It was all starting to feel like a plastic bag tugged over her face. Orchid gripped the parking brake, sweating damp rings through the armpits of her work uniform. She stared across the driveway, the slanting broken concrete, to the front door. More than anything, she did not want to go inside her apartment. Her friends were already at the bar, but as always, Orchid was late, the thick residue of excuses twisting her tongue. She sat in the car, loathing the piles blocking her hallways, towering around her bed and cluttering the living room. The problem was she loved to buy things, mostly kitchenware from Goodwill or garage sales. Stockpiling made her feel high in the saddle, like having an extra paycheck in her bank account, even if she never cooked a meal bigger than scrambled eggs. And when money was low, as it had been lately, she would instead stash napkins, free weeklies, magazine recipes. When she first started collecting, it was harmless enough. She told herself she could always just stuff everything into trash bags and put it right out on the curb. But now.
The longer she faced her Carson City apartment, the more she hated it. Orchid stared at the drawn beige curtains, the shriveled cacti too dry to rot. She closed her eyes. Something inside splintered as she imagined the stacks of frying pans, coffeemakers, and measuring cups lining the hallways. Just yesterday, she had bought another set of vintage mixing bowls from a yard sale down the block. That set raised the stack to hip-height.
Sweat rolled down the back of her neck, soaking her collar. She opened the car door and a belch of warm desert air rushed in. She had an urge to burrow into the dirt, where it was cooler, where she wouldn’t be seen. But she was already late, so she glanced around, and when she was certain the neighbors weren’t looking, Orchid shimmied into her regular clothes right there in the car.
***
The sun exhaled a bored sigh as Orchid scurried across the steaming asphalt. Carson Street was a mish-mash of building facades, modern mixed with old-timey, as if the buildings didn’t know what they were or why they were there. She hurried through the heat, her sunglasses fogging.
In the hotel lobby, Orchid paused, using her forearm to wipe away what the air conditioning could not dry fast enough. Behind her, the carnival yellow gleam of Cactus Jack’s Casino burned in the daylight. In front of her, Fancy and Mavis were already posed at the bar, sipping white wine spritzers, waiting for her and the night to come.
“Sorry I’m late,” Orchid said.
“Better late than pregnant,” Mavis sang.
“Guys love to hear that,” Orchid said, uncoiling her sweaty body onto the cracked pleather stool.
“What’s new, ladies?”
“You’re looking at it,” Fancy said. She angled her chest towards them, squeezing her breasts together.
Mavis stopped smearing on lip gloss to stare at the mounds bursting from Fancy’s v-neck.
“If I were five months old, you’d be breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Fancy scowled. “Be serious, Mavis. Some big shots are staying here tonight.” She leaned forward and yanked her breasts higher in her push-up bra. “Orchid, what do you think?”
Orchid sensed all the other patrons gaping, their attraction as raw as if they had dropped their pants right there. She squirmed. “Why don’t you ask them?”
Fancy shrugged and looked down. “Hello, bosom. How are you tonight?” She jiggled. “Hello, Fancy,” she replied in a high-pitched voice. “Large and in charge, thank you.”
Orchid laughed. “I meant your audience. Take a look around.”
Pablo, the bartender, passed Orchid a napkin with her usual, Baileys on ice. “Those guys have been watching you the whole time, Fancy,” he said. “Can you try to keep it classy tonight?”
Fancy blushed but glanced over her shoulder at the two men. Their arms and necks, candy-caned by farmer tans, revealed they weren’t locals. They wore polo shirts tucked into utility shorts with dusty brown boots. When they smiled, their teeth gleamed like white picket fences.
Fancy spun back to the bar. “Watching is the most action they’ll get tonight. I don’t do gardeners.” She flicked her new hair extensions.
“Don’t worry,” Mavis said. “It’s only six o’clock. The real ones will start drifting in soon enough.” She licked her lips.
It was like watching a television special on jungle cats. Fancy was the type of blonde who wore high heels to the neighborhood pub. Since she only lived down the highway, this hotel was her neighborhood pub. The other one, Mavis, was Fancy’s childhood friend. Her copper hair and faded tan reminded Orchid of an old pipe. Mavis relied on layers of lipstick and gloss, because, she’d said, “Nice lips up top remind men of the ones down low. It’s scientific.”
When she first met Fancy and Mavis at the bar eight months ago, Orchid had been living in town for over a year, working temporary office jobs to pay rent and make the extra money she called her “stash” cash. One day, she got lost on the way to interview for a receptionist position at an automotive shop. She figured the hotel would know the streets better than she would, but by the time she walked in, she was forty-five minutes late. She decided to get a cola at the bar to cool off. The women started talking and soon Orchid began meeting them there every Friday after work. Fancy and Mavis, with their escapades and flashy beauty, were the only friends she’d made so far. Their phone calls and inside jokes made Orchid feel like she belonged.
Orchid, however, was the type of woman who only shaved up to her knee. She never had money for perms or pedicures, so she kept her silt-colored hair straight and clean, like the desert after a good rain. She wore hoop earrings sometimes and liked halter-tops well enough, but that was the extent of her seductions. She was thirty-three, unmarried, and not ready to put a root all the way down.
“What’s on deck tonight, ladies?” Pablo asked.
Orchid knew Fancy and Mavis had a deal that Pablo would let them sit at the bar four nights a week if they slipped him a nice tip here and there. Sometimes it was money, sometimes it was other things that they never mentioned. Either way, Fancy and Mavis did not want hotel management to confuse them with Reno escorts. They were not prostitutes.
Fancy straightened her bangles and rings, the gold dull and clinking. “The conference list out front mentioned the National History Museum.”
“Yikes.” Mavis applied gloss like she was swirling cotton candy. “Those bowtie guys always beg for freaky stuff, ‘Tie me up, sweetie!’” She snapped her compact shut. “That’s why I love businessmen. They’re so powerful, so in control. It just brings out the animal in me.” She sighed. “Although I can never decide when it’s a good time to explain that I’m a groupie, not a hooker.”
“Exactly,” Fancy said. “I don’t want there to be any confusion.”
Mavis wiped the excess gloss from around her lips. “So, do I explain myself when they’re buying me gin and tonics? Or when they leave eighty bucks on the nightstand?”
Orchid gasped. “You take money from them?”
“You never have?”
Orchid shook her head, but Fancy paused. “Just once,” Fancy said. “I hated myself for it.”
Mavis studied the rhinestone decals on her acrylic nails. “I don’t make it a habit,” she said. “But if they’re offering?” She shrugged. “I’d be stupid not to.”
***
An hour later, a cloud of businessmen and cologne settled near the biggest television screen. Even though it was still ninety degrees outside, they kept their ties knotted. That’s how you can tell the ones with money, Fancy had once said. They won’t sacrifice style for anything.
Mavis and Fancy smiled a little bigger, giggled a little louder.
“Here comes dinner,” Mavis whispered.
“And dessert.” Fancy poked Orchid.
Orchid wrinkled her nose, knowing guys like that wouldn’t let her stay the night. “You two go ahead,” she said. “You’re in she-heat and won’t be happy till you get what you want.”
“Are you sure?”
Orchid pointed to Fancy’s chest. “You’re halfway there, and I can’t give it to you. Go.”
Mavis and Fancy laughed. “Don’t forget. Dinner tomorrow night. Your place this time?”
Orchid blanched. “It’s so boring. Let’s go somewhere else.”
Mavis rolled her eyes. “You always say that,” she said. “Eight months we’ve been friends, and you haven’t invited us over once.”
“My place is too small.” Orchid’s palms were so slick with sweat that she almost dropped the glass.
“Besides, you two always have better ideas. Just call me tomorrow and let me know where. Now go. Have fun.”
“Fine,” Fancy whined. “See you tomorrow.” They swished over to the businessmen.
Orchid took a long swig from her drink and reminded herself that people didn’t need to know everything. She tipped the glass back until the ice kissed her nose, then shoved a cocktail napkin into her hip pocket. She set the empty glass down.
“Another?” Pablo asked.
“Why not?” When his back was turned to pour her second drink, she swiped the napkins from Mavis and Fancy’s spots.
Pablo returned with her Baileys. Several more men entered the bar, dusty and laughing.
“Looks like you have a good night coming your way,” Orchid said.
Pablo winked. “Maybe we both do.”
Orchid blushed and fiddled with her ponytail. Because she sat with Fancy and Mavis, Pablo treated her like she was just like them. But Orchid never even got drunk. She knew she could have two cocktails without getting tipsy, especially once the ice melted, so she made the drinks last. Too much alcohol left her dizzy and weepy, but it was better than staying home alone, the layered silence of her house a palm pressing over her mouth. “I’m fine by myself.”
“Don’t kid yourself, honey.”
***
Orchid had been to the bar often enough to feel comfortable sitting alone, so she watched a boxing match on the overhead screen. Ice melted in her drink. Above her, blood streamed from the nose of one boxer. She wondered how long those breaks took to heal.
***
Two rounds later, a man sat next to Orchid and ordered a whiskey. “No place lonelier than a hotel bar,” he said.
The boxers continued to pound, through the blood, the exhaustion. Orchid stared at the screen.
“Says who?”
“I do,” he said. “It’s made for people to sit alone. Look how many televisions there are.”
Orchid counted five televisions above the bar. “If you want to be alone, then what are you doing talking to me?”
“Who said I wanted to be alone?”
When Orchid finally turned to him, she noticed his eyes were a blue she’d only ever seen crowning late winter sunsets. He was tan, and although there was red clay under his fingernails, his clothes were clean. She felt breathless, like trying to inhale during a hurricane, and she wondered if she should look away or keep staring at him.
“Tonight, I’m just here for whiskey.” He stirred the ice. “But I’m in town for the summer to unearth a mammoth.”
Orchid wasn’t sure what he meant, so she sipped her drink. The boxer crouched low in a corner.
“My name is Doug,” he said. “I’m a paleontologist. There’s a mammoth hiding under those hills, and I’m trying to get it out.”
Orchid relaxed. She knew what a mammoth was. “So you’re into digging up stuff?”
“I’ve worked on one other dig here before, years ago. It’s not easy, but it’ll be worth it.”
“How do you know where all the bones go?”
“You have to go slow. And have patience.”
“I don’t have patience, or cable TV,” Orchid said, “so I watch a lot of public access. They always show dinosaur reenactments, and how T-rex used to look. Like a garden lizard. But huge. So now, any time I see a lizard on the sidewalk, I think, ‘Look! A tiny dinosaur!’”
Doug and Orchid laughed loud enough to drown out the cheers from the boxing match. She couldn’t believe he thought she was funny.
“I’m Orchid. I sell tires.”
“We’re quite a pair,” Doug said. ”You move people forward and I move them backward.”
“We’re all just trying to get somewhere, right?”
He nodded. “What do you like around here?”
Orchid never let men get close anymore. Not since Robbie, her last boyfriend, broke up with her, two years ago. That’s when the windows stayed shut and the travel magazines piled waist-high. “The basics. I like watching television. Hanging out with friends. Having a special place to sleep every night.”
“TV, friends, and a house? You’re every husband’s dream.”
Orchid bristled. “I’m not the marrying type. Thought about it once. Didn’t go through with it.”
“Sounds like there’s a good story underneath that.”
Overhead, the boxers punched each other into a corner. She remembered Robbie’s shock when she’d cleared a space for him on her bed. For months, as he took her bowling and to dinner around Modesto, she had felt a hot fluttering in her ribs, like she couldn’t inhale and didn’t want to. When she finally admitted to herself that it was love, she invited him to her place. But he had stumbled through the piles, coughing and sneezing, and refused to spend the night. When she couldn’t live up to his ultimatum of “get rid of your junk or lose me forever,” he ended it. You love your stuff more than me, he’d said. She didn’t, but she couldn’t explain it to him. He hadn’t been back to her or the house since then. After that, she’d moved on to Carson City and bigger piles.
“There was a lot of stuff between us,” Orchid said. She sipped her Baileys.
“Seems like it always happens that way, right?” Doug rubbed his neck. A string dangled from the cuff of his shirt.
Orchid pinched the string, twisting it around her index finger. “That’s my feeling.” When Doug turned to Pablo for another whiskey, she slipped the string into her back pocket.
“I’ve never been married, either,” Doug said. “Always thought I would tie some kind of knot by thirty, but five years later, here I am.” The boxers stopped punching and circled each other, bleeding.
“What are your plans while you’re here?”
“To keep digging until I find what I need. I’m hopeful.” He swallowed the last of his whiskey and then checked his watch. “I’ve got an early wake-up tomorrow. I better turn in.”
Orchid imagined crawling over all the heaps in her bedroom as she stumbled towards her bed. Her stomach sank. “That’s too bad.”
He grinned. “Think you can make it without me?”
“We’ll see.” She adjusted her glasses.
***
Orchid returned to the bar the next night. Tucked inside a mob of Dockers, the girls didn’t have to try too hard to get what they wanted. Insurance salesmen, energized by their morning smoothies and a lust for life policies, swarmed Fancy and Mavis. Orchid couldn’t afford health coverage, let alone car insurance, so she sat alone, watching rugby on the televisions.
***
Four scalding days after that, Fancy and Mavis rubbed the backs of various men from the Transportation Authority conference. The girls chose only the burly ones, letting heat and testosterone and the talk of heavy machinery pave the way right into their pants. Orchid used the time away from them at the end of the bar to consider the permanence of concrete. And to fill her pockets with discarded business cards.
***
At the aftermath of the Dungeons & Dragons conference nine evenings later, Mavis discovered her attraction to men with ponytails, while Fancy pretended to care about the strengths of a halfling rogue. Orchid wondered about tricks and magic, and if anyone could smell the Country Apple lotion she’d put on, just in case.
***
At the end of the month, Mavis sighed. “I am exhausted.”
Orchid eyed the lobby door. “Don’t even want to know why.”
“From all this flapping around.”
Fancy cackled. “Sweetie, never announce that something’s ‘flapping.’”
Their laughter wheezed out, all old memories and cigarette smoke. Orchid glanced at the door again.
“Be honest, now.” Mavis raked her fingers along her scalp. She’d had her hair cut, and the jagged layers reminded Orchid of a lion’s mane. Or Rod Stewart. Behind her, Doug entered the bar. “You like, Orchid?”
Orchid almost knocked over her Baileys. “It’s growing on me.”
Mavis frowned. “More Charlie’s Angels than I was expecting. But I think I remember having fun in the seventies, so why not give it another go now?”
Pablo approached them. “What can I get you, ladies?”
Fancy raised one ringed finger. “The usual.”
Pablo shook his head, aiming the television remote to turn on the championship Vegas fight. “Always gonna’ be the same thing every night?”
Doug smiled at Orchid.
“Let me think about it,” Orchid said, reading over the drink menu as if she hadn’t already memorized it during every awkward moment spent alone at her stool.
“I might mix it up,” Mavis said. “Something spicy to match my new ‘do.”
While Mavis talked drink selections with Pablo, Fancy turned to Orchid. “Honey, you okay lately? You seem out of sorts. I know ‘cuz you haven’t even talked to a guy since,” she glanced down the bar, “that one.”
A bell rang out, signaling the beginning of the match. Four muscled arms lunged toward each other, biceps rippling. Orchid wanted to walk around the bar and collect every napkin she saw. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She signaled to Pablo for a pint of pear cider, something she hadn’t had in years. But something that would last a while. She wondered if he had a big box of napkins she could pick through in the back.
“You’re in a funk, and there’s only one way out, so go talk to him. He’s been looking this way and seems okay. Nice hair. Got all ten fingers. Maybe a little boring, but you could fix that.
The boxers swayed, orbiting each other.
“You’re pretty and funny,” Fancy said. “And he has a penis. He’ll like you.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Orchid lied. “Fine. Just don’t watch me, you’re making me nervous.”
“Go.”
Orchid gripped her cider from the bottom so her shaking fingers wouldn’t drop it, and sauntered down to the end of the bar. “Remember me?”
Doug grinned. His tan, sun-deepened since the last time she’d seen him, electrified the flecks in his eyes. Blue, like the moment after lightning. “I do. Great to see you again, Orchid.”
“You haven’t been around lately.” She hated herself for showing her cards so early. She glanced at the television, disinterested. Counteracting.
“The dig has been harder than we expected,” he said. “Got a few interesting pieces, but we’re not sure if that means there’s more below or if that’s it.”
“Sounds tough.”
“It’s all part of the game. But here we are now.” Doug raised his glass to cheers her. “To my first friend in Carson City.”
Orchid raised her cider. “And who is that?”
“My mammoth.”
They laughed. Orchid smoothed her hair, a nervous twitch she’d only had around Robbie.
Pablo poured wine spritzers for the girls while he watched the match. “Get in there!”
The girls, alone for once, waved to Orchid.
“How about you?” Doug asked. “Been keeping yourself busy?”
***
Halfway through their second drinks, Doug and Orchid had officially revealed three facts about themselves. From her: his three brothers all had “D” names; he hated milk with his cereal; and the best years of his life (so far) had been spent in Seattle. She admitted she was shy, bit her nails, and laughed easily. Orchid had shocked herself with these intimacies.
Above them, one boxer’s eye bulged purple and puffy, nearly swollen shut.
“How does he even see?” Orchid said.
“That guy in the corner is the ‘cutman.’ He’s the one that checks his boxer for injuries. Nosebleeds, cuts. Stops the blood loss.” Doug sipped his whiskey. “Every boxer has one.”
Orchid grabbed his napkin while he was turned away.
“Need more napkins, Orchid?” Pablo asked.
“Always good to have extras. Just in case.” She smoothed a trembling hand over her hair.
Doug threw two twenties on the bar. “Fight’s over,” he said. “And it’s about that time. Hopefully I’ll see you soon, Orchid?”
The cider was tepid, but she swallowed it anyway. “Aren’t you going to invite me up?”
Doug coughed and looked away. “I like you, Orchid,” he said. “But I just wanted some conversation. I don’t pay for ladies.”
Shame flickered through her, followed by a familiar panic. “Look, Doug. I’m not a hooker. I’m just too drunk to drive home.” She swayed for effect. “I promise, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Doug blushed. “All right.”
On the screen, a woman paraded a sign around the ring. Orchid congratulated herself.
“Let’s go. I’m beat,” Doug said.
“Me too.”
Doug looked down at the carpet. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “I just don’t know who to trust yet.”
Orchid swiped the cocktail straws from his drink. “It’s hard, I know.”
***
The next morning, she awoke on Doug’s hotel couch with a cramped back. From the bed, he snored like he was choking on sand. She thought about nudging him awake to say thanks, but sleep crested over him and he gasped again. She gathered her things. Then she ducked into the narrow bathroom.
The complimentary toiletries huddled on the countertop. She sniffed the shampoo and conditioner, opened a little box of soap. All the items went into her purse.
She made sure the door shut softly behind her as she left.
***
When she returned home that morning before work, Orchid pulled all the napkins and straws from her pockets. She stacked them on her kitchen table with the piles she’d collected from coffee shops, fast food restaurants. The heap teetered near her collarbone. She laid the string on the top napkin.
Orchid muscled around pyramids of old shoeboxes so she could get into the bathroom with her new toiletries. Bags of supermarket coupons tottered from the carpet. The morning heat burned through the windows and dust particles swirled as she moved. Her sinuses flinched.
When she finally climbed into her bathroom, she shoved aside all the hand towels she kept just in case and considered her sink. Twenty-three bottles of hairspray covered the tiles. Some were full, some were half-full, and some were empty without lids. She lined them up, but then got distracted by the 18 toothpaste tubes curled near the faucet.
Orchid kicked over a pile of Redbook magazines as she grabbed her way back to the living room, the weight of outdated fashions and marital advice tripping her. When she’d maneuvered back to the living room, she jammed her body into the work clothes she kept piled near the television, found the path to the front door, and slammed the door behind her.
As she locked the door, something scratched her toe. Orchid glanced down, paused in mid-step. Just inches from her ankle, the long dry whip of a lizard’s tail scurried toward a rock. She jumped back, imagining the feel of broken bones under her foot, the snap. The tiny guilt.
***
At the tire store that day, she fitted trucks and cars with the appropriate radials. Most of her customers were men who strained to see down her shirt as she checked the p.s.i. But Orchid expected that and wore a t-shirt under her work polo.
“Wanna know my load index, honey?”
“I need something that can hold on real tight. Something with big traction ‘cuz I like to go fast, know what I mean?”
These men had ruddy, lined skin that cracked when they laughed. Orchid was afraid to fall into those fissures, afraid she’d get chewed up by teeth caked orange with barbeque sauce. Although Orchid hadn’t been in a relationship since the break-up, hadn’t even told another man her middle name since then, and occasionally cried a little on the pillow late at night, she was not attracted to them. Sometimes they had all their teeth, sometimes they didn’t, but Orchid remained professional. She kept her shirt tucked and a smile pinned like butterfly wings across her face.
At three-thirty, the front desk phone rang.
“Hiya,” a female voice screeched. “I need to upgrade to something big. Real big. Even bigger than what I got.” Laughter sputtered from the background.
“Fancy, anything bigger than what you got and NASA will be calling you to check the weather for them.” They both laughed. “Now, what time and where tonight?”
“Five-thirty. At the Mexican place.”
Orchid turned her head so her relief wouldn’t drift into the receiver. “I could use a fiesta right about now.”
“Don’t I know it,” Fancy said. “My old bones need a break. See you then, doll.”
A customer buzzed the counter bell. “Ma’am, please,” he demanded. “Are you open or what?”
As they walked to his car, Orchid squinted down the length of the parking lot. The mountains loomed dry against the grass-cracked concrete, the hills splotched with wheat-colored rag brush and prickly bushes. Somewhere across those brown peaks, far from where she stood, something important was happening underground. She caught herself and blushed.
***
Two hours later, mariachi trumpets drowned out Fancy’s cackle at the Mexican restaurant.
“So I’m on top, riding him in reverse,” she shrieked, “I look back, and he’s passed out!”
Mavis smacked the tabletop so hard that the pineapple wedge fell off her piña colada. “No!”
Orchid dipped her chips in the salsa and laughed. Under the table, she slipped three forks into the zippered confines of her purse, careful not to let them clink.
“Missed my whole show,” Fancy said. “Couldn’t believe it.”
As Orchid motioned to a waiter for another drink, she saw Doug and his museum friends settle into a booth. He looked surprised and waved. Orchid waved back, unhinged.
“Well, look at that!” Mavis bit into a beef taquito. “Did you go up to his hotel room last night?” Grease dripped onto the plate.
Orchid fidgeted, wanting to grab a fistful of napkins, any napkins. “Yes, I went to his room.”
“And?” Mavis took another bite.
Orchid shoved a forkful of refried beans in her mouth. “It was nice.”
“Honey, kittens are ‘nice,’” Fancy said. “Did you jump his bones?”
Orchid thought of having to sleep in her own bed and cringed. “I got what I wanted.”
They raised their margaritas and toasted each other.
***
Stumbling through the parking lot that evening, the women searched for their cars. The moon gazed a full eye onto the desert, illuminating the hillside boulders that jut out sideways, as if they’d been paused during an arm-wrestling competition. Orchid wasn’t drunk and she relaxed under the calm night sky.
“Come on, Orchid. I’ll take you home,” Fancy slurred. “I’m a little buzzed, but I could drive this road with four more margaritas in me.”
Orchid panicked. What if they needed to use the bathroom and saw everything? Could she even open the front door all the way to let them in?
Fancy dropped her keys, squinting into the night. “Can’t seem to find my spot.”
Orchid lurched, unsteady and loose, as if she too were wasted. “Full moons make people crazy! I’m walking home!” It was a performance she’d perfected years ago, to be used whenever she needed to get out of uncomfortable situations. Besides, she could walk back in the morning and get her car.
“You have no idea where you are, do you?” Mavis asked. She kicked off her espadrilles so she could walk straight.
“You ladies trying to get somewhere?”
Orchid turned to see Doug approaching them. His friends waved goodbye, heading to their cars behind him.
“Our hero, whoever you are!” Fancy shouted. “I can’t see.”
Doug laughed. “None of you can. Let’s go, I’ll get you home in one piece.”
“Come on, Orchid,” Mavis said. She grabbed Orchid’s hand and they all headed to his jeep. “Live a little already.”
As they drove, Mavis applied lip gloss and Fancy couldn’t stop talking. Orchid felt ill. She thought about having him drop her off down the street, and then walking to her place after he left. Or she could pretend Fancy was too drunk to get into her apartment and just sleep there. Orchid’s head spun. Her purse was full of napkins.
Doug dropped Mavis off first because she lived the farthest. Then he took Fancy to her apartment. Fancy jumped out of the jeep. “See you lovebirds later.”
Orchid held her breath.
Doug gazed through the windshield. “Look how clear everything is.”
She felt her pulse in her throat, the veins of her eyes. “I’m not ready to go home yet. Are you?”
“It’s the Pleiades tonight,” he said. “Want to have a look?”
Orchid exhaled. “I do.”
Doug drove, cutting through the valley edged by mountains that were a little too high, too close, like a hug that lasts too long. They passed rows of strip malls and sagebrush until they reached the mountains. Then they headed uphill. Orchid closed her eyes as they bounced, taking shallow breaths of dust, fear.
Once he stopped the car, he removed a blanket from the backseat. They walked out to a flat part near a juniper tree, the rocks rolling away, dry and moon-like. Orchid heard something small shuffle across the rocks behind them.
He unfolded the blanket. “We’ve got quite a show coming.”
They stretched out on their backs. Soon enough, thin white streaks cascaded across the night sky.
“I was disappointed when you left this morning,” he said.
Orchid’s eyes darted. “I wanted to let you sleep.”
“You could’ve woken me up,” he said. “Gotta’ open the old eyes sometime.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing me. I want to see you.”
Orchid kept her eyes on the sky. “Are all these asteroids or something?”
“We wouldn’t be alive if they were,” he said. “They’re meteors--the broken end of a comet’s tail.”
She watched the black backdrop and thought maybe they could just sleep out here tonight, make it romantic. That would be easier than thinking up more excuses.
He sighed. “I’ve said so much.” The meteors fell quicker. “Now I want to know what you’re about.”
Orchid’s stomach lurched. “I don’t know if you’re ready for that.”
“I’m ready to be knocked off my feet.”
She didn’t know what to say so she leaned toward him and kissed his cheek, tempted to just give it to him and secure a place to stay this summer. She let her tongue flicker up and down the salted cords of his neck, his stubble, the heat of his skin. When Orchid got to his ear, she unbuckled her belt.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
She slowly unzipped her jeans.
“Wait,” he said, “stop.”
Orchid pictured the towers of ratty luggage and yellowed romance novels barricading her bed. Her heart hammered. “You can’t stop me now.” She let her fingers graze his fly, smoothing over the bulge inside.
Doug’s hand slipped on the dirt and his foot kicked over her purse. A wad of napkins tumbled out.
She rushed to stuff the all napkins back inside her purse.
“I’m sorry.” Doug shook his wrist. “Something ran across my hand.”
They stared at opposite parts of the sky.
“What’s with all the napkins?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Is everything okay?”
“Too bad the asteroids aren’t out tonight.”
***
They drove down the mountain in silence.
“Look, I don’t want you to think I don’t like you, Orchid.” The jeep bounced along the gravel. “I do like you. A lot.”
“You don’t even know me.” She clutched her bag.
“What are you so afraid of?”
She felt for a napkin. “I want to know where we’re going.”
He sighed. “I’m taking you to the mammoth.”
A few awkward minutes later, they pulled into the museum parking lot. He used his loaner key to enter through the side door.
Upright apes hulked through the half-lit museum. Pterodactyls screeched silently overhead, paused, hysterical.
“We’re almost there,” Doug whispered. The stuffed mountain lions, with their wide hissing jaws, eyed them, ready to pounce.
They turned the corner. Along the back wall, the skeleton of a mammoth arched out from a mud pit. It was a death scene, set at night. Orchid eyed the swooping tusks and stared at the dust particles drifting down.
“My bones,” Doug said.
His breath disrupted the dust. She inhaled, holding hers.
Doug admired the skeleton. “It took me years to get to them. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Orchid felt an urge to yank out the perfectly spaced vertebrae, one by one, and watch the mammoth crash into piles of broken bones. She walked toward the exhibit and gripped the railing.
“It’s okay. You can go inside.”
Orchid swung her legs over and stepped into the scene.
“Can you believe it?”
She touched the cold bone. “I don’t know.” She crouched below the ankle of the mammoth and squinted up. “It’s almost too much for me to take.”
“That’s because you’re focusing on it piece by piece.”
As Doug walked back to get a better view, Orchid snapped off a cream-colored vertebrae. It was larger than she expected, and she didn’t want to rip her pocket by forcing it to fit. The mammoth trembled.
“Don’t be afraid to take in the whole thing.”
Orchid gripped the bone, the edges dulled, imprinting inside her fist. “I’m trying.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, tracing the uneven shape, petrified that the mammoth would collapse.
BB
