How to Disappear(28)

She takes my arm and I’m down, in the prelude to the hookup with this girl I’m supposed to dispose of. There must be a moral code ancient as hieroglyphics that says you can’t do this, but I stepped off the edge of the moral universe when I turned over the engine in Don’s crap car and rolled out of Summerlin.

“Do you want me to get you another water bottle?” she asks. “I mean, it costs three fifty and it comes from Fiji. It probably cures cancer.” She’s pretty cute, actually, planning her escape route while looking out for me.

“Not a fan of designer water?”

But she’s already shot off to the food truck, fast, with a spectacular stride.

I down sixteen ounces. “Thanks. Jesus, it’s hot.” I’m used to a hundred and ten degrees in the shade, but what the hell, it’s conversation. “I thought El Molino was supposed to be balmy.”

“Do you believe everything people tell you? Does this feel balmy?” She extends her arms, palms up, as if waiting for wads of balminess to land in her hands. She shakes her head. “You might be too trusting.”

I’m drowning in sweat and irony.





28


Cat


Every part of me is perspiring. My hair is perspiring.

My concentration is shredded.

He says, “Do you have a phone number?”

My mouth is dry. My eyes are too dry to blink. It’s distracting to look at him.

“My phone got smashed.” Breathe. “I lost it.” Breathe. “So no.”

He tilts his head the way Gertie does when she’s trying to figure out where her doggie treat went after she already ate it. “It got smashed and then it got lost? This phone has very bad luck.”

Smartass.

“I lost it, like, ‘Oh no, my phone is smashed!’ I’ve lost the use of my phone. My phone is deceased. No phone. Is that clear enough for you?”

I don’t mention that I smashed it under my foot before tossing it down a garbage chute. And then I stomped on the next one. Or that I bought a new one later, but I’m scared to crack it out of its box. Even though the guy who sold it to me swore up and down that it’s an opposite-of-smartphone, with no GPS whatsoever.

“Clear,” he says.

I have to get out of this guy’s force field.

“Thanks for the ice cream.” Licking bits of chocolate sandwich off my front teeth with my tongue. Backing away. “I have to go to work.”

“Thanks for the water.”

My mouth is cold sugar, but the rest of me is burning. My tee is clinging to my skin like a layer of moist shrink-wrap.

He says, “What do you do?”

I have to go. I know it.

But he sacrificed his shirt. He doesn’t deserve a hot mess bitch. “Aide for an old lady. Very glam. I cook a lot of soup.”

Soup-cooker for a demented person. She doesn’t remember who I am when I get back from peeing. The perfect job. I got it from a tiny want ad posted by her son, who lives in New Mexico. Who’s not responsible enough to hire a legit aide for her.

“Could I walk you?” he asks. Undeterred by the obvious fact that I’m backing away. Slowly, with a beauty queen hand wave, a slight swivel at the wrist. I’m fast, but it would look weird if I shot out of the park like bears were chasing me.

Left him to eat my dust.

And the whole time I’m speed-walking away, I’m forcing myself not to look back over my shoulder. Sliding into Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of a bunch of girls who don’t even know I’m with them. Cursing the alarm on the back door.

Asking myself how I ended up in the park with a guy, 50 percent afraid he’d catch me and 50 percent disappointed he didn’t.

Why does every impulse of mine have to be dangerous?





29


Jack


If I’d been paying more attention to the end game—avoiding the Nevada sun rising over a pile of Manx corpses—I wouldn’t be running after Nicolette Holland like a bunglng ass in flip-flops. It’s like getting a penalty called on the touchdown you thought won you the game you bet your life on.

I blew the details, and I feel the failure. I should have had THINK, JACK tattooed down my arm in block print, not this Maori armband thing. (It was the night I turned eighteen. I was drunk off my ass. I’m lucky I didn’t wake up with Donald Duck on my face.) If I’d thought to wear decent shoes, I could have pivoted on a dime. If I’d thought to wear gym shorts, I could have run in her wake and not looked like a guy sprinting away after mugging someone.

When she came out of Dunkin’ Donuts, I should have been closer. When she slunk into the alley, I should have figured out a way to stick to her. There has to be a way to follow someone down an otherwise deserted alley in broad daylight without being spotted. But I gave up. I crossed the street and circled to the place where the alley meets the sidewalk around two corners.

I’m standing in the shade in the Food 4 Less parking lot, back turned to the mouth of the alley, acting like I’m texting. All I had to do is stay on her until I figured it out—it’s not climbing Mount Everest—and I’m still standing here.

I’m so pissed off at myself, I answer Don’s call. I’ve screwed up so badly, why not make it worse?

“Have you got her?” This is what he’s taken to saying instead of hello.