1

Alice was in the forest. Well, a forest, or at least what she perceived to be a forest. It was a scattering of what appeared to be trees, definitely. Not definitely, not defined. Shapeless. Nameless. Harmful? No, they were definitely trees. And they were definitely definite, at least for now. No roaring, no peripheral noise. Definitely, definite trees. Their name was trees. Not nameless, at least not for now. Harmful, duplicitous, deciduous. No, no, they were pines. Gray pines. Tall pines, but pines nonetheless; nothing deciduous about this forest. Could she be sure? Could she look around her, just to check if there were any maples or oaks or doorknobs? That’s not a tree. Or if it is, it’s not a deciduous tree. Something from Southeast Asia, surely. She couldn’t look around, so she looked down. Grass? Yellow. No, green, like a lime. It had a name. Grass, also. Shag-pile stalks, hissing in the wind. What was roaring, again? Hiss, hiss; not the trees; they didn’t have a name anymore. ALICE! Something silver, seen. Thundering, thundering hooves. Beside her, now behind her, now the other side. It would be in front of her soon, the thundering. A glint of silver threads, steel fibers waving in the roaring wind. Beside, behind, beside, ahead. Over and over. Hooves louder, wind higher, roaring, rushing, screaming. Thundering, clattering hooves beating the earth-hide-skin drum like an avalanche; an avalanche of hooves now, splitting everything in exactly two, right in two, and she stood over the middle of the divide now with her head still pointing at the lime yellow grass-skin and arms at her sides feeling every small hair being swept by the system of noise and wind around her and she knows, she knows, she knows she needs to do something or the entire system will become disappointed, and maybe collapse, and she has to stop it.

      She raises her arms.

      0638. Her alarm will sound in seven minutes.

 

**

      This one was another white car. Not quite as white as the photographs had made it out to be, though. Some of the pieces of body near the bottom skirts or wheel arches were a bit faded or yellowed by the sun or stained or scratched from bits of earth thrown up by the tires, and there was a dull pink smudge on the back quarter panel where a previous owner had once been backed into by a red SUV. The door handles, too, had been worn and discolored from nearly seven years of approximately twelve different hands tugging them open. The inside was decent, though, except for the passenger-side seat which had a large tear in the fabric covering the seat cushion from which a large chunk of supportive high-density foam was missing. The dealer from whom Alice was buying the car had said on the phone that the previous owner couldn’t recall what had happened to the seat, but he was nice enough to quickly knock $50 off the already respectable price the car was listed for.

      Alice’s new haircut was suitable. The stylist hadn’t seemed like she knew what she was doing, and had fumbled a bit in what Alice called her hair’s “transition zones,” i.e., the parts of her hair directly between the long-length and short-length parts, but for $12 she couldn’t have asked for much better now that Charonne had moved back to Los Angeles. She brought her good jacket to pick up the car, even though it was getting back up toward 80 degrees today and was the sun was shining high in the sky; too high, it seemed, for mid-February already. She looked really good in that jacket, though, and any opportunity to wear it for any occasion in which she might be seen by the public was worth a little extra perspiration, particularly on the occasion of a new car (well, new to Alice, at least). Even with the marginally disappointing haircut, she felt good as she stepped from her mother Elvira’s green Chevrolet Tahoe and onto the graying tarmac of the dealership’s lot.

      After an agonizing three or four seconds of glaring blindness while her eyes adjusted to the daylight and the double-daylight being reflected from the immaculately clean row of cars parked directly in front of the dealership’s main building, Alice closed the passenger’s door, which closed with an unpleasantly rattle-y thud, and stepped forward to allow her mother to drive away. She didn’t turn to wave her mother goodbye; she’d see her again tonight after work, anyway, and she still felt a twang of animosity from the argument they’d had on the way to the dealership. Nothing major; money again, like usual. For some reason, Elvira felt entitled to a modest portion of Alice’s already-modest monthly income she liked to call “rent,” even though Elvira herself didn’t pay rent for the apartment, which was being paid for in full by her (Elvira’s) boyfriend Sebastian and her boyfriend Sebastian’s sister Bianca. Thinking of it, now, Alice thought she probably got along better with Bianca than she did with her own mother most of the time. She loved her mother, of course, absolutely and without condition, but she also hated her, much in the way an adolescent hates its parents for a period during which it thinks it needs to spread its proverbial wings and find itself (but really just wants to smoke pot and drink and stay out late and engage in casual intercourse without being shouted at by an authority figure (other than its own still-developing self-deprecating pseudo-conscience, occasionally)). Under the current circumstances, Alice was an adolescent in spirit only, by necessity, against both her and her mother’s (and somewhat against her mother’s boyfriend’s, but not, curiously, Bianca’s) wishes.

      The current circumstances being: Mom had moved in with Sebastian, who already shared a small-ish two-bedroom apartment with Bianca, almost six months ago with the not-at-all whorish intention of becoming pregnant and marrying Sebastian, in that order; Bianca held a steady job as an overnighter at a gas station on the outskirts of town, where regular unleaded gasoline was approaching $4.00 per gallon because it was the last gas before Death Valley (a blatant lie, as any patient motorist would discover 13 miles down the road); and, Alice, who had lost her job at Wal-Mart only a few weeks ago, and had had to move out of her apartment and politely ask to stay on Sebastian’s and Bianca’s (and Mom’s, too, at this point) couch until she could get a new place of her own, had been hopping between temporary jobs at, in chronological order, a small clothing store, a gas station (not the same one as Bianca, but also professing to be the last gas before Death Valley), and a grocery store (or, in order of least- to most-tolerable, gas station, grocery store, clothing store).

      The main building of this particular car dealership (Anthony’s Imports, one of three used car dealerships within what Alice’s mother had termed, “reasonable driving distance;” any more distant and Mom likely would have made Alice take a cab. Gas ain’t free, etc.) was nearly the same oxidized green as Alice’s mother’s car, a mixture of metallic forest with patches of creamy mint. The brown shingled roof was low and had a gentle rake in sort of a faux-Ranch style which had been popular in the late 70s when the building was constructed. As she walked toward the finger-smudged glass front door, Alice’s eyes fell to a particularly tarnished area just below the rectangular sign which read ANTHONY’S AUTO IMPORTS CHEAPEST IMPORTS IN PAHRUMP COME SEE OUR SELECTON [sic] where Anthony or whoever actually owned the building had attempted to scrub away the marks left by the previous sign, which had apparently read ALLELUIA RISEN CHURCH OF JESUS. Her eyes followed the outlines of each word, studying them as if she were in an art gallery. She’d never been to an art gallery.

      It was a small apartment, too, even for three people spread amid two bedrooms and two bathrooms. She felt welcome there, sure, but the space itself was small. When they first started renting the apartment, Bianca had just started her gas station job, and Sebastian hadn’t had a job in nearly a year (going on two, now, f*****g lazy a*****e). Sebastian’d saved up some money from when he used to sell drugs to high school kids in the area (which he’d professed to have stopped), and now made a few hundred bucks every three or four weeks DJ-ing weddings and the occasional rave (from which he would suspiciously return with significantly more bucks than he would from the weddings). Together, using Sebastian’s savings as a deposit and months 1-3’s advance rent, and Bianca’s steady “income” (“salary,” “compensation,” “flux net worth”) for utilities, and splitting the rent thereafter mostly evenly, they’d been able to afford a bargain-basement two bedroom apartment on the second floor of a decaying-ish complex optimistically called Sunnyside Apartment Homes.

      For all its anti-pomp, it did feel like home to Alice, more so than even her own apartment had. It was lively, bustling even. Sebastian liked to entertain (the word, “entertain,” here meaning invite some of his friends over to smoke marijuana and watch The Simpsons, and later go out for four boxes of a dozen donuts each, and eat them all before Bianca and Sebastian’s girlfriend’s daughter got back, what was her name, and try to get Elvira to smoke with them, or show them her tits; Alice, Alice was her name). Bianca had friends over, too, but usually one at a time, and they typically kept to themselves. Mom was always cooking something whether The Boys had smoked or not; someone was bound to be hungry. Alice’s favorite was chicken enchiladas, made with green sauce and lots of cream cheese, and covered with more green sauce and sour cream and served over hot red rice and tomato chunks and black beans. Mom’d been making that since before Alice could remember, back when Dad still lived with them in the house in Ontario. Marina would always ask for mom’s special enchiladas, and Mom would spend all afternoon working with a giant smile on her face, bouncing all over the kitchen, and Dad would sit in the recliner and fall asleep and wake back up and fall back asleep, and Marina would brush Alice’s hair and tell her how beautiful she’d be when she growed up, and Alice would sing songs Grandma used to sing at Christmas, and they’d all eat enchiladas together and they were always delicious. The apartment felt closer to that than Alice had been in years.

      The glass front door had a magnetic doorbell, but the battery in the receiver must have been dying as the only sound it made when Alice opened the door was an asthmatic chirp from somewhere overhead. It wasn’t necessary, though, as there was what appeared to be a salesman sitting at what appeared to be the main desk, working over what appeared to be the paperwork for a white Toyota Camry.

      “Hi there, are you Alice?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Great, I’m glad you found a ride. Nice to meet you.”

      “You, too.”

      “I’m just finishing up the paperwork for your Camry, if you want to take a seat. It’ll be just a second.”

      He gestured to a black plastic chair, one of two in front of the desk. It looked as though it had been designed to appear more upscale than it actually was which, as she sat herself down into it and took her first studious look around the inside of the building, she found matched the thrift-store appearance of the rest of the décor quite well. His arms were hairy, and sweaty. She became conscious of her own sweat in the arms of her jacket, and then remembered she was wearing her best jacket and stiffened her back slowly and slightly, to accentuate her breasts and flatten her stomach. She remembered from the phone call that his name was Mario. He was older than he had sounded on the phone, nearing or even straddling middle age if the creases in his eyes etched by years of phony smiles were any indication. He was well-built, though, and didn’t appear to have let himself go. Probably single, then; no wedding band, no pictures on the desk, no anxious habitual glances at his cell phone, assuming he had one. He wrote with his left hand, like Dad used to.

      “Now, we did go ahead and knock off 50 dollars for the damaged passenger seat. That brings the total to $4,113 with tax.” He typed into a noisy calculator, then slid it slightly so Alice could see the display with the numbers 4163-50, and below that 4113.

      She remembered what Mom had told her. “And it does run well, right?”

      “Oh yes, it’s in great condition. We’ve got it in the garage right now with our guys getting it all cleaned up and detailed. They should be finished any minute, now.”

      Sounded like Salesman for, “no, you can’t take a look at it and make us knock any more money off the price.” He seemed sincere, though. Alice didn’t know what to think. She nodded, and looked past Mario through the windows behind him where he had gestured toward the garage. He followed her gaze and glanced vaguely over his shoulder, then returned to scanning the documents in his hands.

      “Lived in Pahrump long?” he asked, looking up after a brief moment.

      “What?” She had heard him just fine. Alice wasn’t good at small talk; “what” was her way of allowing more time to process a response.

      “Have you lived here long? I just saw for the billing you had written down a previous address in California.” He pointed nervously at the paper to indicate to her where he’d gotten that information.

      “Oh,” she said, raising her eyebrows and nodding. “It’s been about five years, now.”

      “Ah. I moved here back in 1992, back when I was doing real estate. Cars is where the money’s at now, though.” He made an expression with his face which she perceived as somewhat-sincere resignation.

      “Mmm,” she hummed, nodding again. She wondered if she was coming off as rude. She felt the sweat on her arms again, and shifted her weight to her right buttock to cross her legs, left over right. She saw him quickly glance at her blue-jeaned knee as she did so, and then instinctively look away, back to his papers.

      Coming from behind Mario, and from as far away as her chair, Alice could smell a fake lemony odor emanating from the floor-to-ceiling windows indicating they had been freshly wiped of the finger- and nose-prints of the children whose parents brought them along to buy their brand new shiny optimistic five-seat sedan. How many Toyota Camrys (Camries? Camrys?) … How many units of Camry inventory had Mario moved in his time working here, and to whom? Had they been happy customers, eager and anxious for the new adventures their Japanese four-door would take them on? Or were most of them more like Alice herself, desperate for an A-to-B-mobile and not desperately picky about the color or condition (but come on, white?)? Mario’s face and affect weren’t giving away any indication of whether Alice seemed to him like a typical customer or not. He had tried some small talk with her, which indicated to her two possibilities: (1) his small talk was manufactured kindness instilled and brainwashed into him as another cut-and-copy sales technique, and that she was indeed a typical customer fallen prey to the mousetrap (actually, now that she thought of it, a lobster-trap was probably a better metaphor) of an online car ad; or, (2) it was genuine humanity and curiosity and that, other than being a good salesman, Mario was also a kindhearted and generous person out to do the world a bit of good one Silverado at a time. He spoke again before she had the chance at any further deliberation.

      “Sorry, I didn’t mean to weird you out. Lots of customers come in real nervous, like you did. It helps mostly to look over their papers, instead of just signing all of them straight down the line, so I get to know them a little bit.” His face betrayed his sincerity this time; his salesman façade was collapsing a bit, perhaps intentionally.

      “No, sorry, I guess I’ve just had a long day already.” Alice spoke with some hesitation. She wasn’t sure how best to approach the conversation yet, or how much to tell this Mario guy. “I moved here with my mom from Ontario. In California, not Canada. Lots of people think I mean Canada-Ontario, which is weird since California-Ontario is only, like, three hours away. Anyway, we moved here in 2005.”

      She became conscious once again of her knee and how visible it was to Mario, who seemed to be making a constrained effort to overtly look everywhere but at it. The sweat in the arms of her jacket was cold now, and gave her goose bumps on her arms and neck. She shuffled in the chair slightly as her right thigh and buttock had become numb from the pressure of the hard plastic against her pelvis and femur. Mario glanced at the calendar on the wall to his right, then at the hallway leading away from the main room they were in, likely toward offices and restrooms and vending machines.

      “Funny, I guess I would have thought the same thing. Except, I guess, Monteiro isn’t exactly a Canadian surname.”

      “No.” She laughed for the first time since yesterday, a nervous, breathy laugh. She studied Mario as he turned once again to check the outside parking lot. His hairline was clearly receding, although it appeared as though he was attempting to hide it by growing it out a bit, all black and curly; he spoke with quite a nasally, monotone voice that didn’t have any particular virility about it; what she had perceived earlier as a semi-muscular frame she now realized could be (and likely was) a small pot belly disguised by an accidentally flattering improperly-fitted dress shirt tucked into loose slacks. He was at least twenty years older than her.

      A glint of sunlight from a white car being parked outside the window.

      “Oh, looks like they’re all finished with the car. Sorry- your car.” He smiled his best salesman’s smile, a mixture of excitement, haste, and large teeth, all fake (including the teeth).

      He swirled the low stack of papers around to face Alice. He pointed to places she’d need to initial, AMM, and sign, Alicia Maria Monteiro. She uncrossed her legs and sat up, pen in her right hand like Mom. It made a scratching noise as she wrote, especially as she wrote her signature which she had a tendency to write with long, looping lines on the L and the T and the M’s. There were 17 spots to initial and 9 spots to sign her full signature; she was annoyed by the time she got to the final page (IMPORTANT-Warranty Disclaimer and Consumer Rights/Lemon Law Insert-PLEASE READ CAREFULLY (yeah, right)).

**

      luv u babe

      I love u2

      u @ wrk rite now?

      Yea..

      u horny?

      Lol no.

      not even a lil?

      No, Gav. Wtf

      wat u want 4 dinner?

      The Chinese place down the road from their apartment which served really good Pad Thai even though Pad Thai isn’t really Chinese food closes at 5 which is awful early for a Chinese place he thought especially a Chinese place pretty much right downtown where everybody gets off work at 5 he thought. So he thought he ought to drive there this time instead of walking there this time even though he could probably get there in plenty of time walking and still have plenty of time to order and wait for his Pad Thai (Number 4) and Sarah’s Chicken Lo Mein (Number 7) or sometimes Shrimp Stir Fry (Number 12) to cook he thought. Driving’s okay though he thought because it’s not a very long way so it wouldn’t use very much gas which he’s been worried about lately since he has a kind of old truck and gas is almost 4 dollars a gallon he thought. Besides he thought he wouldn’t need to drive anywhere else this whole weekend unless Sarah needed to use it but then she could fill it up if she needed to he thought but she probably didn’t need to go anywhere anyway and if she did she could get Bianca to pick her up anyway he thought. Plus Bianca works at a station so she probably gets a discount on gas or some s**t he thought otherwise why would you want to work there since you could get robbed or shot or yelled at he thought. Even if the pay is good and she’s getting perks and benefits like cheaper gas or free candy bars and s**t like that it would be a total drag and I mean a total drag he thought working at some dead end station in the middle of the desert on the overnight graveyard shift he thought. I mean how lonely could a person get he thought being all by yourself behind a big dirty white counter full of cigarettes and Chinese cell phones for all night long every night and seeing like maybe ten customers the whole night because who buys gas or cigarettes or Chinese cell phones at 2 AM in the middle of the desert he thought. Plus Sarah said Bianca told her her manager likes to be all gropey and handsy with Bianca and this other girl she sometimes works with and let’s be honest who wouldn’t want to be all gropey and handsy with Bianca he thought but still that’s like sexual harassment or some s**t. I mean the pay must be real good and I mean real good or something because who would even want to put up with any of that all by itself for a stupid job but Bianca puts up with all of it at once every day at that station he thought and she’s always happy whenever Sarah invites her over she never really complains or anything like that which is weird he thought since all that s**t sounds horrible. Even when he had his job at the pharmacy and had to work overnights sometimes when the store was short-staffed or the idiot Supe didn’t schedule enough people and made him stay without telling him about it until like five minutes before he was supposed to leave even when he had that job and had like a mountain of crap to complain about every day and was getting paid minimum with no benefits plus no overtime and came home smelling like hand sanitizer at like midnight every night he didn’t feel like he’d want to ever work at a station on the overnight graveyard, no sir. But so he thought he could drive to the Chinese place down the road and have everything ordered and waited for and picked up and back home by the time Sarah got off if she would go ahead and hurry up and tell him what she wanted already he thought before he just gave up and ordered her her usual Number 7 (Chicken Lo Mein) even though sometimes once in a while she’d want the Number 12 (Shrimp Stir Fry) since the place was going to close soon which was why he was driving in the first place he thought. He’d better start driving now and she could text him on the way he thought since it was basically like a straight shot there and by the time he got there and parked and got out and walked inside and stood in line if there was one she’d have plenty of time to make up her mind he thought and if she hadn’t made up her mind by then she was getting a Number 7 (CLM). Except if she didn’t want a Number 7 (CLM) this time he didn’t feel like starting an argument or anything but like it was 4:47 and the place closes at 5 and it would take him at least 6 minutes to drive there and 1 minute to get out and walk inside and get in line and hopefully the line wouldn’t be long because they stop taking orders at 5 too they don’t just lock the door like some places will do they full-on close down everything at 5 and if you come in at 4:58 and stand in line for 3 minutes and it’s 5:01 when you get to the register they say Sorry We Close so he needs to leave like now he thought and if she doesn’t text him back with what she wants he’ll have to just order her a Number 7 (CLM) because he knows she likes it he thought. And he thought how’s it this cold outside he thought since the whole point of moving to Nevada was to get away from cold places since Sarah got sick real easy and I mean real easy and she wanted to be somewhere real warm and never snowy so she picked Pahrump Nevada because it was close to Death Valley and that was like the hottest place on Earth and because I guess they needed dental hygienists in Pahrump Nevada. People here did seem to have real white teeth he thought. Especially Bianca he thought Bianca had the whitest teeth he’d ever seen and so she probably goes to dentists all the time except he wasn’t sure that station she worked at had health benefits for like dental so maybe she was just a really good brusher he thought. He thought he ought to park his truck in the same parking spot he usually parks it in whenever he goes to this Chinese place since they probably recognize him now he thought and there was a new lady at the counter he thought and no one in line and it was only 4:54 so he had plenty of time to get his order in since they don’t stop cooking at 5 they only stop taking orders so he thought he better check his phone even though he didn’t feel it vibrate in the car or make the little bird-chirp sound it makes whenever Sarah sends him a text message. Sarah’s getting a Number 7 (CLM) he thought and he hoped it didn’t start some big production argument back at home since she liked the Number 7 (CLM) anyway and since he’d explain to her how he didn’t have any time to wait for her to tell him whether she wanted the Number 7 (CLM) tonight or not he thought and that would make the argument stop probably if it started in the first place.

      Num 7 ok?

…

…

…

      When the food was ready finally after a long time he thought even though it was only 5:07 when the Chinese lady handed him the bag which smelled really good except she wrote Kevin on it instead of Gavin he thought he’d better go home since Sarah was probably already on her way home and he hoped she wasn’t mad or anything. He thought now it’s even colder what the hell it’s only been like 20 minutes and he hoped Sarah didn’t get sick or anything from the cold he thought. He thought he liked driving even when it was a short little drive to this Chinese place which he could have walked to but didn’t want to waste the time or gas or anything he thought and he heard a little bird-chirp in his pants pocket and he thought Sarah probably got home just now and he hoped she likes the food he got because he didn’t want to start a fight or anything and he didn’t have enough time to wait and see if she wanted the CLM Number 7 or the SSF Number 12 or even something else new off the menu even though he didn’t think she’d ever even tried anything different from this Chinese place he thought since they always got the same thing every time they went there. He’d just wanted to get inside and get the order finished because it was real close and I mean real close to closing time he thought and he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong or anything and please don’t be mad Sarah please he doesn’t want to break up especially over some f*****g Chinese food he’s sorry for his language he thought he was just upset because he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong he just wanted to get her food she liked and didn’t have time.

       He was right though because Sarah’s car was in her parking spot and he grabbed the bag of food and jumped out of the car and his blood sort of went all cold and spiky he thought and he opened up her text message.

      Yum! Thnx babe, b home in5

 

**

      It wasn’t as shiny and gleaming as it had first looked from through the window. Probably, Alice thought, because the sun was hitting it differently and she was able to see in greater detail the small scratches and dents and tarnished areas on the paint. She was also away from whatever pheromones and testosterone Mario had left to emanate, which she felt cleared her senses. It (the car) also, though, didn’t look to her as bad as the pictures on the dealer’s website had made it look. No chips in the windshield, nothing too unsightly about the body or the paint, and from what she could see without opening the doors, other than the gaping tear in the passenger seat she knew about from the website, the interior looked clean and well-tended-to.

      The immediately previous owner had apparently been a Native American woman in her 60s who lived alone on the outskirts of town in a much smaller but less dilapidated-ish apartment complex than the one in which Alice and her family (posse, more like, or entourage; she only really considered her mother her family, as close as she was to the other residents) lived currently. This woman had apparently purchased the car for her son several years ago, and he, while he still lived with her, used it to travel back and forth between several jobs before moving away from the area abruptly and largely unannounced to follow a guru to Tibet. This had left this lady, whose name was Enola Blackshoe, with a broken heart and not-broken car, neither of which she was in any particularly desperate need of. Of course, none of this had been on the website, but in their email correspondences Alice and Mario discussed, in rather excessive-seeming detail, the recent history of the car.

      Not that Alice could afford to be especially picky, nor was she especially picky under normal circumstances anyway, but she had wanted to get a good “feel” for the car before purchasing it. Mario had offered several times to let her come and test drive it, and they had gotten so far as making an appointment to do so twice, but both times had been cancelled out of necessity: the first time, Alice and her mother had gotten into a particularly nasty argument over the issue of Alice having to pay rent but Elvira (she did tend to call her mother by her given name, instead of Mom or Mama, when they fought) not having to, even though Alice and all her paraphernalia objectively occupied much less overall space than any other singular occupant, and took showers that were, on average, nineteen (19!) minutes shorter than Elvira’s (“you time how long I’m in the shower?”), and for the most part purchased her own food and gasoline and paid for her own cell phone and insurance bills (“I paid for you for seventeen years”), and contributed other miscellaneous niceties to the apartment’s environment as a whole (“those f*****g pillows on the couch? Whose are they, again?”); the second time, Alice had instead elected to go on a date to the Pahrump Community Library with a young man by the name of Eugene but who had insisted she, like his friends, call him Brazil, who never called her back which was actually a relief since he was, on all accounts, an idiot.

      Mario had tried to further contact this Enola Blackshoe woman, but she had simply dropped the car off at the dealership after picking up her check for $2190.85 without leaving a phone number, email address, or any other identifying information other than a P.O. Box at the Pahrump Post Office, via which any guarantee of meaningful, timely communication was unlikely. The only time he had ever spoken to her was when she had called the dealership, apparently from a payphone located inside Mountain View Recreation Center, which was basically just a glorified bowling alley, wishing to speak with someone about selling her car. He had asked her to roughly describe the circumstances through which she had ended up with a car in need of sale (a standard practice for most used car dealers, to avoid the accidental acquisition of stolen cars), which she had done in a voice which, Mario had told Alice in an email, had seemed to him very detached and distracted. Another salesman was dispatched to audit the vehicle’s value, and the next day Enola left the dealership in a cab with a check representing significantly less than the appraised worth of her ex-son’s ex-car, which was then quickly and thoroughly washed, waxed, and detailed, and tramp-stamped with a price significantly higher than its appraised worth.

      Alice wanted to take off her jacket, but remembered now what hideous-seeming tans she had on her arms. The sun may as well have been baking her in a black leather oven, but she’d rather be uncomfortable than display in full to Mario one of the end results of a summer of wearing practically nothing but her grocery-store T-shirt and smock and black slacks with matching belt and tennis shoes with the white rubber soles spray-painted black, which had allowed only her lower arms to retain her preferred russet-bronze skin tone. The sleeves of her jacket whined and squeaked from the moisture against the skin of her arms whenever she moved.

      The driver’s side door was almost completely free of any imperfections; only some small paint scratches near the mechanical door lock where it appeared several previous owners had searched for the lock not with their eyes, but with the tip of the key. As she finally approached the handle, Mario drew from his pocket the set of keys, which emerged with a singsong tinkling sound.

      “She’s all yours, kidd-o.”

      What a cliché this Mario was turning out to be. She produced what she hoped sounded like a sincere laugh which actually came out as just an extra-forceful exhalation. She realized this, quickly, and laughed a second time with her voice. Mario didn’t seem to catch the fabrication either time, or else politely pretended not to.

      She remembered taking the keys from Mario, and thanking him as politely as she could muster to appear, and sitting down into the car’s driver’s seat, and Mario beaming and waving gently at her as she closed the door and turned the engine over. It started with a mechanical, chirping purr and idled, roughly for a second but then smoothing out. She remembered sliding the plastic gear selector to “R” for reverse, backing out of the dealership’s small half-gravel half-concrete parking lot, and onto Highway 160, which was called Pahrump Valley Road in some parts of Pahrump and the surrounding area. She remembered the late-morning sun happily glinting off the white paint of the car’s hood through the windshield, and feeling the warmth the seat still held from the same sunshine against her back and thighs, and the supple drone of the car’s motor and the sacred choir of dust-wind as it blew against the glass, and the gentle flow of traffic down this main road like a trickle of water from a drying stream, and the shops and hotels and tiny casinos all lit up by the exact same sunshine that shone this moment of happiness on her this one February morning. This was freedom; fleeting and flowing.

 

**

      It was stupid to put the parking lots below the apartment building he thought because think of how many more apartments they could fit under the ones they already have if instead of parking lots under the apartments they put the parking lots across the street where the stupid dog park is that nobody uses he thought and added new apartments where the parking lots used to be if they moved them to the dog park. Plus then he thought he and Sarah could move to the first floor and not have to walk up the stairs anymore which would be nice he thought especially since his knee is getting a lot worse and I mean a lot worse plus if Sarah wanted kids or something it could be dangerous with the stairs plus sometimes they had to carry heavy things like the couch his mom gave them when they moved in together. Carrying that up the stairs was real hard he thought it took both of them almost an hour because with the arms still attached to it it was too wide to fit between the handrail and the wall and it was too heavy for the two of them to lift it up above their heads to make it go over the handrail plus even if they did leave the arms on and got it up the stairs like that it wouldn’t have fit through the door since the door was the same exact size as the gap between the handrail and the wall on the stairs. So they had to set it on the ground in their parking space and take off both the arms which were made of some kind of cheap wood and were already cracking so he had to take it real slow and I mean real slow so he didn’t hurt the arms (not his arms the couch’s arms) and then they could carry it up the stairs and through the door and then once they got it inside finally he had to be just as careful getting the arms back on (not his arms the couch’s arms) and all that had taken like an hour he thought and they didn’t even have lemonade or pizza or anything, and at the end he ended up screwing one of the screws for the arms (couch’s) back in a little too tight and cracking the wood even worse.

 

**

      Pahrump, Nevada is a bit of an oddity, even by the standards of the American Southwest. First and foremost, it is truly a place of unmatched natural beauty. Nestled in a shallow valley created by a low mountain range known as the Spring Mountains, which themselves form the practical eastern terminator of the Mojave Desert, Pahrump (meaning, in the original Shoshone, Water Rock, theorized by historians and anthropologists to have been so called because of the abundance of natural springs and artesian wells in the area) is a town of round about thirty-five thousand inhabitants famous for having the most strippers per capita in the Western United States and for being the hometown of Art Bell. The valley is flat and dry, save for the artesian wells, many of which have been retrofitted to serve as fountains to mystify tourists and drunk casino-goers out for a midday cigarillo. The town of Pahrump is a neat 60-minute drive from downtown Las Vegas along State Highway 160, sometimes referred to as Vegas’ intestine (the intended metaphor being that Pahrump receives the digested remains from the Mouth That Is Las Vegas, which would explain the extra-wrinkled strippers and Hispanic Elvis impersonators and the well-digested spirit of the town in general). Pahrump is Las Vegas at its maximum entropic state. Molecules sent from Vegas are merely atoms by the time they reach Pahrump; and exhausted, stretched-out, decaying atoms at that (to say nothing of the already-decaying atoms left very near Pahrump by the government of the United States and its determination, once upon a time, toward making sure every nuclear device its best and brightest could dream up detonated with maximum freedom-sowing potential).

      Nuclear tests and wrinkly strippers and Vegas-feces notwithstanding, Pahrump was a decent place to live, Alice thought, as she turned off Pahrump Valley Road and onto the narrow strip of unpainted pavement that led to Sebastian’s apartment complex. It was hardly morning anymore. The optimism of the morning sunshine had brightened to the sterile albedo of a Mojave midday. Even in her new car, driving home was no longer pleasant. She had quickly discovered that the “icebox-cold” air conditioner was more like an “inland-Michigan-summer-with-the-windows-down-cold” air conditioner at best. The low, green buildings of the apartment complex looked extra-faded in direct sunlight. Some of the freshest coat of paint, having been applied probably three or four years ago, was peeling away in high-traffic areas near the exposed outdoor stairwells and doorways. The layer underneath was sort of the color of the barely-sufficiently-filtered water that ran from the taps inside. This particular apartment complex had once been a motel. Upon its conversion to an apartment building in the mid-90s, the new owners had decided that, instead of paying the expense of doing a full conversion, the easiest way to turn motel rooms into apartments was to tear down or otherwise reconfigure the walls between some of the rooms to create sprawling units of several equally-sized rectangular rooms. Most units ended up having two bathrooms, and a small kitchen where a third bathroom used to be, in order to avoid reconfiguring water lines. The extraneous exterior doors had been mostly changed out with floor-to-ceiling windows, but some still remained where appropriate. The whole process had turned out more elegantly than the residents of Pahrump who had any concern of the project had thought it would. It was cheap, yes, and there were rumors of certain building codes or zoning ordinances being ignored during the reconstruction, but the owners had cheerily named it Bright Rock Apartment Homes and purchased expansive ads in the Pahrump Valley Times and several blocks of mid-morning non-primetime (re: budget) broadcast ads on KPVM TV (channel 46) and watched as some of the more discontentedly-destitute of Pahrump flocked to the cheap new apartments where Cozy Motel Pahrump had once stood (interestingly, there had once been a brief time when the illuminated letters of the sign for Cozy Motel Pahrump (which, under ordinary function, read:  COZY MOTEL PAHRUMP CASH ACCEPTED) had been mostly burned out in a manner by which the sign disjointedly read: CO M E RUMP S. This was quickly discovered by staff and the lights were replaced in a frenzy of embarrassment so as not to offend potential guests (or, indeed, accidentally titillate those who happen to find Pahrump’s unique leather-skinned species of exotic dancer appealing).

      Alice pulled into parking space 381 which was not hers, but, owing to the fact her new car provided her a modicum of anonymity and made her appear merely an ignorant visitor, she thought she’d steal away secretly in a parking space significantly nearer apartment 2J (Sebastian’s, again) than her usual space (199) on the other side of the lot. She thought it odd that an apartment complex which normally took a more Devil-may-care attitude toward things like maintenance, security, and functioning appliances would have bothered at all to have numbered and assigned parking spaces. The thought annoyed her as she opened with a metallic clunk the driver’s door of her Camry and stepped out into the unseasonably hot February midday. She looked up at the sky as she got out. It was nearly as antiseptically white as her new car; hardly a hint of blue remained as the sun seemed to fill more than its allotted space in the firmament. It was almost oppressive. A Nazi sun. Her shoes, which were quite a bit nicer than she’d normally wear, to go with her jacket (which she had removed in the car after finding the AC unsatisfactory), made an annoying crunching noise as she stepped from the uneven pavement of the parking lot onto the concrete of the sidewalk directly in front of her car. For the first time, she turned to take in her purchase all at once. She had sort of rushed away from the dealership; Mario had made her uncomfortable for she didn’t know what reason, she was very sweaty in her jacket, and she still had things to do when she got home. She wasn’t exactly proud of herself or her new car; it looked right at home beside the run-down Chevrolet pickup truck she had parked beside, and she imagined within a week or perhaps two that no one would be able to tell it was a new purchase at all. She could see the hole in the backseat through the windshield, which was streaked in a manner which suggested it had been cleaned hastily and with a rather cheap glass-cleaning compound. They may have even just rubbed it down with water for all she knew. There were small chips in the paint of the front bumper, some exposing the metal underneath. The radio antenna which would have ordinarily stuck out of the top of the car was auspiciously missing. She sighed and thought to herself, it’s the best you could afford, it will get you everywhere you need to go, no one’s going to notice or care about the condition of your car. She turned to find the steps that lead up to Sebastian’s apartment.

      Arriving at the dried-blood-red door, she gave one last look at her car below before opening the door and feeling a rush of cold air billow across her body. At least the air conditioning in here worked. She laid her jacket across the arm of the couch on which she slept, slipped off her shoes and kicked them to join the pile of her four or five other pairs, and walked through the square dining room to get to the kitchen. What she wanted most now was a glass of water with too many ice cubes. She was for all intents the only one home at the moment. Mom was probably out at a bar or perhaps the grocery store (doubtful), Sebastian was at work (or possibly out peddling pot), and Bianca would be sleeping until around 7:30 PM. The water and ice cubes was a good decision; she was still sweaty from the drive home. She took the glass back to her couch and sat down, not thinking particularly anything.

      The couch was in what would be considered the family or living room. It was the first room one entered upon entering the apartment. It faced the right-hand wall on which there was a 32-inch flat-screen LCD television. The room had practically become Alice’s bedroom; no one else in the apartment spent much time there anymore. The dining area (which was made up of half of the original motel room that had been next to the one Alice’s room occupied) had a television too, and a small square table with four cheap wooden chairs around it. Sebastian liked to relax at this table. The remaining half of the room was Bianca’s bedroom, and the master bedroom was a third square motel room adjacent to that. It was the second-largest floor plan BRAH offered, the largest being a four-motel-room unit with two living areas. Alice’s room didn’t have a closet, so her clothes were in neat little piles near the door to the bathroom.

      Alice took her glass and got up from the couch, crossing to the window next to the entrance door. The blinds were shut against the heat, and she parted them with her free hand. The view wasn’t stunning, but it wasn’t bad, either. Beyond the parking lot lay a patch of empty desert. She liked looking at the desert. It drew her in, like a sink drain. It was flat and beckoning, like a giant bed. She hadn’t slept in a bed in what felt like years, but had actually only been a few months. She didn’t mind the couch, now that she thought of it, but a bed would be much nicer.

      She looked back at her car, and realized she had left her purse in the glove compartment which didn’t lock properly. She sighed again, this time audibly, and set her glass down on the end table next to her couch. Opening the door again, she experienced the same effect of air washing over her vertically, only reversed from when she had entered the apartment. The heat was consuming. She walked back down the concrete steps, holding tightly to the rusting metal handrail, and reached her car quickly. She didn’t want to spend any more time in the heat than was necessary. She opened the passenger-side door, hitting it on the Chevrolet pickup truck ever so gently, and opened the glove box.

      As she pulled out her purse, the strap caught on something deeper inside the compartment. A second leather bag, this one smaller, slid out and onto the passenger seat as she pulled her own bag into her arms. She stared at this unfamiliar bag for several seconds before daring to touch it, as if it might bite her. She drew it up close to her. Her first instinct, for whatever reason, was to smell the bag. It smelled slightly of honey butter. Not wanting to open it outside, she closed and locked the door and hurried back up the stairs into the fresh AC’d apartment. Sitting hurriedly down onto her couch again, she took the new bag into her lap and unzipped the single zipper on the top.

      The bag was empty save for a few coins and a card at the bottom. She grasped the card and pulled it out of the darkness of the bag. It was a pale pink. It read, MME. ENOLA BLACKSHOE, PSYCHIC, and had a phone number and a dinky clip-art picture of what Alice presumed to be a magic lamp a la Aladdin. She turned the card over, but the backside was blank. The card, too, smelled of honey butter. She got up and carried the card with her to the house phone, which was in the kitchen. She quickly picked up the phone and, dialing the number engraved on the card, held the receiver to her ear. The line rang eight times before a soft click and a deep, dreamy voice said,

      “Yes?”

      “Hi, is this Madame Blackshoe?”

      Pause.

      “It is.”

      “Hi, Ms. Blackshoe. I just bought a car and-“

      “I don’t do readings anymore, child.”

      “No, you don’t understand. I just bought a car, and I found a bag in the glove box. There was a card inside with your name and number on it, and I just wondered if I could return it to you.”

      Pause.

      “What sort of bag?”

      “It’s black leather with a purple zipper.”

      “That is mine, yes. I’ve been wondering where it had got to.”

      “I’d love to return it to you. It looks expensive.”

      Pause.

      “All right. I suppose you could bring it by my home, though I’d appreciate it if you told no one else where I live.”

      “Of course, Ms. Blackshoe.”

      “All right. I live about five miles out of town, North on Highway 160. It’s the only house for miles. It’s bright blue with a yellow roof. If you could come today, I would appreciate it.”

      “I’ll leave right now, Ms. Blackshoe.”

      “Thank you, child.”

      Click.

      Alice hesitated for a moment, looking at the card again. This Blackshoe woman had sounded strange over the phone; almost annoyed. She was sure she was doing the right thing by returning the bag, but something in her didn’t want to meet this woman. And what sort of name was Blackshoe, anyway? Was she some Native American shaman lady? That made the prospect of meeting her even less appealing, for some reason. Native Americans gave Alice the creeps. She wasn’t especially superstitious, but she did believe, however fleetingly sometimes, in things she couldn’t see or touch. She was sure her mother, a devout Catholic, wouldn’t have liked the idea either.

      But she had already made a commitment to returning the bag today. Five miles up Pahrump Valley Highway outside of town. Madame Blackshoe would be expecting her in less than an hour; it didn’t take very long to drive the length of the town on the highway. She sighed again as she felt something in her akin to remorse. She could have just kept the bag, or thrown it away. Why did she choose now to be a good person?