Karen had been driving nearly all night, with the heater turned way up. She’d forgotten how cold the desert could be at this time of year. The smell of Yucca, Saguaro, and Sage pushed in through the dashboard vents. In the back seat, her small suitcase, pile of manila file folders, and tiny black PDA, slumped over in a mound, like an unconscious body. Whenever she left like this, which was only every few years, or so, she found that she had to remind herself of the route west. The turns seemed foreign, almost the reverse of the way they should be, and the Interstate looked different than she remembered, as she passed strip malls and fast food palaces that, the last time she fled this way, had not yet blossomed in the flat vacant terrain, where no one really wanted to live. She found herself clenching her teeth, locked in some inner debate that seemed simultaneously important and trivial, “Was it a mirage or was it a delusion?” She grew more irritated with herself, “What difference did it make, now?”
The car headlights illuminated the white lines that stretched out ahead. The lines were intended to keep the vehicles and their occupants in their designated places. But now, in the early morning cold, just a few minutes before dawn, there were no other cars, no other drivers. Nothing on either side of her, but the blur of desert brush. Nothing behind, but the first half-glow of dawn. Nothing ahead, but some kind of future.
At their apartment, Rory was dreaming he was awake. The sunlight filtered in through the cheap drapes and he had the same recurring feeling he had every morning. Slight disappointment with a trace of regret. He was once again back in the unfamiliar routine that was his life. As if he belonged somewhere else. Same thing, every day. How could it be light so soon? He rolled over and pulled the blanket over his shoulders and wondered why the air felt so cold. Just then, the smell of burnt toast drifted in from the kitchen and seared his nostrils. He let out a sigh and was annoyed at her for being careless again. Why did it bother him? He tried to call out to her but the effort was too much. Why couldn't he find his voice? He thought he heard water running, but his mind couldn't focus on what was happening. Something didn't feel right. His thoughts dulled over and he felt his mind slip over the dark void into deep sleep when he suddenly jerked awake. The room was brightly lit and he had trouble opening his eyes, like someone had ground sand into them and added lead to his eyelids. Eyelids, he thought to himself. Stupid. It hurt to squint at the clock. 2:00 a.m. Shit. He'd fallen asleep with the light on. Again. The window was wide open. That was odd. He leaned over to reach for Karen at the same time he glanced over, but she wasn't there. Frowning, he tried to put the pieces of last night together...but nothing came. He tried to pull himself more awake. Then came a sinking feeling, a gnawing grip at his stomach that got stronger. A wave of disgust that preceded what he dreaded to remember. He instantly tried to suppress the thought, but that made him instantly clear headed and wide awake, unable to fend off the memory of last night.
“My God, Karen, what took you so long? We had just about given you up for dead. I mean…” Her sister’s voice hesitated for a moment. “You know what I mean,” she looked both embarrassed and annoyed.
Whitney stood in the blanched, cement driveway of her home. The sun was warm and the Valley air was already smoggy, well before noon. Although a year and one-half older, her sister looked like her twin, but in the two years since the sisters had seen one another, Whitney seemed thicker, everywhere, like the retraced outline of a child’s crayon drawing.
Karen slid out of the car’s front seat, and the two sister’s perfunctorily embraced for second, a bit like a shrug of the shoulders. Karen opened the driver’s side rear door of her car, as her sister stood to one side, waiting for her to unload her belongings from the back seat.
“We got your e-mail four days ago. I thought you’d be here by Tuesday. You didn’t call. I thought maybe you had an accident.” Whitney seemed more put-off than alarmed.
“I did,” muttered Karen, half-smiling and hoping her sister would get the sarcasm that she never seemed to fully appreciate.” She must have understood this time, because Whitney didn’t inquire any further.
The two sisters walked to the imposing front door, and into the house. Whitney’s kid’s were at school and the place looked astonishingly neat for the home of two elementary-aged children. Karen noticed that the walls had been newly painted a faint peach color that was now thought to mean sleekness and enlightenment in the post-modern suburbs, where her sister had come to rest after a tumultuous decade of trying to succeed as an actress in an unyielding and unwelcoming Hollywood. Multiple parental loans, an occasional appearance in locally shot TV commercials, and periodic parts in community theaters, had dimmed her Vassar-acquired expectations for the dramatic arts in contemporary America.
Her husband, Jack, was gone; at work in one of the exurban financial brokerage companies that helped retirees and well-heeled suburbanites shuttle their money into Eastern establishment, WASPy sounding mutual funds, based in the Bahamas. Karen was relieved that Jack was gone, although in a small, furtive way, barely conscious to her, she always looked forward to seeing him.
Karen dropped her luggage in the hall, and the two sisters settled into the cool air- conditioned light of the house’s large kitchen.
“So what did he do this time?” Whitney asked. “Did he hurt you?”
“No… I mean, yes, but not that way.” Karen set her coffee mug down on the chrome and glass kitchen table. She was dressed in an elegant gray business suit that much belied the swiftness of her flight and the disheveled origins of that first night of escape. Her straight dark hair offset her blue eyes. “He’s too smart to be violent, at least towards me. No, it’s about the money, ‘our’ money. Shit, all of it is gone. Gone.”
“How much was it?” Whitney asked.
“More than Jack will make in ten year’s of trading,” Karen said with a slightly indignant sneer at her sister’s question.
“Where, for God’s sake, did Rory get that kind of cash?”
“Look, you know what he does. He’s paid very well for his work, if you want to call it ‘work’.
Just then, Karen’s cell phone chirped. She paused, reached into her gray suit coat. She knew who it was without looking at the screen. She decided that enough time had passed since her escape—and anyway, Rory knew exactly where she would be. She answered the phone with a curt, “Yes.”
Rory’s voice sounded …….
©B. Rose 2006
