There were those teeth. Those little vampire teeth, glinting sharply as he stared at the road in front of us in a vacant daze. We drove past all the gaudy painted signs telling us where the next doughnut shop was, the nearest hamburger joint; pizza, now doughnuts again. The road was stretched across this wasteland like a big silver rubber band, stapled down by .uorescent mustardy-yellow lines. Even the sky looked tacky, needlessly aqua, a tourist’s T-shirt. And that white skin. His iceberg eyes, luminous white-blue, burning into the distance. I wished he would hurry up and bite me. Drain me of this wish, pull me over to the other side. Surely anyone with teeth that sharp…
We stopped at a roadside diner. People asked if I was his daughter. They ask all the time. Hoping, accusing. We never say yes, and we never say no. We ate our food at a booth in a hungry, self-conscious rush, straight out of the wrappers. They didn’t have plates.We left a tip,just change.The waitress scooped it up straight away as we slid out of the booth. She was middle-aged and bulgy, in a proper matronly waitress’s dress. She shot us what I suppose was intended to be a look of gratitude. She really only managed a weak glare. I guess that’s the countryside for you. People are a little edgy.
Of course Gunther’s never tried anything on with me. It must be the age di.erence. He’s probably right. I do and don’t feel young. I know he’s old, and in comparison I’m young. But it’s the two of us together, and I must be old beyond my years to be hanging around here with him, talking, reading, smoking, riding around in the car observing stu.. I’m getting it all. I’m starting to get it, that is. He said when he picked me up way back there he thought I looked young, but my intelligence made me look older in the face.
I was cutting across a gas station lot, weaving through the pumps. I hadn’t been on the road long. There were a lot of seedy characters lurking around. Pretty much everyone filling up their cars looked like they’d just been busted out of prison. I was trying to pass through undetected, but the station speaker system was piping out KISS. ‘I Was Made for Loving You’. An anthem to fucking if ever there was one, recorded before I was even born. Those songs bring out the animal in some people. I was the only female in sight, so by default the closest thing to a Rock Video Fantasy Chick. Gunther pulled out in his big long tank of a car and I stuck my thumb out. He peered over at me with a kind of worried look, and I got in. He asked where I was headed. I asked where he was headed.
After a brief silence I asked, ‘Is there a penitentiary around here, or something?’
He smirked and said, ‘No, but there is a meat packing plant.’ I .gured he must be vegetarian or something.
He said he thought I was about twenty. Which is still too young. But not running-from-the-law young. I guess I’m not worth it. I’m good company so he keeps me around. Sometimes I think anyone would be good company on this stretch of road. I said lucky for him I’m a virgin. Because if they test me, he’s in the clear. He said no one would believe he hasn’t molested me anyway, so what di.erence does it make? I said I could tell them I’m a perfectly willing driving companion, and he said, ‘Brainwashed…’
Now this is taking a long time to write, because it’s hard to type when you’re stoned. Gunther bought us this ageing portable typewriter. Really, it’s his, but I use it more often. I just like to keep busy. And Gunther says if I have something I want to do, or be, I should start now. He said a painter is someone who gets up in the morning and paints, nearly every day. And writers, by his de.nition, just write things down, a lot. So far the only thing I’ve seen him do on a daily basis is drive, and smoke. He smokes and smokes and smokes, rolling joint after joint, in every hotel room we stop in. He always looks so gentlemanly doing it, throughout the entire ritual, in every practised gesture. Cutting out a little card and rolling it between his thumb and index .nger, chopping, sprinkling, caressing it all into place. And the licking…I remember his old friend Glorie Wethers. Funny old broad. Gunther’s known her from way back.
He introduced us a few weeks back, on a Mississippi steamboat of all places. At an art opening. She’d lent one of Gunther’s paintings to this traveling exhibition; a portrait of her, younger, softer, more fragile.Gunther boasted kind of sarcastically he could now say he’s exhibited in every town along the banks of the Mississippi. I looked at it for ages and couldn’t speak. I wondered if Gunther painted daily circa the time of this painting…if Glorie had been some sort of muse. He assured me it was only the one painting.
She stood there amongst idle chatter and tinkling glasses, smoking out of one of those long .lter holders, .lling our side of the main cabin with plumes of smoke. She has excellent posture, projects her voice, enunciates. It was in one of those moments of hers, of self-possessed, well-preserved elegance that she announced (through a heavy waft of smoke) that watching Gunther lick the seal of a joint was the most erotic experience she’d had for quite some time.
Glorie also said Gunther draws attention by shunning it; everyone has a great paradox, and that is his. His distance from the rest of the world makes him magnetic. She’s right. He’s just far enough away for me to feel the pull toward him. My eyes just follow him around, and the sight of him going about his measured, dreamy rituals .lls me with calm.
There on the bed where he’s sitting, rolling, licking, smoking, passing it to me. That’s a spot on the world that’s not spinning, a pocket of perfect stillness. The smaller the room, the better. The closer the walls, the tighter they hug me, the safer I feel. It’s only claustrophobic if you don’t want to be there. I always want to be here.
Maybe I’m being pretentious, but if I am, it’s all this damn poetry he’s got me reading. Novels, biographies, novellas. Novellas. Not so long ago I would have been punched for even knowing that word. Girl or no girl. My mom always maintained I was ‘a bookish child’, but most of those were horsey books.
He’s wondering where to drop me. And he can’t .nd a place. The world is too ugly, too plain. Every town is an empty blank. And the cities, well, they’re full. As long as Gunther’s acting like some weird detached dad, I’m his little girl. He says it’s a sad state of a.airs when the apparent predator is the protector. I don’t understand what he gets all heavy about. We like it here with each other. I don’t want the world to close in, but if they do, surely they’ll see the innocence. Who said, ‘All’s fair in love and war’? I hope that applies here. I don’t want him to give me up.
Author
Picador |