Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

“Not me,” I said.

She set her phone down. “Now let’s pretend we’re on vacation and having fun.”

“I am having fun,” I said. My bra strap slipped down my arm so I unhooked it and pulled it through my shirt. All of my bras were hand-me-downs from Elise, too small and worn out. “To the Pacific Ocean,” I said, raising my whiskey. “May there be dolphins and no jellyfish.”

We knocked our cups together, spilling some onto the floor, and brought them to our lips. I kept mine clamped tight. I’d had alcohol before but I’d never been drunk. At parties, I’d go behind a bush and pour my drink out, or shut myself in a bathroom and dump most of it down the sink. I’d once held my can sideways like I was so intoxicated I’d forgotten how to hold it until a boy asked me what the hell I was doing and I’d found it didn’t work that way. I didn’t know how it worked, but I had seen what people could do when they were drunk—Shannon cried and locked herself in bathrooms. She’d once given a stranger a blowjob in a parking lot.

I watched the liquid on top of the carpet, not seeping in.

“I miss Cole,” Elise said, braiding a chunk of her hair. She could have been on TV she was so pretty. She was so pretty she had gone and gotten herself pregnant.

“I bet he’s depressed without us,” I said.

“Of course he’s depressed—they keep him locked up in a cage with his own shit and only let him out once a day.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“And I miss Dan.”

It occurred to me Dan might not be the father, that it might be Abe, but she wasn’t going to mention Abe because he’d broken up with her and started having sex with her best friend, Laura Lee, or maybe he’d been having sex with Laura Lee all along. The baby was Abe’s—I knew this suddenly and clearly—and for a moment I was glad. But then I felt like an awful person. If God could see my heart, I’d never be saved, and of course he could see my heart. He was God.

“Maybe if I’m holding Cole in my arms he’ll get to come with us,” I said. “Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure .”

She stacked her pillows and readjusted. “These pillows are too high. I knew we should have brought our own.”

“But we’d forget them and the maids would give them to their grubby children.”

“I’m going to get a crick in my neck,” she said.

“That’s a funny word.”

She smiled at me and said, “I need to go to the store. Do you want anything?” But then she took the knife out of her pocket, opened it and started trimming the frayed pieces of blue jean from her shorts, making a little pile on the bedspread. She was the only girl I knew who carried a pocketknife. She’d found it while hiking. Our father said it was an excellent find—an expensive knife in good condition.

“Our movie’s about to start,” I said.

She held out her cup. “Hit me one more time and put some water in it.”

I poured more than I should have and she drank it down. “I wish you’d stay,” I said.

“I’ll be right back.” She took some money out of her wallet and folded it into her pocket. “If they come back, tell ’em I’m trying to score some weed,” she said, and went out the door.

I checked to see how much she had—fifty-eight dollars, nearly as much as I had. I took two fives and dropped them into my purse, and then carried the bottle to the bathroom and held it under the faucet, filling it past the level it had been. I thought about the Japanese girl and how she’d looked asleep but was probably dead, her insides a jumble of smashed organs spilling blood all over the place. I put the bottle back in my mother’s carry-on and looked around at the shirts dripping on the carpet, our clothes and shoes everywhere. Despite all our stuff, the room felt emptier than when we’d walked in.

I poured out my drink and rinsed the cups, put my toothbrush in one of them. Then I took my phone outside and sat against the door. The workers were gone, and other than a pair of goggles, there was no evidence they’d been there.

It was eight-ten and eight-twenty and eight-thirty and my parents would be back any minute. I was tired but knew I wouldn’t sleep well because I was thinking about how tired I was and how much I needed to get a good night’s sleep, which was exactly what you shouldn’t do. You should go about your business like you’re not even tired. You should stay out of bed as long as you can. I’d probably get four or five hours and wake up when it was still dark out, lie in bed waiting for the birds. Every morning the birds sounded different because they were different birds.

A man in a room across from me opened his door. He was black and muscled, tall and bald and handsome. He looked like a soap opera star.

He stood there for a moment with the light behind him, and then turned and said something to the woman in bed. She was plump and white with long dark hair, wearing only her panties. The woman gestured to the man to close the door, but he left it open, walked over to his car, and took something out of the trunk. Then he walked off in the same direction as Elise—toward the bar and gas station. The woman got out of bed with her breasts swinging and slammed the door.

A minute later, Elise came walking back across the parking lot with a paper bag in her hand, a cigarette burning brighter as she inhaled. She had a fake ID that said she was twenty-one. Once, she’d had me quiz her on the new facts of herself: height and weight and date of birth. She’d even memorized the license number, a long number that would only look suspicious if she rattled it off.

She sat beside me.

“You look homeless,” I said.

“A homeless man bought it for me,” she said, taking a swallow. “Or maybe he wasn’t homeless. He had a debit card.”

“Where’s your ID?”

“I don’t look anything like that girl.” She spread her legs, nearly to a full split, and I recalled the uncomfortable positions I used to sit in as a child, when my body could easily bend itself into different shapes.

“I thought we were going to order pizza,” I said.

“There’s a whole counter of fried shit over there—I could go get you something. Taquitos, chicken fingers, potato logs . . .”

“That’s okay.”

She swiped her cigarette on the bottom of her flip-flop and tossed it into the parking lot. “Don’t mess with Texas,” she said.

The bald man came into view, cradling a sack in his arms.

“When I passed him in the store, he grunted at me,” she said.

“What’d you do?”

“What do you think I did? I ignored him. You have to ignore them or they’ll be encouraged.”

The man opened his door and looked over at us before closing it. I wondered what he was saying to the woman—if they were kind to each other or if they yelled and said horrible things. They were probably on drugs, like my dead cousin. Like her, maybe they’d once had normal lives, with normal families who’d loved them and they’d just gotten off on the wrong track. Or maybe things had always been like this and they didn’t know any other way. Life was mean and people were mean and there was no room for kindness.

Elise lit another cigarette and called Dan. He didn’t answer, so she left him a message, said she was having a terrible, awful time. Then she checked to see what the Florida leg was doing. “Greta had a fender-bender,” she said, “smashed a headlight. And everybody’s giving her the finger today.”

“I bet she loves that.”

“Seriously, though—why are all these people so unattractive? Being religious is no excuse to be this unattractive.” She passed me her phone and I looked at the woman, overweight with messy gray hair, wearing a raincoat.