Claudia Dey - Heartbreaker

5 The reservoir is the result of an asteroidal event, which the astrophysicists also call an impact event. A person could organize her timeline into impact events. This is one approach to understanding a life.

6 While asteroids are, in their own catastrophic way, totally romantic, what the boys of the territory want most is a girl rolling off them saying, That was fucking amazing.

7 Tonight, that girl will be Lana. Lana Barbara California as she will come to call herself.

“YOU NEED ME,” Traps tells The Heavy when they come through our front door, bringing with them the bitter air. On our small cement porch, we have a partial telephone, a broken fridge, and a large piece of chipboard with an 88 painted on it. My mother used to trim my nails on our front porch. I would lie on the cement and she would hold my feet in her lap, and she was radiant. The men kick the ice from their boots and push the door closed. Traps refuses to go home to his wife, Debra Marie, should something come up. He makes a “no way” sign with his hands and calls her on speed dial.

Debra Marie has just suffered what the territory calls its worst tragedy in nearly twenty years. The women of the territory talk about it and how she has not cried once. Not broken down once. Not mentioned her dead child once. The women can’t even tan. They can’t drink their coffee. It’s hideous. It’s cruel. The women feel a weight in their chests, heavy as bronze. Debra Marie, oh, Debra Marie. Poor Debra Marie. It wasn’t her fault. Was it?

After the final resting, when we were leaving the Banquet Hall, even through the commotion, I overheard the men of the territory talking to Debra Marie. They hulked before the black square, which stood in place of the portrait, a bouquet on either side of it, under three floor lamps, and they kept their sunglasses on and did not know what to do with their large arms, like bouncers with nothing left to guard.

“Noble Debra Marie.”

“Noble.”

“If you were a man, that’s what we’d call you, Debra Marie.”

“Noble.”

“Your nickname would be Noble.”

“Yeah, Noble.”

“Noble.”

“HE NEEDS ME.” Traps tells this to Debra Marie over the telephone. Quickly, not wanting to tie up the line. I can see Debra Marie on the other end. Her plain hair arrangements, her purposeful body. She would iron her indoor tracksuit but never put it on. “He has only the one truck. Unlike us. The single vehicle.” Traps adjusts himself and looks for cigarettes. “You have your own truck. Unlike the Fontaine mother, you have your own truck. And it’s fully loaded.” Then he pauses to listen and says, “Okay, okay, almost fully loaded,” and he lights a cigarette, one of my mother’s cigarettes. “She’ll be back. Nowhere to go.” And he glances for The Heavy, to share this small encouragement, but The Heavy has left the room. “Pony was the last to see her.”

And then Traps turns his eyes on me, and lets them go soft and pleading on my mouth. My supple, athletic mouth. I can see him working out the timeline in his head. Two nights until Saturday night. Two nights until I walk the side of the north highway in my button-down and pencil skirt with my perfect waistline-to-ass ratio. A 0.8.

THE SECRET OF PONY DARLENE FONTAINE

THREE MONTHS AGO. Nighttime. When the men of the territory were going to and then leaving Drink-Mart, clusters of them smelling medicinal and exhaling turbines of smoke, clapping each other hard on the shoulder, on the back, a half hug here and there, then dispersing into their trucks to one-eye it home and fall asleep on their wives in their nightdresses, I walked the shoulder of the highway in my white button-down and black pencil skirt. I had a plan. This was step one. I carried a clipboard and waved down the trucks, knowing only one of them would come to a full stop. All of the passing territory men called out, “Pony.” They rolled down their windows. “Pony Darlene Fontaine.” Reaching out with a lotioned hand, I introduced myself as The Complaint Department and asked the men the question I was desperate to be asked, “What is troubling you?” Then I gave them my card with my toll-free number, 1-800-OH-MY-GOD, should they wish to discuss their troubles further.

The men laughed. No one complains here. That is not the territory’s way. Complaint is a form of self-degradation. Hardship is a matter of perception. The men quoted the Leader. The men were missing teeth. They were missing fingers. They were missing testicles. They had slipped disks. They ate the tendons of animals. The organs of animals. They carved them up and gave thanks. Thank you for your meat. They delivered their babies. Their babies became teenagers. Men hunting women. Women hunting men. Men hunting animals. That is how it goes here, Pony Darlene, the men called out, and tearing up the gravel, sped home.

“My only complaint,” Traps said to me, too loud, bit of a slur, throwing on his emergency brake and unlocking his doors, “is that you won’t blow me in the back of my truck.” And, step two, I blew him while he said my name over and over, and when he was done I directed him to his fuel shed, where, step three, he took off his heavy necklace of keys, while looking at me under his security camera. The look was exaltation and the Saturday night sky was dark. However grainy, Traps would watch the video of me waiting for my payment, step four, one full jerry can of his gasoline—one hundred miles of transport—again and again, pausing it at certain moments, when he could really see my face.

I HEAR TRAPS opening and closing our kitchen cupboards. He is looking for the alcohol and concluding his call home to Debra Marie. “We did a tour through the territory. The Heavy doesn’t want to do a door-to-door. Not just yet. Says it’s a family matter. A private matter.”

Tonight, Traps will drink himself to sleep on our beige couch. Too much, too little. He still finds this hard to gauge. He will be standing, talking, drinking, taking, killing, talking, drinking, standing. And then unconscious. Debra Marie loves crime shows. Murder shows. Shows where the plot rests on violence. I wonder when she will stop dragging Traps’s faithless body to comfort. When there will be a trail of blood in his wake. An antler plunged through his heart. “Besides, it’s Delivery Day tomorrow, and no territory woman in her right mind would miss Delivery Day.” He agrees with himself: “No territory woman would miss Delivery Day.”

My father is lying in the half-built room on a hooded chair, and because of the tarp, and the work light he has set up in there, we are both a bright blue. Is she missing? I want to ask him. You can tell me. I can handle it. I can’t handle it. “You need to get some rest,” I say instead to my father, and I unlace and pull off his boots, tug at the cuffs of his jeans. I was with him when he bought the jeans. “Not too tight?” The Heavy said to the salesmen, who nodded with their arms crossed, which was a confusing set of messages. “Denim is a tight and captivating weave,” the salesmen said. The Heavy bought them in a moment of hope. Hope makes you buy clothes that don’t fit you. A brawl to pull off, the jeans hold my father’s shape and appear to be standing, a former fighter turning soft.

“I love that perfume,” he says.

Three things he does not say: Where are you going? When will you be back? Won’t you be cold?

My father, who never raises his voice. Never goes to Drink-Mart. Does not listen to music. Does not watch television. He fears he will miss something real, he explains. Life is about paying attention, Pony.

Traps watches me closely as I lace up my boots and throw on my camouflage outerwear. Camo on camo. I open the front door. On the back of my outerwear are the words I was coloring in earlier with Neon Dean’s impermanent marker, when my mother came down the stairs in her indoor tracksuit, a stale cigarette in one hand and her truck keys in the other. Fifteen years of blank tape running out and clicking off. The asteroidal event. The impact event.