* * *
—
JENNY WAS LETTING THAT MAN, that Jim, tell her what she needed.
I knew she had to be awake right now, unable to stop her mind from twisting, no way to turn off that small part of her that still hungered for a life of her own making. The navigation said I was thirty minutes away from Jenny’s house in Bakersfield. I pressed my foot harder on the pedal, ready to get to her house and tell her that it didn’t have to be this way, not for either of us, I was there now and we had all the time in the world to figure out our laundry situation, which bag to start with and every drop of detergent needed. I reached for another beer, my hand brushing against Billy’s gun in the process.
You needed to bring it, I told myself. You need to be able to protect yourself and Jenny. I’m sure she’ll want to take Adam wherever we go. Jim may not handle it well. When he learns that his wife and his son are leaving him, he will probably yell, scream—animals that are backed into a corner do desperate things. You will not have to fire the gun, I told myself. But you have to be ready.
* * *
—
I STOPPED AT A GAS STATION just outside the city limits. The tank was still half full, but I liked the idea of me showing up at Jenny’s to offer her a car with a full tank of gas, a car of possibilities. I bought a Coke from the attendant and then emptied it out in the bathroom sink until there was only a small layer of soda covering the bottom, poured the whiskey in. I was about to get into my car when a police cruiser pulled up to the pump next to me.
Two cops stepped out of it and began walking in my direction. I opened the driver-side door and reached over to the passenger seat, adjusted my hoodie, prayed that it was covering the whiskey, the beers, the gun.
The taller of the two, with a mustache I wondered if he’d had before he became a cop, stopped in front of me, looked at my belly before he looked at my face. Even my baggiest T-shirts were starting not to fit. “It’s late,” he said. “You should get home. Lots of sickos out right now.”
“Yes, Officer,” I said. “Of course.”
I took a sip from the Coke can, got into the car, put the Coke between my thighs, and pulled out of the gas station, waving to both of them. A drop of sweat collected under my nose, but I couldn’t take my hands off the wheel to wipe it. The cop had been standing close enough to me that he could’ve reached out and wiped any sweat from my face, close enough that he could’ve smelled whiskey on my breath. My foot twitched on the gas pedal. I was trying not to drive recklessly fast, not to drive suspiciously slow.
I kept my eye on the rearview, waiting for red and blue lights, and wondering why the fuck I couldn’t have waited to take a drink until I was safely buckled into the Festiva, the cop car growing smaller behind me. The only answer I could come up with was an honest one: I don’t know. I just remembered standing there and bringing the can to my lips—second nature, muscle memory, a little like breathing.
After a mile with no red and blue lights flashing behind me, I sped up, lifted the Coke can, and took another drink.
* * *
—
JENNY’S STREET was empty and quiet. Like in her old neighborhood, the houses were so big I didn’t understand what all the extra space was used for, the lawns green and trimmed tight, the sidewalks probably safer to eat off of than the plates of some restaurants I’d been to. I parked my car a few houses down and got out, Coke can in hand, the gun in the front pocket of my hoodie. With each step, I waited for every light in every house to flick on, people awakening, knowing there was an intruder in their neighborhood.
I crept around Jenny’s house, the gate to the backyard was easily unlocked just by reaching over the fence and unlatching it. As I tiptoed across the grass, I thought about alarm systems, motion-detector lights, an attack dog even. I walked in the dark, looking for blinking red lights and listening for the growls of a dog, until I was in front of the back door, unscathed.
The glass in the door window was not very thick. I elbowed it twice and it gave away, spraying onto the hardwood below. I reached my hand through the opening, turned the handle from inside, and walked in, sweeping aside pieces of glass with my shoe. I didn’t want Jenny or Adam to cut themselves on our way out.
I half expected Jenny to come running once she heard the glass shatter, but the house was pitch-black and quiet. Unopened boxes piled high, only the couch that Adam and I had sat on unpacked. I tiptoed around the boxes and listened for any sign of movement. The kitchen dark, the fridge empty, nothing for her to re-sort. I found her shoes at the front door and held them for a second; I’d never seen her wear them. When she left me with Adam, she’d been wearing slippers, fuzzy green ones. All the other times I’d delivered her pizza, she’d been barefoot. These shoes were sporty, all black with neon laces. I pictured her running in them. Sweat gathering at the top of her head, sliding down her face, over the slope of her nose, the curves of her cheeks, the point of her chin, dripping, her skin glistening. She looked relaxed—her body working, her mind free and clear, able to let her thoughts run as she did. These were the shoes that she’d wear when we took our long walks together.
I put the shoes down. I moved up the staircase quickly, careful not to take too much time on each step to think. A few images slipped through—Billy waking up to an empty bed, deciding to finally open the shed to see what I was up to, finding only crushed beer cans and a foam football, running to Mom’s room, the two of them hollering my name, searching every corner of the house for me, the way the asphalt in the Eddie’s parking lot glittered in the sun after I hosed it down. At the top I thought about the guy that picked up our garbage every Thursday, how he always whistled when he got out of his dump truck, as he heaved and threw each bulging, stinking bag, the tune and force of his whistling never changing, only stopping when he got back into his truck and drove away to the next house. I could never place the song he was whistling and it drove me nuts.
The first room was a closet, the second a bathroom, the third room completely empty. At the next room, the door got stuck halfway. I squeezed my way in and stepped on a stuffed hippo I recognized as King Cotton Candy, Eric the moose beside him. Stuffed animals covered the floor, Adam lay asleep without a single one with him in his bed. I watched Adam sleep and wondered what the stuffed animals had done to make him throw them all onto the ground. I ran a hand through his hair and whispered to him to sleep well, deep, everything was about to change.
The only room left was the one at the end of the hall. I stood in front of it, took another drink from the Coke can, and, for the first time since I’d left Dad’s shed, I felt hesitation.
I’d hopped into the Festiva and sped down the 5 North. There was a high that came with being on the open road, alone, seeing Los Angeles fade behind me, the twinkling city lights burning out slowly. I’d never been outside of the city limits. Dad and Mom had always talked about a vacation for the three of us, but it never happened, always an excuse available—money, time, they could never agree on where they wanted to go, Dad liked cities and Mom liked nature. When I passed Glendale, I’d officially been farther from my home than I’d ever been in my life. All I could really think about on the way to Bakersfield was how good it felt to have the wind hit my face—I didn’t think at all about what I would say to Jenny when I finally reached her.