Girl in Snow(78)

“Smell it?”

“Clean, right?”

“Very clean.”

I perch on the edge of the bed and pat a flat swatch of comforter.

“Sit,” I tell him, and he does. His snow boots are thick and rubbery against the checkered pattern of the carpet.

That’s the thing about hotel rooms. They level the world. Every single one is the same, and inside, you can become what you’d like. You all sleep in the same scratchy sheets, you all stand under the same underpressurized showerhead, you all dry your legs with the same starchy towels. Doesn’t matter who you are; in a hotel, you become no one and everyone, all at once.

Cameron lies flat, and I do, too. The green-shaded lamp on the nightstand is the only light in the room. Together, we watch the amorphous white ceiling like dazzled stargazers, finding constellations in the asymmetrical cracks, nubs of drywall gathered in clumps. We lie like this until it’s an hour and forty minutes since we left his house.

“We should go,” I say.

“Yeah,” Cameron says.

I drive him home.



WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK

A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

INT. HOTEL ROOM—NIGHT

Celly and Friend sit on the edge of the freshly made bed. The pillowcases are fluffed. A towel is folded in the shape of an elephant at the foot of the king-sized bed.





CELLY


I have a question.





FRIEND


Yes?





CELLY


Are you angry with her? With Lucinda?





FRIEND


Not angry, no.

Friend watches her for a moment. Celly falters under his gaze.





CELLY


Everyone has more going on inside than you’ll ever know. You couldn’t have seen this, no matter how hard you tried.





FRIEND


It all feels a little pointless, then, doesn’t it?





CELLY


Maybe the point is this.





FRIEND


This?

She looks up at him, unwavering.





CELLY


Everyone’s running around, trying to understand themselves and each other. But there are moments like this. Moments when our little human bubbles collide. We rub our boundaries together. We create friction.





FRIEND


And then what?





CELLY


We spin away again. We’ll always feel the shape of the people we’ve touched. But still, we spin away.





FRIEND


That’s sad.





CELLY


It’s not so sad. It’s just life. It’s how things go sometimes.





Russ





Russ walks into the station wearing his only pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt from the softball league he quit seven years ago.

He marches straight to the back office, where the gold plaque on the door reads “Lieutenant Gonzalez.” He does not knock. The lieutenant is hunched over a stack of paperwork—caught off guard, he looks ten years older. The bags under his eyes are a purpling blue. Russ decides that he does not hate the lieutenant. Just pity.

Fletcher, the lieutenant says. Didn’t I give you the week off?

I’m leaving, Russ says.

He places the grocery bag on the edge of the lieutenant’s desk. A stack of paperwork slides as the lieutenant pulls out the accoutrements of Russ’s police career: pants, belt, jacket. His badge. RUSSELL FLETCHER. His gun, with the bullets packed separately in a Ziploc. The lieutenant lays Russ’s things across his desk, then shakes his head.

Are you sure you want to do this? the lieutenant says. In the corner of his mouth, the faint hint of a knowing smirk.

I think so, Russ says.

You know, the lieutenant says, you did have some potential, Fletcher. Even after all that mess with Lee Whitley.

Thank you, Russ says, and then he lies. It’s been a pleasure.



After, Russ drives deep into the mountains. The roads are thin up by the timberline. Precarious. They snake across the cliffs—real cliffs, in the heart of the Rockies. No plateaus.

Russ rolls down the windows, even though it is February. The trees are naked, except for the pines; their needles stand erect, having shaken off that thin, misleading layer of snow. Russ turns on the radio. “Eye of the Tiger.”

He starts to sing along, quiet at first, then louder, louder, until he is yelling—he is hollering—and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night—the bright sun is simple nourishment to his skin.

When the song is over, Russ pulls to the shoulder of the winding mountain road. He gets out of the car and breathes alpine air, sharp, retreating. He looks down at his hands, which are red and barren in the cold, but resolutely his own.



At the end of Fulcrum Street, Ivan is sitting on his front porch. He reads a book, a bottle of Coke wedged in the crook of his elbow. Russ pulls up in his new car, a Subaru with no sirens or lights.

I thought you might come by eventually, Ivan says.