(F) Untitled - Part One

Evening congealed over Blythe like a glaze of retired fryer grease. The stifling mid-day heat that percolated at 108 degrees finally relented and sighed to a spine-soaking 93. The sun fell rapidly, exhausted – spent of fuel.

The moon threw on its whitest wife beater, staggered from its celestial La-Z-Boy, and bathed the desert in a stark, bug zapper glow. All along the freeway, the town cackled to life. Neon buzzed, fast food drive-thru speakers sputtered tinny, broken English, and the very air rumbled and chattered like a big rig’s exhaust stack.

Mexican day laborers stationed along the frontage road punched mental timeclocks, climbed astride their ten speeds and took flight. Minutes later, they acquired orbit around McDonalds, circling amidst the thick diesel vapor and swirling cheeseburger wrappers struggling to achieve escape velocity.

For a mile in either direction, cars emerged from offramps, side streets and alleyways like blood surging from unseen capillaries. Marrow-rattling rap beats reverberated across cinder block here and there, punctuated by the squeal of tires and the organ-grinder twang of Tejano music. Body shops, used furniture outlets and 99¢ stores threw down steel shutters and turned the night over to the bail bondsmen, bodegas and taco stands.

The desert breathed in deeply and resigned itself to another Friday night. Somewhere far beneath the Palo Verde valley, the earth ground its tectonic molars and ruminated on its epoch-long dream of swallowing the entire landscape whole.

From number 21 in the Mission Vista trailer park, Sasha Upton stepped out into the oppressive night air. Her mother worked at the hair salon until ten every Friday, which left Sasha exactly one hour and thirty-six minutes to see how far she could get from home before realizing it wasn’t far enough.

Sasha pulled on the Hooters t-shirt her mother’s last lover left on the back of the couch the October prior. Sasha had confiscated it one Sunday morning, darting quickly from her room while he pissed loudly in the other end of the trailer, then secreting the shirt away beneath her mattress. Her reward was the slurred curses from the man fighting a puking hangover and the harsh reality that he had lost his favorite shirt.

Sasha donned it like a trophy fur. It made her feel older than her thirteen years, although she acknowledged a palpable fear that Kenny would come upon her one night, drunk, and beat her senseless for her treason. Still, danger was better than nothing.

She stepped down from the porch, letting the screen door slam noisily behind her. Her ultimate destination was the E-Z Stop Mobil station on Lovekin Boulevard and the I-10. Ronnie Taylor worked there most Friday nights and Sasha enjoyed his company. The truth was she enjoyed the fact that Ronnie was black and that the very mention of his name sent her mother into thinly-veiled racial convulsions.

“It’s not that he’s black, Sasha,” Mother would say, “it’s just that people like him tend to run in bad circles. Let’s face it, people like him only like white girls for one reason.”

When Sasha would press her to define ‘people like him’, she would be dismissed with a “don’t get smart with me,” and the conversation would end.

On the way to the E-Z Stop, Sasha would sometimes swing by the salon. It seemed to make her mother happy, allowing her to show off her daughter to the janitors that bleached the floors on Fridays. More importantly, it usually earned Sasha another hour out as a reward. But only after running the gauntlet of twenty tense minutes being leered at by the salon owner , Terry — a fat, hairy man who apparently owned just one shirt with sleeves. Sasha was convinced he was an ex-con. Upon every visit, without exception, she was greeted with a “Look at you. You’re sure growing up, little girl.” Terry would then perch by the cash register and take long drags off his Marlboro, looking Sasha up and down through narrow eyes cloaked in smoke.

Sasha suspected her mother slept with Terry on occasion. It wouldn’t surprise her. Any weeknight at the salon that lasted past eight usually meant the boss was being serviced. At least mother never brought him back to the trailer, thank God.

Sasha didn’t feel like dealing with the two of them tonight, and opted to go directly to the gas station to find Ronnie. Stopping briefly alongside their neighbor’s pickup, Sasha reviewed her appearance in the side mirror. Her jet black hair and alabaster skin somehow survived three years in the blast furnace of the desert. She wiped the beading sweat from her upper lip and dragged her hand across her chest. Her breasts hardly fulfilled the expectations of the Hooters logo bridged across them, but Sasha remained hopeful. Pulling her white shorts down lower across her jutting hip bones, she cast one last look over her shoulder and strode quietly toward the dark horizon.

The Mobil station’s towering 30-foot sign shone pharos-like beside the freeway and drew local teenagers like moths to a flame. Their faces emerged from the night like prey animals nervously visiting a dangerous watering hole. Everyone and everything beneath the sign took on a harsh, pale luminescence – almost x-ray like in intensity. Sasha entered the ring of light from behind the self-service carwash and crossed to the center island.

Coming to the window that backed the cashier’s counter, Sasha stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to the glass. Inhaling deeply, she blew a raspberry against the window, inflating her cheeks and, she was sure, sending Ronnie into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Instead, her glance was returned by the impassive face of the station manager – a short, hard Mexican with greased back hair and tattoos depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe cascading down his forearms. Sasha’s eyes shot wide and her face flushed as she folded to her knees, falling beneath the window and out of sight.

“Ronnie’s not working tonight,” a voice calmly intoned beside her. The deep, resonant timbre instantly indicated the presence of an older man. Sasha’s instinct – honed by four years, three states and the invasive hands of five of her mother’s lovers – brought her quickly to her feet. She turned on her heels to face the stranger with an expression unconsciously contorted between ‘back off’ and ‘come hither’.

Sasha had only recently come to grips with her sexuality. Every man regarded, scanned or ogled Sasha. Sometimes guiltily, sometimes shamelessly. Her moon-round eyes, translucent skin that revealed a network of bluish veins beneath its surface and her slender thighs above knobby knees were new tools for Sasha. Her mother had long since recognized Sasha’s ability to arouse men. Her pubescent assets were both bait to help hook lovers for her mother and scapegoats for when the men left. When the ‘why don’t you say hello to my new friend, Sasha’ of Saturday night turned to ‘why do you chase all the good ones away, you little bitch’ of Monday morning, Sasha was painted into a confused corner of self-loathing, resentment and contempt.

Expecting to see either a clean-headed, barrel-chested guard from the Ironwood State Prison or one of a dozen or so bikers that frequented the station, Sasha instead looked upon a figure unlike any she had ever encountered. Not in Blythe, or Tucson or Albuquerque, or anywhere her mother had dragged her.

Seated on the propane tank rack nestled beside the ice chest was a man of some fifty years, she estimated. A wreath of thin white hair encircled a tan, bald pate, greeted at his jaw by a confluence of equally sparse white beard. Slouched awkwardly on a metal bar, he looked to be 80 percent limbs. His lanky arms were too long for the faded charcoal blazer he wore over an olive green t-shirt. Blue jeans and hiking sandals extended to the curb.

The man was looking at his lap pleasantly, adjusting peculiar wire spectacles that had alternate sets of lenses hinged over either eye. He flicked a red lens down on the right, then exchanged a tinted one over the left, assessing the results for a few seconds and humming something under his breath. In his left ear, there appeared to be a hearing aid. Sasha cocked her head at it reflexively, noting the odd latticework of glowing blue fibers.

He was intently scratching a lottery ticket. Not surprising in itself if it weren’t for the hundreds of used tickets laying strewn at his feet. His fingernails, caked with curls of silver debris, scraped across two or three more tickets along the perforated chain he held before he spoke again.

“Sorry, but I didn’t get the chance to tell you Ronnie isn’t here before you put your face to the window.” With that, the strange figure lowered his specs to the tip of his sunburned nose and raised crystal blue eyes to meet Sasha’s. Her filly knees buckled.

Composing herself the best she could, she threw out her first wave of barbed defenses. “Oh, you know Ronnie, huh?” she inquired glibly, tucking a length of raven hair behind her right ear and shifting her weight to her right hip.

“I do,” the stranger replied nonchalantly, as he extended another three tickets from the roll beside him and set to scratching them thoughtfully with his index finger.

“Well, if Ronnie knew you were talking to me, he’d kick your ass. You see, Ronnie and I are tight. He always tells me that if anybody messes with me here, that I should go get him ‘cuz…” she trailed off as the figure looked back up at her with a chilling smile. With teeth bared, tufts of white hair on either side of his head, and dark eyebrows, he began to resemble a nutcracker doll Sasha remembered from a distant Christmas.

“You needn’t play that game with me, Sasha,” he reassured amiably.

The fact that this man knew her name made Sasha’s heart race faster and invoked a more caustic set of countermeasures. “How do you know my name? Did my mom’s bastard boss send you here? Is that what this is?” The man returned her increasingly angry glare with dispassionate calm. “Well, you can tell that Terry that I ain’t putting out for him or any of his goofy, lottery-playing, faggot friends!”

A few tourists pumping gas cast concerned glances in her direction. The juxtaposition of a lanky, disheveled 50-year old and a ranting, attractive teenager was provoking interest even in the perpetually disinterested.

Sasha sensed that she was stirring a scene, and raised her voice further to establish her perceived control of the situation. She took two steps forward as the man rose to his feet. Jabbing a forefinger into his chest, Sasha blurted, “I got every right to call the cops, you know? Weird dude hanging around the gas station, talking to teenage girls. You better just hope I don’t call my dad and have him beat you down. He works at the prison, you know, and he’ll be getting off soon to pick me up. If he finds out you been eye-ballin’ me, it’s all over, dude.”

The stranger looked down at Sasha with a patient, knowing smile and said in a voice narrowcast directly into her ear, “You and I both know that won’t happen, Sasha. You’ve never known your father. Furthermore, Ronnie Taylor knows you only as ‘that girl’ and the only relative of yours that has been inside a prison is your mother. Embezzlement, wasn’t it?”

Sasha took the retort like a blow to her gut. Her temples throbbed with the rush of adrenaline and disbelief. Looking at the tourists from the corner of her eyes, she saw that they had lost interest in her plight. They returned to their cars and evaporated into the darkness. She stood dumbly under the penetrating fluorescents like a pinned rat kept alive after vivisection. Opened.

Quivering now, Sasha didn’t resist the stranger’s hand on her shoulder that eased her onto the rail beside him. Her eyes were growing wet and her throat began to spasm. It had been years, years, since she cried in public. She tilted her head back, recruiting gravity to keep the tears from flowing. Looking up at the sky, she rasped, “What do want from me?”

The spindly stranger leaned over slightly and quietly enunciated, “I’ve come to grant you three wishes.”

Sasha turned her face to his and stared at him, incredulous, as he waggled a bony finger at the freeway and whispered, almost inaudibly, “to all of you.”