“We don’t need a bag, thanks.” I push Mel toward the exit.
Back in the car, I pop a Dexatrim. I’m an old pro at speeding and staying up all night to work. I figure driving across seven states shouldn’t be much different. Mel’s asleep before we hit West Virginia. I’m grateful. I still don’t know what to say to her—what would matter, what might help. Mel’s not in the habit of spilling guts. The only thing to do, for now, is to keep moving forward.
I’m freaked enough that my driver’s hands have taken me down the interstate path I know best—through Pennsylvania toward Ohio—before I realize my mistake. It would take too long to backtrack; the only solution is to charge forward. During one of her stints of wakefulness, I confess to Mel what I’ve done. She merely wipes her nose with the back of her hand, lets the hand fall with a smack down to her thigh, and shrugs.
“Well, she’s not going anywhere,” she says.
We press down Ohio through Cincinnati’s river valley and into Kentucky by the afternoon. Mel dozes on and off through three interstate changes, finally stirring on I-75. “Trivia,” I say. “We are less than five hours from the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. And less than three from mine.”
“Rad.” She closes her eyes. Resumes snoring.
I stop for gas again south of Lexington, throw her a pack of four-dollar Benson & Hedges. She blinks, looks around. The land has exploded into bright green elevation. Trim roadside acres lined with white slatted fences. Two men in Carhartt jackets and boots tend to a sleek, knobby Thoroughbred.
“Iddint that pretty,” Mel says. She lights two of the smokes, sticks one in each corner of her mouth, barks, “I’m a walrus.” Passes one to me. Her hand shakes.
Suddenly I am back home. First time in Kentucky in at least four years. I’m filled with unease, a horrible sixth sense hanging like gas since we hit the state line. I’ve always had the feeling that here, less is possible for me, that even the cars move slower.
I flick. The two men and horse retreat. The mountains are a jagged EKG on the horizon.
“It’s like a postcard,” Mel says.
I turn the engine. “Yep. Can’t find a job but it’s a goddamn Currier and Ives print everywhere you look.”
“I take it we won’t be stopping.”
“We’ve got places to go.”
“You sure? Don’t want to see your mom or something?”
“Hah hah.”
She shrugs. “All right, dude.” Pitches her smoke, curls against the window, and goes back to sleep.
—
We are waved through a security checkpoint and around the main facility, down a long concrete path to a separate building with a sign reading only MEDICAL SERVICES / FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. At the entrance, another checkpoint. We walk through a metal detector. A grim female security guard pats us down and relieves Mel of two airline-sized bottles of vodka. “I’m coming back to get those,” Mel calls out. The guard narrows her eyes and throws them into a box. We are admitted.
Walking into the prison morgue is like entering a school, or a hospital: same industrial-grade lighting, same speckled linoleum, same two-piece office chairs skittering across Berber carpeting. I smell coffee grounds and the spike of bleach cleaner. It is all disquietingly public.
“Can I help you ladies?”
The woman at the desk is heavy, her makeup dark and slick. Kohl liner wings both eyes. A glittering cross hangs from each earlobe. There are rings on her fingers, mammoth QVC jobs. She smiles wide and easy at us.
Mel shifts beside me, but I refuse to speak. “I’m here to claim someone,” she says finally. “Or, uh, someone’s body, actually.”
The woman purses her lips in sympathy. “Of course. Can you give me the name of the deceased?”
“Kelly Kay Vaught.”
The lady gives her keyboard a few taps. “Okay. Are you a relative?”
“I’m her daughter.”
“Melody.” The lady straightens, reaches out to take Mel’s hand in both her own. “I’m Lisa Greaph, the mortician on duty here. We’re so sorry for your loss.”
It’s there on the name placard: G-R-E-A-P-H. I look at Mel. But Mel is distracted, slow. Her eyes trail from Lisa Greaph to the gray double doors behind her.
“If there is anything we can do in terms of guiding you through interment options, just say the word.” She grasps my hand. I catch a whiff of White Shoulders. A framed cross-stitch of “Footprints” sits on her desk: All that time, I was carrying you. “Are you also a relative?”
I take a deep breath. Mel cuts in. “This is my partner.” There’s an uncomfortable pause. “My business partner. She can come with me, right?”