I drove through the hills, the road snaked between the rock mounds and I was amazed at Polly’s ability to sleep. The car pushed her face against the glass of the window, but still she slept. I noticed a glimmer and saw that drool had started to form on her lip. I took a tissue and caught it before it fell. I guess it’s nice to have her along.
Time went on as the desert started to flatten and the road became a straight line. I felt the sleepiness that Polly had readily given in to. My eyes were heavy and I snapped my head upright to try to counteract the drowsiness. I gave my face a bit of a slap. I looked at Polly. She looked innocent for a change. I gave the road a determined look, but in the end it didn’t matter. Orange lines started to form on the road, as I hallucinated some sort of cartoon scene. The road began to shimmer at its edges, and I fell asleep.
My phone rang loudly in the car and both Polly and I shot up from our sleep.
“Were you sleeping?” she shouted as the phone rang again.
“No!” I shouted back, fumbling for the phone. “Yes!” I decided just before answering the ring.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Burnkey?” The questioning voice had a New England accent.
“Yes, this is Theo. Who is this?”
“This is the Middlesex County Medical Examiner. I’m sorry sir, were you sleeping?”
“No. No. No. No. No. Did you find where Morton Petes was sent?”
“Yes, sir, the body was sent to Austin, Texas. It was sent to a funeral home there.”
I wrote down the address of the funeral home, thanked him and then hung up. I turned to Polly.
“One night in Tucson, then I’m heading to Austin. It’s my turn to hunt for a body.”
“Fine, can you pull over at this rest stop? I have to pee.”
“Yes. Of course. You may take care of your bodily needs.”
“I just have to pee, Theo. Girls pee sometimes too.”
“I get it. Thanks.”
“Say pee.”
“No.”
The rest stop had a vending machine that was actually refrigerated. I supposed that otherwise the chocolate bars would turn into bags of chocolate goo. People can complain about the snow in Boston, but this place seemed equally insane to me. Polly went off to “pee” and in my own bathroom I splashed my face. I turned my head to see a world of delightful graffiti on the wall beside me. I was amused to notice that much of it had been blacked out by the management, but that the best of it still remained. It helped that it was written in Spanish.
An hour later, we rolled into Tucson and got a hotel. It was so hot that you could only reasonably exist indoors. It made me think that humanity had clearly proven that it could live on other planets, just by making Tucson. Still, though, the hills around the city were quite pretty and the sun felt good for a few seconds.
“One bed or two?” The man at the front desk had asked.
“Two,” I said and noticed from the corner of my eye that Polly was shaking her head.
We got to the air conditioned room and I immediately fell asleep on my bed. When I awoke, six hours had passed and Polly was next to me in the dark. I lay there for a little while and let myself smell her. Women smelled nice. I remembered another perfume scent. It had been over two years since I had seen Chloe. As I drove east, I realized that I was approaching the place where I’d heard she’d moved. I remembered the day she left and I wondered why Polly wanted to be with such a dysfunctional nerd as myself. Then the name Morton Petes and Jake Phillips came to me. We had each been damaged. I woke her and we headed to dinner.
Polly insisted that we “grab a drink” after dinner and she was enamored by a place called The Surly Wench. The bar was decorated with thousands of representations of partially clad women. In the rest room, I realized that some were even less clad. A band called the Soviettes played from the back corner of the bar and we enjoyed a drink near the front. The sound swept across the room and to our booth.
“I like these guys,” Polly said.
“I think that they are girls.”
“Guys, girls whatever. They are musicians. Besides the drummer was a guy.”
“OK, so when you call him a guy, it means that he’s male.”
“Correct.”
“But saying ‘I like these guys’ implies no gender.”
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a woman, and that is my prerogative. Drink your beer.”
I decided to start a conversation that I had been avoiding for days.
“So, I know that I was going to head to Santa Fe, and then onward to Boston, but now that I am going to Austin are you still going to come along?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I … it’s nice to have you along.”
Her face brightened, “Well, my good man, you helped me look for my missing body, I can at least help you with yours.” Then she held her glass to toast with mine. I held mine up and she winked. I couldn’t help but laugh. The band mentioned that their next song was called “Multiply and Divide” but I didn’t even see the mathematical connection.
Phil darkened the lights in his room. He put on some Tom Waits music and let the raspy voice from the music pierce the dullness of the room. He tossed some of the sleeping pills from the bottle on the bed and put the bottle of whiskey on the night stand. He sat on the edge of the bed and took a drink, then he took another, and finally he got up. He walked around the bed and took a look through the camera that was peering down on the scene. The tripod towered over the edge of the bed like the grim reaper himself. The scene through the viewfinder showed a dented bed, some sleeping pills, the whiskey and the picture on his wall. It was perfect. The music wailed on.
He moved to his desk which was opposite the tripod and accessed a program on his computer. A web site revealed the name of the local police department. He went to the top bar of his web browser and started adding extra letters and symbols to the name of the police website. He added “/records/remote?login” after the name and then hit ENTER on the keyboard. A window popped up with the questions “Name and Password.” Then Phil moved his mouse to another program on his computer called “PazzKrax” and double clicked it. The Password and Name fields of the previous pop-up began to fill with random characters. The programmed then moved the mouse, the modern equivalent of a ghost hand, to the ENTER field and clicked. “Incorrect Password, try again” popped up next and the program moved the mouse to close it as another random attempt at Names and Passwords continued. It would only be a matter of time now.
He grabbed his keys and left the apartment, driving slowly to the morgue where he volunteered. Morgues often appreciate volunteers, but rarely get them. He noticed, as he arrived, that he was the only one there. He quickly got to work on the computer. He went to the deceased person database and started a new entry. After he filled in some relevant data, he walked over to the printer as a card was coming out of the machine. He tore the card along its perforations and removed the small square from the edge. He walked to the room of the morgue that was famous from movies, the drawer room. The neon light above him flickered a blue white as he walked to a drawer and placed the card in the slot near its handle. On it was written his own name.
0 comments:
Post a Comment