NINETEEN

The next morning Genesis made it about half a block away from the motel before she doubled over and vomited into a trashcan. Lupita held her hair tenderly until she got it all up. It wasn’t even noon but the desert air was hot and muggy already. When she was done Genesis straightened up and croaked, “I gotta go back. I’m too hung over for this.”

They had planned on getting some food at the Nugget Diner on Virginia Street, but the oceans of booze she had consumed last night had taken too heavy a toll. Two casinos, at least three bars, and more shots than either of them could recall… She couldn’t remember how much she drank, nor even making it back to the room, but the ominous taste in the pit of her gut informed her that cheap tequila had definitely been involved. There was a hazy recollection of Lupita cracking a bottle over the head of some hick who tried to grab Genesis’ ass. Genesis was pale and unsteady. She looked like she was about to faint. Lupita smiled indulgently and ruffled her hair.

“Okay hun. Go back to the room. I’ll go grab some food to go and come right back. You need me to get you anythin’?”

“Alka Seltzer.”

“Alright. Can you make it back okay?”

“Uh-huh. I’m sorry baby. I feel like such a lightweight.”

“You ain’t a lightweight, far from it. Now go lie down, I’ll be back in ten.”

Lupita made it back to their room a half hour later. She slid the key in the lock and opened the door. Genesis had been sitting on the edge of the bed. She jumped anxiously to her feet when she heard the door open. “Oh, it’s you…” she said.

“Who the fuck else would it be? I got your Alka Seltzer…”

She tossed the pack over and Genesis caught it. “How you feelin’?”

“Lousy. I’m kinda freaked out… you didn’t see some crazy looking bitch hanging around outside, did you?”

Lupita stopped. She cocked her head to the side, like a dog picking up on some inaudible high-pitched frequency. “Whaddya mean, crazy looking bitch?”

Genesis took a deep breath.

“When I got back here… there was someone in the room. Some girl. She was snooping around.”

Lupita frowned. “Like a cleaning lady?”

“In this place? Don’t think so. I figure she musta been the old bag’s grandkid or something. She was too young to be working here otherwise. She musta been like thirteen or fourteen, tops. She wasn’t cleaning shit, that bitch was here to snoop. She was real freaky looking, too. She had all of this… powder all over her damn face.”

Lupita started pacing the room.

“Whaddya mean, powder? Like make-up?”

“No. It was… it looked like the bitch just sneezed into a bag of coke or somehin’.”

“And she was sneakin’ around in here?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lupita started furiously checking their bags.

“Wait, wait! It’s okay. I already checked. She didn’t take anything. Everything’s still here. I think I musta disturbed her before she had time to really take a good look, ya know?”

Unconvinced Lupita started checking around the room, as if looking for bugs or hidden cameras. “What did she do when you came in?” Lupita demanded.

“She just froze. Like a deer in the fucking headlights. She was kinda… leaning over the bed, like she was looking at the pillow or somethin’. When I walked in she straightens up and just… stares at me. That’s when I saw she had all of that weird powder shit all over her face. She had this crazy expression…. Like she’d been smoking sherm or something. I dunno, something about this chick really freaked me out, Lupe. There was something real weird about her. We just stood there lookin’ at each other for a minute.”

“And then?”

Genesis came over to Lupita. She draped her arm over her neck. Lupita’s body was coiled, like a cobra about to strike.

“Chill baby,” Genesis said, “I just told that snooping little cunt to get the fuck outta our room, before I kicked her skinny ass. She practically ran out of here. Never said a word to me.”

“Fuck,” Lupita said. She shrugged Genesis’s arm away and started pacing again. “We gotta get outta here. Last fucking thing we need is people snooping around in our shit!”

Genesis sat on the bed and ran her trembling hand through her hair. It was the first time she had ever seen Lupita lose her cool like this. It was strange because the incident seemed so trivial. After all, this place wasn’t exactly high end. The kid was probably just looking for cash or jewellery.

“Tell me about that powder again. Was it like… ashes? Like the stuff that was on the old lady’s forehead when we checked in?”

“Ashes? I guess, maybe. I dunno. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Look sweetie…” Genesis sat next to Lupita and pulled her close. She kissed her lightly on the neck. “I ain’t feeling up to much anyway. There’s no way I could make the drive today, I feel lousy. We already paid up for two nights… Maybe we could just stay in tonight and split tomorrow morning? We’ll be in here. Nobody’ll try to come in again…”

Genesis felt Lupita’s body relax slightly. “You really told her you was gonna beat her ass?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lupita smiled a little. “She got lucky. If I’d have walked in here and caught her I’d have shot that cunt in the face. Still, I guess grandma down there ain’t gonna be amused when the kid tells her what you said.”

“Fuck that old bitch! I’ll bet she put her up to it. Thinkin’ we’re throwing some crazy lesbian dope parties up here, or some shit.”

Lupita laughed. “Well, she wouldn’t be too far off in that case, would she? Still, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a night off.” Lupita looked around their room and smiled. “Stay in and enjoy the surroundings, you know?”

They fixed some Dilaudid, which helped with Genesis’s hangover and Lupita’s anxiety. Lupita’s paranoid reaction had disturbed Genesis, reminded her of the hair-burning and prayer routine that had gone down after the massacre at the pharmacy. An uncomfortable hint that all might not be quite right with Lupita. As if she had caught a glimpse of some madness that was lurking under the surface of her lover’s public face. But after she fixed Lupita seemed to relax, and after a while so did Genesis. The night unfolded with the quiet hum of an opiate haze. They lay on the bed idly watching re-runs of To Catch A Predator with Chris Hansen on CBS. On an ad break Lupita looked dreamily at Genesis and said, “Genesis hun, you shoulda seen the pharmacy I picked your stuff up at.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. They got one old lady working in there. Place is like something out of Leave It To Beaver. I had a good look around. They don’t even have cameras… It was one of those places that looked too good to be true, ya know?”

“Sounds… great…” Genesis slurred through heavy, slack lips.

Sensing that Genesis was too far into her nod to listen, Lupita said, “Shhhhh. We’ll talk about it later…”

Later that evening Genesis was sleeping while Lupita lay next to her, staring at the ceiling. The TV droned away in the background but Lupita was lost in her own thoughts. She was thinking about many things: about the old woman at the front desk, and the intruder Genesis had caught. About the road that lay ahead of them. About a man who looked a little like Charles Bronson who had once said to her “The shit has to flow, yes?” But mostly she was thinking about the pharmacy three blocks away: the one with the elderly pharmacist, minimal security, and a pile of controlled substances just there for the taking.

A strange sound jerked Lupita out of her thoughts. A faint scratching noise, like mice in the walls. She wondered if she had imagined it at first. But no, there it was again.

It seemed to be coming from the door.

Careful not to wake Genesis, Lupita reached under the pillow for her gun and crept out of bed. She clicked on the outside light and put her eye to the peephole. She saw nothing, just the deserted walkway and the bugs that swarmed around the bulb above the door. She opened the door a crack. She peered around. Nothing.

She was about to close the door again when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Something black was lying on the walkway, just off to one side. It was maybe ten inches long, thick, and it seemed to be squirming. Lupita felt her heart’s steady tattoo in her throat. She opened the door further and peered at the alien thing, still unable to determine what it actually was. She cautiously crouched down, and gave it a solid shove with the nose of the gun. The air suddenly came alive as a swarm of bugs erupted from the object as the gun made contact with it. Lupita jumped back in disgust. She could see now that underneath the mass of insects the thing was reddish-pink. Lupita’s stomach turned as she realized what the glistening, meaty thing was: a cow’s tongue, already swarming with parasites. Sickened, Lupita immediately understood what this meant. She closed the door, pulled the bolt across, and began frenziedly packing their bags. Genesis slept through it all.

When she was done Lupita lay next to her in the bed, wide awake. She clutched the gun to her chest all night. Every time she heard a noise her eyes shot over to the door, as if she expected the devil to come bursting through it. Like the onset of a bad acid trip, all the latent evil and darkness in the universe came seeping out of the shadows. The very air she breathed seemed thick as molasses, infused with the stench of the grave. She occasionally glanced over at Genesis, who lay dozing next to her, oblivious in the pre-dawn gloom.

As soon as the sun was up, Lupita told herself, they were both getting the fuck out of this place. She thought of the pharmacy she had been casing. How easy it seemed. Ripe for the picking. With omens like this in the air, maybe it would be smart to go underground for a while. Hide out. Draw the curtains and withdraw from the world until the winds changed. There were bad vibes in the air, gathering storm clouds.

She thought of the pharmacy again.

One job, a quick hit and run on their way out of town… that would buy them some time. Give them some room to breathe. Lupita ran her thumb lovingly over the smooth contours of the handgun. One more job and they could hide out. Keep their heads down in anticipation of the coming deluge. She listened to the wind, and the steady rise and fall of Genesis’s soft snores.