As the students file off the bus and into their parents’ arms, Marcus soothes them. He reassures. He jokes good-naturedly with the parents to break the tension. And finally, when the last of them — Sandra and her four little sisters — pile into their father’s Hummer and drive out of the parking lot, Marcus makes his way across the lot to his old Ford Escort.
On the drive home, he cranks up the air conditioner to a frigid blast. He often feels transported out of Nevada when he sits in his air-conditioned car. The ice-cold buffer is a time machine that separates him from any of this place’s hot frontier past, from the slaughtered Indian land, from the fact that it’s a fucking desert, that his time machine’s coolant system sucks water out of the air, water in the desert. But today it takes him to his childhood: traveling on a hot bus with his mother, the unfamiliar old man meeting them at the Desert Hotel’s pool. He hands Marcus a Roy Rogers — though Marcus prefers Shirley Temples — and kisses his mother. Marcus has never seen anyone kiss her. His mother says to call him Uncle Barry. The old man takes them up to the hotel’s panoramic viewing patio on the top floor, and Marcus stands in the hot night holding his mother’s hand. He puts his finger through the gentle smoke rings that she blows, and it’s a kind of hypnosis: the smell of his mother’s hairspray, the laughter and singing, the waiters with trays of Atomic Cocktails. He falls asleep in her arms and wakes up at dawn to a bright flash of light and the sound of kazoos and whistles and clinking highballs. He watches the puff of smoke in the distance. A soft poof, like a tiny sneeze, and then a cloud in the shape of a hot-air balloon. The men shake hands, pound Uncle Barry on the back. The women squeal or put their hands to their mouths and suck in their breath.
He wonders if it happened then. He imagines the invisible particles floating gently downwind, like steam released from a shower, waiting above his house for his mother to return, where it will drizzle onto her like desert rain.
In the rearview, the Vegas lights hover on the flat horizon. Marcus could stop right here on the highway. It’s late at night and dead. But he pulls onto the shoulder. He leaves his headlights on, goes around to the front of the car, and leans on its hood, the engine hot under him. He’s never been one to pop open a can of beer or light a cigarette, so he does the next best thing — he pours inky coffee from his thermos and drinks it down like whiskey. He feels clean when it scalds his throat. Then he takes out his wallet and turns through the credit cards, the plastic flip-book of pictures: his sister’s kids, his ’57 Willie Mays baseball card, his mother — dead now for fifteen months — until he comes to what he’s after, slipped inside the billfold with his third-grade booklet from Townsite Elementary School. Marking the chapter titled “Fallout Can Be Inconvenient” is an old ID badge. It amazes Marcus that a facility with a bunch of people working on something as complex as a nuclear bomb hadn’t yet discovered modern lamination. The thick plastic photograph is black-and-white and the shadow across the face of his father is so dark, Marcus can barely make him out. The Barry Lancet label was created on a machine so old it has the uneven ink markings, the blotted e and leaking r’s of the typewriter era. The scanner at the twenty-four-hour gym where he sometimes forces himself to work out has more sophisticated identification security. He should feel more about it, probably, this picture he’s been hating since he found it among his mother’s things, wrapped inside his own birth certificate, where the space for Father was marked unknown. But the hatred is gone. He doesn’t throw the badge at the distant Strip lights or burn it in the desert. He just drops it. But he does slip his hand inside his parka and finger the mottled, viscous bit of flesh for a moment before tossing it into the sagebrush. Lots of blood for a little nick with nail clippers. Back in the car, he makes sure to reach into the glove box for a scented wipe, and he slips it across each finger before resting his hand on the clutch.
Dirty blood
by Celeste Starr
Pahrump
The back room of the Leghorn Bar was stuffed with leather-and-denim boys. I hadn’t been out in weeks. Hairy trolls in leather chaps were just too much and I wanted someone else’s hand on my dick for a change, wanted to see what was up, who was who. Been keeping a low profile recently. I thought most of the guys here looked a little on edge — especially after another body was found in the toilet of some bus depot last month. Just dumped there, it seemed. Papers said the guy was gay. Papers also gave his photo. I’d never seen him, but in Vegas you never really know who you’ve seen. You can’t even remember all the things you’ve done.
The bar reeked of piss and poppers. Has gone to shit much like the rest of the joints around Pahrump. I try to get downtown when I can, where a hotter stable of young studs passes through the bars and back rooms of Vegas’ gaudy universe, but that just didn’t seem wise at the time. There was no one in back that I wanted to fuck, no one worthy enough to hum on my stuff, ugly fucks who pranced around with earrings in their eyebrows and tats on their biceps thinking they’re God’s gift to gay boys, when frankly, I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
Leghorn wasn’t like it used to be when the college eye candy from UNLV used to come through. Now it’s an eyesore with its busted doors and booths out of order. No one gave a shit enough to fix the place up, make it look like something. It’s a hot bed for boulevard boys and drunkards who mistake the floor for a urinal.
I hadn’t planned on staying long, but I needed to get out, be myself for a while. The best thing about the Leghorn was its anonymity. This was the place dudes came to hide. And I think we were all hiding a little. It felt safe here, safe because we were locals and because we’d all seen each other before.
I was about to head home when he walked in. Name was anonymous to me like most of the back room amigos, though I knew him in a way. I’d done him once, years ago. Could still smell his cheap bargain-bin cologne on my clothes. He wore those same snakeskin boots he had made me kiss. That night we took the only booth that was vacant for our back room fornications. Sex seeped like sarsaparilla from every respected stall. Because our booth was busted, cruisers kept trying to get in on our action. Obnoxious fucks. He blew me while I held the door shut from prying eyes.
He stood in the stark dark of the back, nose in the air like he was too good for the rest of us who were scavenging for a good time. I lingered in a corner, holding my composure. He walked my way. I played my game pretending he hadn’t been seen, but for the most part, that summer, we were all beyond tricks. All of us here were looking for something foreign yet familiar, which is something you never really find.
“You want to go in a booth?” I leaned in toward him. His cheap dime-store cologne filled my lungs. “A booth,” he repeated. “You want to go in?”
I said nothing but gave my answer by leading the way. The booth wasn’t busted and able to lock. Slipped my last five bucks into the mouth of the money slot and channeled the TV to a scene of two blond Marines. We reached under shirts and fingered nipples. I didn’t bother to remind him who I was. Didn’t feel it was important at that point. Gay porn gleamed against our skin. He tried to kiss me.
“Ain’t into that,” I said. Who knows where those lips have been? I tugged at his jeans, undid the clasps, and unzipped the copper teeth, exposing hot-white underwear. Even though our booth was locked, it didn’t stop cruisers from clawing underneath at our feet.