X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

The music on was known to her; she could not be sure but it sounded like Elvis, the voice muffled by the crowd’s screams, while little girls at home bemoaned the fact that he was only filmed from the hips up. She had two glasses of Pinot Gris and smiled as the wine opened in her mouth like a flower. She sat in the quiet corner and tried her best to think of nothing. When she departed, the bartender stood up and doffed his hat.

She got into her car, turned the ignition, and prepared to head home. The front of the wagon peeked out of the road like a turtle’s head and was smashed, mercilessly and with great violence, by a roadster. The last thing Meredith Lewis ever saw was an old Mustang speeding toward her. She did not see three-by-five shots of her little boys — John, David, and Robert — in her mind’s eye, nor did she see the wrinkled and cavalier face of Harry; she saw red, coming at her all too heavily and too soon and she was dead.

The driver of that red roadster was Marco Dogliotti, on his way to Atlanta to deliver three suitcases to two sweaty men who wore open collars. He had a belly full of vodka, what looked like paper cuts all over his face, and a wrecked auto — but he was alive.

It was just after dusk south of New York City and Marco had the swagger of a man with a country. America, it was like a song on his tongue, each new detail embellishing this embarrassment of riches. Here he was, behind the wheel of a convertible, registered to his many-syllabled name, tumbling down a highway so fast the windows shook, hatless, with his brown, thinning ponytail tousled by the wind.

Route 78 was a four-lane highway. Traffic lights interrupted its flow only every few miles. On each side was the detritus of a country with too much land: gas stations, junk shops, car washes. Otherwise just concrete trying to squash grass — so nothing to visit but a lot to see. The monotonous scenery thrilled him because this was American soil, and American boredom was a new sort of boredom — bigger, more of it to study, somehow pretty in its unnaturalness.

Mother of God, how far am I from Naples? Only two months and he was already forgetting its sooty port and oranges. Its gawking visitors, pickpockets secreted in the very cracks of walls, unruly traffic, and girls’ skirts that never lifted an inch above the knee. Its rituals, its thievery, its charm. Here in the U.S.A. everything was too new, hung too loosely. One moment it all seemed too transparent and simple to read. Other times he saw only tops of icebergs, understood only parts of meanings — things slipped away in translation. He would think e but say or , bow his head in thanks as locals eyed him queerly. He could not yet trust his tongue.

In his car he drank heavily from a thermos. His sunglasses had white frames and had come free with his last tank of gas. He straightened his ridiculous posture and grinned for no other reason than it was morning. This hour was often accompanied by a giddiness that would die just before lunch, that could somehow never be sustained. Today, though, he would find out what this giddiness ate, and would feed it luxuriously: pollute it with rich foods, regardless of the cost. Today he would genuinely try to be happy. For he wanted, very badly, to be a smiling American, and make this place’s incorrigible sweetness a daily habit.

He mouthed the names of gas stations, fiddled with his dial, ignored the speed limit, and waited, as he always waited, for something significant to happen to him, for a simple change of luck. Engrossed, he didn’t see the red light until it was flush upon him.

His foot flattened and the car groaned to a stop. After the shriek of the brakes died down, he heard that rapid and aggressive sort of chatter that reminded him of talk radio. To his left was a bearded man in a big white make. The man rolled down his window and screwed his face. He said something so angrily that spit flew from his mouth and speckled Marco’s closed window.

He was unable to interpret the English fast enough, only picking out words here and there: mother, dumbest, cunt, ugly . He felt unsure and unwanted and as if a door to a very comfortable room was being closed before him. The stranger stared, shook his head purposefully, and finally pulled away.

The shadow cast, his mood soured, Marco pulled to the shoulder of the road and sat quietly. The rearview mirror had been affixed to the front window by glue and wire. But the heat, which made dreamy lines rise from the asphalt, had melted the adhesive, so that the mirror had started to come off, and was attached only by a thin, naked wire. So now the wind pushed the mirror back and forth like a pendulum. In it, Marco saw flashes of his face, seesawing so as to make him slightly nauseous.

It was olive-skinned with slim features. His hair was the color of assorted, processed tobacco and his eyes were doleful but prying. His mouth was tight and dry, as if his face was in pincers. He viewed the reflection in the mirror, and was disappointed that this new country had done nothing for his appearance. He frowned at its smooth, unblemished contours, wishing a scar or some other mark of distinction might emerge, thinking America at least owed him that. He felt that in this nation of so many, he might never be able to distinguish himself. And surely not with a face so plain it was rendered blank.

He started the car again. He drove seventy miles an hour for as long as it took both sides of a Sam Cooke album to play on CD. At the sight of a sign that read, Middletown , he turned off the highway and went to the first bar he saw. It was just before noon but already raucous inside — tight, big-hair riffs came from the juke box, while boys in baseball caps raised hell and screamed in shorthand. A girl sat alone at the bar. She was his type — destitute — so he crawled over and asked if she liked the vodka.

“That and anything else,” she said, so he ordered two, and two again, and it didn’t stop until his vision was so blurred it was like seeing the world through tears.

When they got to the hotel she silently disrobed. He offered her his white bag, and she unfurled a line long and thin as a snow corn. She took the scraps and applied them to her gums, which made her wince, then blush.

Twelve hours later they hadn’t slept. Unaccustomed to attention, she was talkative. He learned that a perm couldn’t tame her hair and she liked waterfalls. She’d traveled. Done a tour of Texas, where her ex lived. Farthest she’d ever been from home. Sick on the plane. In a monotone voice she listed cities visited like exotic but affordable items from the market: Plano, Dallas, Argyle, Cee Vee. He pretended to be impressed, widening his eyes each time a name left her lips. But all he was thinking of was if she would lay him again, and if not, what he might do to keep her quiet.

She said they had a bond, but the bond wasn’t forever, because when the coke ran out so did she. Her possessions looked like trash, but she put them in her purse anyway, and then shuffled out, scrubbing her nose. She left the door open, letting a ruler-straight line of light into the room.

Feeling unclean, he showered, and when he returned there was less money in his wallet than there used to be. Inwardly he shrugged his shoulders: so life would be as life was. This land did not want him but he wanted it, could already taste a new existence. He slept like the dead and promised himself that he would cross the Mason-Dixon the next day.

He woke up wet from the heat. Sometime in the night the air conditioner had given out. The hotel robe was thinner than a paper napkin, but he wore it anyway. He put on a ragged pair of sandals too, and came out of his room looking like a forlorn Jesus, all disciples up and gone, no one but he and the Bible out here in a forgotten-about America, lost counties abutted by lost counties, weak radio signals, shabby concrete, and long highways, the very end of some backwoods called Earth. He wanted to say a prayer but could think of none.