Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

We came off Exit 47 and turned north, toward the quiet dark mass of the mountains, sensed more than seen in the moonless night. “Let’s go up Baldy,” I said. Amanda nodded and we swung up past the colleges and into the lower slopes. Below us the city began to form itself into a checkerboard grid, into straight lines of light stretching on forever, into a cool Cartesian beauty that promised order and sanitation. Amanda drove off the road, onto a dirt track, and we stopped on an overhang looking out on the valley. She began to rummage through a purse.

“I wish we’d thought to bring beers,” I said.

“Better,” she said, holding up a little square of glassine. She pulled a rectangular mirror out of the bag.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“You don’t like it?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“No, I like it too much,” I said. She poured the white powder onto the mirror and began to cut it with an industrial razor. “Isn’t coke supposed to be passé?”

“Who gives a shit?” she said.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter.” She cut the lines and gave me the mirror, and began to roll a five-dollar bill. I twisted in my seat and reached back to shake Tom awake. He came up with a look of terror on his face, with pupils dilated and lips pouting.

“What, what…”

“Easy,” I said. “Want some candy, little boy?”

He rubbed his eyes, yawned, twisted his head from side to side. “It’s so dark. I mean, up here.” He took the mirror from my hand.

“There’s no moon,” Amanda said. “And it’s cloudy.” She gave him the rolled-up bill. We did the lines, passing the mirror around, and I was last. I let my head roll back and savored the clean, clean rush of it, the hard chemical taste and the buzzing numbness around the gums and lips.

“Hallelujah,” Tom said, running a moistened finger over the mirror. He smiled and shook his head. “We are blessed.” He put a hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “Let me sit in the seat. If I can pretend I’m driving this thing I’ll be in heaven.”

She giggled. “Okay.” So she got out of the car, and I went around the front and stood beside her, and we watched Tom wiggle into the front seat and take hold of the wheel. He made a low purring sound in his throat, turned the music up and started to dip his head forward and back, shoulders hunching up and down, in time to the beat. “Whooeee,” he said. Amanda and I laughed.

After a while Amanda cut some more lines and we sat on the grass with our backs against the car. I reached up behind me and tapped on the door. “Tom,” I said, “Tom.”

“What?”

“Here. Turn the music down.”

“No way. I’m having too much fun. Where’s that bill?”

“Here. Roll up the windows.”

He handed the mirror back to me and then I heard the quiet hiss of the windows as they slid up, cutting off the music. I shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“Feels like it’s going to rain.”

I lay back and put my arm under my head, and sure enough, in a few moments, I felt a drop on my forehead, in the middle, a little above my eyes.

I heard my voice say, “Let me read your hand,” surprising myself, because this had been a well-known gambit even at fifteen, allowing you to hold and caress the other’s hand, but Amanda responded enthusiastically.

“You can tell the future?” she said.

“Yes, Madame. Not only the future but also the past.”

“But you can’t see anything, the lines and stuff.”

“Tell Tom to switch on the light inside.”

She leaned across me and motioned at Tom. A weak illumination hit our bodies, and as she moved to lie down beside me, elbows on the ground, facing me, I felt the long coil of hair move across my chest.

“Here,” she said, holding up her right hand. Her skin was cool and crisp, like paper. I ran my finger across the mound at the base of her thumb. “What?” she said.

“Nothing, nothing.” I tried to remember the astrologers at home, the ones on the sidewalk who would let a parrot pick out your destiny from a pile of dirty pieces of paper. “You will have many children,” I said, putting on a generic non-American accent. “I see in these excellent and clean lines in your palm much success and little pain, much joy and little sorrow.”

She laughed. “Liar,” she said. We kissed and her lips were supple, moving. I could taste the powder on both of us. She moved up and put an arm across me, smoothing away the water from my forehead. The bones of her shoulders were thin, fragile under my hands. She turned her head and began to kiss my neck, finding, instantly, a long bruise that curved downward. She said something indistinct and ran her tongue over it.

“That’s a cliché,” I said.

“What?”

“Kissing bruises or scars and that sort of thing,” I said. “It’s a cliché.” I raised her chin back to me, to my lips.

“Oh, shut up,” she said, and rolled on top of me, grabbing my head between flat hands, “shut up shut up shut up.” I laughed, feeling her eyelashes whisper across my cheek, the warmth inside her mouth, her breasts touching softly, the tension in her thighs, I touched her waist and the muscles quivered away from me and then back again, taut, and then something moved, I don’t know what, maybe something in the ground under me, and I pushed myself up, and in the valley below, I saw a light, a speck of fire that grew and brightened until there was nothing else and the horizon washed away. What is it? Amanda said. What is it? I waited for it to stop but I could see only a harsh brilliance, and it was endless, and my head fell back, and I was outraged. I was filled with disbelief. But it wouldn’t stop, it was brighter than day, and it became still more radiant, the sky was a terrible burnished white, and now I could hear a roar, feel it in my legs. I began to tremble, to shake, with no thought now, no words, only a panic deeper than bone.

The sky went dark again and I found that I was screaming. Not loudly, but low in my throat. I was curled up on my side. I sat up, feeling pain shoot through the veins in my arms and legs.

“Can you believe it?” I said, and my voice broke and squeaked. “That was too fucking embarrassing. I thought it was the fucking bomb. Can you believe it?”

Amanda was a few feet away, around the front of the car, knees up to the chest. I crawled over to her on my hands and knees and put a hand on her shoulder. I tried to speak but my mouth felt like the inside would crack, like dry wood. I turned her head. She was crying, fisted hands held side by side in front of her lips, her eyes shut tightly so that they looked like stitched wounds.

“Amanda,” I said, low and hoarse, “Amanda.”

There was a trail of snot running out of a nostril.

“Amanda.”

She raised her hands until her forearms covered her face and the hands curled, quivering very faintly, over her hair. My stomach squeezed and I turned away and vomited, trying to hold my head away from the grass with arms that shook and gave way and wouldn’t lock at the elbows. When I could get up I stumbled over to the car. The music was still playing but I couldn’t see Tom. I pulled at the door and the stench hit me before I saw him curled up, jammed into the space between the driver’s seat and the pedals.

“Tom?” The window on the side away from me had a star growing from its center, a delicate foliage of crystalline lines that reached out to the chrome. “Tom?”

The inside of the car smelled of shit. I backed away from it a little, and as I did so his head whipped up, and he exploded past me in a quick scurry toward the bushes. I got in gingerly, looking around, but the smell had almost disappeared now, so I spun the knob on the radio from station to station, but all I could find was music, songs. Amanda walked up to the side of the car, wiping her mouth. I felt vaguely embarrassed.