“Is that what’s in your secret suitcase? Guns?”
“Rare earth minerals, Jupiter sea shells, dragon tears, stardust, and guns.”
“I won’t leave, but I will put on a record,” I offered as a compromise. “Then we won’t be alone. We’ll have the whole band with us.”
She sighed painfully and tried to make a sour face at me, but it wouldn’t hold. I walked straight to her record collection and held up a vinyl sleeve: Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks 1964–1971.
“There’s a chunk missing. Hazards of travel, my dear,” she warned.
I shrugged and put the vinyl on the tiny turntable, ignoring the ripped away section of the disc and what it meant for our future.
In blissful surrender, she said, “We’ll have to flip it before Wild Horses. The hole…”
I shut the door behind me and locked it. She looked up, exposing her throat. Didn’t show any fear even while wearing a disguise. There was a magnetic understanding that could not be undone now that our nuclear reactions had been initiated.
She kissed my neck. I ran my hand through her bright red hair, wondering what color it could really be beneath all the chemicals.
The arm of the record player dropped. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” crackled into life. A chorus of English voices began as June pulled her shirt over her head, showing me where her heart was.
Then my jeans came down. I struggled to kick my sneakers off. She just kept pushing my pants, but I couldn’t get my shoes off. Her skirt hiked. The fishnets tore away.
We fell like maniacs onto the sharp-spring bed.
When the needle took a nosedive into the abyss following the opening four bars of Wild Horses, June and I were already past the point of no return.
We were panting and sweaty. She bit my earlobe so hard it began to bleed. She had one sharp tooth that she didn’t realize. She’d never bit a man’s ear before, because she’d never been with one the way she was while the record player went into hysterics — the arm falling off the edge of the earth and into the netherworld.
Afterwards, she said, “I feel better now,” with her head on my chest.
“We’ll have to tell K.”
“Yes, we will.”
Apocalyptic fireworks were being loaded into cannons, prepared to explode all around us.
June stood from the bed, naked; took the dead flowers down from the window; opened up the suitcase; and delicately put them away … for a time.
Tunnel
June was on top when the front door opened. We were startled from our dream by K’s voice.
“Lucy, I’m home!”
We weren’t so brave anymore. June put the rest of her clothes on. I pulled my shirt over my head.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “Out the window.”
I shook my head, pointing at the floor. “Let me show you something.”
I moved the bed. Underneath, was a small door.
“Escape hatch,” I said.
“Hellllllo,” sang K Neon out in the living room.
We climbed down through the trap door just as K began to lightly knock on the locked bedroom door.
“June?”
The cellar was cool. Vintage vino was stacked on dusty racks.
“A lot of nice wine down here,” I said.
“A little birdie told me that you can open one with a shoelace,” June said. “We’re trapped now. Show me.”
“We’re not trapped,” I said. “See that over there? That’s a door.”
“To where?”
“Let’s find out.”
We walked down a long passageway made of stone and just barely illuminated by the sun on the other end. We came out, undetected, in the rocks beside the house.
I walked one way — down to the river. June walked the other way — back to her love.
19
I went off alone, hunting rocks … again. The mountains seemed like they were meant for that type of thing anyway. As I drove, massive stretches of jagged rock uncurled through dark forests, piles of leaves, broken limbs, puddles of standing water opaque with rotting debris. The animals watched from their perches in the shadows as I passed in the machine. They didn’t know what to make of me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of them.
It was another Saturday morning. I was just trying to find some sort of person to ask for directions. I was lost up there, trying to build a tomb.
At the foot of the steep dirt road, there was a paved, two-lane road that ran east and west. I headed west, farther away from the highway. I knew there was nothing back in that direction. When June drove us in, there’d been nothing. Now, I was eyeing my gas gauge with a small bit of concern. What was around here?
The change in altitude completely screwed up my hearing. I kept opening my jaw as far as it would go to try and make my ears pop. No luck.
The paved road was desolate and seemed to lead nowhere. I drove for ten minutes, thinking, “Is this really a road to nowhere? Does it end in a goddamn dead end? There’s probably one house on it, ten miles up. One lone house with a crooked mailbox; a sign on a dead elm tree at the foot of the gravel driveway that says, ‘DO NOT ENTER, I GOT A SHOTGUN — chicken wire, and a barking, gray dog.”
Then, up ahead, I saw a fork in the road. I headed to the right, and within another five minutes, I saw civilization appear before me. Small houses. Porches. A woman pulling weeds out of a flower bed in jeans and a green shirt. I stopped the truck, and the woman looked over at me.
“Yeah,” she said, “what is it? Don’t gawk too hard at me. My husband’ll show up. That’s no good for any of us.”
“I’m looking for…”
“For what,” she interrupted, wiping the dirt of her hands on a smock. “What are you looking for?”
I noticed a cat sitting on the wooden deck. It was eyeing me suspiciously too.
“A quarry,” I said. “For rocks.”
“For rocks?” She shook her head. “Nothing like that around here.”
She looked at my license plate.
“Jersey. Doesn’t surprise me. I went to Wildwood once. They charged me to go on the beach. Everywhere else in the world, beaches are free. Nothing free in Jersey, huh?”
She told me to just go and take the rocks. They were right there. Right there on the mountain for the taking. I felt so stupid. I’m from the ocean. There’s no mountains where I’m from. You have to buy them by the pound. I thanked her and drove off towards town.
“Town” was nothing but a tiny gas station, a general store, and a hardware store that looked like it was closed. I went to the door and knocked. Nobody was inside.
Finally, a guy walking by said, “What’re you doing?”
“Need to buy something.”
“It’s Saturday,” he said.
I got back into the truck, did a U-turn, and pulled into the gas station. The same guy was walking back the other way with his dog. He shook his head at me and my New Jersey license plates.
“Still Saturday, smartie.”
When I got back to the house, Feral was out on the rowboat, casting a line on the still water.
I said, “You catch anything?”
“Just boredom.”
“Try harder,” I said.
“You’re scaring the fish away,” he said. “Thought you said this was a sailboat?”
“Mast fell off. Now you gotta row.”
“This boat sucks.”
“Just don’t sink it, please.”
I went into the house. There was music coming from June Doom’s room. There was a light under K Neon’s door.
I stood in the hallway, trying to figure out which door I would choose.
20