Red Dirt

Red dirt. For miles. Nothing else surrounds the diner in The Middle of Nowhere, Arizona. A diner surrounded by dirt is the perfect place for peculiar things. Inside sit five booths of red vinyl riddled with cigarette burns and ketchup stains. The creases between the vinyl seats hide hardened fries, skin cells, ants, time.

A linoleum counter, wiped clean, still shows a discoloration that only years can perfect. The old woman behind the counter, Susan, shows a similar discoloration, but she can never be wiped clean. Secrets smother Susan.

Most days, the diner has at least one customer sitting for an undetermined amount of time. Susan supplies an obedient audience with their fractional lives in this between-places place. She listens and watches, unnoticed, forgotten, behind the counter, as if it were a wall between her and the diners, a confessional’s partition. She has seen people fight each other over unknown angers, she has seen people stumble into the bathroom to make love, she has seen people abandoned in this nowhere place by their families, lovers, friends, hopes, wills-to-live.

Susan has the number to a cab company nailed to the wall at the back office. The abandoned always need a cab to ferry them back to civilization, ungodly fees be damned.

Once, Susan watched a man leave a child behind. The man had told the boy to go wash his syrup-sticky hands in the bathroom, and while the child was gone, the man stood up, placed a twenty on the counter, and walked out. A fresh coat of dust stuck to the diner windows as his car sped out of the parking lot. When the boy walked out, Susan gave him a milkshake, on the house, while she called the police. They arrived over an hour later and took the boy with them. Susan never knew what happened to him or his father. Had it even been his father.

Susan plays her role behind the counter in silence. She isn’t worthy of judging others—at least, not in the open. She remains a voyeur. The quieter she is, the louder the secrets become.

Today, a couple occupies one of the booths.
They are the only customers in the diner.
The woman’s name is Amanda, but the man doesn’t know that.

Amanda is doing her job, a job she is very good at. She has been doing it for ten years now and has become a wealthy woman because of it. This man sitting across from her is her last job before she retires. She is 35 years old.

During the rare moments when she questions her line of work, Amanda thinks about her retirement. There is a house in Cozumel that she is having renovated and refurbished. A beautiful woman waits for her there on the white sand. She thinks about the margaritas, the money, the woman, the house, the sand, the sun. Then she sets aside the ethical concerns.

Amanda sips black coffee, two sugars. She does this delicately to preserve her lilac lips.

Amanda’s hair is short, like a man’s. She wears comfortable cotton clothing that gives her flexibility without being baggy. She looks like painted porcelain but makes you think you might be the one to break.

The man across from her has long hair, like a woman’s. It is brown and oily, dirty and tangled. He would appear to be homeless if not for the pristine outfit he wears, cotton T-shirt and jeans, all pressed to crisp creases. He can’t move as freely as Amanda.

The man’s name is Paul, but for the last fifteen years, he has been called 397, pronounced “Three-Ninety-Seven.” After murdering a girl and her mother on a hot Texas morning sixteen years ago, he became the three-hundred and ninety-seventh person sentenced to death in the state.

Paul wasn’t ever a violent man, really. That day, so many years ago, he remembers the heat, and then a dead girl. And then her mother, dead beside her.

He worked for them. The mother gave him a job mowing the lawn, cleaning the pool, that sort of thing. He was homeless, but since he got this job, he no longer begged on the street for food.

Paul was a hard worker, polite. He looked away from the woman whenever she stripped in front of him and swam laps in the pool. She would bring him a tall glass of lemonade and make him drink the whole thing right there on the spot, her hand out waiting for the cup.

These silly power games ended whenever her husband or daughter were around. Her husband, rarely home, was indifferent to Paul, and Paul was happy to steer clear of him. But her daughter came home every day after school, right in the middle of Paul’s shift. Sometimes, she would join him and her mother outside.

It was a good gig.

And then the girl came home early one day, and it was so hot outside, and the sun was ablaze like nothing else…

Sixteen years later, when Paul was finally due for execution, this woman, this red-haired porcelain mystery sitting across the table from him, appeared and shoved him into her car, driving him God knows where.

Paul still blames the heat.

He shoves pieces of cheeseburger into his mouth. He suffers to swallow. He hasn’t eaten for several days.

Amanda watches Paul. She thinks to herself that men really do look like animals sometimes.

But animals are easier to tame than men.

Paul finishes eating and leans back into the cigarette-burned throne. He looks at the woman with a satisfied smile.

“Thank you,” he says. His voice shakes a bit. He hasn’t spoken in a while.
“You don’t ever have to talk to me,” she replies, just as earnest.

His smile fades a bit. He falls silent. Something crawls into his eyes, a dark thing, maybe fear.

Susan appears, as if stepping from behind an invisible curtain. She hands the bill to Paul.
Amanda smiles sunshine at the old waitress. “Oh, I’ll take it here, thank you.” She takes a platinum card from her wallet.

“We don’t take cards here, hon,” Susan says, smiling back at Amanda because mirroring people’s emotions is a natural habit.

“Not a problem,” Amanda says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a black leather wallet. She rifles through several bills before pulling out a hundred, which she hands to Susan with a soft hand. In an even softer voice, she tells the waitress to keep the change.
Susan’s smile is no longer a mirror. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. Anything else I can get for you two? Something for the road back?”

“That’s alright, we’re already on our way.”

Susan nods. She returns to her post behind the counter, tucking the hundred in her apron.

Amanda looks at Paul, her smile gone. She nods her head towards the window, his cue to move. She follows him out of the diner.

As they approach a grey Honda, a bright red Mustang whips into the three-spot parking lot in front of the diner.

Dust flies up to Paul’s face. A middle-aged man jumps out of the car, yelling “Sorry!” as he runs to the diner.

“He must be hungry!” Paul jokes.
Amanda brushes red dirt from her cotton top. She sits in the driver’s seat while Paul sits in the back. A large bag full of peaches occupies the passenger seat.

Sam’s heart squeezes his lungs as he whips past the couple. He goes up to the old waitress and says, “I need food now, anything, whatever you can make fast.”
Susan is not easily rushed. She takes her time cutting a slice of pecan pie. A minute later, she pours him a cup of coffee.

Sam carries these to the booth farthest away from the entrance.
He does not eat. A fly lands on the sweet slice, untroubled.
Sam stares intently out of the dusty windows.

Sam’s heart beats, his lungs contract. He is coming down from a very high high, a month-long euphoria that has made him imagine things he cannot express, feel things he does not understand, and say things he would never have said before.
Sam wants more of this feeling, but he has run out.

He shouldn’t have taken the pills, he knows that. But he had watched the guy take them first, right there in front of him. The guy took a great liking to the black pills and their effects and he smiled a lazy smile and talked about how great his life was, about the stars in the sky at his father’s house. At one point, he told Sam he had sprung a huge erection and clutched his groin, saying he hadn’t felt aroused in months. He went on like this, laughing about his boner, babbling about the stars, talking to Sam and then to imaginary people. He claimed he could do anything, but all he really wanted to do was sit there and feel good for a while.

Sam hadn’t been that happy in a good long while.

And now, a month later and too many pills to count, his inventory is almost gone. His hands shake. His legs jump. His eyelids twitch. His blood runs cleaner every minute.

A car appears at the end of the shimmering ribbon road that runs right up to the diner.
A dog barks. Sam sits up straight, blinks several times, straightens the collar of his dusty button-down, and finally takes a small sip of his lukewarm coffee.

A woman steps out of the car wearing a dark green sequined ball gown. It shimmers in the bright Arizona sun. Her hair is pitch black and falls to her exposed shoulders. She carries a small, caramel brown Bulldog.

Susan is not fazed by this opulence.
The emerald woman walks into the diner and sits across Sam.
“H-hello, Lu.”
“Hello Sam. How are you today?”
“I-I’m fine.”
A pause.
“Well, actually, there was a bit of a problem i-in Tulsa…” Sam whispers.
“Tulsa? Sam, what happened in Tulsa?”
“W-well, I couldn’t, I couldn’t move the inventory,” he says, avoiding her gaze.
She sighs. “How many remain?”
“Five.”
“You know what that means?” she asks, her voice just as sweetly as anything.
Sam looks at her, his eyes wide. “No.”
Lu nods.“Yes, I’m afraid that’s that. You signed a contract, there’s not really anything I can do about it.”
Sam’s shaking intensifies. Tears form in his eyes.
Lu laughs.“Oh, don’t do this please! You know I can’t do anything about it. Don’t start crying, Sam, it’s absolutely out of my hands now, and you know that!”
Sam can’t stop from crying.
“All right, well, thank you for your service. I’ll be heading off now. I have dinner in Albuquerque, and I absolutely cannot be late.” She stands, pup still cocked.
Before she walks away, she asks for the remaining inventory. Sam gives her a clear plastic bottle with five black pills inside.
Lu covers her red mouth with a perfectly manicured hand in mock surprise. “That’s all? Sam, you haven’t been taking it, have you?”
Sam looks at the fly on his pie. “You knew I would.”
Lu’s voice hardens. “Everything you do is your choice.”
“Please, let me keep one. Just one. For myself.”
Lu considers him, considers the bottle, considers each pill. She walks out of the diner, gets into her car, and drives off.
Sam stares at his cold coffee, no sugar, and thinks that it really might not be so bad.
Pecan pie untouched, he drops a five-dollar bill on the counter in front of Susan, who grunts as he walks out to his car.
He drives two miles away from the diner, just far enough to be completely alone.
“Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed plays on his stereo.
Red dirt surrounds him.
No one will drive by for another hour.
A click.
And the colored girls go…

A car exploding in the desert is a surreal thing.

One moment it exists, red metal, rubber tires, leather seats, driver, fear, sweat, music.
The next moment, all that remains is a smoldering pile of metal scraps, a bloody earlobe, and the echo of a refrain.
The rest has been incinerated, torn up, scattered, blown far and wide, from Hell to breakfast.

Susan looks up from the cash register at the sound. She waits a moment before carefully returning the uneaten slice of pie back into its place as part of the whole in the dessert case.

Artwork by Francois Bard