Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

“You should stop smoking.”

“Maybe I will, but not for the baby.” She turned away from me and said, “I’m not going to ever be a mother. I’d be a terrible mother.”

“You’d be a good mother,” I said, but I didn’t know if she’d be a good mother or not. She liked to go to parties and drive around with her friends.

When Elise was asleep, I got out of bed and put on my shorts as quietly as possible, took a key off the table, and slipped out.

All of the lights were on and the curtains were open in room 212. I wanted to be a curtains-open kind of person, a person who smiled at strangers on the street—not just dogs and babies but beautiful people, too. Sometimes I could be this type of person. I’d feel so good and happy and it was like I’d never felt any other way, but the next day I’d be afraid again.

Charlie saw me and opened the door before I could knock.

Their room was exactly like ours except backward, the same dull landscape pictures on the wall.

“Hey, girl,” Gabe said. He scooted over and I sat next to him in bed. He handed me his beer.

“Your sister asleep?” Erik asked.

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t like us much,” Charlie said.

“Not really,” I said.

I knew it was coming and then Erik said she was a knockout and I agreed. My heart was beating fast. I moved a hand to my neck and tried to make it seem like I wasn’t checking my pulse.

The door opened and four people came in—three girls and a guy. Gabe stood and led me to the bathroom. “You aren’t going to like these people,” he said, locking us in. “The girls are loud and everybody gets so fucked up they puke and shit themselves.” He sat on the edge of the tub and I pressed my back to the door and slid down.

“They shit themselves?”

“Sometimes, but mostly they just puke.” He dropped the toilet lid and said it was our table. “We’ve got everything we need here—beer, a toilet, drinking water. I think we could be very happy.” He smiled. He was a lot better-looking when he didn’t smile but it was nice to be smiled at. And you couldn’t tell someone not to smile. It would be like saying, Don’t be happy. I don’t like it when you’re happy.

“I hit my head earlier. Do you see a bump?”

He lowered himself to the floor and parted my hair, searched my scalp. “I don’t see anything,” he said, putting his hands above my knees.

“I’m a good girl.”

His hand moved to my thigh. “I know.”

“I don’t even date.”

“That’s because you’re a fundamentalist,” he said, squeezing.

I thought about telling him I’d spent my whole life believing everything everyone had ever told me, but I didn’t want him to think I was stupid. And I was changing all of that—I was going to start becoming my own person, figuring out who I was and what I believed in.

“I like this t-shirt,” I said, rubbing the thin cotton between my fingers. It had a picture of Jeff Bridges on it.

“The muse of the age,” he said, examining the ring on my necklace. He slipped it on up to his knuckle.

“It’s a purity ring.”

“Your parents give it to you?”

“My dad. Elise and I both have them. We took pledges to stay virgins until marriage but they don’t work.”

“They don’t work, huh?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Elise is pregnant.”

“Shit,” he said. “Damn.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the problem didn’t feel like it belonged to me at all after that. It was just a story I could tell him. I told him about the ball where we’d pledged our virginity, how it was held in a school gymnasium, my father on one knee. All the white flowers and white balloons, grape juice for toasting.

“I didn’t know things like that existed,” he said.

“Some black family in the country organized it. They had four daughters. One of them was like seven.”

He touched my face and I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate—I had to enjoy it. I had to be fully in the moment so I could remember it forever. And then his hand was on my thigh again and my own hand moved instinctively to my other thigh, trying to feel what he felt. I put my face in his neck. He didn’t smell like soap or cologne or food or alcohol or cigarettes or plants. He didn’t smell like earth or salt or pickles or rain or honey or anything I could name. I wanted to be able to name it. How could I remember if I couldn’t name it?

“We just met but I feel like I know you,” I said. I’d always wanted to say that to someone. It wasn’t true but it wasn’t not true, either. There was something about him that I recognized.

“You’re easy to talk to,” he said, leaning forward. “And I like the way you look at me.”

“How do I look at you?”

“Like that,” he said.

“I’m sure lots of girls look at you like this,” I said. I was attempting to look sexy by copying what I’d seen on TV—a combination of sleepy and hungry. He leaned forward and I turned my head. I wasn’t ready for him to kiss me yet. “What are y’all doing in a motel room if you live here?” I asked.

He reached behind him and turned on the shower. “We just stay here sometimes.”

“How come?”

“Because we can do whatever we want and no one bothers us.”

“Do you tell your mom you’re spending the night with Erik and Erik tells his mom he’s spending the night with you or something?” I asked.

“My mom doesn’t care. If she wants to find me, she’ll call, but she usually doesn’t. I’m trying to create some ambiance,” he said. “What do you think? Is it putting you in the mood?”

“It sounds like a shower,” I said.

“We could take one together.”

“I don’t think so.”

Outside, more people were arriving. There were many different voices now, but one loud girl stood out. We drank our beers and listened; I liked being hidden away with him, separate from the others. “How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Fifteen. Elise is seventeen.”

“You seem older,” he said, staring into my eyes.

I gathered my courage and held his gaze. It felt incredible. There were starbursts in the center of his eyes, little rods of yellow and green shooting out from the pupil like a doll’s. But then there was a knock—it was the loud girl, saying his name.

“We’re busy,” Gabe said.

“I gotta take a piss,” a guy said.

“Me too,” said the girl.

“Piss outside.”

“Fuck you, dude,” the guy said.

“I can’t piss outside,” said the girl, and we sat there quietly until they went away.

“There’s not much privacy here,” he said, touching my hair.

“I’m not going to have sex with you,” I said.

“I know,” he said but his face changed briefly, like he hadn’t known. He ducked out of the bathroom and grabbed a couple of beers from the sink, shut and locked the door behind him.

“I like you,” I said when he was settled back onto the floor. “Why do you have to be all the way out in West Texas?”

“I like it out in West Texas,” he said. “But then I’ve never really been anywhere else. What’s Alabama like?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “it’s different. The birds sound different. It’s full of deer and paper mills and fat people. That makes it sound really bad, though—Montgomery’s not that bad—I just wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Alabama. Except maybe Birmingham. Birmingham’s okay, I guess.”

“Are there Rebel Flags everywhere?”

“Sometimes, but it’s good ’cause then you know who to avoid.”

There was another knock and a different girl’s voice—she sounded nice, said please. He stood and pulled me up.