The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (23 page)

‘Are you bleeding?' Sarah says. I can make out her vague form standing a body length away in the dark. I put my hand in my hair and search for wetness.

‘I don't think so.' I rub my eyes.

‘Shit, can you find one of those meteors? It just bounced off your head. Don't think it went too far.'

‘I got hit with a meteor? I thought it was balls!' I excitedly run my hands in the cool sand around my splayed-out legs. Suddenly a loud
thwack
cracks against the car door next to my shoulder, making me jump.

‘Fuck!' she yells.

‘You're throwing them again?' I ask quietly.

‘You fell asleep. You don't really care to get hit with a meteor or you would've tried harder!'

I listen to her huffing in between the spooky desert night noises of clicking bugs, scurrying rodents, and crying coyotes. It all sounds too loud and contained
and the star-pocked sky too rounded and low above us to be anything else than some small weird bedroom we're stuck in.

‘Meteors don't work,' I say too quietly into the room. ‘They're too small to hurt me.'

‘What?' She stomps.

‘Find a big rock. I can get hit with that. He'll never know what it really was. It'll be just like in Africa.' I listen to her thinking, biting her nails, making little paper-tearing sounds.

‘You think it'll work?'

‘Better make those reservations for the bridal suite at the Mirage,' I tell her.

We decided it was better for me to get hit in the car so she wouldn't have to carry me into it if I got knocked out. She spread out a beach towel to protect the vinyl interior. I lay on my stomach with my head almost hanging out of the door. It was a pretty good-size rock we found. Little bigger than a baseball. It took her a few tries, cracking the windshield, hitting the seat and my back before she nailed me.

‘Oh,' I said. And everything went black.

The ceiling is white. Like in a hospital. There is something gooey in my eyes clouding everything. I try to move and can't. I look around for a nurse.

‘You shouldn't wake up yet.'

I try to lift my head, but I can only roll it to the side. I want a nurse. A nice one with short, unpolished
fingernails, because those are the ones more likely to hold your hand and pat your forehead.

‘Go back to sleep,' Sarah whispers furiously.

I want the nurse to tell Sarah to wait outside, like how they do on the soaps. I twist my head to find a nurse.

‘Close your eyes again!' Sarah yells.

I rub at the goo in my eyes to see better.

‘No, no. You're wiping away the blood! You look better with it. Stop!'

Her hand grabs mine.

I look past Sarah's panicked face and see the mountains of Death Valley.

I roll my head the other way and see my filmy metallic reflection in the tinted door of the Death Valley Visitors Center.

‘He'll be here any minute. They open any minute! Wait till he sees you! Lord, I can't wait. He'll be so impressed.' She drops down next to me and whispers even though no one is around as far as I can tell.

‘Remember, we were camping and then, bam,' she yells into my ear, ‘this meteor hit you.'

She unfurls her hand and waves one of the little meteors I stole in front of my face like smelling salts. ‘Got it?'

My head feels bloated inside, and I can see my heartbeat. The goo is still oozing into my eyes and burning. I wipe at it again.

‘Stop it!' she screams. ‘Are you gonna ruin this, too, after all my hard work?'

I slowly shake my head no. The concrete under me is freezing, but I'm grateful it's not hot. What if I was wounded by a runaway wagon or scalped by the Indians in the mountains and I had to wait on burning hot concrete outside the visitors center and had only badwater to drink?

‘Thirsty,' I say.

‘You'll be impressed, too.' She puts the meteor up in my face. ‘See it?' I blink at the blurred rock. ‘That's blood! I stuck it in your head to get it like it hit you. You didn't even think of that.'

She closes her fist fast around the rock as if I were going to try snatching it from her. I stare off at the hazy mountains and watch a flock of dehydrated pioneers struggle to cross the range.

‘We got hit! We got hit!' I hear Sarah yell out enthusiastically. I don't try to open my eyes. ‘C'mere! C'mere!'

A car door slams with that metal clink that sounds so final. ‘We got hit! See, I knew we would. I tole ya, didn't I? Didn't I?' I hear the soft pad of his boots, hesitant like a deer, coming toward us.

‘Look here. See? I got a meteorite for you!' she calls out teasingly. ‘And it hit him! Bam! Just ask him.' Sarah's foot pushes into my side. ‘Tell him. Go on, Richard, tell him what happened.'

‘Jesus,' I hear the ranger say.

Sarah nudges me again harder. ‘Tell him.'

‘I got hit,' I mumble, and open my eyes halfway.

‘He got hit,' Sarah boasts.

‘Did you get the car license plate?' I hear him tread closer to me.

‘License plate? What're you, kiddin'? Ain't no license plate on a meteorite! I told you. We got hit with a meteorite!'

‘You got hit with a meteorite,' the ranger repeats, and leans in over me. I try to smile at him, nod, wave, but my head just kind of wobbles and my arm flops on the concrete.

‘Here. Look at what came streaming down from the heavens above and knocked him on the head.' She reaches out and hands him the rock.

She hops around to get closer to him. ‘That's his blood on it!' I can make him out standing over me, turning the rock around in his hand. ‘Just like in Uganda,' she says. ‘It bounced off a cactus instead of a banana tree.'

‘This is an L6 chondrite,' he says.

‘Exactly,' she says.

He wipes it clean on his khaki pants, and a brownish streak is left on him. ‘This isn't fresh.' He shakes his head.

‘Now you don't gotta go to Africa!' Sarah says and nuzzles closer to him.

‘There isn't molten material.'

‘Sure there is.' She giggles.

‘There would be a fusion crust.'

‘I can get us a suite at the Mirage,' she whispers loudly in his ear.

‘This has been polished,' he says.

‘I'm gonna be a showgirl with my own dressing room,' she says.

‘I'm going to radio for assistance,' he says.

‘I'm easy to carry,' she says.

‘I'm not going to move him,' he says.

‘Over the threshold, silly,' she says, and gives his ass a little slap.

He walks away quickly, and she follows after him. I close my eyes and dream of hemorrhaging banana trees falling at the speed of light.

‘Can you open your eyes? Richard, open your eyes.' The voice is very stern, kind of like an angry teacher when you fall asleep in class. I blink my eyes open.

‘Very good, Richard.' A man is leaning over me. Not the ranger. ‘Try and stay awake with me, okay?'

‘I'm Dr Peterson.' He's speaking as if I'm standing a mile away from him instead of lying right in front of him, and he smiles too wide, his mouth like a cartoon coyote. His eyes are little yellow lemon drops behind thick, fishbowl glasses. ‘You have quite a little scrape there, got a good number of stitches and what looks like a concussion.' The doctor nods at me; I nod back so as not to appear rude.

‘Want to tell me what happened?' he says.

‘I got hit by a meteorite,' I say, surprised by my own voice.

‘No, you weren't, Richard. A meteorite didn't hit you. You want to tell me what happened?'

‘It fell and hit a banana tree first,' I tell him as he shines a bright penlight in each of my eyes. I try to remember who Richard is. I think it's the ranger.

‘Do you know where your mother is?' he asks, and keeps the light shining on me, like in a spy interrogation movie, moving it from one eye to the next. Dull panic starts seeping over me.

‘Where is my mother?' The words run into my blood like an IV line and make a rusty taste in my mouth.

‘She was in the waiting room, but she left and hasn't returned. We'd like to talk with her. Do you know where she could have gone?' He switches off the light, and little blue and red dots swim like aquarium fish through his big glasses.

‘She's with Richard,' I mumble. He nods.

‘How many fingers am I holding up?' He waves three fingers that look like a gun.

‘Bang,' I say.

‘Richard!' He snaps his fingers and sounds like the angry teacher again.

‘How many fingers? Hmm? Can you see it?' He holds up the peace sign.

‘OK,' I say.

‘OK what?' he asks.

‘OK, truce,' I say.

‘Do you know where your mother is?' he says.

‘Is she with the ranger?' I ask.

‘No,' he says.

‘She's all alone?' I ask.

‘I don't know,' he says.

‘He's not marrying her?'

‘Get me Social Services on the line,' he says over his shoulder. ‘You don't know where she is, do you?'

I shake my head no and close my eyes against Dr Peterson, acting like he's in some jazz concert, snapping his fingers frantically in my face. I lay back into the bleach of the pillow under my throbbing head. The bright, garish lights of Vegas begin to flash around me like an ambulance. I feel cold as people stream past me, but then I see her. Sarah, smiling. She dips an L6 meteorite into ranch dressing, and holds it out to me, and waits for me to bite.

I
T'S LIKE
I'
M
pushed from behind, pulled down the slope of Natoma Street like a ramp down into another world. All the buildings are low and tight huddled around me. Heavy-gated sweatshops, sunken-down tenements, windows filled with dusty laughing Santas and graying fake snow and ancient slaughterhouses with rusted metal beams jutting suddenly out above me. I watch my shadow slip underneath them, sharpen under the piss-colored street lamp, and slide unsliced over the green and white pebbles of glass worn smooth from streams of urine. And behind me somewhere is the rainlike sound of a car window being smashed, and in front of me the crunch-crunch under my boots, pulling me forward. I tilt my head to listen to the blood in my own ear, and all I hear, and all I feel, is my cold ache. The sheet metal door glistens in front of me like an ax on a fire blade, and the sound of my pounding fist on the door echoes through me and down Natoma Street. Each split second of contact with the frozen metal is like a jolt trying to wake or stop me, but all that's racing in my blood is too old and too known and too mechanical
to be turned back. I stand and wait and watch delicate white puffs of air float out from me. And it's amazing anything can come out of me. Soon nothing will. I bang the door as hard as I can, bruising my knuckles, and wait a few seconds.

‘C'mon . . .'

My teeth are clamped. I kick at the door with my boot. They're gonna find me collapsed here as drained and as empty as if a vampire had fed on me. I kick the door again and again, and it shudders. I feel the panic and desperation in my stomach spread as my blood roars away, feeding on itself.

‘You're supposed to . . .'

I kick and hit the metal door.

‘Be fuckin' here!' I yell. From behind me a window slams open.

‘People sleeping, people sleeping!'

I turn and look up to see a bald Chinese guy, his face so chubby and squished, he looks like a smiling Buddha. Christmas lights flash like a strobe around him.

‘You go 'way, go 'way!'

From behind me I hear heavy latches and bolts moving, and I twist around, and it's like an opening in the world, with cars, lights, and people passing the mouth of Natoma, and they have no idea I'm here, and waiting to be.

‘Goddamn, you're eager . . .' The door pulls open like a bank vault, and blue light reflects onto the sidewalk.

‘It's just eleven-thirty now, I don't start early,' he says in a deep radio announcer tone. My ears pound and I look back up to the Buddha man, but he's gone, just the empty flashing space of his gaping window.

‘Let's go,' he orders, and I turn to face him, but he's gone, too. I climb into the blue lights and the door that's framed in steel, and it slams behind me.

‘Bolt it,' I hear from ahead of me. I stare at a puzzle of red-and-black-painted locks and bolts. ‘The bottom,' he says. It's a lock that will need a key to unlock. I feel it clink in my stomach as I watch my hand seal me in.

I walk down an unpainted narrow Sheetrock hall with bare blue bulbs poking out like lights in an arcade. The ground is concrete and cracked.

‘C'mon!' he says impatiently. ‘Off to the right.'

The hall opens into a huge warehouse with two giant Harleys parked in the middle and a maze of other halls, lofts, ladders, and doors surrounding it. I follow the blue lights into a smaller room that smells of rubbing alcohol and something else I recognize but can't recall.

‘Over here.'

He's sitting in a director's chair in the middle of the room, holding two Fosters. He holds an open one out to me. I watch my shadow like a black fog moving toward him. My shadow head hits his feet, black in engineer boots, and I trace up faded Levi's to a leather vest half revealing shining silver hoops through his nipples. His arms are like air-drawn traces of a woman's figure. I avoid his face. I reach out for the beer.

‘Uhh, thanks.'

‘How old are you?'

He crosses his legs.

‘Eighteen,' I say automatically, and sip some foam. He laughs.

‘Try again.'

His boot wags.

‘Fifteen,' I mumble. ‘Fifteen?' he repeats. I follow the floor to a brick wall to my right. There are things hanging, attached, from the wall. A warm wave rushes over me; I swallow loudly.

‘Fifteen, I like that.'