On Friday morning, Maggie phoned with the seed of a plan.
“I need to bury my pills. I’m thinking someplace rural.”
Jess stuck a finger between the waistband of her pants and rubbed the indentations already forming. The air had turned the corner and held a bite. Passengers shielded their faces with their hands, reluctant to unpack their winter clothes. That morning, her train delayed at the station, she’d seen a homeless man kick the receivers off the telephones, then run away. She felt empathy not for the man, but for the plastic molded earpieces, their sudden stop after confusedly twisting through the air. Her finger worried a part of the wool fabric where the fibers were thinning, becoming a ruinous hole.
Jess slumped in her chair, lowering her head just below the line of bean bag stuffed animals positioned around the perimeter of her neighbor’s work station. Their black button eyes reflected the Jess’ swirling screen saver, a silent hurricane. A drawn out groan came over the line. Jess cupped the receiver in her hand. “Which pills—that pack from the university trial?”
Maggie always had some issue with her birth control. One gave her vertigo, another made her feet swell up a full size. An entire weekend in Madison, which included a stolen drum from an Ethiopian restaurant and $500 in parking tickets, was later ascribed to a hormone regulator implant. Jess hadn’t been aware of any problems recently, but evidence wasn’t always a requirement in her best friend’s emotional trials.
“The Estrocese?” Maggie yawned. “No, remember, I dropped those out the drunk trolley on St. Pat’s? These are garden variety. ‘Clears your skin and won’t jack your libido! I know, because I’m a woman doctor.’ Those. But they’re giving me night terrors like whoa. Got to get rid.”
“Got to get rid”—a trap door trigger for any unwanted element in Maggie’s life. Woe to the man or small furry creature that heard those words. These expulsions meant a ritual needed to be planned, a mild prayer said for lost plans. When the wheels of Maggie’s life train jumped the track, everyone needed to stop and listen to the grate and whistle of steel changing course. She was a part-time nanny and masseuse, professions with normal connotations for Jess, at least until they became the foundations for Maggie’s retro-adolescence.
Jess composed spreadsheets for insurance policy mediators and recently threw away a live goldfish. She did not say a prayer when she realized her mistake.
Looking up, she immediately locked eyes with her manager, a dead-eyed MBA with the weight of a luxury sedan lease resting on his narrow shoulders. Simultaneously, he typed furiously on his standing efficiency desk and bored a hole in the wall two inches above Jess’ head. She’d forgotten to get a tardy slip from the transportation desk. Her face warming uncontrollably, she looked down and spied a post-it note sticking out from under her ergonomic wrist pad, unnoticed when she first came in. “Where are you?” she read aloud.
Maggie stopped listing her music choices for the ride. “Alright, alright, I get it. Go. I need to get Kaydon from his breakfast enrichment play date anyway. Do you need any clothes?”
Jess folded the note into an origami bird, but messed up the beak. “No, I’ll just sleep in my underwear.”
“Yeah you will. Or maybe less. Whacca Whacca Whacca. Porno.”
“I need to bury my pills. I’m thinking someplace rural.”
Jess stuck a finger between the waistband of her pants and rubbed the indentations already forming. The air had turned the corner and held a bite. Passengers shielded their faces with their hands, reluctant to unpack their winter clothes. That morning, her train delayed at the station, she’d seen a homeless man kick the receivers off the telephones, then run away. She felt empathy not for the man, but for the plastic molded earpieces, their sudden stop after confusedly twisting through the air. Her finger worried a part of the wool fabric where the fibers were thinning, becoming a ruinous hole.
Jess slumped in her chair, lowering her head just below the line of bean bag stuffed animals positioned around the perimeter of her neighbor’s work station. Their black button eyes reflected the Jess’ swirling screen saver, a silent hurricane. A drawn out groan came over the line. Jess cupped the receiver in her hand. “Which pills—that pack from the university trial?”
Maggie always had some issue with her birth control. One gave her vertigo, another made her feet swell up a full size. An entire weekend in Madison, which included a stolen drum from an Ethiopian restaurant and $500 in parking tickets, was later ascribed to a hormone regulator implant. Jess hadn’t been aware of any problems recently, but evidence wasn’t always a requirement in her best friend’s emotional trials.
“The Estrocese?” Maggie yawned. “No, remember, I dropped those out the drunk trolley on St. Pat’s? These are garden variety. ‘Clears your skin and won’t jack your libido! I know, because I’m a woman doctor.’ Those. But they’re giving me night terrors like whoa. Got to get rid.”
“Got to get rid”—a trap door trigger for any unwanted element in Maggie’s life. Woe to the man or small furry creature that heard those words. These expulsions meant a ritual needed to be planned, a mild prayer said for lost plans. When the wheels of Maggie’s life train jumped the track, everyone needed to stop and listen to the grate and whistle of steel changing course. She was a part-time nanny and masseuse, professions with normal connotations for Jess, at least until they became the foundations for Maggie’s retro-adolescence.
Jess composed spreadsheets for insurance policy mediators and recently threw away a live goldfish. She did not say a prayer when she realized her mistake.
Looking up, she immediately locked eyes with her manager, a dead-eyed MBA with the weight of a luxury sedan lease resting on his narrow shoulders. Simultaneously, he typed furiously on his standing efficiency desk and bored a hole in the wall two inches above Jess’ head. She’d forgotten to get a tardy slip from the transportation desk. Her face warming uncontrollably, she looked down and spied a post-it note sticking out from under her ergonomic wrist pad, unnoticed when she first came in. “Where are you?” she read aloud.
Maggie stopped listing her music choices for the ride. “Alright, alright, I get it. Go. I need to get Kaydon from his breakfast enrichment play date anyway. Do you need any clothes?”
Jess folded the note into an origami bird, but messed up the beak. “No, I’ll just sleep in my underwear.”
“Yeah you will. Or maybe less. Whacca Whacca Whacca. Porno.”
***
Jess was backing away from a memory like a hiker retreating from a bear. Or at least that was the visual image that always broke through her daydreaming, when she was grasping at something not real, but clinging to her mind. Nights she would try to go to sleep, only to wake up a couple hours later in mid-run, taking solace in half-finished crosswords and DVDs. She lost weekends to unnecessary errands and spent time planning meals. She’d begun to forget small appointments, remembering days after, absorbed in the ambient sound of the radio running in the shower.
That previous summer, sitting at a stranger’s kitchen table in sweat-soaked sports bra and gym shorts, Jess considered a drained bottle of wine. Plans for a leisurely evening had transformed into an endurance test. The sun hadn’t yet descended behind the rooftops she could see through the sliding glass doors leading out to an irony balcony. Jess shifted her weight from one foot to the other, questioning her ability to stand.
Her body performed the necessary duties for going out: bound her damper hair in an elastic, applied mascara, stripped and tossed her dirty underwear in her duffel, not looking for another pair. A fleeting reminder that her reason for being there—the sensitive rottweiler, frightened of fireworks, a Puerto Rican holiday turning the neighborhood into a battle zone of pride—was tossed in the tile bowl by the front door, along with her car keys.
Later, recalling the sequence of events, nothing felt more important than anything else, the true course of events subverted by wine and individually wrapped: her friend's fluorescent dreadlocks, a rainbow sea anemone reaching up to the ceiling; an arbitrary debate about Polish versus Mexican beer, consumed with lime and orange; driving west through identical neighborhoods filled with houses lined up like rolls on a baking sheet; treacly vomit clinging to the strap of her dress; 20 dollars in her hand, hanging noncommittally over the plastic divider of the cab; a gauntlet of darkly silent men leading up to the house; the women who knew and were known, laughing, tapping their cigarettes over a communal plastic cup, their practiced gazes; the disembodied heads of Pacino and De Niro, their brooding young faces like propaganda murals; a plastic cup filled with liquid the color of a traffic cone; a woman, all teeth and eyeshadow, lecturing to her about exegesis; Jess’ sudden paranoia that she’d been pawned off, abandoned for strangers; sitting in the basement, black leather couches and mirrored walls, the music the kind you’d hear in the background when a mobster gets gunned down in a seedy club, too embarrassing to dance; her friend and the boy talking, laughing, looked over the shoulders of the DJ spinning aggressive synth beats; the low ceiling forcing everyone forward, as if they shouldered burdens too heavy to bear. Jess was in three places at once. In the basement, locking eyes with a man across the room, on an opposite leather couch, his head a buoy bobbing on a white cap of silver chest hair and white t-shirt, his lips curling like cooked prawns; curled up on the couch, a wet nose underfoot grounding her as fireworks punched the night; and ahead, waiting to see if things would happen as they did before, unable to stop them. Sitting at the edge of whatever was coming, she felt the need to force herself up and away.
Now, the rest she was not unhappy to dispute with herself, was a deconstruction of these painfully wrapped and stackable images: a mockery of the former's compactibility.
When standing on the shoulder-to-shoulder bus ride or flipping through a magazine at the doctor's office, interesting developments arose with back straightening clarity, sending her in search of a nearby friend with whom she could share. These a-ha moments dissolved like snowflakes on glass, and she was not embarrassed to show a fraction of devastation at having lost them once again in the murky mess of her knee-jerk selective memory.
Indisputable: a hand print bruise brandishing her forearm; unseen places suddenly making themselves known through her sharp inhalations of pained breath; a darkened figure of authority leaning forward, not asking if, but telling her that she was ok; lighting the self-conscious cigarette outside of the hospital, judging her location from the cross streets. Running through these images, frustrated, unnerved, the cracks between slowly filling with her worst assumptions. All of it sounded like the Tori Spelling tv movies, cliche beyond cliche, which in itself might have been another experience worth noting, but she avoided doing so.
As the summer mellowed and the shades lowered on the evening sunlight, Jess became accustomed to missing frames in the reel, the moments that seemed better left forgotten.
***
Five minutes past five, Maggie pulled up in her hand-me-down Saab hatch back, a loaner, pumping out the smell of fennel and matted woven fabrics from its owner. Accordion and guitar spilled out of the open passenger side window. Her drunken Medusa curls coiled around her bare shoulders. Crayon portraits drawn by her charge covered most of the surfaces of her coach house. “I’m kind of squiggly,” she’d say with a practiced shrug, sweeping the hamster’s nest of paper off her kitchen table.
Maggie dumped two brown bags in Jess’ lap, which contained effortful snacks-- pistachios, seedy crackers and spreads. “You’re on assembly.”
Iowa had been an afterthought. First they chose a highway by the number alone, eventually pulling over to check the traffic report, just in case. As usual, they focused on the spontaneity, allowed the planning when it was necessary and inconspicuous.
Sedans and vans pooled behind tollway turnstiles, jostling under floating food courts and keychain depot. Their favorite radio show came on around dusk, and both girls realized they’d never heard it live before, a deadening side effect of so much downloadable information. They laughed together, actively listening to the other for a cue, for a reaction they might have missed on their own. Jess would place a slice of salami on a cracker, spread some anonymous olive dip, perch a shelled pistachio on top, then guide the structure as delicate as blown glass into Maggie’s open hand.
Indisputable: a hand print bruise brandishing her forearm; unseen places suddenly making themselves known through her sharp inhalations of pained breath; a darkened figure of authority leaning forward, not asking if, but telling her that she was ok; lighting the self-conscious cigarette outside of the hospital, judging her location from the cross streets. Running through these images, frustrated, unnerved, the cracks between slowly filling with her worst assumptions. All of it sounded like the Tori Spelling tv movies, cliche beyond cliche, which in itself might have been another experience worth noting, but she avoided doing so.
As the summer mellowed and the shades lowered on the evening sunlight, Jess became accustomed to missing frames in the reel, the moments that seemed better left forgotten.
***
Five minutes past five, Maggie pulled up in her hand-me-down Saab hatch back, a loaner, pumping out the smell of fennel and matted woven fabrics from its owner. Accordion and guitar spilled out of the open passenger side window. Her drunken Medusa curls coiled around her bare shoulders. Crayon portraits drawn by her charge covered most of the surfaces of her coach house. “I’m kind of squiggly,” she’d say with a practiced shrug, sweeping the hamster’s nest of paper off her kitchen table.
Maggie dumped two brown bags in Jess’ lap, which contained effortful snacks-- pistachios, seedy crackers and spreads. “You’re on assembly.”
Iowa had been an afterthought. First they chose a highway by the number alone, eventually pulling over to check the traffic report, just in case. As usual, they focused on the spontaneity, allowed the planning when it was necessary and inconspicuous.
Sedans and vans pooled behind tollway turnstiles, jostling under floating food courts and keychain depot. Their favorite radio show came on around dusk, and both girls realized they’d never heard it live before, a deadening side effect of so much downloadable information. They laughed together, actively listening to the other for a cue, for a reaction they might have missed on their own. Jess would place a slice of salami on a cracker, spread some anonymous olive dip, perch a shelled pistachio on top, then guide the structure as delicate as blown glass into Maggie’s open hand.
In the six years since they’d first met, flopping inside makeshift raincoats, both missing home despite their best efforts during summer program at Oxford, both were aimlessly enthusiastic about constructing life experiences, approaching was day as a scavanger list containing miniscule adventures that they silently hoped would one day add up to something profound. Sitting in Maggie's bird's nest single atop the far corner of the campus' courtyard, mini fridge squatting under the window like a garden gnome, Jess, a lonely child in transition, first experienced the comfort of a friend, encapsulated in the difference between Maggie's gleaming shower and her own sepia-stained bathtub, which had bathing in to a foreign and anxious undertaking. They lounged hidden under a single willow tree or hoisted on a ledge above a stairwell, writing simple observations that made them laugh and laugh, always sharing something secret, real or imagined.
***
Maggie’s head dropped two times before Jess guided the steering wheel to the Rip Van Winkle motel, a sleeping giant cut out splayed over the entrance in repose. They both took pictures pretending to sleep standing up in front of it.
A pick-up with a camper in the bed was parked kitty-corner from the reception area, the only other vehicle in Van Winkle’s courtyard. Remnants of a barbeque sat in the gravel under its back tires, and an alarmingly fresh-looking smoke stain crept up the two-story building.
Maggie’s head dropped two times before Jess guided the steering wheel to the Rip Van Winkle motel, a sleeping giant cut out splayed over the entrance in repose. They both took pictures pretending to sleep standing up in front of it.
A pick-up with a camper in the bed was parked kitty-corner from the reception area, the only other vehicle in Van Winkle’s courtyard. Remnants of a barbeque sat in the gravel under its back tires, and an alarmingly fresh-looking smoke stain crept up the two-story building.
“Let’s hope those are unrelated.” Jess imagined them standing over the railing with wire hanger skewers roasting marshmallows in the giant fire pit. The room key was attached to wooden paddle like those brandished by nuns. Maggie grabbed the ice bucket and slapped Jess lazily on her way to the vending machines. Jess lay on the acrylic floral comforter, making sure not to touch it with her face,thought about the construction of their latest experience, how easily an unplanned element, something admittedly real, could wipe it all away.
The bouncing of flimsy plastic cups, crinkled saran wrap, running water into an ice-filled glass. Maggie held the water within Jess’ opened hand. “Drink me.” She dug around in her bag, pulled out a pill dispenser and swallowed one.
“Are those the pills we’re going to bury tomorrow?” Jess asked, still facing the ceiling.
Maggie crunched one between her molars. “Eh. I’m almost done with the pack.”
They looked out either side of the sliding front window for signs of life. “Do you really want to walk along this road at 11 at night?” one asked the other with her eyes. Maggie stood with her hand on the doorknob for a few moments, but failed to say anything definitive. Voices floated up from the camper, baritones interrupted by the inhale and exhale of smoke, capped off by exaggerated grunts of satisfaction, like they were actors in a badly staged play.
She kicked off her leather sandals, flopped on the other twin bed and turned on the TV. Everything played under a layer of dust. The local news drained of color, an old western ran like a historic newsreel.
Maggie was dead sleeper, performing simple unconscious regeneration when needed for any length of time, but Jess tossed and turned. She focused on her breathing, batting back the cataloguing and analysis of daily life that tried to sneak in. Her sheets took on the rigid sterility of the hospital bed. She rarely dreamed, though between thinking she’d get up to drink some water and two hours later, standing at the ledge of the courtyard, her mind slipped into another room in the motel, where Maggie and a man she did not know drank from tiny bottles and laughed at a clip show on the TV. The man’s hand was on Maggie’s thigh, and she looked up at his face, waiting for the answer to some unknown question.
Jess woke, the rhythm of her heart in her ears, moving the sheet over her chest. The room was empty, a rubber wedge placed between the door and its frame, an infomercial for vitamins playing silently on the TV. Maggie’s shoes were still by her bed, her backpack hemorraging t-shirts and socks. Makeup lay strewn on the bureau top, like stained glasses after a cocktail party. Panic constricted her throat, not unpleasantly. A short pop, like a towel being snapped, could be heard through the crack in the door.
Gazing over the lip, only the two pairs flat masculine of feet of two men sitting in lawn chairs, Maggie’s toe rings sparkling between them. Her voice floated up like smoke, the baritones murmuring in response. A pellet flew arced in the air, and landed with a quick snap before them in camper's lumpy shadow. Jess thought she could see something moving. A dog looking the color and temperament of buttermilk expectantly poked his head out from under the camper where it lay, a few feet from the growing pile of expired fire caps, a seemed to look up at Jess' figure silouetted against the watery light of the tv.
All three tilted their heads up, twisting their necks like overgrown owls, sloppy smiles plastered across their faces, Maggie’s half-concealed by her hair. The stale smell of marijuana mixed with charcoal.
The men turned back to look at the buttermilk dog, who was watching and shivering with anticipation. One pointed forward in faint protest, in the universal sign of waiting it out. Maggie stayed frozen, raising a tiny bottle to her lips as she held Jess’ gaze, her eyes saying, “Can you believe these guys?” Her anthropologist’s amusement getting the best of her, Jess wondering at her neutral interest. Maggie waited for what she would say next, like they had planned an ambush that needed to be carried out. But Jess didn’t know the plan. She turned back to the room, making sure the wedge stayed in place when she closed the door behind her on the crash breaking of glass mixed with her oldest friend’s laughter. Jess fell asleep to stock footage of pills rolling down endless ramps, shifting together into tight lines.
Dawn bled underneath the blackout curtain. Maggie came inside with two plastic wrapped honey buns in her hand, smelling of barbeque and sweat. “Wouldn’t put it past them,” she laughed, finishing a previous conversation, with a knowledge of inevitability, frosting covering her upper lip.
Groggily, Jess redirected her head to the foot of the bed, reaching into her bag for a disposable camera. She moved the film to the next frame, fixed Maggie in the view finder, and pressed the button without charging the flash.
“That’s not going to come out,” Maggie said, shaking her head emphatically. Without seeing, Jess could tell that her eyes were still dilated from more than the dark. She absently faced the ceiling, rolling the film forward more, taking a picture of the dimpled ceiling spackle.
“Doesn’t matter." The advancing film chirped a chorus of agreement.
Maggie sat on the edge of her bed, with her elbows resting on her knees like they were stilts supporting her back, staring at the wheels of the television stand. She blinked drowsily, erratically, a lazy Morse code. Someone had drawn on her arms in ballpoint pen, games of hangman and tic tac toe. She crumpled like used newspaper on the bed with a groan, turning her back towards Jess and the door.
Persistent lamps stay lit above the truck stop despite the perfect sun that was beginning its ascent through the sky. Remnants from the night before dotted the dirt, waiting to be ground up under tire and foot and accepted back in the earth. The pick-up and camper in the parking lot were gone, now just two tracks leading through the gravel until they ended where the road began.
**
The clear cobalt sky cut down in the distance, cleaving a horizon among distant houses and cows like razor wire. From the gravel shoulder of the elevated road, valleys spilled out, up, and down in perfect ice cream scoops of land.
“I’m going back to nature! I am going to run naked through these fields!” Maggie whipped off her shirt like it was on fire, exposing a generic nude bra with tags cut out. She ran, arms and legs pinwheeling behind her, stumbling down the hill until she rolled, flattening dandelions and tufts of long grass in her wake. Splayed out before a stack of hay bales twisted as perfectly as cinnamon rolls, she breathed exaggeratedly, in through her nose and gasping out of her mouth.
Jess followed, coming to a stop with a snort. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she saw a farmhouse in the distance, close enough to see them with scope from the second floor window. “You realize that we’re probably on somebody’s property. A farmer with a shotgun won’t take your Mother Earth word as bond.”
Maggie looked out into the distance, sighed. “You misunderstand the source of my entitlement.”
A jet slowly made its way over their heads, tethered to its own contrail, like a memory refusing the release its creator. “Get up,” Maggie said, though she was the one who was down. She walked over to the hay bales and planted her feet shoulder-width apart before them. Silhouetted, a rebellious pear in only sandals and corduroys, the outline of the pill dispenser embossed on the seat of her pants, she contemplated the best means of attack. Jess felt exhausted, the prospect of climbing and forced reverence weighed on her chest. She wanted to scream for Maggie to just get on with it, to do whatever she needed to before starting her next disaster, though when it happened, Jess would agree that it was the start of something new and amazing.
“You going to put them in the hay? I think the cows eat that.”
Maggie cocked her head to the side, absorbing that prospect. “Cows don’t get pregnant, they don’t make milk. No more veal. Good thing!” That seemed to get her going, fingers wrapping round the industrial twine that contained the chaos of the bale. She scrambled up the side and did not look to Jess to see if she would follow. Once in the middle of the pile, the pills were fished out of her pocket, held high in the air, and then pressed deep within the scratchy swirls, Maggie hesitating as if her skin were admonishing her. She raised her arms in a circle in front of her chest, like a frozen ballerina.
“Oh, Estrocese. You brought unto me bloating, constipation, a depleted sex drive, and most importantly, night terrors. Now that I am free from you, I hope to never again imagine myself in the ravaged streets of Baghdad, neck deep in the shark-infested waters, or leading the human rebel army in a war against the supreme robotic race. Yes, you kept me from getting pregnant, but I usually had David pull out, so I don’t think that counts. May you join your Nuvaring and IUD brothers and sisters in the Planned Parenthood in the sky.” She looked down at Jess as if she’d just completed a task per instruction, and flashed a big smile. “Ok?”
The clear cobalt sky cut down in the distance, cleaving a horizon among distant houses and cows like razor wire. From the gravel shoulder of the elevated road, valleys spilled out, up, and down in perfect ice cream scoops of land.
“I’m going back to nature! I am going to run naked through these fields!” Maggie whipped off her shirt like it was on fire, exposing a generic nude bra with tags cut out. She ran, arms and legs pinwheeling behind her, stumbling down the hill until she rolled, flattening dandelions and tufts of long grass in her wake. Splayed out before a stack of hay bales twisted as perfectly as cinnamon rolls, she breathed exaggeratedly, in through her nose and gasping out of her mouth.
Jess followed, coming to a stop with a snort. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she saw a farmhouse in the distance, close enough to see them with scope from the second floor window. “You realize that we’re probably on somebody’s property. A farmer with a shotgun won’t take your Mother Earth word as bond.”
Maggie looked out into the distance, sighed. “You misunderstand the source of my entitlement.”
A jet slowly made its way over their heads, tethered to its own contrail, like a memory refusing the release its creator. “Get up,” Maggie said, though she was the one who was down. She walked over to the hay bales and planted her feet shoulder-width apart before them. Silhouetted, a rebellious pear in only sandals and corduroys, the outline of the pill dispenser embossed on the seat of her pants, she contemplated the best means of attack. Jess felt exhausted, the prospect of climbing and forced reverence weighed on her chest. She wanted to scream for Maggie to just get on with it, to do whatever she needed to before starting her next disaster, though when it happened, Jess would agree that it was the start of something new and amazing.
“You going to put them in the hay? I think the cows eat that.”
Maggie cocked her head to the side, absorbing that prospect. “Cows don’t get pregnant, they don’t make milk. No more veal. Good thing!” That seemed to get her going, fingers wrapping round the industrial twine that contained the chaos of the bale. She scrambled up the side and did not look to Jess to see if she would follow. Once in the middle of the pile, the pills were fished out of her pocket, held high in the air, and then pressed deep within the scratchy swirls, Maggie hesitating as if her skin were admonishing her. She raised her arms in a circle in front of her chest, like a frozen ballerina.
“Oh, Estrocese. You brought unto me bloating, constipation, a depleted sex drive, and most importantly, night terrors. Now that I am free from you, I hope to never again imagine myself in the ravaged streets of Baghdad, neck deep in the shark-infested waters, or leading the human rebel army in a war against the supreme robotic race. Yes, you kept me from getting pregnant, but I usually had David pull out, so I don’t think that counts. May you join your Nuvaring and IUD brothers and sisters in the Planned Parenthood in the sky.” She looked down at Jess as if she’d just completed a task per instruction, and flashed a big smile. “Ok?”
