Negative Space by Mike Robinson (best ereader for students txt) 📕

the windshield. Traffic bobbing and blinking around them. Miles and miles of cement and sky, red brake-light glares against the gloom. The freeway to the highway, the city gradating toward the vast hard-kneaded country, stipples of civilization until there was nothing but raw rumpled plains, wide and forever.

***

She isn’t here.

Where the hell is she?

He gripped the steering wheel tighter. His brain raced. She hadn’t been to The Schoolhouse in days. She had missed his meeting.

Gone, she’s gone, avoiding you, wants nothing to do with yo,u can’t you see what’s wrong with you what’s wrong with you—?

James kept at least three cars between him and them on the eastbound I-10 freeway, which then turned into the I-15 toward Barstow. Good solid buffer. They wouldn’t notice. He imagined heads were swimming with the riots, too. What bullshit that was, but maybe helpful, at least to him. Good distraction.

She knows she knows she knows she sees you.

No. He was okay. Especially since he now drove Teresa’s car, and not his own.

***

IV

By nightfall, the gas needle trembled just above empty yet they rolled on, speeding across the desert beneath the wide dome of the sky, the wispy clouds like squiggly snow-tire tracks tracing away toward the horizon. Within fifty miles of Barstow, muscled clouds appeared, bunched up in a grand conspiracy of storm. The gray sheet of rain ahead veiling the spread of homes and buildings on an otherwise desolate landscape. As they moved into it, raindrops pop-thudded loud and harsh on the van.

“How about we find a motel for now?” Dwayne said. “Before we head any farther. We can decompress a little. Rest. Figure out what to do.”

In silence, Max and Karen agreed.

They entered Barstow. Pebbled streets amphibious with rain-slick. Thunder a cosmic throat-clearing. The horizon aflutter in lightning. In desert country there was a divine rawness to the weather, which dominated all here.

They found a Motel 6, vacancy sign sputtering. Karen and Dwayne dashed into the lobby. Max waited in the back seat. Thousands of nails drummed the roof of the van, as if the rain were trying to coax out of this mistaken instrument some kind of maddening rhythm.

They were given Room 5.

***

“We’re just staying here one night,” Max said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Right?”

“That’s the plan,” said Dwayne. He thumbed toward the street. “I’m going to grab some gas. We can leave first thing tomorrow. I may hit the store, too. You want me to pick up anything, food-wise?”

“I think I’m okay,” Max said.

Karen checked her cigarette supply and shook her head.

Dwayne looked at them both. He sprinted back to the van, rummaged a bit, then returned with a dirty towel. Karen and Max leaned forward as he unraveled it, revealing, like some parent might a hideous babe, his single-action revolver.

“Keep this with you, in case,” he said.

Blank stares.

“As a precaution,” said Dwayne. “I noticed a car behind us for a long way. It’s a highway so everyone’s traveling far, but this guy was with us since we left Los Angeles. At least that’s when I noticed him. Didn’t get a good look, though.”

“Jesus,” Karen said, taking the towel and gun. “Okay.”

Thunder grumbled. As if in rebuke, the rain strengthened. Dwayne flipped up his collar, shoved his hands into his pockets, and hurried through the silvery-wet column back toward the van.

Karen shut the door and slid the bolt, then dumped the gun on the nightstand and backed away from it.

“I hate guns,” she said. “I can handle whips and chains, paddles and knives, but guns....”

Max sat still.

“He’ll be back soon,” he said. “Soon.”

***

He wasn’t entirely sure if they were on to him. They’d given no indication, but what indications could they have given? Of course, if that grubby driver was any sort of actual investigator, he would have all his sensory dials turned up. But clearly the guy wasn’t that good. He was sloppy, cheap. It was probably why Penelope had used him. Good rate. But one got what one paid for. A broken window. Cocksucker.

Cunt.

For many miles, he kept multiple car lengths between them. As they turned off in Barstow he continued driving, taking a later exit. Turning back. He cruised the streets. Either they were pulling off to stay the night or they were swinging by for a quick bite. Fast food or a grocery store or a motel. There wasn’t much else, to be honest. Regionally, Los Angeles was like a brilliant sun in an empty and loser solar system.

Besides, that van, like something out of some’69-hearted Boomer’s wet dream, was easy to watch.

The Motel 6.

He parked half a block away. Watched. The grubby driver was leaving. He knew the room. Okay. The best way to approach this. What was the best way to approach her? She was with the grubby driver and that guy Max from the sex shop. There was no way to do this without pissing on his image, at least with her. Followed me all this way? He was over the edge now. A crazy fucking stalker. But how callous was she? It was all theater. Lying to him. All this time, he felt like she’d been building him toward something, like he himself had been building toward something, but that he had been denied suddenly, whatever that was. An answer. A release.

***

A knock on the door, muffled by the storm and the television, which Max muted.

Another.

They shared a glance. Dwayne? No. He had just left, and he had a key. Unless he’d forgotten it.

Then, through the watery patter, “Penelope?”

Tingling in Max’s gut. Karen turned white.

“No,” Karen hissed. “No no what the fuck—”

Max sprang to the edge of the bed, huddled close by the nightstand where lay the toweled gun. Karen stood between him and the door, frozen.

“Penelope,” he said. “Whatever your name really is. Come on, please. I just want to talk to you. I know you’re there.”

You’re going to use the gun, Max thought. You’re going to have to use the fucking gun.

A gray shadow appeared in the