Page 17

17

Departed

Jake

I press the buzzer to Dodi’s apartment. There’s a crackling squeal and then—

“Hello?”

It’s the most unfriendly hello in the world.

I barely recognize her when she comes down. She’s covered up, as usual, but in casual clothes. She seems strangely small in sneakers and joggers, her sweatshirt swallowing her whole. She slings her black weekend bag into the back seat, something hard making a thunk when it hits a buckle, and then she curls herself into the door of the car with her phone. I sort through conversation starters. Someone else thinks I’m a serial killer too. I wonder what she would think of Bill. I wonder what she’ll think of the Murderers at Work tickets. I wonder why on earth she agreed to go to Las Vegas with me. I wonder why on earth I wanted to go. But I know why. Dodi is a speck of vibrant color in a gray world. A controlled substance causing fireworks in a serotonin-depleted brain. I’ll keep coming back to press the lever like an addicted lab rat in a wire cage until I die of exhaustion.

She doesn’t talk to me during the drive. She doesn’t talk to me while I park. She doesn’t talk to me during check-in. I almost touch her elbow when we pass the escalator that would lead to arrivals. I could take her down, show her the chair I left Katrin in. It would break the spell, and she’d turn to me with a smile like I’d delivered another dirty joke.

She makes a point of taking the security lane farthest from me, and I watch from one aisle over as she twitches and chews her thumb while her bag passes through the scanner. A TSA agent curls his finger at her and unzips her bag with gloved hands.

“What do you mean, what is it? What does it look like to you?” she snaps. And surprisingly, the agent raises his hands and backs off. She zips her bag furiously and stomps her feet into her sneakers. She scowls when she sees me watching.

She’s a closed fist wrapped around who knows what, and she’s always been a puzzle to pry apart, one finger at a time. But it occurs to me, slowly, uncomfortably, that maybe she didn’t want to go to Las Vegas with me . She wanted to go badly enough to tolerate me tagging along.

I leave her and find a seat by the gate. I have two more missed calls from Andrew. I delete the voicemails without listening to them.

I lose track of her until boarding, and she’s already seated at the window when I get to our row, eyes riveted on the tarmac. Her bag has been forced into the too-small under-seat stowage in front of her, like she can’t bear to part with it. I stow my own carry-on above and snap the overhead storage shut. When she hears the click, she startles and looks at me.

I’ve had time to regroup. I’m the facilitator of work vacations, bearer of mutilated dolls. I bring value to our working partnership.

“What did you do with the last Christmas gift?” I ask when I slide in next to her.

“She needed to cool her head.”

“Next to the ice cream?”

“Next to the other decapitated head.”

“Did you—”

“Are you going to talk to me for this entire flight?”

Closed fist. She puts in her earbuds and fixes her attention on the window, and there her attention stays as we take off, ascend, and glide through the gathering evening. The sky turns liquid blue outside, then inky, and the lights of the cabin shut off, and a handful of individual reading lights flick on one by one. Our row stays in darkness. And then I realize Dodi is asleep.

I watch her profile. I watch her face when her head lolls toward me. And then I watch our blurry reflection in the seat screen in front of us, when she slumps over and smooshes her face into my shoulder. I stay still as a statue. I can smell her hair, and hear the tinny rattle of a podcast playing in her earbuds. I wonder if this counts as Dodi letting her guard down.

The plane banks lazily just after midnight and I glimpse the sprawling sparkle of Las Vegas through Dodi’s window. We circle round and round. And we keep circling. Round and round and round…And then a voice rasps over the speaker.

“There are some issues on the ground at LAS. We’re waiting for instructions and we appreciate everyone’s patience.”

Minor murmuring gives way to gasps and groans as everyone consults their phone.

“Bomb threat!”

“We’re not going to be able to land. Can we call—”

“The whole airport has been evacuated—”

We circle for another fifteen minutes, and then the voice returns.

“We’re being directed to land at—”

Howls erupt, and Dodi twitches.

“That’s a three-hour drive from Las Vegas. Are you kidding me,” someone behind me huffs.

When the lights come on as the plane begins its descent, Dodi asks, groggily, “Are we there?”

“No. We’re doing an emergency landing at a different airport. We’re three hours away.”

She stares at me. She pinches sleep out of the corners of her eyes. She looks around the airplane.

“Is this some Podunk little airport in East Jesus Nowhere? Because everyone here is going to need a rental car.”

I realize she’s right. Her face hardens.

“Get your bag,” she says to me, undoing her belt.

“What?”

When the plane rolls to a stop, Dodi slithers across my lap with her bag in a vise grip and darts down the aisle.

“Move it!” she shrieks.

There are other planes landing, too: even more competition for rentals. Dodi sprints through the night, and I kick up my heels to follow. We smash through a pair of double doors, round a corner, pelt past the baggage claim, and there, glimmering like a beacon, is a dingy Avis sign. There are other people making their way there too. The groggy agent’s eyes widen when he sees us all barreling toward him.

Dodi slams to a stop against the counter like a baseball player stealing home.

—

By the time we have a rental secured, there’s a line fifty people deep. Dodi leads the way out to the parking lot. She’s smoldering. She’s vibrating. Whatever diabolical energy she packed for this trip is coming out in lashings now.

“It’s a silver Nissan Rogue,” she barks at me. “What’s the license plate number?”

I consult the paperwork.

“P-M—”

“B?”

“No, P —”

“Use call signs!”

“Pterodactyl, mnemonic, three—”

“Fuck’s sake!” She whirls on me, panting, her hair clinging to her clammy forehead. “Three as in ‘T’ or the number?”

She’s a wreck. A nasty little creature with its foot caught in a bear trap. I reach out and take her heavy bag from her, and her whole body sags with relief when I do. She looks hard at my hand on the handle of her bag.

“Click the key fob.”

She stares stupidly at the fob in her hand. She presses a button and the car next to us beeps.

“You need food,” I say. “You’re too tired to drive. I’m tired too. We can stay in a motel somewhere.”

She turns to face me and her eyes glitter dangerously in the night. We’ve been on the ground for half an hour now, but as I look at her murderous expression, there’s that fairground feeling again. Falling, falling, not sure where solid ground is.

“I need to get to Las Vegas,” she grinds out.

This is where a normal, boring person asks why.

But I’m not normal. I’m the calm serial killer who doesn’t raise an eyebrow at his victim’s histrionics. I’m the stranger with secrets who doesn’t ask questions. The con artist who procures plane tickets and executes devious plans. The boy who reaches out to hold a girl’s hand and is delighted to find a closed fist. This is why Dodi is letting me tag along.

“Please,” Dodi whispers.

No. She’s not just letting me tag along.

She needed me to take her to Las Vegas. She couldn’t do it on her own.

My exhaustion vanishes. I stow her bag in the trunk of the car while she peels off her sweaty pullover and throws it on the back seat. I take the keys from her and we hurtle down a dark highway, engine keening, music blaring. She lowers the windows, and the wind assaults her hair, and she screams the lyrics to Johnny Cash and Elvis at the top of her lungs. I feel light. I feel free. I feel like a helium balloon slipping away, and my real life is the shrinking child throwing a tantrum on the ground as I soar up, up, up…

I feel alive . I always come alive around Dolores. Grant and Andrew and my temp job—and everything else —are someone else’s problems.

“I will make you hurt …” she sings.

I press the pedal to the metal and slide into the far left lane, speeding up even faster, passing two cars on our right. We have to pass everyone. We’re too full of purpose to tolerate anyone in front of us. We’re going to Las Vegas .

The sky is dark and starry and huge. We drive for hours, or years, until we spot an unearthly glow on the horizon. It burns brighter, and brighter, until the sprawl of Las Vegas materializes underneath.