Philipp Meyer - American Rust

He was making good time. He had long legs — a fast walker. He was thinking a lot. He thought you'll follow her. You'll follow her to Connecticut. Plenty of schools up there you'll get a scholarship. Except Christ what was wrong with him. She had moved in with her boyfriend, husband now. It was all a fantasy what he'd just had, it was not the last time they'd sleep together it didn't have that feel, it didn't have that tragic, sitting around crying feeling. But it was close. They would do it one more time and it would be horrible, sex followed by five or six hours of intense bawling and holding each other and complete and utter misery. And then he would never see her again. She would not come back to the Valley he could be sure of that. Four years gone, down the tubes. Only Christ it wasn't four years, it had never been four years, it had only been fun and games that had gone on four years, it was not the same as being together. They had never been together properly except the one Christmas break three years back when she came home the whole week. One week of walking down the street and holding hands and all, kissing games, all your standard boyfriend- girlfriend activities. The rest of the time it was just sex. That had seemed good at first, a pretty girl who just wanted sex and not much else. You did not think those girls really existed. But now it didn't seem good at all. She would go back permanently to her other life, because that's what it was, she had two lives and this one, the one here in her hometown, this was the life she was trying to get rid of. It was another world entirely she had out there, he had not seen it but from the way she talked he could imagine it, that new world, mansions, educated people, a butler involved. It was not even doctors and lawyers, it was another level entirely. It was the level of having butlers. Only maybe those were only from movies. Butlers were outmoded, probably. He guessed it was all robotics now.

And look at him here now, walking down a dirt road, an actual dirt road, he imagined her new husband driving his BMW or whatever it was down the road, look honey, we are driving on an actual dirt road. How quaint. Well yes. He had seen a picture of the new husband once, back when he was still just a boyfriend. He looked queer. That boyfriend of hers looked like an actual homosexual. Wearing a pink oxford. Maybe that wasn't queer in Connecticut but still, that pink shirt, it had given Poe a good deal of satisfaction to see it in that picture. Though here he himself was on his dirt road, walking home as he had no functioning vehicle, his own home, not mansion but a doublewide trailer, just ahead of him. He could see the porch light just ahead. It was nearly five in the morning. Before going inside he took a leak in the bushes so as not to wake his mother with the bathroom noises. He was careful to be quiet — his mother she wasn't a good sleeper and if there was anyone who needed it, about three years of good sleep, it was her.

He made it into the house quietly and into his bed. Falling asleep he had to remind himself that bad things were happening to him, but that wasn't how it felt. This will all blow over, he decided.

It was late in the morning when he woke up, clearheaded, the best he'd felt in weeks, he checked the clock and knew his mother had already gone to work. He was thinking about Lee again, lying there in his bed in his room with the sun shining on him. The south- facing window, he hated it, you didn't get good sleep once the sun came up. He needed to fix the curtain rod, it'd been broken for weeks now. And the tape was coming off his old posters, Kiss, why had he ever liked them anyway, plus Rage Against the Machine, someone said they were communists. The good thing was that with no curtain over the window he could see a long way, almost to the river, and on account of the sun it was already hot in the room. It felt good though he hadn't slept well. The warmth.

He would go to the library and fill out the applications for schools, April 10th now, another day advancing, it would not stop until he died. Only even then it would not stop, the day he died would be like any other day. He hoped that was a long way off. He got up and went outside in his boxer shorts, it was another beautiful day the kind that reminds you how good it is to just be breathing, no matter if nothing else is going right. You are breathing, he thought, more than many can say. He looked at his car, his 1973 Camaro, last of the small- bumper models, before the government came in with its five- mile- per- hour bumpers that ruined the lines of the car. He would never own one newer than 1973. You would have to be an idiot. The Camaro was sitting where the tow truck had left it a month earlier, off to the side of the driveway. Leaves and dirt on top of the new paintjob he'd paid for. He'd dropped the transmission racing Dustin McGreevy in his new WRX Subaru, Dustin going on and on about pop- off valves and turbos and then Poe had smoked him the first time but the second time Poe'd dropped the tranny, the original Turbo-matic, torn the inside of it all to pieces and they'd had to leave the Ca-maro in the ditch and Dustin had given him a ride home. So much for American steel, said Dustin. Least it isn't my mom's car, Poe told him, flicking the Jesus air freshener.

That was a lesson, he decided, McGreevy's Japanese car, it had only won because it hadn't destroyed itself. They knew what they were doing, the Japanese — plenty of steel still got made there. Special alloys. You wanted to believe in America, but anyone could tell you that the Germans and Japs made the same amount of steel America did these days, and both those countries were about the size of Pennsylvania. He wasn't sure about that last fact, but he guessed it was true. Pennsylvania was a big state. Not to mention all the expensive cars were made there — overseas — Lexus, Mercedes, the list went on. Happening to the whole country, he thought, glory days are over.

Anyway he'd put almost eight grand into the Camaro, punched- out 350, Weld rims, new paint, much of it on a credit card he'd stopped making payments on. He'd probably get three or four grand all told. Maybe thirty- five hundred. Speaking realistically. It had rust. It was not a good investment. It was not like putting your money with Charles Schwab. Get something cheap, good on gas. Toyota or something. He tried to think but no, the car, that old Camaro, it hadn't gotten him any pussy he wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Pussy magnet is what the guys at the hotrod shop called that car of his, but that was a bunch of bullshit. You could not trust people who told you things like that. The car was a loser, through and through. As his mother had said it would be.

He would put an ad up on the Internet to sell it, do it at the library when he went to do his college applications. Some stupid kid would buy it same as he had. He'd pick up an old Civic or Tercel, good on gas. Listen to yourself, he thought. Buying an actual little car like that. Unthinkable even a month ago, you are changing. You are changing in front of your own eyes. He got a hose and bucket and sprayed the leaves and dirt off and got his special car soap from the house and sudsed the Camaro so it wouldn't look so bad for a buyer. He was still wearing his boxer shorts. It felt good being out there in the sun like that, practically naked, he could feel the heat all over him.

Then he heard someone coming up the road. It sounded like his mother's Plymouth. He didn't think his mother would be back that early, but maybe so — her hands were getting worse every day. That was another thing he hadn't considered — that soon his mother would not be able to work, at least not much. Winters were hell on her. She pulled in next to the trailer and there she was, his mother, dressed for church and him standing in his underpants in the driveway, nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. She shook her head, but not in a friendly way. She was not happy to see it.