Chapter Three
David Lance stared
down at the money on the bed, at the stack of wrinkled tens and twenties that
he had removed from a half dozen pockets and compartments in their travel bags.
He had counted five times, with each count coming up to the same disappointing
figure of $2000. At other times in his life, he would have thought this as a
small fortune, especially during the dog days of the army when he could buy
almost nothing on his monthly stipend, even with combat pay. Yet staring down
at the rumpled money, he saw a shrinking fortune, something so large once he
believed it would last forever. Yet in eight months, he and Sarah had managed
to nearly squander it all. Where had the other $18,000 gone? Certainly not into
anything so luxurious as a house or a car. The only thing they owned of value
was a 1959 VW van with a blue book value well under $500 counting all their
possessions packed inside.
"So?" Sarah
asked, folding their clothing into the motel dresser, a towel around her head
from the shower with a single strand of wet hair hanging across her forehead.
She looked the same. Even the motel had the same stuffy scent to it, of lint
and packaged soap. Only the money had changed.
"So it's almost
gone," he spat and stood, knees cracking from sitting too much. Hours and
days in the front seat of a van. Still, he missed the vibration of the wheels
beneath him, the way he sometimes missed the shake and rumble of the helicopter
from his tours of Vietnam. Four years riding a helicopter over the swamps of
Nam and he still got seasick on a waterbed, still felt queasy too long in a
car.
"So, what are we
going to do?" Sarah asked, always the practical soul even in the face of
his growing panic.
"I guess I'll
have to get a job," he mumbled and staggered to the window where the sky
shocked him again. Or rather that part of the sky missing. A black patch out of
which no stars shown. The mountains of Colorado, daunting even in the dark,
like rising storm clouds cutting short the day by hours. After eight months in
L.A., the difference unnerved him, as if someone had stolen time out of his
life. His body clock had to readjust to the early twilight.
"You?"
Sarah laughed in a tone harsh enough to hurt. "What do you know how to
do?"
"There must be
something," he mumbled and looked at the money again. The question had
plagued him for months and he had put it off, thinking the money would last
forever.
"You mean we
came all the way back here so you could tell me that?"
"No," he
said, turning from the window to stare at Sarah's round face. In Hollywood, the
street people teased her, saying she looked like Doris Day. Blond hair and blue
eyes stark markers despite the outrageous red lipstick and near purple eye
shadow. Doris Day engraved in her and she hated it. "We came back to see
if you wanted to live here again. Do you?"
He knew the answer.
He'd seen it in her eyes the whole ride back down the mountain from Boulder,
the emptiness of missing friends as stark and deadly as the dark mountain
against the night sky.
He loved it, not her,
from his first visit here, walking in awe like a child among skyscrapers,
unable to believe in things so ungodly big.
Eight months ago, he
had come here to steal her and had taken away a dream of snow capped heaven
California couldn't shake from his head.
"I hate it
here," she said and sat in the chair beside the dresser, yanking the
string for the lamp. Dull yellow light filled the room and the black mountain
vanished into a wobbly reflection of his face in the window.
"Hate?"
"We shouldn't
have come back."
He sagged and sat
heavily on the bed, some of the money tumbling to the floor where he left it.
He stared at himself in the glass. Long brown hair shaped around a rugged face.
The eyes half hidden by protruding brow. He had lobbied hard for her return,
hoping she would feel the same magic he did.
Maybe he should have
guessed from her willingness to leave with him back then, when he had come
knocking on her door after his stint in the army.
Come away with me,
he'd offered, telling her of a little dive he'd rented in East L.A., and the
store he'd robbed back east for the twenty thousand dollar grub stake. He
wanted to settle down after Vietnam.
But the mountains had
stolen his soul, and as he talked her into leaving, he begged himself to stay.
But among her friends he felt skittish. One or two had been lovers and he
resented it, allowing
the resentment to chase him west.
"Why?" he
asked, still staring at himself in the glass. "Why do you hate it."
"Because it's
boring," she said. "Always has been, always will be.
"But you agreed
to come back."
"I forgot this
part," she said harshly. "I forgot how ugly the quiet can be. I used
to lie in my bed for hours cursing it, straining to hear the sound of motor
cycles coming to rescue me. It's the people I missed and they're all gone now.
They probably couldn't take it either."
Gone like the money
was gone. Spent in L.A. fast life, clothing and drugs, and God knew what else.
Gone and never to return. Though, two thousand might be enough if they found a
place and he
found a job and...
"So what do you
want?" he asked after a long silence.
Sarah shivered and
slithered from the chair, ambling slowly to the window. Below the rear of the
hotel, the land sank into a bowl of twinkling lights, Downtown Denver at its
center.
"I want to
leave," she said.
Hip Cities and Lost Souls (Version 2)menu
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