“and Mister George Eastman once told me to embrace light, admire it, love it”
but above all, know light,* so today, when no warmth remains, I can’t stop thinking of that other February so long ago, its wind-scoured ice, the watery shadows, the weak sunshine, how you arrived at the orchid society’s gathering with your plant to swap—it was a lady slipper, a Cypripedium reginae, who refused to flower (remember, you once asked me, What good is a plant that never blooms?), and after introductions at the get-together, you avoided small talk, declined hot tea served from the hostess’s sterling samovar, ignored the shivering aspic, passed on the pastel petit fours the chef pyramided on china plates; instead, you wedged yourself splinter-straight into the farthest corner and studied the discarded cultivars on the sideboard (leave a plant, take a plant), studied the orchids in full flower (me) and the merely naked stems (your disappointing lady slipper), all the specimens waiting to be chosen, all unwanted, and then, the soirée’s hostess, my grower, caught your eye, her purple hair swaying in a pharaoh-high pile, and she commanded you, Take your turn, Mister Eastman, and you paced, then halted in front of me as you admired my anther cap and velvety labellum, your sad eyes gray as an overcast winter morning, and you whispered, Hello, my dear, and my leaves stiffened at the timbre of your voice, and you rubbed a thumb down my spine, your ascot wiggling at your throat, blue serge suit lustrous under the chandelier, and you proclaimed, I’ll take this Cattleya amethystoglossa, after which you snatched me up and departed in haste, and we wandered home through a blizzard, me inside your coat, violet blossoms crushed close to your hard-beating heart, as you whistled a waltz by Strauss, regaling the Georgian estates and Tudor mansions, the dead perennial hedges as you kicked through the sidewalks’ snowdrifts, the limousine following us at cortege-speed; and that day was ages ago, but the light was like today’s, like your eyes, and now, the power’s out, and I’m up early braving this ice storm, the downed power lines squiggling over the town’s frozen walkways and sparking like camera flashes, and the illiquid cold vanquishes every plant in your conservatory, the sleet tap-dancing a dirge across this behemoth manor’s slate roof and above your kitchens where the overhead bulbs are dark, where no percolators pop and brew, where sweating condensation solidifies then crackles on the casements, and I gaze through the greenhouse glass at the clacking maples outside, their crystal-encrusted branches, upside-down icicle crowns that hold court outside the panes, and you won’t throw tarpaulins over the mansard’s hole, that fascia destroyed in last night’s tempest, nor will you task the caretaker with the urgent repairs; instead, you perambulate, hum lullabies in this icebox orangery, and I wonder why you won’t help my dying friends or me, your collection of beauties, the Dendrobiums, Oncidiums, and Cymbidiums, the Brassias and Vandas, the perfect, sickly-sweet smelling varieties, the scentless, the gamboge, citron, and chartreuse, all of us inhaling and exhaling what heat remains, but it’s too frigid—thirty degrees Fahrenheit and dropping, twenty outside—and you rub my leaves, half-moaning, It’s no use . . . while I crane to catch your breath’s offerings, and I contemplate the world captured here, the impossible cloched daylight, the sepia tones that give me no hope, and I wonder why you won’t fire up the kerosene heaters or quarter-turn our pots or cover us with blankets, why you let this chill steal over our rows, why you drag your chair into the dim crevasse between our troughs even as your lobes and nose turn a new color, your whole face florid from the horror as hoarfrost tiptoes inside to nibble on our nodes, and Mister George Eastman once told me to
* Quote attributed to George Eastman, industrial magnate and founder of the Eastman-Kodak Company
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Lookers
Something’s crossed over in me, and I can’t go back.
—Thelma Yvonne Dickinson
Louise and I prefer a night-time ramble to the straight-shot of freeways or the whiz-by of eighteen-wheelers. Or the possibility of a trooper on the median. She reminds me that Texas is always off limits. I admire these lonely places as we lattice routes through one-horse podunks, the vacancy signs spilling neon shadows across two-laners. So many low towns span the desert vista like sparkling rows of teeth. When we finally slide out of the wilderness into cities, it’s slow-going from stoplight to stoplight.
We make good time this morning, and at dawn, we pull over, park behind a mini-mall to sleep. My pistol’s loaded and between my thighs just in case. Then, at midmorning, we hit the road again, and I’m peckish by lunchtime.
Cocktail? Snacks? Louise asks, reading my mind.
We pull into a parking lot. The cowboy saloon’s sign, bright even in daylight, flashes across its roof. Orange colts gallop in a loop, a stampede of electric hooves disappearing over the eaves, only resetting and running their hot steed color again from the other side of the building.
Inside, the bartender asks if he knows us. He says, I’ve seen you somewhere, I swear. We say, No way, then pound shots.
Louise wins every game of Skee-Ball, collects a ream of tickets, but she decides not to cash them in for a stupid stuffed animal we’d have to lug around anyway. Instead, we trade her winnings for more shooters; we drink and play until motel check-in time.
We stay in undercooled, stale motel rooms. Often when we unload, we rescue scorpions we find trapped in the tubs.
Today, we check into a nice enough spot to hang our hats. As soon as I drop my duffle, Louise scoots into her bikini, then hightails it across the blistering sidewalk, dives into the pool. She treads in the deep end, and I know that her freckled shoulders will soon turn pink.
Come on, Thelma! She waves me in.
I cannonball into the cold. We kiss under the bobbing rope, still drunk from our tequila lunch, then float at the ladder, kick plumes. I’m happy, I think, as Louise slides her fingers between my legs. I follow her lead, but I’m clumsy. And she’s irritated with me. As usual.
She says, There. No, there. She moans in her cute way.
I float, and the wind whips up, tousles the palm tree’s fronds. Leaves gurgle in the pool skimmer, dead bugs smacking against the intake flap.
We skip dinner, eyes bloodshot from hours in the chlorine, and roll around on the bedspread. As soon as we get into it, though, Louise pops up.
Let’s explore!
We change into our best jeans and drive.
After a few miles, next to an overpass, we spot a four-story mechanized iguana standing on her hind legs. The creature’s striped tail’s a kickstand, and someone’s painted her like a kind of reptilian femme fatale—she blows a kiss with crimson lips, winks her curled eyelashes. In her claws, she holds a car aloft; her spiny head sways toward a sign—Chip’s Go-Carts! Go-Go-GOOOO!
I say, Get a load of that. A sexy Godzilla. Huh.
Louise changes lanes, turns into the go-cart complex.
We pay admission at the window, get our helmets, and wait behind a group of pimply boys who roughhouse and punch each other. Teen girls wearing Daisy Dukes control the start line, and the air reeks of gasoline and adolescent sweat.
Louise chooses a green car. I want yellow. At the flag, I’m slow to go, boys left and right zooming by—I watch Louise zip ahead, rounding the curves with aplomb as she maneuvers through the fastest route.
On the way back to the motel, Louise rolls down her window and howls, Let’s go-go-goooo forever!
And at a quarter to midnight, Louise has one of her hunches and thinks we better check out. We head west again, and it’s so quiet in the car—Louise bites her cuticles and shivers, but she isn’t cold. We’ve got nothing to talk about. In silence, we pass in and out of towns with their golden arches and all-night groceries. Casino billboards beam kaleidoscopes across our backseat. And the loaded pistol’s in the unlocked glove compartment.
After an hour or so, we spot a sign with blinking dice and pips as big as my head. One die rolls toward the roadway; another follows; they tumble into snake eyes and stop above the Blessed Pair Motor Court.
Inside the motel office, Louise pays cash for our new room. The night manager, who eyes us warily, is in a pink maternity top, but she’s too old to be pregnant. She grabs a stack of overbleached sheets and towels and leads us up the breezeway stairs. Every few steps, she swivels back toward us. I’m sure she’s eyeing Louise—people always gape at her, try to figure how anybody’s born with a pretty face like that. The world’s never required Louise to be smart or lucky.
As the manager deposits the towels on the bathroom counter, she says, My, you two are lookers, then backs out of the room and gently tugs the door shut.
I’m exhausted, Louise says, and she gets naked. I follow, slide into the rough sheets, and roll toward Louise, but she turns away. There’s a clown picture over the bureau, and I stare at it as I listen for Louise’s snores to turn soft and regular. The clown smirks.
At the window, I yank open the blinds. There’s our dust-covered car with its cracked windshield, the top still down. We always back it in, just in case.
I sit at the table and open the road atlas to map our next route. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll travel, but then again, I’m not sure how much longer we can heap bright town on top of bright town and aim past that horizon. Louise’s breaths are steady now, and I worry—I always want her to feel secure. Soon, tomorrow or next week or who knows when, I’ll need to protect us. I spin the pistol on the table like it’s a bottle. It slows and stops with the barrel pointing toward the door.
Across the street, there’s a neon bar advertisement on a building. The sign moves through its mechanized cycle: a half-full rocks glass tips strobing blue light into the motel parking lot. I can almost hear the ice cubes tinkle as they plummet through the air, then disappear at ground level. The wind tangles the hedges along the road—the breeze swells, disperses. And the cocktail sign cartwheels, resets.
Cate McGowan is the author of a book of short stories, True Places Never Are, which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Lascaux Book Prize. Her novel, These Lowly Objects, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Books. McGowan’s stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous outlets, including Glimmer Train, Crab Orchard Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Phoebe, Shenandoah, and a Norton anthology, Flash Fiction International.
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