Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Okay, said Thebes, who would you rather have as a boyfriend? Frankenstein or George Bush?

Frankenstein, I said.

Okay, who would you rather have as a boyfriend? Frankenstein or Freddie Krueger?

Frankenstein, I said.

Okay, who would you rather have as a boyfriend? Frankenstein or Peter Pumpkineater?

Peter Pumpkineater. No, wait, I said. Franken—

No, you already said Peter Pumpkineater, said Thebes. Who would you rather have as a boyfriend? Peter Pumpkineater or Snoop Dogg?

Snoop Dogg.

Okay, who would you rather have as a boyfriend? Snoop Dogg or Paul Martin?

We did that for a few minutes until I eventually ended up with the Lion King’s runty brother as my boyfriend.

The whole time I was thinking about Min. Well, I was also thinking about Marc and I was thinking about Cherkis, and I was thinking about what a world-class champion of fucked-up I was. One week ago I’d been a carefree bon vivant in the City of Lights ballin’ in the mad cheddar, as Thebes would say, and now I was passing out in gas stations and drinking wine out of the bottle with an imaginary animal for a boyfriend and a fifteen-year-old at the wheel. I didn’t know if we should turn around and go back home, head straight to the hospital, or crank it up a notch and haul ass to Twentynine Palms. Maybe drive all night. But in which direction?

Thebes and I fell asleep all tangled up while Logan careened like a rangy demon through the mountains with his Biggie blasting and the wind howling and semi drivers blaring their horns at him to get the hell away from them.

WHEN I WOKE UP we were in a corner of the parking lot of a motel, parked under a dim streetlight covered in moths. Logan was slumped, asleep, over the wheel and Thebes was lying on the floor, also asleep, between the back and the front seats. I sat up carefully and silently and looked at them. The streetlight was buzzing but not very loudly and some moths were gently throwing themselves against the windshield of the van. Logan was snoring very, very quietly and still gripping the wheel with both hands. His music had stopped. His notebook was in his lap. I reached around to the front and picked it up and stared at it. Logan had used a fat Sharpie to write Hot Tears Is a Concept on the cover. I put it back in his lap.

Thebes looked a little confused while she slept, like she was trying to remember what the distance was between the sun and the earth or why it was, again, that she’d had to be born. She had a thin moustache of sweat on her upper lip and her hair was plastered to her head. She had corked up my bottle of wine, and I meticulously uncorked it again and sat there sipping plonk and wondering what it would feel like to leave these two homies behind.

Hi, Hattie, whispered Thebes. Are you awake? Where are we?

Hey, I said. I don’t know. Moab, probably. You okay?

Rock solid, she said. She glanced at Logan draped over the wheel. Did he get shot?

No, I said. He’s sleeping.

She wiped her eyes and mouth with one filthy hand and patted my knee with the other one. Drinking alone? she said.

No, you’re here, I said.

I don’t count, she said. Want to hear my dream?

Yeah, I said. Tell me.

I dreamt that there was a thirteenth month, she said. And everybody knew about it except me. Like, it had been there all along, like all throughout time. A thirteenth month, and nobody had told me. And then I found out that even my birthday was in the thirteenth month, which was squeezed somewhere in between February and March. And this month, the thirteenth month, was called Shtetl. So, like, my birthday was Shtetl the Eighth.

Shtetl, I said.

Do you know what that is? she said. She was busy adjusting her holster.

No, I said, well, yeah, sort of. Like, a small town. I think it’s a Hebrew word, like Moab. Maybe that’s why you had the dream.

But I didn’t know that word before my dream, said Thebes.

We tried to wake Logan up but it was impossible. He wouldn’t budge.

Sure he hasn’t been capped? said Thebes.

Yeah, I said, you can hear him snoring, can’t you?

We decided to spend the night in the parking lot, in the van. We’d save some money, and the night was almost over anyway.

Cops came around at dawn, apparently — I didn’t notice, I was sleeping — and they asked Thebes what we were doing there and she said sleeping and they said we weren’t allowed to sleep there, it wasn’t a campground, and the motel front-desk person was suspicious, and Thebes said okay, we’d leave, except that her peeps were still asleep, one at the wheel, and so what was she supposed to do?

They said all right, that was fine, we could sleep for a while. Better that than another exhausted motorist on the highway. They didn’t ask to see Logan’s licence. As soon as I opened my eyes a crack, Thebes was in my face.

Popo says when Lo wakes up we’re outie, she said.

Thebes, I said. This talking thing? The way you talk, it’s—

No, no, she said, shhh, please don’t tell me how to talk. I have to do it this way, okay? I won’t always. She looked like she was about to cry again so I told her no, no, it was fine, she could talk however she wanted, it was stupid of me to have brought it up, we were good.

Logan woke up. He moaned and swore and stretched and then slumped over the wheel again. Smells like ass in here, he said. Thebes and I said good morning and asked him if he knew where we were.

Moab, he said. He got out of the van and walked way over to some trees to pee and stood with his back to us for a few minutes. When he got back he rifled around in his fake alligator suitcase and pulled out a stick of incense and lit it and waved it around the van, mostly in Thebes’s general direction. She whipped out one of her pistols and fired a few rounds at his head.

You die, hippie, she said.

We all agreed we’d drive around Moab, check out the sights, and have breakfast in a restaurant instead of eating soggy shabu-shabu sandwiches or whatever rotten fruit was bobbing around in the cooler. We ate at a dive, Logan’s choice, called King Solomon’s, in honour of Deborah Solomon, the love of his life. He’d bought a copy of The New York Times to see where she was at. I left the kids at the table to fight over the miniature jukebox and gawk at Moabites while I wandered around the restaurant in search of a pay phone and a machine that might sell Advil or Tylenol or morphine. I called the hospital and got a hold of the same woman, oh, harbinger of grim, at least I think it was the same woman, and asked if I could speak with Min. She said no, she was sorry, it wasn’t possible, the doctor hadn’t made his rounds, Min was in a locked-down recovery room, there had been some trouble that morning and, no, I couldn’t speak to her.

Yeah, but, what the fuck! I said, and immediately apologized. Silence on the other end. I’m sorry, I said. I’d like to know if she’s okay right now. And, also, what do you mean, trouble? I’m sorry, again.

She’s not in any immediate danger, said the woman. I thought about Superman, her certified intrepid roommate, and wondered where she’d got to, what nemesis she’d been busy battling, when Min had been in trouble.

Can you tell me what happened? I said.

You’re family? said the woman. I just need to confirm…

Yes, I said, my name’s Hattie Troutman. I’m her sister. I’ve been calling…

She disappeared for a short time, said the woman. She was gone for about an hour and a half.

Where’d she go? I asked.

Well, she said she was going out for a cigarette, and—

But she doesn’t smoke, I said.

Well, we didn’t know that, said the woman.

And I thought you just said she wasn’t getting out of bed at all, so how did she—?