Motel. Pool. (9 page)

He emerged from the bathroom to the smell of coffee. Jack smiled widely and handed him a steaming cardboard cup. “I figured out how to work the machine. Well, there were some instructions. Those helped.”

Bemused, Tag sipped the liquid. It was standard motel stuff—bitter and cheap—but even so, the flavor was complex enough that he didn’t think he was imagining it. Besides, it burned his tongue. Which meant it was probably real, and
that
meant he’d somehow brewed himself a pot before showering and without the memory of doing so. “Thanks,” he said.

“Wish I could drink some too.”

“You can’t?”

“Ghost, remember?”

“But… you’re pretty solid.”

Jack beamed as if he’d been paid a compliment. “I am. But my insides aren’t quite… I don’t really have guts and stuff, so there’s nowhere for coffee to go.”

“Oh. Well, um, sorry.”

Tag began to gather the few belongings he’d scattered around the room. He folded the clothes he’d washed the night before and stuffed them in his suitcase, packed his razor and other toiletries into a black bag, and stole the white pen from beside the phone. You never knew when a pen would come in handy.

Jack watched Tag work. After the suitcase was zipped and as Tag scanned the room for anything he might have forgotten, Jack said, “Have you really slept with a lot of men?”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve only
slept
with a few, I guess. But I’ve fucked plenty of ’em.”

“That’s different from when I was alive.”

“What? You’re trying to tell me there were no queers in the fifties? I know that’s not true.” Tag drained the cup and stood a moment, considering whether to pour a refill before he hit the road.

“Of course there were homosexuals. But people weren’t so… casual about it. If a fellow admitted what you just said, he could get arrested. Committed. He could lose his job, his life. Most folks wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He could get killed.”

Tag paused as he reached for the coffee pot. Jack looked slightly flushed and breathless, both of which were ridiculous for a ghost
or
a hallucination. “How’d you die?” Tag asked quietly.

Jack disappeared.

The same desk clerk was on duty when Tag checked out. He was wearing a different shirt, though, so maybe he’d just come back on duty. He quirked a bushy eyebrow at Tag. “Room’s not trashed?”

“I left a couple towels on the bathroom floor and I think I knocked a pillow off the mattress. That’s the extent of it.”

“Well, I guess I can forgive that much.” The clerk smiled. “Drive safely.”

Tag got into the car and started it up. He was planning on drive-through, but he spied a small market and headed there instead. He was getting sick of fast food, and Jason would have laughed at that. He used to tease Tag about his junk food addiction. “Don’t know why you’re not big as a house, man,” he’d say, stroking Tag’s lean belly. “I bet someday all those Whoppers are gonna catch up with you.”

Tag would move his boyfriend’s hand to his crotch. “Well, here’s a whopper for you too.”

Jason would chuckle and give him a friendly squeeze. Sometimes Tag wondered if Jason laughed as much with his new boyfriend. Jason deserved to be happy.

At the market, Tag bought a carton of OJ, a couple bananas, and a frozen burrito that he zapped with the store’s microwave. He got an apple pastry too, which probably wasn’t any healthier than McDonald’s but looked mighty good. He thought about a couple cans of energy drink but decided against them. He didn’t have very far to drive today.

He ate while he drove. He was twenty minutes outside of Williams when the radio switched suddenly from a car commercial to “Heartbreak Hotel.” Jack appeared in the passenger seat. He had a cigarette tucked behind one ear. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get to come this far. Thought I’d get all stretched again. I wonder how many miles I can go.”

Tag glanced at him from the corner of his eye and shrugged. “We might as well find out.”

“Might as well,” Jack said and leaned back in his seat.

“W
HAT
’
S
WITH
all the historical markers?” Tag asked. “Are we supposed to be impressed at more Joshua trees and yucca?”

Jack had been silently gazing out the window for miles, but now he glanced at Tag. “They’re old mining towns.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve heard people mention them.”

“When you were eavesdropping.”

Jack made a rude noise and shifted in his seat. “Yeah, when I was eavesdropping. Isn’t like there’s much else to do when you’re a ghost. Listen in, watch TV when they do… sometimes I watched them fuck, but that was just… frustrating.”

“Ghosts have libidos?”

“I do.”

Jeez. Freud would be delighted with this hallucination. Tag decided to push it a little farther. “Can’t you beat off?”

“No,” Jack replied sadly. Then he brightened. “Except I probably could, now that I can be solid.” He looked down at his lap thoughtfully.

“No!” The car swerved with the vehemence of Tag’s response. “No masturbating while I’m driving!”

“Spoilsport,” said Jack with a snicker.

Tag was going to reply, but he caught sight of yet another marker. He pulled off the road abruptly enough to make the guy in back of him honk angrily, then hopped out of the car, leaving the door open and motor running.
CHLORIDE
, said the sign.
Four miles east is former mining town of Chloride.
He reached out and touched the stone and metal; they felt real enough. So did the sharp grasses poking at his denim-clad legs. Tiny black ants marched across the marker’s base, dust in the air tickled his throat, and cars roared by on the highway. Everything about his sensory input felt genuine.

He plopped back down in the driver’s seat and slammed the door but didn’t shift out of park. “I could have guessed this on my own. We’re in the middle of the Mojave. What else would the signs be about?”

“Indians. Cowboys. Bandits. Settlers. The Colorado River. Railroads.”

Why did Tag’s subconscious have to be so goddamn smug? “You’re not real,” Tag said firmly.

“Sure I am. And how do I know
you’re
real, now that I think of it? Maybe after all these years alone, my mind’s starting to go and I’m imagining you, like I did before.” Jack blinked as if he’d said more than he intended to.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

Trying to prove your own existence to your delusion was a new level of insanity, one that Tag was not willing to explore. He pushed aside the specter of his mother’s schizophrenia, put the car into gear, and merged back onto the highway.

His passenger seemed restless. Jack tapped fingers on the armrest and refolded Tag’s maps. He made faces at the fast food bags scattered near his feet. “Your car is a mess.”

“I’ve been driving for a while.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. A week, I guess.” He’d started out with a few days of aimless circling before heading south to the old Route 66.

“You’re not on vacation.”

“Not exactly.”

After the silence stretched for a few miles, Jack sighed. “I haven’t talked to anyone in almost sixty years. You could at least try to make conversation.”

“But I feel stupid, talking to someone who’s not really there.”

“I
am
here, though. In spirit, anyway.” Jack chuckled softly. “Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“Vegas.”

“Las Vegas? Really? Sam said we’d go there sometime, but we never did.”

Tag cut his eyes sideways for a moment. “Who’s Sam?”

“Nobody,” Jack replied quickly. “How come you’re going there? Are you moving there?”

“For a little while.”

A sign announced they were leaving Arizona and entering Nevada. Tag drove slowly over a tall bridge, then took the next exit. He saw Jack looking at him quizzically, and he shrugged. “I’ve never been to Hoover Dam.”

“Me either. My dad almost headed out here to help build it. There were hardly any jobs back home and the farm wasn’t big enough for him and all his brothers. But he ended up finding something in Omaha instead and marrying Mom. He used to grouse about it sometimes. Said he would’ve had better luck out west.”

The roadway curved sharply as it descended. “You’re from Omaha?” Tag asked.

“Originally. You?”

“All over. We moved a lot.”

There was a short line of cars stopped ahead of them, and Tag’s heart sped when he realized he’d have to get past a security checkpoint. Did he look like a guy who was in the midst of a psychotic break? And if so, what would happen to him? He remembered his mother’s stark fear of mental hospitals, her avowal that she’d take her own life before she let herself be locked up in one of those places again. His throat went dry. But the cop only gave him a long look, then stared at the passenger seat before waving Tag past.

“What was that all about?” Jack asked, twisting around to look behind them.

“Terrorists, I guess.”

“Huh?”

“After 9/11 they started worrying about people blowing things up.”

Jack turned back to look at him. “What’s that—nine eleven?”

Jesus. “September 11, 2001. This group hijacked some jets and flew them into the Pentagon and the World Tra—a couple of skyscrapers in Manhattan. And I think the other plane was heading for DC, but the passengers fought back and it crashed in a field. Something like three thousand people died that day.”

“You had a war? Here, in the US?”

“Not exactly. This was… a bunch of guys who hated us, I guess. But it wasn’t a war.” Tag decided to sidestep the whole Iraq thing that followed.

Jack remained silent as Tag entered the parking garage and forked over seven bucks to the attendant. But as Tag pulled into a vacant space, Jack shook his head. “A couple of my uncles went to Europe during the war. Not Dad. He got some kind of exemption. But Tommy and Joseph went. I used to write them letters.”

“What happened to them?” Damn, Tag hadn’t meant to ask.

“Tommy came back pretty deaf, but he managed okay. We just had to talk real loud around him. Joseph got killed. D-Day.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Jack.”

Jack shrugged slightly. “It’s okay. Least he was a hero.”

It was much hotter here than it had been near the Grand Canyon. Tag snagged a bottle of water as he exited the car, then walked across the garage and jogged down a couple flights of stairs. Jack was at his side, but quiet, which was good. Tag didn’t want to be dragged into a public conversation with his imaginary friend.

Tag followed the walkway until he actually stood on the dam itself. It was an impressive feat of engineering, he had to admit. And to think that it was built before there were computers and lasers and whatever else modern engineers used to construct their miracles. He leaned his arms on the thick concrete wall and looked down.

He stood there a very long time, ignoring the sun on the back of his neck and the sweat dripping down his forehead. The green water looked cool.

“Drowning’s not a good way to die.”

Tag startled slightly at Jack’s voice but didn’t turn his head to look. He didn’t answer either. He could smell cigarette smoke, though, and hear the slight puffs of Jack’s exhales.

“I think,” Jack continued, “if you jumped from here you wouldn’t have the chance to drown. You’d bust your head open on the base of the dam instead, or maybe break your neck when you hit the water. I don’t know which is better. Either way, you’d have a few seconds to think about it while you fell. I wonder what goes through a fellow’s head in a time like that.”

Against his better judgment, Tag swiveled his head slightly to see next to him. Jack was leaning on the concrete beside him, holding a cigarette between two fingers and staring off into space.

“I wasn’t going to jump,” Tag whispered.

“Good. ’Cause I’ve been watching people pretty closely for a long time—used to watch them even when I was alive, because that’s what an actor does—and you seem kinda… lost.”

“I am going to Las Vegas.”

“And I was going to Omaha.” Jack took a few contemplative drags from his cigarette. “Sometimes maybe a fellow isn’t even sure he wants to do something—something bad—and he finds himself doing it anyway. And by the time he realizes what a mistake he’s making, it’s too late.”

Tag snorted. “Story of my life, Jacky-boy. I’m king of the fuckups.”

Jack pointed at him with the cigarette. “But you’re still alive, and that means you can still fix things.”

“Great. My hallucination’s a motivational speaker.”

“I don’t think it’s an accident I found you. I think you should listen to me—” Jack stopped abruptly, his wide eyes focused over Tag’s shoulder.

Expecting to find a crowd gawping at the loony talking to himself, Tag spun around. There was a crowd all right, but they were looking at Jack, not him. Two dozen men stood on the roadway atop the dam. Some were shirtless, and all wore weird canvas overalls or ragged trousers. They were booted, and many had helmets or hats. All were dirty and deeply tanned. And they were transparent.

“What the fuck?” Tag asked with a gasp. He looked over his shoulder at Jack, hoping for an explanation, but Jack looked even more flabbergasted than Tag felt. The cigarette dropped from Jack’s fingers and rolled a few feet before disappearing.