Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

It is just empty asphalt.

He straps the satchel containing the Pleur-evac system over his shoulder, takes off his sunglasses, hangs them on his shirt, squints in the suddenly bright light, and heads, past a couple tables with salt and pepper shakers set upon them, into Motel/Food.

A stainless steel counter in a window between Ian and the kitchen. A short-order cook, guy in his sixties with tufts of gray hair sprouting from every orifice like shrubbery, is hunched over the counter, flipping through a titty book with a limp cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. A cloud of smoke around his head.

As the bell above the door rattles-it certainly doesn’t ring-the guy stands, straightening the greasy white box of a hat on his head. A couple inches of ash drop from the end of his smoke and fall onto a centerfold model before rolling down into the fold between the pages. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, blows the ash to the floor, folds the magazine, and stashes it under the counter.

‘Howdy. Food or bed?’

‘I could use something to drink.’

‘Monica’s in the shitter and Betsy’s stepped out a minute, so that’ll have to wait a sec. Not hungry?’

Ian coughs into his hand, then wipes his palm off on his Levis.

‘I could have a burger,’ he says.

‘Cheeseburger?’

‘Okay.’

‘American, Swiss, cheddar?’

‘Swiss.’

‘Fries?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Fried egg on top?’

‘Of the fries?’

‘Burger.’

Ian shakes his head.

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah, no egg.’

‘All right. Coming up.’

He turns left, peels a patty off a stack of them, and tosses it onto his waiting grill. While that’s going, he pulls out a bun, smears it, drops some fries into the fry basket, and gets to humming what Ian thinks is supposed to be ‘Under My Thumb’.

Somewhere a toilet flushes, and a moment later a door opens. A woman walks out, saying, ‘We’re low on toilet paper, Uncle Hal. A whole roll in a day. Someone needs to change their fucking diet!’ Then she sees Ian standing there and blushes. It makes her pretty. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘Quite all right. Monica or Betsy?’

‘Monica. Betsy’s with a. . checking on a room.’

Ian nods.

Monica’s in her thirties with reddish-brown hair set atop a pale and freckle-spotted face. She is shaped like a twig, no hips at all, and wearing a denim skirt and a T-shirt.

Ian finds her unaccountably sexy. But he has always been attracted to unconventionally pretty women.

‘I see Uncle Hal’s already cooking.’

‘Cheeseburger and fries.’

‘Fried egg on top?’

Ian shakes his head.

‘Want anything to drink?’

‘What do you got?’

She pokes her thumb over her shoulder, toward the small glass-doored refrigerator humming dully against the wall.

‘Couple Buds, I guess, and a bottle of water.’

‘All at once?’

Ian nods. ‘Thirsty.’

‘Will you be staying with us tonight?’

‘Yeah, if you got the space.’

She lets out a brief laugh. ‘Yeah, I think we can squeeze y’in. Just you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’ll be seventy-two forty-five,’ she says. ‘Plus I’ll need a credit card on file. We got pay-per-view.’

‘I won’t use it.’

Monica smiles. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but if we trusted every stranger walked through the door we’d’ve been broke a long time ago. Ain’t that right, Uncle Hal?’

‘Sure is, Monocle.’

‘I reckon that’s true,’ Ian says. ‘Monocle your nickname?’

‘Don’t get any ideas.’

‘Mean anything?’

Monica shakes her head. ‘Just an Uncle Hal-ism.’

He pays with a credit card and puts a five-dollar bill in the tip jar (an emptied tub of red vines with a few loose bills floating around the bottom).

Monica hands him a key.

‘You’ll be in room four, first trailer on the left, door on the left.’

Ian nods.

Monica turns around and pulls open the fridge. When she turns back, she has his two beers and his water. She sets them on the counter next to a tub of ostrich jerky.

‘You can sit wherever. I’ll bring your food when it’s ready.’

‘Thanks.’

He grabs his drinks and walks to a table by the fly-specked window. He sits down and looks out at the desert. A truck hauling groceries rumbles past, and then emptiness. After another five minutes a 747 roars by overhead, shaking the windows in their frames. And then more silence. Ian’s eyes sting. He closes them.

‘You want some TV?’

Ian is about to say no, thanks, I don’t reckon there’s anything much on right now, anyway, but Monica doesn’t wait for a reply. She grabs the remote from the counter, aims it, and presses a button. The TV comes to life, and a situation comedy flickers across the screen, all set-designed studio and laugh-track laughter. Ian pops a beer and takes a swallow. It is good and cold and soothing on his dry throat. He wonders if he shouldn’t be drinking. Alcohol thins the blood. Fuck it. It’s only beer and he’s only having two.

He nods to himself.

‘Fuck it,’ he says, aloud this time, and takes another swallow.

‘Excuse me?’

Ian shakes his head, nothing, sorry, and turns back to the smudged window. The right half of his body is throbbing with pain.

What if that was Henry Dean pulled over to the side of the road back near Sierra Blanca? Maybe he was arrested and even now is sitting in a Hudspeth County jailhouse. Maybe Debbie is on her way now to pick Maggie up. Maybe there’s a message on his answering machine telling him all about it. ‘Where the hell are you, Ian? I’ve called your cell twenty times but it keeps going to voicemail. You’ll never believe what great good fortune we’ve had. Henry Dean was-’

No: that isn’t how it happens.

His stomach tightens at the thought of it happening that way. He isn’t sure why.

Because you want to run toward oblivion and this gives you an excuse. You know exactly why, Ian, so stop lying to yourself.

He pushes that thought away. He will not accept that.

Even if that were true, it wouldn’t-

‘You’re a million miles away, aren’t you?’

Ian jumps and a startled grunt escapes his throat. After a silent moment of nothing, he laughs at himself.

‘Guess I was,’ he says.

‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ Monica says, setting down a white plate with a cheeseburger and fries on it.

‘I know it,’ Ian says.

‘Mind if I sit down? Betsy’s back so I can kick up my heels a minute.’ She gestures toward the counter. Ian didn’t even hear the bell above the door rattle, but there she is, Betsy, standing behind the counter, sipping a Cactus Cooler and looking up at the TV in the corner of the room. She’s a little younger than Monica, and a little bit prettier, and a little bit curvier, but obviously her sister.

Ian pushes a chair out with his foot. ‘Take a load off.’

‘Thanks.’ She sits down.

Ian flashes her a brief smile, then turns back to the window. The desert stretches on and on, dotted here and there with creosote bushes. Hills float in the distance.

‘Nothing out there worth looking at,’ Monica says.

‘You don’t think so?’

She shakes her head. ‘Just desert and glimpses of people going to and from places you’ll never see yourself. Every once in a while, maybe they stop in, maybe they tell you a little bit about where they’ve been, but it’s just a story you heard, and then they leave again.’

‘Is it that hard to pick up and go?’

Monica shrugs. ‘Harder than it should be. I’ve packed my bags a dozen times.’

‘Yeah? How come you never went?’