And it did. I chewed and chewed until things fit back in order and bones felt like bones again, flesh became real. Angles and edges returned to my cheeks and chin.
The sun began to creep up behind the desert rocks and everyone lost their mystery at once. Smudged faces, busted eyes, swollen lips, and dilated pupils confounded by the presence of daylight. Everyone wished to shut off the light, erase the motion of the earth, kick the sun back behind the hill. The smarter ones got in their cars and drove away. I hoped Alo and Ben were among them. The vastness of the desert was too much to take in by day. The intimacy and tribalism disappeared in an instant. The cratered land had been everyone’s cozy living room at night but now it was a filthy service-station bathroom with vomit and piss steaming across the dirt. I stayed to watch the lost ones under the stage who weren’t ready to go home. They had sunscreen and vitamin C and Vicks VapoRub to keep their highs going, and they danced in a torment below the speakers. That’s when I saw her. She was spinning in circles with her eyes closed, face smeared with glitter and gold, eyelids heavy with Egyptian eyeliner. She glowed from within, listening to a melody nobody else could hear.
I slipped off my knee-highs and put my bare feet on the ground, thinking if only I could feel the soil beneath me, I would be able to move again. A soft wind slid through my heart. I began to transpire with a warm feeling that leaked out and recirculated through my pores. Suddenly I was able to walk again and everything seemed simple. I put one foot in front of the other and kept going until I reached her cool bare arms.
“Deva,” I said, moving hair away from my eyes. “Happy birthday.”
She still smelled of bay leaves and patchouli, but her eyes were a darker green now, as if distance had accumulated density in her pupils. She seemed older. I held her and put my hands on her hips. The dirty desert morning transformed into California dawn. She hugged me back. I’d never seen her so thin. I kissed her hair and when I looked at her again, her strong, concrete eyes turned watery and began to dart around my periphery, unfocused, burning with their usual urge to move on. She laughed—a begging, pained expression—and introduced me to her friends, all lanky and transformed. They were too high to be friendly. We didn’t shake hands.
I reached for her wrist, wanting to take her away.
“I’m sorry. I looked for you, but got carried away,” she said.
I pretended it wasn’t a big deal, wasn’t that what everyone did at parties? Got together, swarmed in unison, split up, and found each other again at dawn like in a migratory bird dance?
“Your father,” I reminded her, gripping her wrist more firmly now. “You said you had to be back in the morning for your birthday hike.”
Deva looked up to a corner of the sky. The sun was out. Fun gone from her face.
“We have to go, yes! He’ll kill me.”
—
We found a ride back to Topanga with some friends of Deva’s. Things seemed simpler in the daylight. We stopped at a gas station and bought Gatorade because we were all dehydrated. From the edge of the cement lot we could now see cars scattered across the land, blasting music. Impromptu parties were happening under dry plants—brief spurts of dragged-out festivities. On our way back, we popped in a cassette of the night’s highlights, a kind of bootleg recording Deva’s deejay friend had given her. Deva rolled down her window and stretched her arm out, her hand mimicking the movement of a boat rolling up and down on the tide. She hummed to herself, one hand waving at the Mojave moon turf, the other holding a cigarette. I kept glancing over at her, hoping she’d betray some emotion toward me, but she was in some far-off place.
The freeway that would take us back to Los Angeles was visible in the distance as we descended a sharp winding hill. Curve followed curve and I remembered I had been on that road before, driving much faster, my father at the wheel. It was the place where my brother had fallen off his bicycle and split his knee open the first week we’d moved to Los Angeles. I recognized the Mount Sinai hospital in the distant valley. I remembered my brother’s little body appearing from behind a curve, walking toward us covered in blood, my mother hitting my father, crying. I saw now how sharp and blind each curve was. Why allow a kid to dash down that road without a helmet?
“Let him ride his bike down the hill while we drive. We’ll wait for him at the bottom. I never used a helmet in my life,” my father had said.
Ettore had put us all in danger the minute we set foot in California. He knew we needed some armor if we were to start a life here. A shell, like my rubber suit or the coarse skin that had hardened on my mother’s face. She had exposed herself to so much sun that it had burned through the layers on her forehead. Her Mediterranean skin had peeled away, letting the rays charge across pores and cells. In her third eye were the flames of an imaginary star. That was her scar. We all had our own. They were indelible.
—
Everything ached. My limbs were stretched out as if they’d run away from my body. I was struck by a feeling of overwhelming sadness for them, as if my own body had morphed into something else while I wasn’t looking, and now it was too late and I had to deal with the consequences of my recklessness. Deva closed the flimsy white curtains of her cabin to filter out the morning light and got in bed next to me. The smell of her skin came and went. I squeezed her closer to trap her inside my nostrils.
“I missed you,” I told her with my eyes closed.
She rested one hand on my belly and put the other one between my thighs. “Squeeze,” she said. “I’m cold.”
I pushed my legs together and exhaled on her head to warm her up. The cabin was musty. Humidity seeped into our skin. I wrapped myself around her and opened my eyes, observing her face up close.
“How was Montana? I thought you’d never come back.”