“Let the alarm wake sleeping beauty,” he muttered to himself.
He turned on the water and let it cover up the sound of the annoying beeping of the alarm clock. He hated the damn things and only used them on the very rare occasions when he had something pressing that he needed to start early in the morning. Today’s pressing event was their return to St. Louis.
He stepped into the shower, ignoring whatever tirade was coming from the other side of the wall. She was very likely pissed that she had to roll over and turn off the alarm. The water flowing over his body washed away the sound and he relaxed into the feeling of its warmth. It was almost like the way that the wind had wrapped itself around him in his dream. Again, he tried to pull up the image of the woman and feel the weightlessness of flight, but it had all disappeared. The opening of the bathroom door killed it completely.
“What time did you get up?” Melissa grumbled.
“5:28,” he replied, just for spite. He knew what would follow, but somehow the stab seemed to give him a little bit of satisfaction.
“Why the fuck didn’t you turn off the alarm?”
“I thought I’d let you sleep a little longer.”
The smile spreading across his face was hidden by the shower curtain.
“Bastard,” she mumbled, closing the door behind her.
Chapter Two
They were on their way, but a little bit behind schedule, according to Melissa’s reckoning of things and, like always, it was Parke’s fault. He had taken too long in the shower, lingered over breakfast too long, was too slow getting the car loaded; it was a never-ending rant which he simply ignored. The final straw came when he pulled into the 24-hour convenience store to gas up.
“Why the hell didn’t you do this last night?”
Her penetrating glare held a particular sort of venom that burned through his skin in an attempt to consume him with fire.
“What the fuck difference does it make if we leave at 7:12 instead of 6-fucking-59?”
He slammed the car door as hard as he could and moved toward the handle on the pump, turning to fill the car with gas. He had finally taken all of her shit that he could handle for one morning and snapped. It would shut her up for a while and might actually make the morning drive more pleasant.
He had mixed feelings about leaving the Grand Canyon behind. He had plenty of new photos, memories and concepts to incorporate into his paintings and was eager to return to his studio, but he could also feel the tension which had been conspicuously absent while he was enjoying the sunshine and breezes of the southwest.
A rather sharp breeze came up suddenly and swirled around him as if it was doing a scan of his body. He let the feel of it move over him for a moment, closed his eyes and let it cleanse the tension in his soul. The wind back in St. Louis had never been able to do anything of the sort. In St. Louis, it was just another irritant to go along with the noise, the smell, the humidity and the penetrating flavor of toxic smoke in his mouth. He had escaped all of that for a while. Something had to be wrong, seriously wrong with him to want to return to it.
His mind would have wandered further if the smell and sound of fuel overflowing from the filled tank had not brought him back quickly. He fought with the pump handle to get it to shut off, but not before a fairly generous stream of fuel spilled on the concrete and created a small stream around his shoes. His hands were soaked in it as well. He swallowed the expletive that had formed in his mouth and finally put the handle back in its holder and started into the store.
The glare that he received from Melissa when he returned didn’t need any words along with it to let him know that she was neither happy with the extra time that he spent in the bathroom trying to get the smell of the fuel off of his hands nor of the fact that he had basically told her to fuck off earlier.
Good, he thought. That will keep her quiet for a while. Satisfied that he would at least have a few hours of peace to enjoy his last morning in Arizona, he put the car into gear and pulled back onto the highway heading south toward Interstate 40. The sun touched his left shoulder and warmed his cheek as they traveled through the desert toward the mountains to the south and west near Flagstaff. By the time they reached Williams and turned onto Interstate 40 to head east, Melissa was asleep.
“Thank God for small miracles,” he whispered when he looked over at her.
She was still strikingly attractive when she was asleep. It reminded him of the early years of their relationship when she was so beautiful and pleasant to be with. She was excited by his artistic skills and loved going camping. She loved nature; she loved to feel the breeze in the open spaces and the feeling of living free. He marveled at the fact that someone who hated change so much had made such a drastic one.
She had become the darling of the accounting firm in Tulsa and had moved rapidly into a supervisory position. Her new position demanded more of her time and energy and she began to give it more and more as well. It slowly ate away at the fragile person inside of her, helping her to find strength and belonging. As she poured more energy into her work, she moved further up the ladder of success and was asked to relocate to the main office in St. Louis, where she would take on an even more substantial role in the firm. Being much more transient in his way of thinking, as well as his means of earning income, Parke had encouraged the move; something he had begun to regret almost the moment they arrived in the gateway city.
He contemplated the changes to their lives, their relationship and, most of all, the bitterness that seemed to cover them just like the darkness over the canyon during the night. The impossibly blue sky, the mountains, the different shades of red in the landscape and the feelings of isolation, even while being surrounded by a moderate amount of traffic, mostly semis, as they traveled along I-40 seemed to soothe him and his thoughts wandered up the long canyons and into the mountains.
Each mesa top drew his eyes as he wondered if the thrilling ride of his dream had taken place on any one of them. In such a state of bliss, Flagstaff, Winslow and Holbrook all passed by before he was interrupted by a comment from the passenger’s seat.
“We are now in the middle of fucking nowhere,” she announced. “Who lives here?”
He tried to ignore her comments as they cut into the peace that he’d been having.
“I mean, would you seriously ever consider living in a place like this?”
“Actually, yes.”
He regretted the answer, but was too late to stop it.
“Seriously? You would live out here with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go? Oh yeah, I forgot, you love nature. You’re just a painter.”
The stab at him hurt. Rather than allow it to lead them into another confrontation, however, he decided it was better to diffuse it all.
“I’m sorry that I yelled at you and slammed the door earlier.”
The absence of a reply made him turn and look to see if she had heard. When he looked at her, she forced half of a smile to her face and then turned her face toward the window.
She used to love wide open places. What had happened to her? What had changed her so drastically? Would she ever be able to break free of whatever had claimed her soul and had her entire being in chains?
“You used to love nature too.”
He broke the silence, still hoping the old Melissa might have a chance to break free and return to him.
“That’s before I discovered the real world, Parke!” she snapped. “It’s about time you discovered it too.”