Billy Summers [en]

‘Believing that would mean believing that someone or something up the line was more important than my sister. Same with Albie Stark. Taco. Johnny Capps, who’ll never walk again. There’s nothing reasonable about any of that.’

She doesn’t answer. When he looks at her she’s looking down at her tightly clasped hands and there are tears on her cheeks.

‘Jesus, Alice, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘You didn’t,’ she says, brushing away the evidence on her cheeks.

‘It’s just that if there’s a God, he’s doing a piss poor job.’

Alice points ahead, at the blue teeth of the Rockies. ‘If there’s a God, He made those.’

Well, Billy thinks, girl’s got a point.

9

There’s no problem getting adjoining rooms at the Pronghorn Motor Rest; based on the number of cars in the parking lot, Billy thinks they could’ve had every room on the hallway to themselves. They eat at a nearby Burger Barn. Back at the motel, Billy plugs in the thumb drive with his story on it. He opens the document and goes to where he left off: Taco handing Fareed their GOOD MORNING VIETNAM bullhorn. Then he closes it again. He’s not afraid to write about what happened in the Funhouse, exactly, but he doesn’t want to do it in installments, either. He wants to be in a quiet place where he can pour it out like poison from a bottle. He doesn’t think it will take long, but those hours will be intense.

He goes to the window and looks out. There are a couple of cheap lawn chairs in front of each unit. Alice is sitting in one of them, staring up at the stars. He looks at her looking for a long time. He doesn’t need a psychiatrist to tell him what she means to him; she’s a version of Cathy only grown up. A psychiatrist might try to argue that she is also Robin Maguire, aka Ronnie Givens, from the House of Everlasting Paint, but that wouldn’t be true because he wanted to fuck Robin, many was the night he jacked off to that fond fantasy, and he doesn’t want to fuck Alice. He cares for her, and that means more than fucking.

Is caring for her dangerous? Of course it is. Is the way Alice has come to care for him – to trust him, to depend on him – equally as dangerous? Of course it is. But to see her sitting there and looking up at the stars, that means something. It might not if things go wrong, but right now it does. He gave her the mountains and the stars, not to own but at least to look at, and that means a lot.

10

They get an early start and are skirting Denver at eight in the morning. It’s flat. They drive through Boulder at quarter of nine. Also flat. Then boom, they’re in the mountains. The road is every bit as twisty as Billy thought it would be. Alice sits up straight, her head on a swivel, her eyes wide as she looks from deep gorges on her right to the steep wooded upslopes on her left. Billy gets it. She’s a New England girl who’s made one short and ultimately unpleasant side trip to the mid-South and this is all new to her, all amazing. He will never believe she had to get raped in order to be here in the Rocky Mountain foothills, but he’s glad she can be. He likes her amazement. No, loves it.

‘I could live here,’ she says.

They drive through Nederland, a little town that seems to be a mere adjunct to the sprawling shopping center on the outskirts. The parking lot is jammed. Billy, who can believe almost anything, would be hard-pressed to believe that in the early spring of the following year that parking lot will be almost deserted on a business day, with most of the stores closed.

‘I need to go in there,’ Alice says, and points. There are spots of color in her cheeks. ‘To the drugstore.’

He pulls in and finds a parking space. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, but I’m going to have a visit from my friend. It’s two weeks early, but I can feel it coming. Cramps.’

He remembers the flier that came with the morning-after pill. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to—’

‘No, I’ll do it. I won’t be long. God, I hope I don’t make a mess in these pants.’

‘If you do, we’ll buy—’ Some new ones is how he means to finish, but she’s already out of the car and hurrying toward the Walgreens, almost running. She comes back a few minutes later with a bag.

He asks if she’s okay. She tells him, almost curtly, that she’s fine. Outside of town they come to a scenic turnout and she asks him to stop and park away from the few other cars. Then she asks him to look the other way. He does so and sees a hang-gliding fool soaring over a ravine as deep as a stab wound. From this distance the guy hardly appears to be moving. He hears her shifting around, her zipper going down, the rattle of the bag, more rattling as she strips the paper from what she needs – a pad he assumes, she wouldn’t want to try a tampon, not yet – and then her zipper again.

‘You can look now.’

‘No, you look,’ Billy says, and points out the hang-glider. The guy is wearing a bright red singlet and a yellow helmet which will do exactly jack shit if he crashes into the side of the mountain.

‘Oh … my … God!’ Alice is shading her eyes.

‘Not to mention your sainted hat.’