Sleep Walker

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Only one out of every two streetlights was working, but that was better than many other parts of town where the lights were permanently off. Luxury condo buildings which had been halted mid-construction stood like pyramids to lost gods and every wall and every door, on certain blocks, were defaced with crude graffiti.

But this street, these few blocks of town, still supported some scant commercial activity and the diner, aglow with neon, was a beacon against the darkness.

She went there out of boredom, but also to seek business opportunities. She found them that day in the shape of an expensive car with tinted windows parked right by the front of the diner.

Inside there were a couple of regulars, sitting in a booth. They were none of her concern. But the stranger sitting at the bar interested her. She eyed him quickly. Nice shirt, fancy shoes, stylish hair. He didn’t look like he cut out coupons from the circulars and his credit was maxed, no sir, and when she leaned against the bar, next to him, she caught a whiff of cologne.

Very nice.

“Hey, Annie, can I have a coffee and a slice of cherry pie?” she asked.

Annie turned around and gave her a big frown. Fucking old, ugly, bitch Annie. The girl already knew the answer was going to be no. “I’m not putting anything on your tab. You have some nerve hanging out around here.”

“It’s a free country.”

Annie frowned, but she was busy and turned around to head back into the kitchen. There was no dishwasher boy anymore, and Annie had to help with that and other stuff. The girl knew this and smiled.

She peeled off her jacket and tossed it carelessly on the bar, then she just as carelessly walked towards the beat-up green juke box sitting in a corner. She flipped through the song catalogue, picked an oldie, tossed a coin, then she walked back to where she’d left her jacket, right by the stranger while the strings of “Sleep Walk” played.

She didn’t have to waste a coin on it, she had the same song on her music player, but she did it for the effect.

An effect it did have, the stranger turning his head to look at her and she could already see the questions forming in his head, the appraising look as he took in her bare midriff and the chains hanging from her neck, the torn jeans, the hair piled up and the eyeliner laid thick. He was wondering how old she was, and if he’d get in trouble if he put a hand down her pants, although no one gave any sort of importance to that shit around here. Not with the way things were.

She could look anything from fifteen to twenty-five, and it drove men crazy, that ambiguity. She did nothing to reassure them one way or another. Let him look and wonder, it helped with the mystique. Who’s that girl? That’s one thing you could still cultivate, even in a shit place like this.

“You wouldn’t be able to buy me a coffee and a pie, would you?” she asked, sitting down and resting both of her elbows on the counter, asking without looking at him as she took out a cigarette from the back pocket of her jeans.

“I suppose I could,” he said.

“Good.”

She waved to Annie and Annie grumbled, but she brought the pie and coffee. The girl lit her cigarette, smiling at the guy. He looked twenty-something, going on the later part of the twenties rather than the early, but she didn’t give a fuck if he was seventy and geriatric if he bought her a meal.

“Are those your wheels outside?”

“That’s me,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“Nice. Are you making a pit stop?” she asked, because there was only two reasons anyone ever stopped in this town, and she wanted to know what category of guy he was.

“Sightseeing,” he declared, stiffly.

Ah. Well. The girl reached for the ash tray and tapped her cigarette against it one hand, while she pushed a fork-full of pie into her mouth with the other.

“Not much to see around here,” she said. “You must be looking for the show.”

He coughed, like a bit of pie crust had lodged in his throat. He washed it away with more coffee and then looked at her again, now more intently.

“How do you know about that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Everyone knows. Do you need help finding it?”

He unfolded the camel coat he had set on a stool beside him, as if he were about to fish for his wallet. She knew he was trying to make a quick exit and she needed to make an even quicker pitch.

“I bet you’re going to go check into the one hotel in town and you are going to ask the clerk there for directions, and hope they’ll draw it on a napkin and make your way there. Right? But it’s dark and lonely, and you’ll get lost in two seconds flat. It would be better if I guided you. You can’t even see the street signs at night, there’s no lights.”

He frowned. No doubt he’d noticed that and had made his way to the diner drawn by the glow of its sign. He had stepped out and looked around the ghostly town, chin up, determined, and realized life here was restricted to a thin strip of three blocks. Beyond that, the night swallowed you.

“I can get you there and back here,” she said. “It’s no big deal. And you don’t even have to spend an arm and a leg on it. You’ll never find it on your own.”

“How much?” he asked.

They haggled briefly. Once the deal was struck she ordered a milkshake and another slice of pie on his dime. When she was done, the girl wiped away the crumbs off her jeans, spun around and walked with him back to the car.

It was a very nice car and she sank into the seat, comfy, as he started the engine and they drove across town. They passed the hotel and the pharmacy, then came empty store windows, buildings that looked like maybe they hadn’t been pissholes ten years before, and eventually empty lots with chain-mail fences, blackberry bushes poking through them. In the summer she picked baskets full of blackberries, but it was the end of autumn now.

“Do you do this kind of thing often?” she asked.

“What kind of thing?”

“Look for odd attractions. Go to see the biggest ball of twine in the world or the clown motel?”

“There’s such things?”

“Of course. There’s a paper museum with doll houses made of paper and there’s a spoon museum, and I’m sure there’s other sights.”

“No. I don’t look for that stuff. This was a whim.”

It couldn’t be. She knew better. No one who came to town, who came to see the show, came just on a whim. It was greater than that.

“Can I smoke?” she asked.

“No. You’ll stink up the car.”

“I can open the window.”

“You’ll let all the heat out.”

He did have a point there, although she didn’t mind when the wind nipped at her fingers as long as she had a good cigarette between her lips. It cut down on the hunger, too, best damn diet in the world. Alright, so she smoked way too much and ciggies weren’t free, but they did their thing, and on a night like this she had to chain-smoke to survive it.

The moon looked as if it was sliced cleanly in half and the girl observed it, putting a finger in her mouth and nibbling at the nail without chewing on it; she simply placed the nail between her teeth, feeling the bitter taste of dirt on her tongue.

“How did you hear about the show?” he asked.

“Everyone in town knows about it. You can’t keep secrets here.”

“Hmmm.”

“We don’t talk about it, though,” she said. “It’s just a thing we know, like we know where the creek is or where the old schoolhouse used to be.”

She was going to have a good time with the money he would pay her. They’d agreed on half up front, half when they returned to the diner. She felt the cash tucked neatly against her breast pocket and thought she’d buy everyone a round at the bar. That’s what she did when she returned from trips like this, walked into the bar and bought a round. The warmth of the crowd, the friendliness of them all, was like a ritual. Didn’t matter none that she shouldn’t have been out drinking at a bar at her age or that her grandma got angry when she came home late.

There’d be money left, for sure. Enough to pay the tabs she owed around town, enough to tide them up for a few weeks. When it was all said and done, Grandma complained about her nights out but she took the money all the same.

“How did you find about the show?” she asked, turning her head to look at the guy.

He had a fine profile. Grecian, Grandma would have said. Like those white, carved heads that served as book ends at the library, ‘til they closed that down.

“A friend of a friend told me about it at a party. I looked for information on this town, but couldn’t find much. But, then, somehow, I… heard a bit more and made my way here.”

It was like that with the show. It was always people talking about it, you couldn’t find it in no guidebook, in no webpage, despite nothing being hidden anymore. It was part of its mystique, the feeling of being invited into a select circle.

“When did you first hear about it?”

“Last winter,” he said, quickly, eagerly.

“You took your time.”

“I wasn’t sure about it. I’m not sure now,” he chuckled. “Is it real? I mean… you’ve seen it right? You must have. You say everyone knows about it.”

“I haven’t seen it,” she said. “You have to pay for the show and we don’t have money to spare. It’s a tourist attraction; it’s not for the locals.”

“But then how do you know it’s real?” he asked, frowning.

“It is. Like the creek and the old schoolhouse.”

“I don’t want to waste my money on something ridiculous,” he said and he rested, for a moment, his right hand on his camel coat which he’d tossed in the space between them. It must be stuffed with cash.

He’d paid with cash at the diner. She could picture his money clip, the city where he came from, the girlfriend he’d lied to. Told her he was going on a business trip because the show was a secret. It was not something to be blurted out and if he’d told her, she would have convinced him to cancel the adventure.

“Everyone who watches the show says it’s an experience. That’s what you are looking for, no? An experience.”

Boys like this one. They tried to climb Mount Everest or did a tour of the Antartica. They had to live, had to do something, had to experience. She knew the type. And others, too. Women with brilliant careers who secretly dreamt of stabbing their firm’s director in the throat, bored housewives who didn’t want to push the baby pram around the block any more, wealthy men who had two mistresses and resented both.

An experience.

Everyone wants one.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly right.”

The streets had dissolved into nothingness and the road was bordered by pines. It really was dark and it really was confusing. He could have never found his way there on his own, he would have spun around seven times in circles and then another seven times more. He must have known it, too, by the way he squinted and tried to make out the road and she just said “keep going, ahead, now a wide left.” On and on. Until she said “stop,” and they were there.

A fence which had been white lay half hidden under dead blackberry bushes, much like the ones in town, and the trees by the road had lost all their leafs. A dirt path zig-zagged onto the doorsteps of a two-storey house.

It wasn’t anything special, the house. Just like the fence, it had once been painted white. But it was now gray. All the windows were boarded up, graffiti lavishly spread upon them. The only thing in decent shape was the front door, which had been painted with two coats of vivid yellow paint, and did not have a nick or scratch to show, its brass knocker carefully polished; as if the door had been transported from another location and affixed to the old house as a joke.

There was light on the second floor, it trickled out through the boards, making the house glow like a dim ember. Above it the half-moon was bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky to hide its face.

It was a sad sight, but not a frightening one. Merely a derelict house with nothing to show.

“Are you coming with me?” the man asked.

“Of course not,” she said. “I told you, the tourists are the ones who pay for the show.”

“If you want, I can pay for your admission.”

“No. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

“In the car?” he said, frowning.

“You’re not going to make me wait outside, are you?” she replied. “I’d freeze to death. It’s not like I can drive it away. Plus, you owe me my other half.”

“Yeah, alright,” he muttered.

He grabbed his coat, put it on and after lingering for a few minutes by the car he finally set off, following the path and knocking at the door. The door opened, he went in, and she leaned back, closing her eyes as she pressed play.

It was always good to bring music. Audio books could do too, but music was better. It made the time flow, it was louder. She didn’t play her special melody, saving that one as she always did, instead circling through other tunes.

Her Grandma, she’d be asleep by now, but come midnight she’d wake up, grab her cane and wake up her brother, tell him to go find her. The bleary-eyed boy would protest, but he’d get up just the same and go to the bar to drag the girl home. She’d be there, eventually, and he knew to wait for her. Wait for the round she’d buy. Then they’d drink several beers, the two of them, until at closing time they’d walk back home.

But she didn’t mind rituals none, it would have been silly to mind them. Spiders spin silk, salmon leap up stream, and people, they have their rituals. Don’t step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

It was time for a cigarette.

The girl opened the door, unfolded her legs and stood up, scratching the back of her head before she lit one. The smoke rose before her face and she turned off the music because she didn’t need the music when she was smoking. That was another one of the benefits of the cigarettes.

You couldn’t see much in the night, not even with that sickly light coming from the house. From this distance, it looked like the outline of a house, and the yellow door was a pale rectangle floating up.

In spring, if you stopped by this place during the middle of the day, the grass was speckled with dandelions and you could take out a can of spray paint and vandalize the outside at your leisure. Write “cock sucker” and “eat my pussy” on the boarded windows, taking your time, without any hurry. At night it was a different thing. At night you had to be careful. You smoked your cigarette and you looked at the house and you kept your distance.

In the day it was good, with all those dandelions. In the day the place was deserted, but friendly.

Nevertheless, not even in the day, would you damage the door. That was off limits. Everyone knew that.

She looked at the house, her cigarette between her fingers, cocked her head to the left. The earth under her feet was hard. The first snow should come soon enough.

It was peaceful and nice here, with the moon keeping her company.

She went back into the car and put her hands in her jacket’s pockets, fiddling with a coin. Bored, she opened the glove box. She found a pack of gum, the car’s registration, a pair of sunglasses which she put on, modeling them in the rear view mirror. She took the sunglasses off.

When she turned her head she saw the guy was walking back to the car. A cloud had obscured the moon. She couldn’t see his face in the dark, he was just a shadow, walking slowly. But eventually he got there, opened the door, and sat in the driver’s seat.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

He had his hands on the steering wheel, but he did not make a motion to start the car. He simply sat there, staring straight ahead. She gave him a couple of minutes before speaking again.

“Hey, we need to drive back. It’s late.”

He didn’t reply. It was colder now than it had been before and her breath came out in a puff. The lights inside the house seemed to have dimmed and she heard a noise, like a bird flying above. An owl, hooting, only it didn’t hoot. It was the motion of wings.

From the corner of her eye she could see the dead blackberry bushes which looked like they had been painted with ink, the tracery of the path.

“Buddy, you need to drive us back,” she said.

There had been no wind outside, but now the wind began to blow, rattling the dead trees. The owl which was flying near them must have settled upon one of the trees because she caught a flicker of motion, but she did not look to confirm it.

She didn’t look at the house, either, with its boarded windows and its yellow door. It was there. She could feel it. The house, the door, the night outside, the icy cold, and the both of them tucked like snails in a shell. She could feel it and she could feel the deadness of the soil upon which they stood and the half-moon, perfectly ordinary.

But not for all the gold in the world would she have stepped outside the car in that moment. Because the night was yawning.

That’s how Grandma put it to her, “the night was yawning,” the time she told her and her brother about the house where the show took place, and how she’d come there, and the radio played Santo and Johnny while Grandma waited in the car.

“Dude,” she said grabbing his chin with one hand and turning it so he would look at her.

His eyes were open wide. He looked young. She thought he wasn’t late twenties, but much closer to her age. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if he was 70 or 20, he needed to drive them away.

“Dude, drive. Now,” she ordered him, her voice firm.

She thought she was going to have to punch him, but the guy snapped out of it. He turned on the car and they drove. She saw a shifting silhouette in the rear-view mirror, but didn’t pay attention to it, her gaze fixing back on him.

“You alright?” she asked him.

“I’m… yeah,” he said.

He looked pale, beads of sweat on his forehead.

Tourists, she thought. Idiots.

She turned on the heat and the car warmed up quick. The guy was still holding real tight to the wheel, and if you looked close you’d notice his eyes were very bright. Like he wanted to cry and couldn’t.

Fools, all of them. Looking for experiences.

“I’m gonna play a song, alright?” she said.

She took off the headphones and pressed play, and the old music swept around them. That slow steel guitar, chirping high, moaning of a lost love. No lyrics, but a love song. Ain’t no need for words all the time.

He relaxed his hands. The girl lit a cigarette and placed it on his lips, and he didn’t complain none about it, he took a drag, and then she took one.

Now she looked in the rear-view mirror, a hand tangling with one of the chains around her neck. Behind them there were pines, a narrow road, the night with pin-prickles of stars. Nothing else.

The diner was open late. They parked, and were greeted by its welcoming glow. The light, like the music that had played in the car, was soothing. The girl opened the door and stepped out. He did too, although more slowly.

“Here’s your other half,” he said as they both stood in front of the car.

“Thanks.”

He had put on the camel coat and placed his hands in his pockets. She noticed he’d gotten the coat dirty, it had stains on it, as if he’d dragged the hem through the mud or dirt.

“I didn’t think… the show, I didn’t think…” he said, trailing off.

“Nobody does,” she said.

“What now?” he asked.

“Get some rest. You have a long drive back home tomorrow,” she said.

“I feel like I have to tell someone,” he said.

“Not me.”

“But—”

The girl took out her pack of cigarettes. She had two left. She handed both to him. He grabbed the crumpled box and looked at it in astonishment, as if he didn’t know what it was. He nodded, slowly.

No need for words. Words didn’t do.

She bid him goodbye with a quick wave of the hand and crossed the street, heading to the bar. She was going to buy everyone a round.