“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, bless your heart.” She gives my hand a squeeze. Turns to Mel, shakes her hand, then reaches out and grabs her by the arm, looks into her eyes for a long second. “I don’t mind telling you,” she says, “but I’ve got a feeling about you. I surely do.” She pats her arm vigorously, still staring. “May the Lord bless you and keep you, Melody Vaught.”
Mel coughs. “Right back at you.” Turns and heads out the door.
I trail behind. Lisa touches my shoulder, purple fingernails glinting. “I’m glad she has someone to take care of her,” she says in a low voice.
I cram the Nutter Butters into my bag. “Huh?”
“Bye-bye, now.” The door swings shut.
We walk back to the car. The sun is round and low and hot. It hurts to face west. The soil is sand, crunchy under our shoes. There is green only in small patches, strong and spiny.
I look sidelong at Mel. I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound dumb. The sun shines behind her head, her lips and jaw sharpening against the glow.
I swing over and bodycheck her, shoulder to hip. She walks through the stumble, grimacing a little at the ground.
“I picked cremation,” she says.
“I think that’s a good choice.”
“Yeah. Well. I didn’t feel like digging any big fucking holes in the ground anytime soon.” She kicks gravel. “We got a platform now, should we ever need it. Nashville Combat Two: Shanked in the Spleen.” She laughs. It’s a thin, glassy sound. “Come on. We were both thinking it on the way down. Right? Probably pulling some dumb bitch’s hair trailer-park-style when she got stabbed. And it killed her. That’s stupid, man.” Mel’s head bobs in time to her steps. “It’s embarrassing, is what it is. I spend this whole trip ripping myself apart. Thinking about how she suffered. About how we hadn’t talked in, like, years. And I made this thing about her and I have no idea how it might have made her feel, to watch it, you know? But now? I don’t have a single solitary fuck to give, man. You live a stupid life, you will more likely than not have a stupid death. I get to mine her life for all it’s worth now. That’s what I get out of this.” Her voice catches on something. She stops.
“Mel.” I reach out, grab her hand, her shoulder.
She strides forward, shaking me off. “I’m gonna get those little bottles back. I’ll meet you at the car.”
I watch her slump away. We’ll get a motel room for the night, then drive back tomorrow, back home for a few weeks. Then, on to the press tour. Taking our little show on the road. Maybe it’s better than the alternative—anything to avoid New York for a while. Mel’s big, dirty playground, where I could lose track of her far too easily. I shield my eyes, open the car door. I back away from the smell.
WHAT WE DID TO NPR
When I first imagined what it would be like to go on TV or radio, I pictured the glamour clichés first: tall buildings, busy people, a long-sought grace and knowledge occurring to me as soon as I had a spotlight trained on my face and a boom mic over my head.
But I climb the subway stairs at Forty-second Street and realize, with a loosening of bowels, that this level of comfort and smoothness will never occur to me. I’m about to go on NPR and I feel as stupid as I did yesterday.
I’m slightly relieved to find New York’s public radio affiliate in not a high-rise but a dark, squat building from the sixties. There’s a point, living here, at which you stop being the transplant, the tourist, and become something else. Not a New Yorker. God, no, never that. Just wearily, testily deft at being here. Strangely comforted by darkness and grime. A doorman keeps post with a crossword puzzle and wags a hand at me when I enter.
It’s been an eight-week, ten-city promotional tour since Florida, a blur of more sour-smelling rental cars and threadbare hotel comforters, the feeling of never having slept enough and always having eaten too much. I’m not in great shape. Sore, chunky from our time on the road, ass melding to the driver’s seat of a low-end Chevy, sepia-toothed from smoking too much, slamming McGriddles and Mountain Dews from the grief of it all, promoting Nashville Combat, which has been called both “regional psychodrama” and “token manipulation” by critics. It’s been discussed as a class struggle piece, a work of fourth-wave feminism, dark comedy worthy of an Oscar, a gross failure, a triumph. We have been condemned and applauded and we don’t much care either way: We nearly piss ourselves every time we see our names in print.
And we have twenty minutes until we’re due on NPR and still no sign of Mel. None at all.
My phone vibrates. I wince—I won’t be able to hear a phone ring for another six months without the fear of bad news on the other end—but it’s a text from Donnie:
You just hit number 100 at the box office for the summer season. That’s an INDIE ADULT CARTOON with LIMITED BACKING in the top 100. This is HUGE! You’ll have LOTS to talk about on Glynnis!