Clearly troubled, Mr. Doyle comes to check the piece of paper. He opens the folded square, eyes the two of us, then puts it in his pocket. “This is a good time for a breather,” he announces.
At break Loren and I take off, heading south toward the Maricopas, the closest thing I know to Mexico on a Thursday night. My truck is full of block and tools, and when we reach a certain speed, sand whips in the windows and bites us.
To the east, the moon is swollen, rising, so that it is framed in the truck window past Loren’s face, which is fixed somewhere just short of regret.
“I should tell you,” she says. “My husband can tear a phone book in half.”
“Are we talking Rural or Metro?”
“We’re talking about the Yellow Pages.”
I laugh, and with that, some reservation leaves her face.
Loren opens lukewarm wine coolers for us and tunes the radio to a Mexican station. I point out the snakes that appear in the edges of our headlights, sprawled across the shoulders of the road to warm themselves on the asphalt. The road begins to bob and switch, and where the foothills of the Maricopas rise, we pull off the main road, the tires moaning through the sugar sand of an arroyo until I shift into four-wheel.
To the south are cliffs that appear obsidian, and the distant heat lightning they reflect seems to flash from deep within them. Loren’s eyes are drawn to where we came from, to the orange dome of Phoenix. I wander through rolling hills and washouts until we are deep enough into the dark carpet of the desert that the faint whoosh of cars on the road vanishes.
I park near an outcropping of black rock that rims the swell of several dunes. There is silence when I cut the motor, and Loren is wide-eyed at what lies before us. Chollas stand fuzzy and glowing against the indigo sand, and saguaros look cut from smoky, purple-green glass.
The sand hills loom ahead, and after climbing out, we move through the crumbly, pink chalkstone and caramel-colored joshua trees that lead the way. From somewhere, a light breeze brings the clean, dusty smell of wet granite. Smoke trees waft in the dark, stirring elf owls and their strange double calls.
“It’s like a whole nother world,” Loren says.
“This is happening every night out here,” I tell her.
We move on into the desert, taking deep steps up the moonlit faces of the dunes, and sliding down their bluish, shadowy backs. We sink and climb, sometimes on all fours, our hands and feet moving through a cool layer of air that hovers over the sand. When there is nothing to be seen but dunes, we lie at an angle along a crest, the stars overhead seeming to wobble and migrate, shifting design as easily as the high, formless clouds that cruise below them.
Loren rolls on top of me, straddles my midsection.
“I’ve done some things,” she says, “and Jack’s done his share, believe me. But I’m not really one to run around, alright? I’m just telling you that.”
“Do you love him?”
She puts a hand on my chest to support her weight, and with the other, touches my cheek. “What do you know about love?”
She smiles, but it’s a little bitter, too. I shrug.
“Do you ever think about leaving him?”
“That’s not so easy.”
“I don’t know. My dad left us at the same time he left the navy. Then he moved in down the street, and I saw more of him than ever.”
“Oh, tiger,” she says. “I’m not sure if that’s a sad story or not.”
My shirt and pants are starting to fill with sand. I touch Loren’s side, feel the last, stunted ribs of her cage. “It’s the only story I got.”
* * *
In the morning, I wake to the whine of my mother’s hair dryer across the hall and the phone ringing downstairs, so I head down to the kitchen in my boxers, where I find Greg, in his undershirt, hair wet, talking on the phone and peeling an orange.
“It’s for you,” he says when he sees me. He passes the receiver. “Some woman, maybe your teacher.”
“Morning, sunshine,” Loren says when I answer.
I cup my hand over the phone. “Maybe it’s none of your business,” I tell Greg and head out the front door to stand in the driveway for some privacy. But lots of women in the neighborhood are out working in their yards. The fire station is two blocks down, and this is the time of the morning when the young firemen go jogging down our street.
“What’s going on, is something wrong?” I ask Loren.
“I can’t just call you?”
“It would be kind of weird if my mom answered. How’d you like me to call and have Jack pick up?”
“Would you like to speak to Jack? He’s in the next room eating his protein flakes. I’ll get him if you want.”
Across the street, Mrs. Goldwyn is raking leaves in her sweats and next door, Mrs. Sekera prunes in polka-dot gloves. They both look at me in my boxers.
“You know what I’m saying,” I tell Loren.
“I just called to say I want to see you. Jack’s got an exhibition and then a late-night revival.”
The firemen come by, five young men in tight blue shirts and nylon shorts, trotting with radios in their hands.
“Okay, I’ll pick you up at eight,” I tell her. “What did that guy say to you?”
“What guy?”
“The guy who answered the phone.”
“He asked me if I was your girlfriend,” she says.
“What’d you tell him?”
“I told him to go write ‘I will not be nosey’ a hundred times.”
The garage door opens, and my mom comes out, lugging the big briefcase.
“Who are you talking to?” she asks.
“Nobody.”
“Nobody, out here in your underwear?”
“A girl.”
“Okay now, a girl. That’s more like it.”
Mom spots Mrs. Sekera. “Did I miss them?”
“Boy, did you,” she answers.
* * *
In Civic Responsibility class, Cheryl passes me a note. We are watching a video on being nice to animals. The teacher apparently forgot that we’d seen this one before, and during the part where the man in red suspenders throws the chickens into the pit, Cheryl lifts an arm, as if scratching the red spot on her neck, and holds a folded paper out for me. I almost have to reach into her hair for it.
The note is really a flier for the Power Team, a weight-lifting group coming to campus today. The posters are all over schooclass="underline" four muscle-bound men hold the corners of a Volkswagen Beetle, while another reclines in a folding chair beneath.
Cheryl turns to me in the dark. Backlit by the video, her eyes and teeth are extra white. “The other day, were you just messing with me?”
“You mean, about the cigarettes?”
“Because I was serious about not letting people tell you what to do.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” I say.
“If you’re serious about finding the strength to do your own thing, you should come check out the Power Team.”
“The Power Team?”
“Yeah,” she says. “They cut through all the hype. My dad is on the team, and he’s living proof of how much someone can change.”
“So your dad’s like a weight lifter?”
“More of a motivator. Can I count on seeing you there?”
“Sure,” I tell her. “You bet.”
We all still gasp when the video shows footage of “retired” racing greyhounds.
After class, I run into my old friend Terry Patuni at the fence where the cheer team is practicing. There are several guys there smoking. I stand next to him, and we put our fingers in the mesh. The team is making a pyramid by kneeling on each other’s backs. “Why don’t they ever line up the other way,” Patuni asks, “so we can see their asses?”
“Yeah, what’s with that?” I say, and it feels kind of good to just hang out with him. We used to be better friends, but I wouldn’t move in with him, and then I was kind of a prick once at the end of our senior year. My dad needed extra help one Saturday, and I brought Patuni along. His father is dead, and for some reason, I kept guffing it up with my dad, making it look like we were best pals.