Read American Elsewhere Online
Authors: Robert Jackson Bennett
She isn’t sure. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
It is such a pity. She hates it so much it makes her want to weep.
Weep, weep. Weep, weep, weep for poor Bonnie.
There is a knock at the door, and poor Bonnie goes over and opens it and puts one eye (with a pupil like a pinpoint) to the crack, and she whispers, Who’s there?
And a voice outside says, It’s me, Mal, silly, open the door.
Bonnie does not want to let Mal in. The apartment is Bonnie’s place, no one else’s, so she opens the door a little more and awkwardly sidles out. Carefully shuts it behind her, locks it.
Jesus, says Mal, what have you done to yourself?
Nothing, says Bonnie.
Girl, look at me. Look at me, girl.
Bonnie pouts, but looks at her.
Jesus, says Mal. What happened to you. Have you bathed?
Bathed? Today?
Anytime. This morning. Last morning.
Bonnie just shrugs. Every morning is a restart to her, a total reboot. Today is yesterday and tomorrow, it doesn’t matter.
Christ almighty, Bonnie, says Mal.
It’s not that bad.
It’s pretty bad.
I guess it is that bad, she says. She looks at Mal. I don’t want to go tonight, she says.
Mal leans up against the wall of the apartment and rubs a twist of stray lipstick from her mouth. She eyes Bonnie sourly, and says, Oh really? Bonnie watches her. She takes in Mal’s long, lean body, which so effortlessly fills her tight khaki pants and dark green blouse. Mal is everything Bonnie wishes she could be. Strong, smart, sexy. And not sexy in the pouty little-girl way, sexy in that freshly fucked kind of way, that I-just-had-it-and-I-don’t-care-what-happens-now
kind of way. She has that lofty, clever confidence about her that can only come from knowing that everyone in the room wants to fuck you. Bonnie wishes she knew what that was like.
I hate it, says Bonnie.
Mal says, What?
I hate it. I hate it so much.
Hate what?
The night. The night and where it lives. That’s where I’m going again, aren’t I? Where you’re taking me.
Mal is silent.
Bonnie says, We’re going to that place under the ground where the night lives. I know. It’s okay. I just… I just hate it. I hate it so much, Mal.
The night doesn’t live there, says Mal. It’s just… oh never mind. Come on. Let’s get you in the car.
I’m not coming. I won’t, Mal. I hate it.
You are, says dear old Mal. You’ll want to come.
Why?
She reaches into her pocket, grabs something, holds it out. Because I got a present, she says.
Bonnie looks at the bag. It is a lot, a whole, whole lot. Enough to keep her running for days and days. More than dear old Mal’s ever given her before. Yet why, Bonnie wonders, is Mal’s hand shaking as she holds the bag? Mal is not the type to shake.
It’s so much, says Bonnie.
Yes, it is.
Why is it so much?
Why do you think?
Bonnie considers it. She asks, Because this is the last time?
Yeah, she says. Yeah, you’re right, kid. This is the last time.
Oh, thank goodness. Thank, thank goodness.
Then you’ll come?
Yes. Yes, I’ll come.
Put your shoes on. Do you need help with your shoes?
Bonnie nods.
Oh Jesus, says Mal, and she sighs and sits and tries to force Bonnie’s feet (toes black, nails yellow) into her Keds. Bonnie whimpers a little.
Stop it, says Mal.
I don’t mean to, says Bonnie.
Yeah you do, says Mal.
I don’t.
I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care. Come on.
Mal drives an old green Chevy Suburban that is as wide as a boat and it makes Bonnie scared because she’s sure it’ll tip over, yet somehow it never does. They drive north, straight north, because Bonnie lives on the southern side of Wink, which is not the “wrong side of the railroad tracks” because there are no railroad tracks in Wink, but if there were then Bonnie’s neighborhood would be on the wrong side of them.
It is that kind of neighborhood. There are a lot of trailers.
Have you been dreaming more? asks Mal as she drives.
Bonnie shakes her head.
Well, that’s good.
Bonnie shakes her head again.
It’s not good?
No, says Bonnie.
Why not?
Not sleeping.
What? You’re not sleeping anymore?
No. I don’t like it.
That’ll kill you, you know. You’ll burn yourself up.
Bonnie doesn’t answer. She stares out the car window. Rolls it down slowly.
You don’t want to know why, do you? asks Bonnie.
You’re right, says Mal. I don’t want to know why.
I’ll tell you.
I said I don’t want to know why.
I’ll tell you anyway. You put him in my head. You deserve to know.
Mal is silent. Though Bonnie slavishly adores Mal, she enjoys seeing her so disturbed. It is a power she has never had before.
Because when night comes, when I sleep, says Bonnie, there’s another corner in my room. I can’t see it, because I’m dreaming. But I know it’s there. There’s a fifth corner, suddenly out of nowhere, where it shouldn’t be. It’s like a door opens, and then there it is. And he’s always there. Standing in the corner. He’s got his back to me. I don’t know why. But he’s always there. And even though I can’t see his face I can tell he’s watching me. I don’t think he needs eyes to watch me. I think where he’s from no one needs eyes. They have other ways of seeing things.
You’ve said this before.
Have I?
Yeah. Mal asks, Where is he from?
I don’t know. Somewhere far away. And underneath. Like when you flip over a board lying on the ground and there’s all these bugs underneath. But it’s not quite like that.
No?
No. It’s more like you flip over a board and you see it’s not the ground under there but a whole ocean, big and black, and there are things looking up at you from down there, watching you. They’ve been watching you all this time.
Jesus Christ. I hate talking to you when you’re high.
I’m not high.
You are. You fucking are. Look at you.
Bonnie laughs. I’m higher than high, she says. She holds her hands out the window as if to embrace the sky. I’m higher than higher than higher than high, she says.
Shut up, says Mal. Now you’re just being irritating.
Maybe, says Bonnie. She looks into the sky and drops her arms. You want to hear something funny? she asks.
I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing after all the talking you’ve done.
I wonder whose sky that’s in, she says, and she points up.
Mal ducks her head down to peer up through the windshield. What, she says, the moon?
Yeah.
What do you mean, whose sky it’s in?
Bonnie stares at the moon. It is so huge, so pink, so smooth. She murmurs, I mean what I said. I just don’t think that it’s in ours. It must be in someone else’s. Maybe it’s their sky…
Shut up, says Mal.
Okay.
The Suburban goes straight into the heart of Wink, around the park with the dome and past the shops to a small dirt road that leads to a concrete ravine. Mal pulls the Suburban forward so that the headlights are pointing down into the ravine. Then she throws it in park and the two of them just sit there for a while, looking at the blank concrete, all lit up white in the brights. The ravine tapers away, ending in a wide, black drainage tunnel in the side of the hill.
They want two this time, says Mal.
Two?
Yes. Just put two in the box.
Hm, says Bonnie.
Silence.
Well, says Mal. You know how it works.
I know how it works.
Mal waits. She gets impatient. She reaches over and opens the glove compartment. Inside is a small glass lantern, like the kind miners used back in the nineteenth century, a pair of gloves, and a wooden box with a brass clasp.
She says, So are you going or are you going?
Bonnie stares into the black hole at the end of the ravine. She bends forward and starts rubbing the side of her head and rocking back and forth.
Jesus, Bonnie, says Mal.
Bonnie whimpers and looks away.
Get out of the goddamn car.
No.
Get out, damn you.
I need to cook up, says Bonnie.
What! Like hell you do. I let you cook again and you won’t even be fucking walking. You’ll fall asleep. You’ll be dead.
I won’t. I’ll walk fine. I promise. Just let me cook up a little.
No. Get fucking going.
But it’s mine anyway, you gave it to me, says Bonnie. She reaches for the bag on the dashboard.
Mal hits her so hard for a moment Bonnie thinks she’s about to pass out. Bonnie leans up against the window of the car, the side of her head contracting, expanding, contracting, crunching like eggshells with each contortion. She blinks hard and looks around, gaping.
Mal says, Who the fuck do you think you are?
You hit me!
You’re goddamn right I did. That isn’t how this works, girl. You get what I need then you get what you need.
I want to go home, cries Bonnie.
You want to go back to that shit-ass apartment? Is that really what you want? Because you can rot in there if you like. I’m damn near tempted to drop you off back there.
And Bonnie wants to say no, no, that’s not her home, not really. She almost tells her what she really wants, but she is so ashamed she can’t even speak of it.
All right, she says.
Good, says Mal. She leans over and throws open the door of the Suburban. Go on, she says. Get.
Moving slowly like a beaten dog, Bonnie slides out of the passenger seat of the car and takes the lamp, the gloves, and the wooden box.
Wait, you got to let me light it, stupid, says Mal.
Bonnie holds the lantern out, and Mal strikes a match and sets its wick alight. Now go on, says Mal.
Bonnie says, This is it, right?
This is what?
The last time.
Mal looks at her for a while. Yeah, she says. Yeah, it’s the last time.
Because I don’t want to do this again, Mal. You don’t know what it’s like in there.
If you do it now, you won’t ever have to know again, either.
No, says Bonnie. I’ll always know. I can’t go back. Not from that.
Then she turns and walks down the ravine and into the tunnel.
At first it is the same. A tunnel like any other, filled with the echoes of her footsteps and the wind being dragged across its mouth. It goes on and on and on, underneath the town and maybe even farther. The lantern’s light is weak, turning the corrugated metal sides of the tunnel into a flexing, pulsing accordion with each step. They have to use naked flame because flashlights don’t work where Bonnie’s going. She’s never been sure why but she’s heard she is not the first person to try running the tunnels for Bolan and his people (whoever they are). Apparently there was someone they used before and he went in with a huge flashlight in his hand, like one of those mini-spotlights or something, but when he came to that one place (the threshold, the door, the hollow place) it went
POP
and just fucking
exploded
, exploded in his hand like it was a claymore mine, and he came running out screaming with blood pouring out of where his hand had been, and his side, even his face, and they tried to take care of him but then oops, so sorry, he up and died right there in the ravine, whimpering like a stuck pig.
He doesn’t know it, but he got lucky. He never saw what was at the end of the tunnel.
Bonnie keeps walking. She wishes she were high right now. Well, she
is
high right now. But she wishes she were that special kind of high, which, sadly, is getting harder and harder to attain these days.
Bonnie’s heard the phrase “chasing the dragon” before, but Bonnie’s not chasing anything so exotic. What Bonnie wishes to see when she lays the needle to her bare skin, what she hopes to smell and hear and taste when the heroin floods her arm and comes rushing into that vast space behind her eyes, is, in this order:
Once she smelled him. Once when she was floating in fumes and all the world was wiped away she caught a stray whiff of his cologne, as if he’d just passed through her room and she’d only just missed him, and she wanted to run after him and say no, no, stop and pick me up and put me on your shoulders as you used to, but her arms and legs were leaden and she could not move, only moan and roll her eyes back and whimper in her sleep.
Even that misery was sweeter than never smelling him again. For more than anything in the world, Bonnie wants to go home. But she cannot. It is gone. It has amputated something from her, the incision reaching deep and dark. She now spends her days chasing ghosts, not dragons, and wandering down dark passageways, going places no one should ever want to go.
Weep for poor Bonnie.
Weep, weep.
I bet that’s why they bring the heroin in here in the first place. So that they can get some of us hooked, get us to break the rules for them. Do things no one should ever want to do. Then you can get high again.
They tricked me.
I let myself be tricked.
I am dying. I am dying, dying.
It is then, at her most abysmal point of despair, that Bonnie comes to the changing place, the threshold, and she stops.
The changing place is never exactly in the same spot. Like most things in Wink (and Bonnie is only slightly aware that this is a terrible, terrible secret) it is not really where it is, or where it
says
it is. When she first made this run, when she first entered this dark maze to find their silly treasure, she had to walk for nearly three hours. But on the second it was only ten feet in. Like it was waiting for her.