'You're
I climb aboard without even checking where the cowgirl's sitting, or even if there is a cowgirl. I just gulp down the aura of crumpled bedclothes, of travelers messy with chippings of sleep, and shuffle to an empty row at the back. My adrenal gland coughs as we move away, half expecting Lally to appear, or Ella's mom, or some kind of shit. I don't even want to think what, because Fate always pays attention to what you think, then slams it up your fucken ass.
'Drrrrrr,' the motorcoach hits the road, and after nameless miles I hang suspended on the knife-edge of a doze, my brain like crystal grits. Then we pass a field of manure or something, the type of smeary tang your family pretends not to notice when you're in the car with them, and it suddenly floods my senses with Taylor Figueroa. Don't ask me why. I sense her in a field by the highway. She's down on all fours behind a bush, naked except for blue synthetic panties that strain hard into her thigh-vee, and glow dirty ripe. I'm there too. We're safe and comfortable, with time on our hands. I surf her upholstery with my nose, map her sticky heem along glimmering edges to the panty-leg, where the tang sharpens like slime-acid chocolate, stings, bounces me back from her poon. In my dream I bounce back too far. Then I see we're in a field of ass-fruit, and suddenly I don't know if it's Taylor 's scent, or just the field I can smell. I scramble back to her cleft, but the edges have vanished. The forbidden odor dissolves into the body-heat and aftershave of the bus. I wake up snorting air like crazy. She's gone. Empty distance rolls past the window.
I sit up straight in the seat, hoping to fool myself into normality. But the waves start tumbling in, tidal waves of horror on the back of this beautiful dream. Now bright images of Jesus form around me. He doesn't look at me. He looks away, and takes the barrel into his mouth, tastes its heat. Around him, milky eyes dot the school yard like flowers, jerky eyes getting slower, fading dead away. Boom. Fractured air oozes coughs and gurgles, the hiss of desperate clotting, of vital last messages nobody hears. Mr Nuckles the teacher is here too, his face trimmed with bubbles of young blood. The memories are back. I shoot disorderly tears for the fallen, for Max Lechuga, Lori Donner, and everybody, and I know I'm fucked for the rest of the journey, maybe for the rest of my life, fucked and nailed through the eye of my dick to the biggest cross. How could they think I did this? I hung out with the underdog, moved out of the pack, that's how, and now I fill his place, now anything original I ever said or did has turned a sinister shade. I understand him for the first time.
'You all right?' asks an ole lady, approaching down the aisle. I must be gasping like a fish or something. She brings her hand to my face, and I meet with it like it was the hand of God.
'I'll be okay,' I say through a curtain of spit. She withdraws her hand, but my face follows it, without instructions from me, aching for another touch.
'I'm so sorry you have troubles. I'm right over here – if you need some company, I'm right over here.' She pulls herself back to her seat.
An angel from heaven, that ole lady, but I can't feel a thing except pain and darkness, the darkness of purgatory. I bury my face in my hands, and sit shaking with hurt, praying for some kind of hopeful distraction. Then, I swear on my daddy's grave, Muzak starts to play in the bus. Just a welling violin note at first.
It's light when we roll into San Antone, but too early to be busy. I'm as hungry as a loose dog. My eyes are still gritty with salt. I skulk around the terminal restroom until eight o'clock, then I go to the phones to call Taylor Figueroa's folks. I just feel empty, drained of my life juices. The current logic is this: if I can get Taylor 's number, and take the first step into my dream, it'll boost me up, maybe even enough to call home and explain things. If I don't get Taylor 's number, then I'll have so little left to lose that I'll call home anyway, because I won't care about being boosted up.
I punch in the number. A thought comes as I do it, that maybe my ole lady became best friends with the Figueroas overnight, and is over there drinking coffee, or bawling, more likely. You know how Martirio is. It's shit, because my ole lady never went to the Figueroas' in her life. But you know how Martirio is. The number rings.
Teaches,' Taylor 's mom answers in a cool, deep voice.
'Mrs Figueroa? This is a friend of Taylor 's – I lost her number and wondered how I could get in touch.'
'Who's speaking?'
'Uh – just an ole school buddy, like, from school.'
'Yes, but who?'
