like a boat anchor, man. The things I see. It’s like, it’s not just the traumatic deaths – the car crashes and fires and stabbings. It’s the slow deaths. AIDS and diabetes and kidney failure and liver failure and kid’s cancer and rectal cancer and breast cancer and cancer cancer cancer. And did I mention cancer? People just lie there. Disease leaching everything out of them way I’m sucking on this cigarette. Whittling them down. A stick into splinters. And I can’t stop it. I can’t stop any of it. I have no idea how to change it for people.” She thinks of the little boy and the red balloon, and she almost tells him that story. But something stops her. As if there’s someone else out there who will hear it first.
“Suicide is fast. I’m going to use a gun.”
“I know.”
“Oh, right.”
“My first boyfriend used a gun.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
They sit there for a while. Her staring over the wheel. Him staring at the smoldering tip of the joint.
“You can have some of my stuff,” he says. “Like I promised. I have a little money. I’ll leave it in a bag in the front living room. I’d say you can stay in the house for a while – it’s not huge but before Marie left me, we had two dogs in that house and there’s a little backyard and…” He clears his throat. “But I’m going to be dead in there, and I’d do it somewhere else but I want it to be there. In that house. In our house.”
“Thanks.”
“You can have the car, too.”
“I take the car, they might think I killed you.”
“Oh.” He nods. “Good point.” Then he rolls down the window and flicks the joint outside. “Some kid will find that. Hope he enjoys it. Or sells it for a couple bucks. It’s good weed.”
“Thanks for the driving lessons, Aidan.”
“Thanks for sharing a little of my last day.”
Stop and go , she thinks.
It’s his time to stop.
Hers has not yet arrived, and so she goes.
TEN
THE SUNSHINE STATE CAN GO FUCK ITSELF
All the way she’s been listening to whatever random radio stations she can get on the dial, and it occurs to her slowly (but surely) that music basically sucks these days. Hollow, soulless pop music, shallower than a gob of jizz drying on a hot sidewalk. Even the country music sounds more like pop music – gone are the singular miseries of my wife left me, my truck broke down, all I got left is my dog and my shotgun and the blue hills of Kentucky and now it’s sugar-fed Barbies twanging on about ex-boyfriends and drinking Jack-and-Cokes and she’s pretty sure Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton are clawing out of their graves somewhere – though, wait, are the two of them even dead? Shit, she’s not sure.
Once in a while she gets a station that plays something worth a damn: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nirvana, Cowboy Junkies, Zeppelin, Johnny Cash, Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails. It troubles her that music from the 1980s is now “oldies” music. Hard to picture a bunch of geriatrics thumping their walkers around to 99 Luftballons .
Most of the time the dial just finds static. Whispers of dead air. Crackles of voices lost in the noise.
Sometimes she thinks they’re talking to her.
“– mothers don’t love their daughters–”
“– dead people – ksssh – everywhere–”
“– fire on route 1 – St. Augustine–”
“– wicked polly–”
“– river is rising–”
“– it is what it is–”
Now she’s on this hellfire-and-brimstone station. Some preacher hollering on about depravities and Leviticus and the ho-mo-sek-shul menace, suggesting that God is so squicked out by two dudes kissing that he’s willing to once more drown the world in another hate-flood. Which, to Miriam’s mind, suggests that God doth protest too much . Maybe that’s why he booted Satan out of heaven. Maybe they were blowing each other.
She waits for lightning to strike her in her seat.
It does not.
She cackles.
She finishes off her Red Bull and
“Suicide is fast. I’m going to use a gun.”
“I know.”
“Oh, right.”
“My first boyfriend used a gun.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
They sit there for a while. Her staring over the wheel. Him staring at the smoldering tip of the joint.
“You can have some of my stuff,” he says. “Like I promised. I have a little money. I’ll leave it in a bag in the front living room. I’d say you can stay in the house for a while – it’s not huge but before Marie left me, we had two dogs in that house and there’s a little backyard and…” He clears his throat. “But I’m going to be dead in there, and I’d do it somewhere else but I want it to be there. In that house. In our house.”
“Thanks.”
“You can have the car, too.”
“I take the car, they might think I killed you.”
“Oh.” He nods. “Good point.” Then he rolls down the window and flicks the joint outside. “Some kid will find that. Hope he enjoys it. Or sells it for a couple bucks. It’s good weed.”
“Thanks for the driving lessons, Aidan.”
“Thanks for sharing a little of my last day.”
Stop and go , she thinks.
It’s his time to stop.
Hers has not yet arrived, and so she goes.
TEN
THE SUNSHINE STATE CAN GO FUCK ITSELF
All the way she’s been listening to whatever random radio stations she can get on the dial, and it occurs to her slowly (but surely) that music basically sucks these days. Hollow, soulless pop music, shallower than a gob of jizz drying on a hot sidewalk. Even the country music sounds more like pop music – gone are the singular miseries of my wife left me, my truck broke down, all I got left is my dog and my shotgun and the blue hills of Kentucky and now it’s sugar-fed Barbies twanging on about ex-boyfriends and drinking Jack-and-Cokes and she’s pretty sure Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton are clawing out of their graves somewhere – though, wait, are the two of them even dead? Shit, she’s not sure.
Once in a while she gets a station that plays something worth a damn: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nirvana, Cowboy Junkies, Zeppelin, Johnny Cash, Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails. It troubles her that music from the 1980s is now “oldies” music. Hard to picture a bunch of geriatrics thumping their walkers around to 99 Luftballons .
Most of the time the dial just finds static. Whispers of dead air. Crackles of voices lost in the noise.
Sometimes she thinks they’re talking to her.
“– mothers don’t love their daughters–”
“– dead people – ksssh – everywhere–”
“– fire on route 1 – St. Augustine–”
“– wicked polly–”
“– river is rising–”
“– it is what it is–”
Now she’s on this hellfire-and-brimstone station. Some preacher hollering on about depravities and Leviticus and the ho-mo-sek-shul menace, suggesting that God is so squicked out by two dudes kissing that he’s willing to once more drown the world in another hate-flood. Which, to Miriam’s mind, suggests that God doth protest too much . Maybe that’s why he booted Satan out of heaven. Maybe they were blowing each other.
She waits for lightning to strike her in her seat.
It does not.
She cackles.
She finishes off her Red Bull and
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