Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

After she wipes the area around the wound, he feels her pour something onto it and into it. It stings and he sucks in air in a hiss.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

She wipes at it again, and then lays something over it. She does it with gentleness, a soft touch that makes the pain feel almost pleasurable. Then she pulls something else from the first-aid kit, and he hears a clinking sound, then something like tearing. Medical tape being unspooled and torn away. She tapes a pad of gauze onto his back. After another minute, she tosses everything into the first-aid kit and latches it closed.

‘All done.’

‘Maybe you could stay a while longer.’

‘You’re in no shape for that.’

‘I know. That’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want?’

He lies on his back in bed and watches her take off her clothes. She does it slowly, first her T-shirt, and then her bra. She unbuttons her skirt and lets it drop to her feet. She is wearing a pair of utilitarian white panties. She puts her thumbs into the waistband and pushes them down. She has a thick thatch of reddish-brown pubic hair. The bones in her hips are visible. Her breasts are small and her nipples light pink, ghosts of nipples. There is a mole on her left breast. She stands there completely naked before him, looking at his face.

Then she walks to him and lays herself down beside him, on his left side, and he feels her smooth legs against his legs and her warm breasts brush against his skin, her coarse pubic hair against his hip, and her breath on his cheek, and she rests her head in his armpit and she puts a hand on his heart.

‘It’s beating so fast,’ she says.

‘I know,’ he says.

Ian watches the fan in the ceiling spin. He tries to follow a single blade as it makes its way round and round, but keeps losing track after four or five rotations, the blade dissolving back into a blur with the rest of them. He imagines his life after getting Maggie back. He imagines living in an apartment in Los Angeles with her and Monica. Monica is sweet and gentle and true. He might be able to live with her. He likes the idea of once more having a woman in his life. A partner. He thinks of Debbie, widowed back in Bulls Mouth, but he knows there is nothing left there. Sometimes people have too much history together, history of the wrong kind, and people cannot tear pages from the book of their life. Once something is written there it is permanent. But maybe he could start something new with a new woman and his daughter. Chapter four. Her body feels right against his body. He smiles at the thought, though he knows in the back of his mind that it’s nothing more than a childish fantasy. He smiles at the thought and tries to hold on to it for as long as possible.

‘Maybe you can stop by again on your way back from California,’ Monica says.

‘I’d like that.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘I would too. I like you.’

‘We could have a date,’ he says. ‘A real date.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I could buy you dinner and we could ask each other what our favorite color is.’

‘We could start now.’

‘Okay.’

‘You first.’

‘Green.’

‘Me too,’ she says. ‘What’s your favorite food?’

‘Meat.’

‘Meat isn’t a food.’

‘It’s a food group.’

‘Then mine is sugar.’

‘Okay. Filet mignon.’

‘That’s better.’

‘What’s yours, really?’

‘You’re gonna laugh.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Promise?’

‘Stick a needle in my eye.’

‘Okay. Those little sour gummy worms. You know the ones?’

‘Really?’

She nods. He can feel the movement against him, though he sees only the ceiling above.

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘You promised you wouldn’t laugh.’

‘I’m not. I’m closer to puking.’

‘Stop it,’ she says. ‘You’re making me feel dumb.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. You can have sour gummy worms on our date if you want.’

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

Ian swallows. ‘I don’t like this game anymore,’ he says.

‘How bad can it be?’ she says. ‘Did you steal something?’

‘Let’s skip that question and move on to-’

The sound of a car outside makes him stop. He listens closely. It pulls to a stop out front.

He sits up.

‘Could you see who it is?’ he says.

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Please,’ he says.

Monica gets to her feet and walks naked to the window. She pulls back the curtain and looks out.

He shouldn’t have let himself relax. He knew better than to let himself-

‘Who is it?’

‘It looks like a police car.’

He gets to his feet and bends down to pick up his satchel, but suddenly everything goes gray like a thin blanket thrown over him, and the blanket is very heavy, and he’s falling to the floor, it pushes him to the floor, and then he’s on the floor, and there’s nothing.

Maggie opens her eyes. She does not know where she is. She is leaning against something, something soft and warm. A person. Her head is throbbing. Her mouth tastes bad. She sits up and looks around. She is in a truck, Beatrice on her right and Henry on her left. They are both eating hamburgers wrapped in yellow paper. She looks out the windshield. They are in a parking lot behind a McDonald’s, and beyond the McDonald’s the pink evening sky lined with gray clouds that look almost solid. The descending darkness makes the sky feel very small: it is closing in on her. She feels trapped sitting in the cab of this truck, trapped on either side by the hulking figures of Beatrice and Henry.

She rubs at her eyes.

Beatrice glances over at her. ‘You’re up,’ she says.

Maggie nods, but does not feel like she is up. She feels groggy and gray and caught in a dream. A nightmare.

‘How’s your head?’

‘Hurts.’

‘You had a accident.’

She thinks of the ground rushing up at her.

‘I know.’

‘We got you some food.’

Beatrice leans down between her feet and brings up a hamburger from a white paper bag. She hands it to Maggie and Maggie takes it. She holds it and looks at it. For a moment she thinks she is not hungry, that she will not be able to eat the hamburger, but then her stomach grumbles loudly and she realizes she is starving. It’s been a long time since she last ate. She unwraps the hamburger and her stomach clenches and she takes a bite and tastes ketchup and pickle and she barely chews before swallowing and taking another bite.

‘What do you say?’

She looks at Henry and swallows. ‘Thank you.’

‘Not me.’

She turns to Beatrice. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Beatrice smiles at her.

Maggie takes another bite.

Fifteen minutes later they’re back on the road. Maggie sits between Beatrice and Henry and looks out the windshield. Darkness is spreading quickly across the land now that the sun is below the horizon. She is afraid that she will never escape. She wonders where her daddy is.

She closes her eyes and counts to ten.

She opens her eyes. She feels like a person in a snow globe. The sky is so close. Maybe it always was that close and she just doesn’t remember. She spent a long time in the Nightmare World. Outside is bound to seem strange to her now.

She wonders what Borden is doing.

He’s not real.

Everything will be okay, she thinks. Everything will be okay.

The sky is darkening, but she has her own light inside. Not even the Nightmare World could kill it. Certainly the setting of the sun will not.

Diego parks his car next to Ian’s Mustang in what is left of the day’s dying light. He kills the engine and steps outside. He squints at the interstate, then sprinkles tobacco into a rolling paper, rolls it, licks it, and sticks it between his lips. He thumbs the end of a match into a flame and lights his cigarette. It’s a loose roll and it burns quickly. It tastes good but in four drags it is burned down to his nicotine-stained knuckles. He drops it to the dirt and heels it into submission and walks toward a building fronted with a sign that says MOTEL/FOOD in hand-painted white lettering.