TWENTY-SEVEN
End of the Road
The whisper, harsh in her ear, lingers as she jolts awake.
"I'm sorry," Miriam blurts.
Louis looks over at her as he wheels the truck off past the exit ramp and through a tollbooth. "Sorry for what?"
For letting you die, she thinks. Her hair is stringy, sweaty. It clings to her forehead.
"Nothing. I thought – I think I was snoring."
"You weren't."
"Well. Good."
She rubs her eyes. It's night. The windshield is wet from recent rain, but in the jaundiced streetlights it looks like someone pissed all over the glass.
"Where are we?" she asks.
"Pennsylvania. Headed toward a truck stop in Coopersburg. I got a buddy up there who's real good with trucks. Has a gift. I like him to do all my maintenance, and whenever I swing through this area, I always pay him a visit."
She smacks her lips together. Her tongue rasps against the roof of her mouth. A case of total cottonmouth. Cigarette. Coffee. Booze. One of those three would be nice right now.
"Pennsylvania. Weren't we just in Ohio?"
"We were. But then you fell asleep."
"Shit. That's a long trip, isn't it?"
He shrugs. "Not really. About eight, nine hours. That's the name of the game. Go as far as you can, fast as you can – we get paid by the mile."
"So that's why most truckers drive like a bull in a china shop."
"Yup. They're trying to feed their families, so they pop No-Doze or worse and push it. Sometimes beyond the breaking point." His voice gets quiet. "I don't have a home, don't have a family to feed, so I can take it easy. Even taking it easy, I make about thirty-five cents a mile, and today we did a five-hundred-plus mile haul – that's darn near two-hundred bucks. I pull in about sixty grand a year, and I don't have a mortgage, don't have many bills."
"Does it bother you? This life? You're basically… a nomad. You have no home."
"Neither do you."
"I know. And I love it… sometimes. I love that I'm just a piece of garbage floating down the stream – wherever it takes me, it takes me. But I also hate it. I never feel connected to anything or anybody. No anchor. No roots."
"I feel connected to you," he says.
"I feel connected to you, too," she responds, and yet she marvels at how feeling connected to him also makes her feel more distant. A paradox, an impossibility, but there it is. She's close to him, but between them lurks a great and monstrous gap: the yawning abyss betwixt life and death.
He feels it, too. She knows he does, because he's quiet then. He doesn't understand it like she does. He doesn't know what's coming. But she figures, somewhere inside of him, he feels it. The way spiders can sense a thunderstorm, or the way honeybees can signal an earthquake.
The lights of the local highway strobe into the cab.
She breaks the silence. "We crashing in the truck tonight?"
"No," he says. "The truck stop has a motel and a diner attached to it."
"That's my life. Motels. Diners. Highways."
"Mine, too."
Then the silence returns, and the truck rumbles on.
The tables at the diner are clean, the eggs are good, and the coffee neither looks nor tastes like urine from a diseased kidney. The motel next door, too, is clean. Doesn't stink of puke or cigarettes. No roaches doing a kick-dance on the sink. The motel's doors don't lead right to the parking lot, either. The place has a goddamn genuine hallway. It's like the Four Fucking Seasons, she thinks. Is that what separates a motel from a hotel? Is this actually a hotel? she wonders. Has she ever stayed in a hotel?
Miriam should feel happy. This is a step up. Louis is a step up.
She paces outside, smoking, unhappy.
"You don't know what you're doing," she mumbles to herself.
It's true. She doesn't.
She's just been going with it. Garbage in the stream. Be happy. Find bliss. Let it work. Make Louis happy. Don't worry about tomorrow. And that was working fine, just fine.
"But then, dumbass that you are, you have to go and visit a bona fide psychic who erupts like a goddamn blood geyser and tells you that you're the human equivalent of the Enola Gay. Meanwhile, Louis is going to die in five days and what are you going to do about it? Nothing? Let it happen? Sit back and watch and smoke your goddamn cigarettes?"
As if angry at the cancer stick, she pinches it and pitches it –
And Ashley ducks as the glowing cherry whirls over his shoulder.
"Talking to yourself?" he says.
It's like seeing a ghost. As if he emerges out of nothing. Miriam can't help but wonder if he's even real. He doesn't sound the same. A tremor quivers below his voice. He itches at his side. His stance is off, even – his confidence is tilted, like his body.
Miriam pats her jeans pocket. The knife isn't there. Of course it's not there. She had to leave it behind in that woman's thigh when this cocksucker bailed on her.
"You fucking shitcock asshole."
"That a way to greet an old friend?" He chuckles. It's not a healthy sound. He's not a ghost.
"Old friend. That's a good one. You come near me, and I bite. I'll bite off your fingers. I'll bite off your nose." To emphasize, she snaps her teeth together: clack clack.
Ashley comes closer anyway. He steps into a halo of bleak light. His smooth face is dotted with patchy beard growth. His eyes, hollow. His hair is messy, and not in the purposeful way he once favored – it's now just a greasy tangle.
"I need your help," he says. He pleads. "I need you."
"You need a bath. You smell like–" She takes a whiff. "Cat piss. Jesus, Ashley. You're using. You're actually using that stuff."
"I'm on the run."
"Then get the hell away from me."
"They're following me. Dogging my every step. I gotta stay sharp. It's just for now."
She laughs. "Just for now. I can quit anytime. I didn't know she was fourteen, officer."
"Fuck you, you alcoholic, nic-fit freak."
"Those are legal." As if to demonstrate, she taps a cigarette out of the pack and grabs it with her lips. "They also make me smell like a bar, not an overturned litter box."
"We can go somewhere. We can go anywhere. Just get on a plane and go."
"Where's the case?"
His eyes dart to-and-fro. "I've taken care of that. But I can get it when we need it."
"You can't take a metal suitcase full of crystal meth on a plane, dumb fuck."
"Then we'll take a bus."
"Oh, heck, I love the bus," she says. "Nothing better than a twelve-hour ride in an oven-baked casket with unwashed schizophrenics. Super-sweet. Understand something: I'm not going anywhere with you. You're on your own. You left me to die out there, paired up with a gun-toting Annie Wilkes-wannabe. She could've killed me." Probably should've.
She takes the unlit cigarette out of her mouth and pops it behind her ear. Heel pivots to toe, and then she's turning away from him and heading inside the motel.
"Wait," he says, coming in after her. The motel clerk – a bald guy in one of those translucent-green poker visors – regards their conversation with sleepy eyes. She doesn't plan on giving him a show. She hits the hallway, passes the ice machine.
Ashley dogs her.
He puts his hand on her shoulder. She thinks seriously about biting it, but she doesn't know where those hands have been over the last week.
Instead, she shoves him back.
He reaches for her again. She grabs a fistful of his shirt and hurls him backward.
"I'll tell him," he says, staggering.
She stops. Over her shoulder, she asks, "Tell what to whom?"
"Your truck-driver boyfriend. I'll tell him everything."
Her feet carry her forward, away from Ashley. She heads toward their room. The key is in her hand before she knows it, and she suddenly recognizes that this was a bad move. But she doesn't know where else to go or what else to do, and the quiet scared little girl inside of her just wants to go to Louis and curl up in his lap and let him protect her from her mistakes.
She opens the door and calmly walks in.
She closes the door behind her and locks it.
She sits on the bed, trembling.
Louis is already up and alert. He looks concerned.
"What was that? What was that in the hallway?"
Miriam stares forward. She bites her lip. She tries to say something and can't find words.
Then: a pounding at the door.
"What is that?" Louis asks. "Who is that?"
"Don't answer the door," Miriam says.
"Don't – what? Why not?" He moves toward the door.
She grabs his hand as he passes. "You don't have to. You can just ignore it. Ignore it. Please."
Then he asks the question. It's telling. It tells what he really thinks about her, or more accurately, what he fears about her.
He asks, "What have you done?"
"I…" The words don't trail off so much as they never manifest to begin with.
Louis goes to the door and opens it.
Ashley shoulders his way into the room as if Louis isn't there. Arms crossed tight in front of him, rocking back and forth like he's some kind of mule-kicked simpleton, Ashley stands in front of Miriam. "I need to know how I die. Tell me how I die. They don't kill me. Tell me they don't kill me. I know they're coming, Miriam. You can help me; I need you to help me–"
"Hey," Louis barks. But then he sees who it is. "Is that your brother?"
Ashley laughs. "I'm not her brother, bro."
"What? Miriam?"
"Don't look at her. Look at me. We're here to rob your ass. This is a scam. A con."
Miriam says nothing.
Louis frowns. "You'd better tell me what's going on, son."
"We know you've got bank. All that money in envelopes. Hand it over. Or else."
"Or else what?"
Ashley pulls a gun – really just his thumb and index finger shaped into a gun. "This, motherfucker. Now stick 'em up." He cocks his thumb back like he's ready to fire.
Louis lays Ashley out with one punch. Bam.
It's like a wrecking ball. Ashley topples backward onto the bed. He starts to get up, dizzy – the punch should have put him down for an hour, but whatever meth is still crawling through his system is happy to animate his body like a puppet on strings.
With his meaty hands, Louis picks Ashley's entire body up and pitches him backward into the bedside table. A lamp spins off and crashes into the ground, casting that corner of the room into darkness. Louis then grabs Ashley by the ankle and drags him back around the bed toward the door, with Ashley's head hitting the table legs on a crummy desk, the corner of the dresser and TV stand, and even the rubber door stopper.
Louis throws Ashley out of the room, then slams the door.
A sense of mad elation fills Miriam's heart. He saved her. He did so without asking any questions. He saw the threat and eliminated it. She feels protected. She feels safe.
Miriam leaps to her feet and throws her arms around Louis's prodigious torso.
He doesn't return the embrace.
Gently, he pushes her back.
"Is it true?" he asks.
Her heart sinks.
"Louis–"
"Just tell me, is it true? He's not your brother? Were you planning on robbing me?"
"Not at first, but then – then maybe – but not now, not now, I ditched him, that's why I ditched him, you have to believe me, I never wanted–"
But Louis moves away from her and starts throwing his items back in his bag.
"Where are you going?"
"Away," he says. "Away from you."
"Louis, wait."
"No. My truck's not in the shop yet, not until morning. I'm just going to leave. Room's yours for the night if you want it. I don't much care. But I can't abide liars."
She grabs his wrist, but then he grabs hers in return. His grip is gentle enough, but she knows that with a twist of his wrist, he could snap her arm into brittle bits.
"You were right. You are poison. You tried to tell me. I should've listened."
He takes a deep breath, then says the word that is a knife that goes right through her heart:
"Goodbye."
Bag over his shoulder, he pushes his way out of the room, steps over Ashley's supine body, and moves silently down the hallway until he's out of sight.
Miriam hasn't cried in a long time, but she cries now.
Hard, wracking sobs. Her eyes burn. Her ribs hurt. She cries the way a child cries: gasping, hitching, keening.
Over her cries, she can hear his truck rumble to life.
The sound grows to a growl, then fades.
Louis pulls his truck out of the lot and back onto the highway.
He doesn't think much of the black Escalade that passes him, going in as he goes out.