Clearly Now, the Rain by Eli Hastings Page A

it’s empty. In my state of mind, twelve hundred miles and twenty hours since the last stop, spun out on speed, gas station coffee, and the psychosis of sleeplessness, the sight is beyond surreal: an Amish family with two children, formally dressed and bonneted, in the carriage with a team of draft horses under the whip of Dad, who wears an Abe Lincoln top hat, his beard like a pelt strapped under his chin. To them, of course, I look every bit as bizarre, with my bare chest, wilding hair, and dilated eyes, my California license plates. I lock gazes with this specter, and when he gives me a strange, three-finger salute, I find myself returning it, as if hypnotized. I knock the gearshift up into third and leave them as far as I can behind, trying to catch Serala’s Desert Storm, flying, feeling as if I’m being towed through a dream that teeters on the precipice between nightmare and not.
    Cassie—always a caustic, insulated personality anyway—is hungover and not terribly glad to see us, it seems. Serala is grouchy and muttering curses at the world; Monty is drowsing; I am trying to choke down Corona so I can fall asleep. I’m glad when I can curl into a corner and will myself to unconsciousness, and I’m glad that when I rise, it’s time to go again: on to one of my people in Oberlin. Ohio afternoon light is erasing the eerie memory of the morning and I feel rested despite everything. The setting is all heartland: residential estates; TV antennae devouring the horizon; a barn flattened absolutely, as if fallen from the sky; John Deere machinery parked in duos and triplets, like a meeting of machines; silos, like cocks or missiles, rising all over the passive countryside.
    It is a pleasure to see my old friend Gene, but he is distracted by graduation. I recall our time there as a two-day swim through strange parties, lots of beer from those red plastic cups, a house full of black lights, a postmodern art exhibit—but it all runs together. Except for one moment.
    It is the morning and we are lounging around Gene’s apartment. Gene is out, as usual. We’ll be driving again within an hour, and Monty has to hit the store for socks and shaving cream. Serala has put on
The Pretenders’ Greatest Hits
very loud. I’m doing my manic calisthenics. I finish and lie down on the floor and she ambles over and lies down next to me. I feel like a child, still and quiet in the dark, hoping the monster he’s heard under the bed will just go away. Only my fear is of the way her sudden closeness makes my head swim. Her perfume braids with the cigarette smoke and binds my mind. I’m in a small pouch and she has hold of the drawstrings, closing them. My heart raises its tempo even further when she rolls to me. She’s smirking, beautifully, but I don’t need to see her eyes to know that there is more than just games in her heart. Monty has been gone all of ninety seconds and she snakes an arm around my neck and pulls herself to me.
    I’m sweaty as hell,
I say, stupidly.
    I told you I love it,
she says, and kisses my chest. I disentangle and hop up, hiding my erection with a T-shirt.
    I’m going to go take a shower now
, I tell her,
because I’m sweaty as hell and because your boyfriend will be back any minute.
    She just smiles and rolls onto her back, lights another Pall Mall, taps a ring on the floorboard to the Pretenders’ beat. I get under the cold water cursing her.
    She hops in my truck for one hour in Indiana so she can tell me, like a business proposition, over the Beastie Boys’ shouts, that
we should have sex if the proper opportunity presents itself
. I cough and scratch my head and study the road through the bug guts on my windshield before nodding.
    Good,
she says,
now pull over. He doesn’t even have a driver’s license.
I obey, round the bend of this over-thought ethical question. Just for kicks, I suppose, she sends Monty to ride with me