Текст книги "The Porcupine of Truth"

Автор книги: Bill Konigsberg

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

I WAKE UP to loud clanking above me, like a pinball game played by someone who is seriously bad at it. The pings come in quick succession, and then nothing for a minute. Then more pings. I look over to the other couch. Aisha is gone and her blanket is nicely folded. Light pours into the trailer from the semiopen blinds above me. I must have overslept.

I find my shoes, check my breath, decide it’s not terrible, run my hand through my hair, and step outside in the sweatpants I slept in. Then I scream.

A man is crouched on the ground. With a rifle. Pointed at me. I cover my face with my hands and duck.

“Oh hey!”

It’s Thomas’s voice. I peek through my fingers as he slowly hoists himself to his feet and puts the rifle down. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No worries,” I say, as if it’s a typical Carson morning to wake up in a trailer, go outside, and almost get shot.

“Sorry for the noise. Damn pigeons. Drive me crazy.”

I walk out to where he is and look up. There on the pitched roof of the trailer are three pigeons, milling around.

“Isn’t there like a ‘Thou shalt not kill’ rule or something?” I ask.

He glances at me sideways and laughs. “For pigeons? Don’t think so. Wait ’til one day you have these dirty things pooping all over your front yard. You’ll want to shoot them too.”

“Hey, I already kind of want to shoot them,” I say, and he grins. “Is it legal?”

“BB gun,” he says.

“Oh.” That doesn’t really answer my question, but I don’t care.

He cocks the rifle, lays it on his right shoulder, and squints one eye closed. I’ve never seen a BB gun before. I’ve actually never seen any gun up close before. We’re not big recreational shooters, we who take the 2 train to school.

He shoots. The gun emits a little pop, followed by a clank when the BB hits the metal roof … about fifteen feet away from the trio of birds, who don’t look remotely alarmed.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“The girls went to meditate,” he says, and I feel glad that Aisha found something she likes, even if it’s something stupid. Then I think about the “for me” thing that Laurelei said, and I let it go.

Thomas aims again and shoots. Oh for two.

“Aisha is so pretty,” he says.

“Don’t I know it.”

We share a look, and it’s like he knows that I dig her. He reloads. “I heard you and Laurelei talked about God last night.”

“We spoke about God, and we concluded that God is dead.”

The ends of his thick mustache dance when he laughs. “You’re a tough nut to crack.”

“When you’re trying to sell me on God, yeah.” I put my hand out. “Can I try?”

He hesitates for maybe just a nanosecond, and then he hands me the rifle.

“Nobody’s trying to sell you anything. You believe what you believe. That’s all.”

“If you say so,” I say.

“So what exactly does this God I’m trying to sell you look like? What does he do?”

I fiddle with the rifle, unsure of what to do. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Thomas takes the rifle from me and shows me how to hold it. He places the butt of the rifle against his right shoulder and puts his right hand on the trigger. His left hand holds the rifle steady. Then he tilts his head down to look down the barrel.

“You see how there are two sights? This little slot near your face and the bead at the end of the barrel? Line ’em up.”

He hands the rifle to me, and because I’m a lefty, I reverse what he’s shown me.

“You’re a natural,” he says. “Wanna shoot?”

“I guess.” I concentrate on aiming at the birds, unsure if I’ll be able to pull the trigger. I’ve never killed anything before.

“So what does this God look like?” he asks again.

I put the rifle down and look at Thomas, and I think, You. Which is weird. God doesn’t exist, so he doesn’t look like anyone. But if he did, I realize, to me he would look and act like Thomas. He’d be authoritative and manly, not silly and prone to emotional outbursts like my dad. He’d be kind and serene, or whatever you get from meditating (aside from bored).

But that’s the kind of thing you really can’t say to a person without having them question your sanity – that he looks like God. So I say something else instead.

“He’s a big white dude, and he has a white beard and he wears flowing white gowns, but not in a gay way. He has thousands of switches and levers in front of him and they’re labeled, like, ‘Middle East Violence’ and ‘Bali Earthquake.’ Some of them he just flicks on and then laughs, a real deep laugh. Others he can adjust, such as the weather – someone’s gotta control the weather. What with global warming and whatnot, that’s almost a full-time job.”

Thomas laughs really hard. “That’s quite a busy schedule for God. You’d think he’d have some helpers, like Santa’s elves.”

“He does,” I say. “They are called God’s leprechauns.”

He laughs some more. “God’s leprechauns. I like it.”

“I try,” I say. I pick up the rifle and force a frown, so that I look the way a guy holding a rifle should look. I aim at the roof, and then, before I can think about it too much, I squeeze.

The pop jolts my head. Dust flies about five feet from where the pigeons are. Better than Thomas, but still a miss.

“No pigeons were killed as a result of this shooting demonstration,” I say. He grins. I put the gun down and add, “Anyway, I’m cool that y’all are spiritual or whatever, but just for the record, I’m pretty sure God doesn’t exist.”

He shrugs and takes the BB gun back from me. He raises the gun, aims, and says, “Reminds me of a joke I saw written on a bathroom stall. Someone wrote ‘God is dead,’ and signed it ‘Nietzsche.’ Then someone crossed that out. Underneath it, they wrote, ‘Nietzsche is dead. Signed, God.’ ”

I laugh. “So here’s what I don’t get,” I say. “You believe in God, but you’ve been to Africa and seen all the hardship and crap.”

He nods, his gun still aimed at the roof.

“So God lets that crap happen? Why? Why is God so mean?”

Thomas fires, and this time, the pop is accompanied by a pigeon tumbling off the roof.

My hand involuntarily grasps my own throat.

It’s funny, because it’s just a pigeon. And it’s not like I wasn’t just shooting at it myself. Maybe I didn’t put it all together. That the activity we were doing while having a nice talk could actually end a life. Even if it’s the life of just a pigeon.

I look to the other pigeons to see their reaction. Are they aware of what just happened? Do they know they’ve just lost their family member? Was that a mother? A father? A child?

That pigeon is over. Life done.

Thomas is too focused on his kill to notice me. He strides over to view the bird. I look down and see that its wing is still flickering some. Thomas lifts the BB rifle, aims, and fires down into it.

I sit down on the gravel, numb. Thomas goes inside, and moments later he returns with a dustpan and a black garbage bag. He uses the end of the rifle barrel to push the lifeless pigeon onto the dustpan, and then he throws that life away.

I sit there with my chin on my knees, watching and wondering what just happened to me. Because it’s just a pigeon. And Thomas is just a man, not like a god. Or maybe he is just like a god, because God smites things every day, every second. This all-loving thing you’re supposed to pray to, who loves you and provides for you. He’s a killer. He’s all-powerful, and terrible stuff just happens, over and over and over again, and God doesn’t stop it. Like with my dad. I think about this and I hate the world.

Thomas takes the garbage bag down the road to a green Dumpster and deposits the expendable just-a-pigeon life, and then he comes back and he sits next to me on the ground. We both sit there, arms wrapped around our knees, staring at a roof with one less bird.

“I don’t think God is mean. God just is,” he finally says. “A long time ago I gave up the idea that God was some great puppet master, that one day he decides there needs to be a tornado in Kansas. Things happen, and then there’s God.”

I don’t respond, because what would I say? Real men don’t have feelings over pigeons. I 100 percent don’t know what a “real man” is, but he doesn’t cry over spilled pigeon.

He looks over at me and swats me on the shoulder. “You okay, kiddo?”

“Tired,” I say, rubbing my eyes.

Thomas scoops up a handful of pebbles and shuffles them around in his hand. He sifts a couple of pebbles back onto the ground through the hole between his thumb and his forefinger. “Okay,” he says. “Just checking.” He says it in the way that people talk to damaged goods, and I don’t want to be damaged goods. But obviously I am.

Thomas heads inside, and I’m left sitting on the gravel, pondering bird families. Somewhere out there, a pigeon dad is in mourning for his son. He is wondering what he could have done differently, like tell his kid to stop playing on trailer park roofs. And he wonders: Where do all the bird memories go after death?

And what happens when you die? Do you just stop breathing?

Try to imagine: You are breathing. Then you stop. Breathing.

Forever.

I’M STILL SITTING outside, trying to get a grip, when Laurelei’s old olive Chevy spirals a cloud of dust toward me as it pulls in to the covered spot next to the trailer.

Aisha springs from the passenger seat like a totally different person than she was yesterday. Laurelei waves at me and heads inside, and Aisha jogs over.

“I know, I know. You hate meditation,” she says. “But that was … That was seriously serious. I’m all, like, Zen’d out and shit.”

I recline on the gravel, my elbows scratching against the rocks, which is not at all comfortable. Aisha kneels down the way basketball coaches kneel to check out a hurt player. Elbows on knees. Calves flexed.

“You okay?”

I nod.

“You don’t really look that okay.”

I look up at her and I don’t know what gets communicated, but in about a half a second she’s yanking me to my feet and we’re walking away from the trailer.

We silently stroll the dirt ring of the trailer park, past a trailer that has multicolored toilets in front of it, like some sort of art project gone terribly wrong.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks.

“It’s stupid. I don’t know what it is,” I say. “It’s just …”

“Yeah,” she says, and I have a feeling she doesn’t have a clue what “it” is. Since I definitely don’t.

I concentrate on kicking up dust as we continue to walk. All the trailers are covered with crazy, tacky stuff that’s hard to categorize. Street signs taken from the side of roads; macramé masks that would make a two-year-old cry; lonely, forlorn lawn ornaments; and other castoffs from the isle of misfit trash. I feel like I belong here.

I keep walking, and finally I begin to think that if I don’t say something, Aisha’s gonna just decide I’m fine, and I’m not fine. Part of me wants that, for her to not know what’s going on in my brain. Another part of me is so fucking tired of people not knowing.

So I just talk. “Do you think, like, pigeons mourn when a family member is shot?”

“You and your birds.” She laughs. I don’t, though, and she stops laughing when she realizes that I’m not.

We stop walking. She looks into my eyes, and I avert them from hers.

“I’m such a loser,” I blurt. “All Thomas did was, like, shoot a pigeon off his roof with a BB gun, and my head got all wacked, and —”

I look down at the dusty road beneath us. I say, “I’m a loser and a freak and an idiot.”

Aisha does the weirdest thing. She puts her hand on my forearm and squeezes. She speaks really softly, which I don’t expect from her. “I feel messed up sometimes too,” she says, looking directly in my eyes.

I can’t quite return the look. “You?” I ask the ground.

“Ugly,” she says. “I feel ugly.”

“You are the least ugly person in the world, and you can trust me on that one.” I am studying a patch of gravel-less dirt. It’s so much easier to talk without eye contact.

“You are the least loser person in the world,” she says, but I just can’t believe those are the same thing. I am definitely more loser than she is ugly.

I know that if I say that, she’ll just tell me again I’m not a loser. And that won’t make even a little bit of difference in my mind, because I know I’m at least something of a loser, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I don’t say anything. I just continue to feel her hand on my forearm, which now feels good, actually. Not in like a sexual way. Just in the way of something that feels nice.

She lets go, and we stand in the dust, close to each other, like we need to stay close now. I am finally able to look up into her eyes.

“We’re wounded,” she says softly.

A funny idea crosses my mind. Maybe a joke will always cross my mind. I imagine two soldiers in a bunker during a war. There’s a huge explosion and one of them loses his head. It explodes off and lands in his friend’s lap. And the friend looks down at the head, and the head says to him, “We’re wounded.”

But I don’t say that, because it’s the wrong thing and the wrong time.

“I know,” I say.

“I’ll help you, you help me,” she says, and I have to admit I like the way that sounds.

We find a place to sit in the shade, and we just hang for a bit until I feel better. Then we finish our lap of the park and go back to the trailer. Thomas and Laurelei are sitting on the couch where Aisha slept. I pretend I didn’t just have this meltdown about pigeon shooting, and Thomas is cool and acts like I didn’t too. We sit down and shoot the shit for a bit, and then Thomas and Laurelei share this look and she nods to him.

“So we have a little news for you,” Thomas says.

“We were just talking it over and it came back to me,” Laurelei says. “Peter and Lois Clancy in Salt Lake City. Russ went to them after he left us. We knew them way back when from those religious conferences.”

Aisha pulls out her phone like it’s a revolver from a holster. Thomas stops her. “We have all the information you need,” he says. “We just called them. You ready for this? Lois absolutely remembers your grandfather, and she says she’d love to see you.”

“What did she say?” I blurt. “Does she know where he is?”

“She said they lost touch, but she has something of his she wants you to have.”

I look at Aisha, wondering whether she’d even consider a drive to Salt Lake City. “What is it? Can she tell us over the phone?”

“She said it would really mean a lot to her to meet you.”

“But Salt Lake City is like …” And then I stop talking, because it’s embarrassing that I have no real idea of how far away it is. Out West, everything seems super far apart.

Aisha is on her phone. “About eight hours,” she says. “Give or take.”

Thomas nods. “That’s about right.”

I think about our options. We can go back to Billings and be there in a few hours. We won’t solve the mystery of my grandfather, but … Well, that’s it, I guess. Or we can drive to Salt Lake City and meet someone who knew him. Who has something for me. They may have lost touch, but at least it will take us a step closer.

Aisha must be thinking the same thing, because she says, “I’m game.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yes, really,” she says.

Thomas says, “If you leave now, you’ll be there by eight, even if you stop a few times. Lois said they’d be happy to put you up.”

My mind spins with the possibilities. What could she possibly have to give me? This is irresponsible. We haven’t needed to get gas yet, but if we go farther, we will. What about food? We’re definitely going to need to start using the credit card a whole lot. But then I figure, What the hell? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

I look at Aisha. “You sure you’re up for sixteen more hours of driving round-trip?”

She smiles and shrugs. “You got the funds, I got the wheels. Let’s go.”

I pull out my phone and text my mom.

Hey mom, on the road,

doing great. How’s dad?

He’s doing Bette.

Better. Sorry. He has more energy today.

Good! Okay if we take another day?

She’s going to say no. There’s just no way she’s going to be okay with me being off with a girl I hardly know, who she hardly knows, wandering the Wild West while my dad is —

I suppose one more day would be finish

Fine I mean. I hate this silver

Silly sorry

iPhone. Always charges what I type.

I don’t answer right away. I’m getting what I want, so why be upset? And I’m not upset. It’s just. I don’t know. It’s too easy and it pisses me off, I guess.

Thanks. Luv u.

xo. Please consider calling your fate

father

Everyone’s looking at me, so I put on a smile. And then I realize I’m going to freaking Utah with Aisha, and the smile becomes a smile for real.

“So, off to Salt Lake City,” Laurelei says. “You’re taking your grandfather’s journey.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. We’re following in his footsteps all these years later.

Thomas gives Aisha the address and phone number. Then he quickly pens a note to the Clancys, thanking them for their hospitality.

“Now these are real religious folks,” Thomas says, his tone a bit wary. “Can I count on you two to tone it down a bit?”

I look at Aisha, because I figure she’s the problem more than me, what with the whole lesbian angle. But then I realize they’re all looking at me.

“What?” I say. My jaw gets tight, but they won’t stop looking at me, so I finally just say, “Fine, fine.”

It doesn’t take much for us to pack up our things, and Thomas notices. He says, “Take the sweatpants. Both of you.”

“Really?” I say.

“Absolutely. You thought you were on a day trip. In fact —” He holds up a finger and disappears into the bedroom, and then he calls Laurelei in. After a few minutes, they return with a pile of shirts, some toiletries, and a ratty old canvas bag.

“There’s no way you’d fit in any of our shorts or pants,” he says. “But the shirts should do in a pinch.”

“Thanks,” I say, and Aisha says it too.

They walk us out to the Neon. Laurelei fawns all over Aisha, asking her did she get everything, is she sure we don’t want to stay for lunch, does she want to shower. They exchange phone numbers, just in case.

“Man, I’m gonna miss you guys,” Aisha says, burying her head in Thomas’s shoulder in a hug. I feel both glad for her that she felt so at home here, and a little sad that it didn’t work out that way for me exactly.

Laurelei takes my hand and squeezes good-bye. When she unclasps and lets my hand go, I look up and she is smiling at me, Thomas right behind her. There’s this pang in my chest that I don’t expect. He creases his lips in a way that tells me he’s sorry our visit is over. I am too.

“Thanks again for the stuff,” Aisha says.

Laurelei beams. “Don’t mention it.”

We get in the car, and the Neon kicks up trailer park dust as we take off.

“Bless you!” Laurelei yells to us.

“Bless you too!” Aisha yells back as we take a left out of the place.

I look at her. “Oh my God,” I say. “ ‘Bless you’? Next thing you’re going to tell me you no longer believe in the Porcupine of Truth. Which would be unfortunate, as it is, you know, the Porcupine. Of Truth.”

She grins. “I would never deny the existence of the Porcupine.”

We get back on the rural highway, heading south toward I-80. Wyoming is the windiest place I’ve ever been; even with the windows up, we can barely hear Fitz and the Tantrums over the gusts that whip across our windshield. We zoom past miles and miles of nothing but sagebrush, which I start calling the “broccoli of the West” as we pass cowless pastures filled with it. This makes Aisha smile.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen on this trip?” I say, deadpan. “The Clancys are psycho killers and they kill us. Or they don’t kill us, but they sell us into the sex trade.”

Aisha shoots me a look. “Don’t be such a pessimist.”

I point at myself as if taken aback. “Me? Hardly. I’m an optimist. The biggest optimist. Eternal, even. If I were an eye doctor, I’d open a practice called The Eternal Optometrist.”

I can actually feel Aisha roll her eyes. “Don’t make me sorry I agreed to this before we leave Wyoming.”

WHEN WE FINALLY arrive in Salt Lake City, it’s just before eight on Sunday night. We’ve driven straight through without stopping for food so we can get to the Clancys’ before it gets too late. The city’s skyline at night is awesome – clean and crisp, like a Disney city – and I have to admit it’s nice to be back somewhere with actual tall buildings. Even a city named after a lake of salt.

The address is in a crowded neighborhood on the north side of town, a tree-lined street packed with modern-looking houses. The Clancys’ home is older, with paint chipping off the door. I ring the bell, clutching the letter Thomas wrote, my head buzzing with anxiety. Aisha looks much more calm than I feel.

We hear scampering feet, and then an elderly woman opens the door a crack.

“Hello?” she says. I can only see a sliver of her eye and nose.

“Hi, are you Mrs. Clancy?” I say, my voice trembling.

She opens the door a few inches wider, so we can see her lined face and wispy gray hair.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispers.

I start to ask her why when a booming voice yells, “Lois, who is it?”

She shakes her head at me and speaks louder this time. “No. We can’t help you.”

She shuts the door.

Aisha and I are left standing there on her front steps, bewildered.

“What just happened?” I ask.

Aisha says, “I have absolutely no idea.”

From inside the house, we hear a crotchety man’s voice.

“They sent us a black lesbian. Goodness gracious.”

Aisha and I look at each other, mouths wide open.

“He wasn’t even at the door,” I say. “How the hell would he know —”

She bites her lip. They must have learned this from the Leffs, and I feel a twinge of anger that the Leffs would have told them that information. Not to mention sending us to stay with a bunch of racist homophobes.

“That sucks,” I say.

Aisha shrugs. “After a while you just stop listening,” she says.

Part of me wants to pound on the door and tell the Clancys that they’re hypocrites, hiding their hate behind a God who is supposed to be loving. But Aisha says, “C’mon,” and we walk back to the car and sit there in silence.

I wish I could be half as strong as Aisha. Things that would destroy me just seem to bounce off her.

“So what do we do now?” I ask.

She thinks for a moment. “Do we go back to Billings?”

My stomach twists. I’m hungry and I’m tired and the idea of driving another ten or so hours right now is too much to take.

“Maybe we stay at a hotel?”

As Aisha considers this, her phone rings.

“It’s Laurelei and Thomas,” she says, and I perk up.

“Hey,” Aisha answers, and she puts the phone on speaker. “We can both hear you,” she tells them.

“Oh hi,” Laurelei says. “I’m so sorry, guys. I’m furious right now about how the Clancys behaved. She just called me and told me. I’m mortified.”

“It’s not your fault,” Aisha says.

“Well, it feels a bit like it is. I had no idea. When I spoke to Lois a few hours ago, everything was fine. Then, I suppose, she spoke to her husband. She just called me, and she sounded very upset. I’m so sorry, Aisha. I mentioned that you are homosexual just in passing. I did not expect it would matter, especially because Lois seemed so kind. I wish I hadn’t said anything now.”

“I’m glad you did,” Aisha says. “I don’t want to stay with someone who hates people like me.”

“Well, me neither,” Laurelei says. “But I also don’t want you to spend the night on the street! I simply don’t know what to do. We don’t have any other contacts, and we don’t use credit cards. I could try to call a hotel and talk to someone….”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I have a card. We’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” says Aisha. “Don’t sweat it. We’re fine.”

“Well, there is something else. Carson, Lois still wants to see you and give you this thing of your grandfather’s. She can’t do it tomorrow, though. The first time she could get away from her husband is Tuesday morning, so she wants you to meet her at eight a.m. Tuesday in front of the Tabernacle in Temple Square.”

I laugh. “Um. So she turns us away, then wants us to wait two days to meet her? Could she figure out how to see us tomorrow, at least?”

“I know, I know,” Laurelei says. “I just don’t know how to advise you.”

I think about our options. We could figure out how to stay a couple of days in Salt Lake City. It’ll mean spending money, and it’ll mean taking some extra days away from Billings. I don’t know. Even though my mom will probably never, ever say no to me, my dad is sick and I should be with him.

But how could I forgive myself for giving up my search for my grandfather? I picture him in the photo where he’s holding my dad as a young kid. His face like mine. I remember one of his puns: “When two egoists meet, it’s an I for an I.” His jokes like mine. He’s my blood.

I turn to Aisha. “I want to keep going. I really want to know what this lady has for me.”

I don’t know if I expect her to argue, but she doesn’t. “Well then, I guess we’re staying in Salt Lake,” she says.

“I don’t know how to help, but if you can think of a way, we’ll do it,” Laurelei says. “I feel partially responsible. We both do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Aisha says. “We’ll be okay.”

We ask Laurelei to tell Lois Clancy we’ll see her on Tuesday. Laurelei wishes us well, and we say good-bye.

Aisha drives us to a nearby diner for a bite to eat. We’re both famished. While we’re waiting for our burgers and onion rings, she pulls up a site I’ve never seen before.

“After I was kicked out of the house, I couchsurfed a couple nights,” she says.

I crane my neck so I can see her screen. “I think you mentioned that.”

She explains that there’s this site called surfingsofas.com. People open their homes to complete strangers for God-knows-what reason – insanity, possibly. She found a family in Billings and she stayed with them for two days before she decided she was in their way and left.

“It’s worth a try. People review the folks they stay with, and vice versa.”

And then the craziest thing happens. I think, Sure. Why not? I’m doing all new stuff I’ve never done before. What’s one more new thing? “Let’s do it,” I say.

“Just no fucking Mormons. I’m over the fucking Mormons,” she says as she scrolls through people. “My soul is not getting saved in Salt Lake City. I have limits, you know.”

As I scarf down my burger, she finds two possible hosts who seem cool. She reads their profiles to me. One is a couple in their thirties who do organic farming, and the other is a lesbian couple in their twenties. I might as well just turn into a lesbian at this point, because that seems to be the direction things are going around here. She sends the requests, and then she dives into her cheeseburger while I tear into my onion rings and begin to steal hers. In between bites, we stare at her phone, hoping to hear the beep that would alert us to a message from surfingsofas.com.

“Did you know that the reason God burned down Sodom wasn’t because everyone was gay, but because of a lack of hospitality?” Aisha asks as she sips her soda.

“Um. I did not know that.”

“And of course the Clancys are religious. The husband’s a pastor. That’s very ‘love your neighbor,’ right?”

I realize getting turned away by the Clancys is bothering her more than I thought. More than that, she’s right. Whatever their reasons for not letting us stay with them, the Clancys knew we were two teenagers alone in Salt Lake City. They had to know that if they didn’t take us in, we’d have no place to be overnight. “Some people suck,” I say.

She stares down at the last remnants of her bun. “The last person to turn me away was Kayla,” she says, and I can tell from her tone that what she’s saying is painful. “It’s hard to find out someone you thought you might … love … doesn’t love you back. At least not enough to give you a roof over your head when you don’t have one.”

Instinctively I reach across the table and intertwine my pinky with hers. She curls hers around mine, and I have to close my eyes because all I can think is, I gave you a roof. Why can’t you feel that way about me? I’d do anything for you. I would never, ever let you sleep in the goddamn zoo.

After dinner, we drive the streets of Salt Lake City, which are completely impossible. N 200 W intersects with W 500 N, and you have to be just about a genius to know where you are in this town.

When the clock says nine thirty and there’s been no beep, Aisha pulls into a Big Lots parking lot and checks her email anyway.

“Nada on surfingsofas.com. Oh well.”

“Oh well.”

“I think it’s hotel time,” Aisha says, and I know she’s right, but I still wince. Right now my mom thinks we’re staying with friends. How the hell am I going to explain a hotel charge to her? She says yes to just about everything, but I’m beginning to wonder if we’re reaching the limit of “reasonable” expenses.

The cheapest hotel she can find online is a Days Inn for fifty-four dollars. That seems reasonable-ish, so we drive there. I’m feeling fried, so I know Aisha must be feeling even more so, since she’s driven the whole way. She invited me to drive part of it, but the truth is, I don’t even have a license yet. We who grew up with a crosstown bus don’t have a lot of incentive to pass a driving test.

At the Days Inn, the guy behind the counter doesn’t trust us from the start. He raises one eyebrow as we walk in, and his eyes dart back and forth like he thinks this is some sort of hookup. If only. He starts filling out a form anyway, and then he asks for our license and credit card.

I give my card to him, hoping we can do this without a license, or with Aisha’s. He runs it through the machine and waits, looking at the screen. Then he shakes his head and flips the card back to me. “Declined,” he says.

“What?” I say. “No. It can’t be.”

He frowns. “Declined.”

I look in my wallet. Thirty-six dollars. We don’t have any other way to pay. Should I ask Aisha what she has? I can’t. So we leave, out of ideas.

We sit in the car and try to figure out what’s next. Aisha’s eyes look like they’re beginning to close.

“Looks like we’re sleeping here,” she says, and I look around. There’s the backseat, where the Porcupine is currently lying on her side next to a shiny, satiny lavender pillowcase, and there are the two front seats. The backseat could possibly be comfortable for one.

She offers me the backseat but I insist she take it, and we compromise on each getting it half the night. Before we close our eyes, Aisha checks surfingsofas.com and finds that both of our requests were viewed and not responded to. Yes, people do suck. In a last-gasp effort, even though it’s almost eleven p.m., Aisha posts a message on the surfingsofas.com Salt Lake City bulletin board.