side window. I begin to recognize the streets and the stores. When we reach my building, I refuse to leave the car. I text Veronica, telling her to meet us outside.
Somewhere Ben is there and he will wave in the sort of way that isn’t much of a wave but really a way to be suspicious.
I think clearly.
I type—
At the peak of adrenaline I can feel myself falling in line, everything fitting, and I don’t need even a single moment to interpret what each might be.
Veronica walks outside the building. Ben is talking to her.
I slouch in the seat.
Rios says, “He can’t see you.” Taps the glass, “Tinted windows.”
I sit back up. Rios honks the car horn, signaling Veronica to get in.
“Everyone’s got their own demons,” Rios grins.
Genuine and true, he narrows his eyes, “What did you do? A strange cat like you can’t get by without fucking up.”
Before I can respond, Veronica opens the car door.
She looks at me like I’m somebody else.
“It’s the moonlight,” Rios says.
“What … happened?” She sounds concerned.
Rios speaks for me, “Get in, got a long ride. I’ll preach it.”
But he doesn’t. We remain quiet for the entire ride. I ignore the likes and comments on my last post, the beginning of Meurks’s absence.
What did you do?
Rios’s words echo out, having stuck somewhere deep.
It feels wrong — all of it — so I change the nature of the prompt.
What will you do?
And then I am able to set the question aside, unanswered.
The drive seems to last forever.
We get there shortly before dawn. Everything falls into place, like the line continuing its path toward the bullet point at this sentence’s end.
6
Dawn looked like a dull light shining into my eyes, trying for acceptance. It wanted me to blink but I had already blinked too much. This was a time for not blinking. I sit with legs numb from so much sitting. Veronica is asleep in the backseat, the backseat all hers. Rios doesn’t look any different. Not tired from driving through the night. The road starts to narrow.
It’s almost time for Meurks to start posting.
I want to type.
Then I don’t really understand what that means, but the itch, the thought to do so, to type, runs through me. The phone pocketed is a phone with battery drained. Lost it an hour back. The phone doesn’t last long.
It isn’t new except for once.
Yawn, and I imagine something ahead of us.
It is a house that is more a castle, a castle that is more a house.
Finally I blink, and then we are there.
Rios is the first to speak, much like he was the last to have spoken.
“You’ll dig my sister,” he tells me.
I think of Veronica, who is still asleep in the backseat.
“She’s just your type, bud.”
He catches me looking over my shoulder.
Makes a noise, “You don’t fit in.”
He says it again, “You don’t fit in.”
The second time is louder than the first. Like he really meant it.
I have nowhere to look but down at where the phone should be.
He slaps me on the shoulder, “You don’t fit in, so you have nothing to worry about.”
When that actually makes any sense, Veronica is awake and we are already inside the place, which is Rios’s sister’s, her name, Nikki, and all the details blur to the point where there are only two considerations:
Nikki is different.
And:
What exactly is any different?
Nikki tours us around the place as if we can’t figure it out ourselves. Then I begin to see the differences and it’s greatly the opposite of my apartment. Or any apartment for that matter. Nikki doesn’t leave my side.
She asks me about things.
I tell her what she wants to know.
Whether or not it is true doesn’t seem like a problem until later.
Veronica stays behind with my phone and hers, letting them charge; she needs to catch up too. Meurks is too far behind and this information makes concentrating on aspects of the tour quite difficult.
Nikki’s voice carries, and she spends most of the time explaining the dollar value of each item. She would not make for a good Elite Aesthetics employee.
Rios disappeared when we arrived.
When I attempt to figure out where he went, I come up empty.
I don’t ask Nikki.
I don’t ask Nikki anything.
I only answer her questions.
And then she starts telling me about herself and it sounds like she said this all before, many times.
Says that she likes to enjoy life.
Says that she’s tired of how most people live.
Says that people are too judgmental.
Says society is toxic.
Says that society is absurd.
Says that people try to find too much value in society.
Says that doing that makes it difficult to hide from society.
Says that society will destroy a person.
Says that society is tragic.
Says that if you let society do all the talking, you’ll find that everything is a cage and nobody is free.
Then Nikki goes on to talk more about herself.
Her studies, her exhibitionism, her many suitors.
We turn the corner and she pushes me into an alcove.
She kisses me lightly, I don’t kiss back.
“‘Nikki’ isn’t my real name …”
Then we keep walking.
When I look at Nikki, she has a great big grin. When I’m not looking but looking from the side, pretending not to look but I’m really looking, Nikki has the greatest frown. There isn’t anything genuine here.
She’s just giving me a tour.
When we finish we end up back in the bigger room near the front where Veronica stayed. Rios is there too. They’re talking.
The way they talk confuses me.
He sits real close to her, and she isn’t pulling back.
When we arrive, Rios greets me but completely ignores Nikki.
I guess it’s because they are brother and sister.
My guess is as good as any.
Maybe not. There are a lot of maybes traded as everyone in the room, 4 people, exchange considerations for what happens next.
What happens next?
They don’t ask me.
And I don’t say anything. I keep to the phone. Meurks is so behind.
Nikki and Rios take us to the shoreline. There is a rocky pasture where the seawater splashes up and I sit there with my phone for most of the time. Veronica goes with Nikki and Rios. They walk the edge, where their feet sink into the cool sands.
I can hear only Nikki’s voice, like Veronica and Rios are holding theirs close. Nikki shows them around.