"You'd be the first customers I've had in a long time. The new motel owners aren't much for advertising."
The year is 2000; in two years a man named John Darnielle will reach cult fame for his up and coming album. Tonight, while he sings his songs into his Panasonic boombox, Barbara "Barry" Fennel parks her car on the top of a hill. The threads of her flannel strain as she stretches and slowly lowers her right arm onto Vivian's shoulders.
Vivian looks out the window and sees nothing but the tops of trees as far as the eye can see. At the bottom of the hill is a rusty motel with an empty parking lot. And above the hill is a sky full of stars, unhampered by the city lights. She strokes her braid and straightens her back, squirming out of Barry's touch. No one in the whole wide world can see her, and the pressure of the emptiness weighs on her back.
"Look, Barb-" she begins, but Barry cuts her off sharply.
"Oh, I love this song!" Barry cranks up the radio volume and lets the music flood the already suffocating space. Clearly, she's inept at reading Vivian's body language, and keeps trying to pull Vivian into a half hug. "And I told you, call me Barry!"
And I know what you're saying / And I know what you're saying it for / But I'm not listening / I'm not listening anymore.
Vivian twists and untwists her braid. "Look, Barry, this… date, hasn't been bad." She feels a tremor run up Barry's body, and yet Barry keeps her eyes forward, dull look on her face. "I appreciate dinner, I appreciate the movie, and I appreciate you getting me out of the city, but-" as much as she hates to, she chooses her next words carefully: "I am… just not interested in you."
Barry's blood runs cold and then hot, too hot, hot enough to increase the room temperature. Speaking loudly over the music: "Come on, why not? I've been a gentleman."
Vivian furrows her eyebrows together, keeping her eyes forward while Barry's eyes bore a whole right through her. With the albinism that runs in her family, Vivian is quite the spectacle to behold. Everyone wants to stare at her. They stared at her at the restaurant, Barry's big personality just a magnet for more eyes. They even turned their heads away from the movie to stare at her. What's that freak doing with that dyke? Even here, on the edge of human civilization, Barry is looking at her.
"I shouldn't need to explain myself." With the center console between the driver and passenger seat, Barry can only get so close. Despite the barrier, Vivian can feel Barry's body pressing up against her. She squirms towards the door, hot breath fogging up the window.
"Come on!" Barry throws her hands in the air, knocking her knuckles against the car roof. "We're the only two lesbians in this whole shit city! I deserve to know what I did wrong!" A single car pulls into the motel parking lot, stalls, and then makes a wide circle to turn around.
"Language!" Vivian wishes to protest further. Surely the two of them can't be alone in this world. But good little girls who are not freaks just don't seek out that kind of information. "Just take me home!" The music keeps playing:
And I know what you're saying / And I know what you're saying it for / But I'm not listening / I'm not listening anymore.
The tension in Barry's shoulders dissipates into the air. "Fine. Fine. I'll take you home." The radio is silenced and she twists the key.
And then she twists the key again.
And then she twists the key again.
And then it's Vivian's turn to throw her hands up in frustration.
"Are you kidding me?"
Barry sweats. "I've got a full tank. The thing's just old! Needs. A good. Beating." She slams her palm against the dashboard and then she twists the key again. Smoke rises from the engine. For the first time, Vivian willingly puts her hands on Barry to make her stop.
"Stop that! You're going to start a fire."
Barry grunts, reaches into the backseat for her cane, gets out of the car, and pops the trunk open. Vivian also gets out to fill her lungs, humid air sticking to her skin. She leans up against the car; Barry's noises of frustration are a horrible chorus to the otherwise beautiful sounds of nature. The hood of the car slams down with a thunk that rattles Vivian to the core.
"I'm going to head down to that motel and see if they have a phone," Barry announces. And so the procession makes their way the the hill. We'd be down so much faster if she didn't lug around that walking stick, Vivian thinks, bitterly.
The parking lot smells like cigarettes and old cheese. Rows of tiny bedrooms are stacked on top of each other. There's a small refurbished outhouse with a glass door, the only person within twenty miles sitting inside and meticulously adding to that aforementioned cigarette smell. As they enter, Vivian can't help but think about how terrifying it must be for a woman to work a job like this. All alone. In a position where anyone could waltz in and hurt her. She can't help but think about how intimidating Barry must look, bumbling through the door at this hour.
"Can I help you?" Anastase, according to her name tag, blows a smoke ring at them at they enter.
"Yeah, uh, my car broke down a little ways away. Can I use your phone?"
"Help yourself." She gestures to to phone on the wall. "You know, you're the first people I've seen come by here since I got a new boss. You'd think we'd dropped off the map altogether."
"I can't imagine why." Vivian looks out the door and up at the neon sign announcing the motel's presence. Snooze 'n' Cruise Palace it cries out with each flicker of the old bulbs.
Barry treats the phone the way she treated the car, without tact. "This phone isn't working." She holds it up and the phone makes only silence.
"It must be down again," Anastase says, neither particularly enthused or disappointed. After an extended silence, it's clear she has no desire to offer a solution.
"We could walk home." Vivian grasps the shortest straw and pulls.
"I don't exactly walk all that well." Barry taps her cane against the ground. "We could hitchhike." Vivian makes a sour face. "… You're right, not a good idea."
"Might I point out that you're in a motel?" Offers Anastase.
With a side glance at Vivian, Barry approaches the counter. "How much for a night?" Anastase taps her cigarette on a sign labelled 25$. Barry puts her head in her hand. "Twenty-five bucks, that's like… fifty bucks." Like a good dog, she places the money on the counter.
"Just one room for the both of you?"
"Unless she wants to buy her own room." She gives Vivian a pointed look and Vivian takes it with dignity.
A key is received, a door is unlocked, and Barry sits on the edge of the bed and works off her shoes. Vivian looms by the door like a shadow stuck to the wall. Barry's hair stands up on end. A statuette of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross in agony stares back at her on the wall.
"This place has a freaky vibe." She turns her back to Vivian and hugs her chest. "Are you just going to stand there and be judgey all night?" An eighteen wheeler speeds down the road, shaking the foundations. The windows rattle in their frames. Vivian digs the heels of her ankle boots into the carpet plastic fiber carpet.
"I'm not being judgey. Why do you have to be so easily offended?"
Barry balls her hands up. She's shorter than Vivian but built wide and low like a bulldog. "I'm easily offended? I've been nothing but a nice guy tonight!" She's on her feet, right up in Vivian's face. "You're acting like I've done something to offend you! And it's not like you're being prickly over the car breaking down, because you've been brushing me off all night!"
Blush burns through Vivian's cheeks. Her hands blindly feel for the doorknob; once found she opens the door and steps out of the car to fill her lungs. "I don't like being interrogated right now." Barry reaches into the backseat for her cane and follows after her, grass crunching under socked feet.
"I'm not interrogating you! I just don't like being treated like I'm some annoying dog. Tell me what I did to offend you."
Vivian doesn't want to talk, she just wants to get down this hill and into a bed. She would rather die can clearly define where the wall is, not when it should be obvious. Her boundaries are as simple as the boundaries between states, enforced only by pride and culture. Barry follows her down, occasionally stopping to pick a spiky plant off her socks.
"I'm not treating you like anything. Is my rejection not enough?"
Barry crosses her arms. They come down to the parking lot. It's completely empty, save for a single back minivan in the far corner. Were it not for the streetlight above it, it would be completely invisible against the darkness of the night. Against her better judgement, Vivian opens the door to the front desk for Barry to walk in first. However Barry freezes at the edge of the parking lot, neck craned high to stare at her car on the top of the hill.
"What's the hold up?"
"I just though…" Barry scratches the side of her head and enters the building.
"Could I please use your phone?" She rest her hands on Anastase's desk.
"I have no problem with that, but I can't guarantee the phone's quality."
Barry takes the phone of the hook, keeping Vivian in her peripheral vision. Now who's glaring and glowering, Vivian thinks, bitterly.
"I'm not getting anything," Barry announces. "Maybe we could hitch a ride?"
"I'd rather not get murdered. Just-" Vivian grabs a handful of her hair, "-get a room for the night."
"You'd be the first customers I've had in a long time. The new motel owners aren't much for advertising," Anastase says, tapping her cigarette on the 25$ sign.
"There's a car over there, though," Vivian says, leaning over to peer at it through the glass door.
"They use my parking lot and don't come talk to me," Anastase says with a shrug, neither particularly enthused or disappointed.
"Twenty-five bucks…" Barry mutters, fishing through her wallet. "That's a good four hours of work."
"Four hours of work for twenty-four hours of rest, sounds alright to me."
A key is received, a door is unlocked. Barry swings her arm around Vivian's shoulder and corrals her into the car. Vivian bears her teeth, but keeps her head down instead of biting. The center console between them is their dinning table, and the rest of the tables are filled with men in black suits and black cars with black sunglasses and black hearts. Vivian pulls her hat down at an angle to cover her face.
And I know what you're saying / And I know what you're saying it for… says the overhead speakers. If she hears that song again she's going to end up on the news.
Barry looks around, uncomfortable and confused, like she wasn't the one that drove them here. "It's like you're afraid to be seen with me," Barry says to her plate of pasta. Oh, so she can figure out things without being told them.
Vivian slaps the table and regrets it, loud noises only encourage those men to see her. Speaking softly, "It's just that you dress… so loud. And garish. You look like a-"
"A lesbian?"
"- a man." Vivian's face scrunches up and she forces herself to smooth out. Can't get too mad lest her face show signs of being alive.
"Real bold to call my looks loud and garish. I mean, look at you!" Barry flicks her wrist towards Vivian. Vivian's mouth fills with poison. "In your short, sparkly little dress, and your face full of makeup! Who are you trying to impress with all that?"
"At least I look like a woman! It's people like you that make people think we're predators!" The least a pair of deviants like them could do is look respectable!
Barry stands with enough force to shove the table into Vivian's stomach. "That's how it is, huh?" She storms up to the front of the restaurant. "I'd like my check now, please."
Anastase blows a puff of smoke into Barry's face. Vivian bites her lip, wanting nothing more than to tell Barry to get away from her. Can't she tell how scary she is, marching around with her anger fully showing? Real women just don't behave that way.
"Looks like you owe us twenty-five bucks," Anastase says, neither perturbed or disappointed by Barry's energy.
"Twenty-five bucks, for this service?" She looks to Vivian. "You don't want to pay for your half of the meal? Least you could do."
Throat dry: "I don't have my wallet on me."
"Doesn't have her wallet on her," Barry mutters, placing the cash on the counter. "It's like you'd really prefer it if I were a man."
The parking lot is half full of black cars and packed up one after each other. Barry drives them out and up onto the hilltop where they can see the world and the world can't see them. … But I'm not listening / I'm not listening anymore, says the radio, and Vivian agrees. She isn't listening to anything but the blood rushing behind her ears.
"Do you feel that?" Barry asks, harsh voice suddenly light with anxiety. "I don't want to go to that motel."
"Then drive us home," Vivian huffs.
"The car won't start up," Barry says in a grieving tone. "I put my whole damn life into this thing, and I just can't trust it. Just like how you think you can't trust me, even though I've doing nothing to you."
Vivian scoffs. "You are- you just can't let it go, can you!"
"Of course I can't! I'm stuck with you in this damned motel, in this damned city. And you don't even notice what's going on. We're the only two dykes in a thousand miles and you don't want me because I'm-" the word on the tip of her tongue is butch, but good girls just don't seek out that kind of information, "-masculine!? The Because I could take care of you better than any man ever good?"
"You astound me." She storms out of the car and down the hill towards the motel. Barry rushes after her, cane in hand.
"Wait! Wait! I don't think we should-" Barry stumbles and tumbles down the hill, rolling past Vivian. She manages to dig her fingers into the dirt and bring herself to a stop right where the hill meets the parking lot, but not before her body breaks her cane into three chunks.
Vivian runs to her side and drops to one knee. "Barb! Are you okay?" She cups Barry's cheek and gets blood all over her hand. Barry opens and closes her eyes several times and sees nothing. Her clothes are wet and sticky with dew and grass.
With a groan: "Not dead… Augh, that sucked." She holds up the part of her cane that has the handle on it. "Get an ambulance. Get police. Don't get a room…"
"Can't you just get up?"
"Do you think I use a cane for sport?"
Maybe you'd be able to walk if you didn't rely on it so much, Vivian wants to bark, but then she's picking up Barry's wallet off the ground. For a moment it looks like a small animal, it's certainly made of an animal. The small, brown blob is warm in her hands and now has a bit of blood in its crevices. One heartbeat away from biting its way out of her grasp.
"I'll try. I'm going to take this just in case."
"Vivi? Vivi?" Barry groans, but Vivian is up and gone.
Cautious now, spilling confidence onto the asphalt, Vivian approaches the front desk, holding the wallet with two hands. She stalls before the doors, ashamed that her most guarded secret is about to bite her. Same as her mother and her mother before her, Vivian is damn near blind. At the very least, the law would call her blind, but she can see enough.
She sees people walking around the city with white canes and working dogs. And she thinks of her mother who could see just as well as Vivian can but walked around tap tap tapping that cane against the ground. Why would she put her trust into something else? Why couldn't she have just powered through? Vivian did. The least a pair of deviants like them could do is look respectable.
She steps up to Anastase. "Can I use your phone?"
"It's right there."
She takes the phone off the hook and gets nothing. "Aren't emergency numbers supposed to work even when the phone line's down?" Anastase shrugs. "What about a room? How much for the night?" Anastase taps her cigarette against the 25$ sign and Vivian is forced to contend with the fact she just can not read it. She's about to swallow her pride and pick up the sign for a closer look, when time catches up with her and she recalls something Barry said.
Twenty-five bucks, that's like… And so, Vivian gingerly places a twenty and a five onto the counter.
"You'd be the first costumers I've had in a long time," says Anastase.
"Really? The parking lot looks pretty full."
She shrugs. "The new owners use this place to shack up their employees. They help themselves to the keys without ever saying a word to me."
"Must not be too bad, getting paid to warm a seat."
"It's certainly a living." As an eighteen wheeler rumbles past, Anastase hands Vivian two movie tickets.
Barry is waiting in the movie theater parking lot, dried blood all around her nose. She reaches into the backseat and pulls out a piece of her broken cane. "Vivi. I need you to listen to me. Something's gone really wrong." Without any tact, Vivian begins wiping Barry's face with a handkerchief.
This whole date has gone really wrong. "I got the tickets, we can go get seats."
"My cane's broken." She holds out the chuck as though a prop makes her words more real. "Vivian, we've been here before."
"This is the first time we've gone out together."
"Yes but- listen, there was this motel, and then I fell down a hill-"
Vivian bares her teeth in frustration. "Will not stop spitting nonsense and come take our seats?"
"But-?" she holds out the cane again.
"Can't you make it to the theater?"
"I guess. If you just just give me a hand." Barry launches herself onto Vivian, wrapping her arms around Vivian's shoulders. Vivian strains but does not buckle under the added weight. To anyone looking in, they'd just look like just an affectionate couple, which is exactly what Vivian fears. "So, where are we heading?"
"Uh…" Vivian squints at the tickets before coming to the more obvious solution of handing them over to Barry.
Dramatis Personae
Vivian Kinsely ………………… A pair of working legs
Barbara "Barry" Fennel …….. A pair of working eyes
Together they find themselves seated in the middle of the theater. Vivian has already preferred the big screen over a tiny home television, the blurs are much easier to tell a part. For example, she can recognize the face on the big screen as Barry on her eighteenth birthday, wearing a cute floral print dress over her Mormon undergarments. She looked nice back then, nothing at all like the brute leaning up against her now.
As the youngest, little Barb is jammed up between her six or seven older brothers for a family photo. She takes the embarrassment with grace, because there's cake waiting on the other side. No matter what her parents say, she won't find a drop of appreciation in having all of her family in one room.
She blows out her birthday candles and keeps her wish private as one is meant to. Before her presents can be dished out, in steps a man fresh out of the Bosnian War, decorated like a murderer. Little Barb has met this man before, but she's never seen him drop to one knee, and she's never been offered a diamond ring. Her mouth hangs agape. She looks to her parents, to her brothers, straight into the camera, and everyone smiles back at her.
Vivian whispers into Barry's ear: "Why did you say no?"
"Huh?"
"Why did you reject him?"
Barry grimaces. "He was twice my age and my parents practically sold me to him without telling me."
"Yeah? You were handed the safety of a heterosexual marriage without having to do any of the work. You could've been someone's wife."
Barry opens her mouth for some sort of rebuttable, but she finds herself too horrified to speak.
Back on the hill that oversees the motel parking lot, the silence follows them there. I hear your voice getting faster and louder / I see a stranger in your eyes… says the radio. The engine grinds itself into a smoke cloud and the smoke flows in through the air conditioner, forcing them to retreat into the night to fill their lungs.
"I think you're right." Barry raises a chunk of her cane as a white flag. "You're not right for me."
"Thank you for finally understanding," Vivian says, and the two mutually respect each other's boundaries and go their separate ways. As if! Something about that wording makes Vivian's eye twitch. You're not right… like Vivian is the one who's in the wrong.
"What do you mean by that?"
Barry shoots her a sharp side glance. "I mean I've had enough of you. You've won, I'm no longer interested in you." Moving forward in an ambling limb, Barry begins heading down the hill.
"No!" Vivian doesn't mean to say it out loud, but she feels it so strongly it comes out of her anyway. "No, you don't get to have enough of me!" Barry isn't hard to catch up with, Vivian keeps a steady pace right behind her, practically preaching her gospel right into Barry's ear. "I've done nothing wrong!"
Uncharacteristically stoic, Barry keeps her eyes forward. Her full concentration converted into the power she uses to stay bipedal. Vivian doesn't relent. Her braid as come undone and her hair flows into her face, her beady little eyes bore through the curtain.
"I am a good person!" She tells the world that can not see her. "I am a good woman! I've shown a great deal of patience tonight. It's just that someone like me just shouldn't be expected to keep up with a beastly cripple like you!"
"Well that's just fine, 'cuz this goddamned cripple is taking herself out of your hands!" When her feet touch the parking lot, Barry leans on a black car for support and catches her breath. Pain radiates up her body in waves. "And you can get your own room!"
Vivian's blood runs cold, pale skin taking on a sickly glow. She doesn't have any of her own money, but what she does have is Barry's wallet. With it in her hand, she watches the shape of Barry dragging herself across cars. Barry attempts to storm out of the motel's parking lot, but the world flips on her. One second she was facing the road and in an instant she's facing the parking lot. It's so jarring she wobbles and begins falling backwards again, only for the world to flip, and her head hits the parking lot ground instead of the road
"Come on!" Barry whines. "Can't you get over your hate of me long enough to relieve what's going on?" Panting and sweating, she manages to sit up and props her head up in her hands. Vivian stalls, feeling the warm leather in her hand and revealing in Barry's suffering.
The eighteen wheeler rumbles past. She imagines herself simply walking off, hopping into a stranger's passenger seat and sleeping unbothered in her own bed. But even in her righteous revenge fantasies she must have common sense. Nose pointed to the sky, she marches past Barry. Her hand is on the glass door when Barry grabs her ankle.
"Now hold on." She squirms back onto her feet and dumps her weight onto Vivian. So much for running off with her wallet. Together, they enter.
"You two get hit by that truck out there!?" exclaims Anastase, finally perturbed by the mess that keeps dumping itself on her lap.
"I want to go home." Barry doesn't mean to say it, but she feels it so strongly.
"Perhaps I can call someone for you?" Anastase takes the phone off the hook. "Hmm… the line's down," she says, disappointed.
"Just a room for the night," says Vivian.
"Two rooms! Separate rooms!"
You should be begging to sleep at the foot of my bed. "Yes, two rooms."
"I'm afraid there's only one room left." She holds up the key, as though a prop makes her words more real. "We're all booked up otherwise, I mean just look at that parking lot." She holds it out. "People from the city don't really come here. Let's say it's on the house. "
Both women reach to take the key. Quickly, Anastase lets go and holds her hands up in defense. It's quite literally out of her hands. In a rare act of choosing a different battle, Vivian allows Barry to hold the key as she drags her weight up the stairs. Weren't we on the ground floor before? Vivian wonders, as if they've ever seen this place before tonight.
"Alright, give me the key," she says.
"Wait." Barry holds the key close to her chest. "I don't think we should."
A vein bulges in Vivian's forehead. "Why not?"
"It was going in there that started this."
"What are you talking about?" Barry holds tightly onto the key and in response Vivian takes a hold of the metal tag marking the room number. They stare into each other's eyes. Vivian straightens her back, emphasizing her height over Barry. Barry may be buffer, but she's clearly not much for a fight. What was it about Barry that she ever thought was intimidating?
"I don't want to be stuck here anymore! I need you to listen! Things have been repeating, and I don't know what will happen if the loops gets completed."
"Stop this! Just give me the key!"
"I'm trying to warn you of something!"
"If you don't want in, you can just sleep on the ground!"
The key ring begins to morph and stretch as they repel each other. The tension is too painful to bare. Barry has her back to the stairs, and she's not exactly steady. If it came down to court, Vivian could wave the self defense card. They would rule in her favor. Her soul would remain pure.
Her hands make contact with Barry's chest. The bottom of Barry's foot slips off the top step and she falls backwards. She grasps the front of Vivian's dress for stability, sweeping her off her feet with the force of her entire body. The grassy hill rises up to slam into them, knocking the air out of their lungs. The momentum is too much for them to fight, and as one entity they fall, limb over limb, smacking into each other like two jarred bugs in the hands of an excitable toddler.
Eventually, the hill flattens and presses up against the parking lot. The human bolder comes to a bruised and bloodied spot. Putting her hands on the soft parts of Barry's body, Vivian pushes herself off the ground. She takes a few steps away from Barry, moving like a newborn deer, legs unsure of their ability to hold her up. On the fourth step forward, she crumbles to the ground and starts coughing. Barry remains motionless on her back, the world spinning her too fast for her to handle.
"Erughhhh," Vivian groans, long and slow. Her vision is black- no, a black van takes up her entire vision. The parking lot is filled with them. She squeezes her hand into a fist and the key bites into her. Past the barrier the cars create is a refurbished outhouse turned motel front desk. She tries to drag herself towards it, but an eighteen wheeler speeds past, shaking the ground too much for her to move.
"Clear!" A man's voice shouts. Vivian can't identify the source of the voice, but she can identify the shape of three men grabbing her off the ground.
"Let me g-!" She chokes on her own spit. In the corner of her quickly fading vision, she can see Barry being dragged away as well. The next thing she knows, her head hits the back seat off a Foundation vehicle, and the world goes dark.