Ten minutes later, as I turn the SUV south toward the desert fifteen hundred miles away, Corey starts snoring in the background, and I say what I should have said sometime during the past two weeks, what little I’ve seen him. “Thanks.”
Dominic looks out the passenger window out to the ocean. It looks like a storm is coming in off the water. “For what?”
“Our story.”
A pause. Then, “You’re welcome.”
I can’t find anything else to say.
Yeah. Nothing’s going to change at all.
TWO DAYS later, I’m trying to understand just how it is that people can live in Arizona.
“It’s all flat and boring,” I say morosely, staring out the window as Kori drives through the outskirts of Tucson. Dom’s asleep in the backseat. I’ll have to wake him up soon. “Where the hell are all the trees? I don’t think it’s possible for people to live without close proximity to trees.”
“They’re right there,” she says, pointing out the window.
“That’s a cactus.” A very phallic one at that.
“Same thing.”
“You can’t hug a cactus.”
“You shouldn’t really be hugging trees, either. That’s just weird.”
What a sad woman Kori is. “When are we coming up to the unconstitutional checkpoint where, if I were any darker of skin, I’d probably be detained for being a suspected illegal immigrant even though there’s no proof?”
“I told you already, those aren’t really a real thing.”
“Oh, really?” I scoff at her. “Tell that to Jan Brewer, the evil head witch who runs this barren, treeless place.”
“I think her job title is actually ‘governor,’ not evil head witch.”
I wave her off. “Same thing.”
“She was promoted after Janet Napolitano left. She was reelected after that.”
“They did the same thing with Stalin,” I say. “Look how well that turned out.”
“I didn’t say they were smart people,” she says. “You’re in a red state now with your tiny blue self. Think of yourself as a Smurf standing on the sun.”
“That is surprisingly visual and so very, very sad. You guys have a lot of dirt here.”
“It’s called a desert.”
“It’s dirt.”
“You know, there’s a hugely varied ecosystem here that survives—”
“Nice try,” I tell her. “You almost had me there appealing to my scientific side, but then my phone just buzzed with an extreme heat warning.”
“What, 110? That’s nothing. It’s a dry heat. Remember the humidity in New Hampshire? That was excruciating.”
“Where are we?” Dom asks from the backseat, his voice rough with sleep and extraordinarily hot. Damn fucking feelings and hormones.
“Almost there,” Kori says. I can’t tell if she sounds happy about it or not. “Another ten minutes and we’ll be at Sandy’s. He should be off work now, so we should be good to go directly to his house.”
“You excited to be home?” I ask her. I don’t know what sort of answer I’m expecting. Hopefully a reasonably honest one. I know Corey and Kori. I know Kori comes out when Corey’s nervous or scared or wor