Whataboutmy girl Wheres she Did she get a job Is she somekind of fugitive or somthing Waw that helicopter looking for her? For him? Or was it just a coincidence? Did she get away on foot? But wasn’t it winter? Didn’t Orion come up that very next night, and scare her like a scarecrow over those great big indiana fields? Or was it illinois? Did she go on foot to the truck stop across the highway? Wasn’t she afraid she would just be stepping out of one fire into another? Did she get a ride with someone? A truck driver perhaps? An old wizened one? A comically typical fat one? With overalls to boot? And boots? Did they talk about boots? Did they ahve that in common? Did he tell her stories about his family, his home life, and did he laugh a little wistfully because he doesn’t get to see the too much? But was there a certain joy around his mouth when he recalled them in words, a certain joy that was so alien to her it was almost as much scary as it was heartwarming? Was she a little feral still? ANd did he have a picture of them clipped to the grubby sun visor? And when the sun started to go down did he glance over at her, worried, but she couldn’t tell if there was something else in the glance, and so she asked to be let off at the next town? And so he had another story to tell. Or would he forget her? Was she just another stranger in a nation with highways lined with strangers, all in row, all lined up ready to be processed like so many chicken nuggets. And where was that next town? Was it big? Small? SOmewhere sort of in between, like maybe about the size of SPringfiels? And were those smoke stacks billowing out pillows of great big steam against the cold clear air? And had the truck driver actually given her some money? Was he just that kind of guy? And maybe he had given her a winter coat that was too big for her. It was one of his wife’s cuz sometimes, rarely, not really very often anymore, she had used to ride along with him, and so she had left one of her old winter coats in the sleeper space behind the cab. And it smelled faintly of stale cigarettes and some old lady. And did she wrap it around herself like a goddamn teddy bear, and had she also taken some of *his* money, in a last desperate gesture before she’d left that damned hotel? Had she figured, well, fuck, if i’m in this i might as well go all in, and taken hundreds of dollars in cash from his secret stash in the hotel room fridge before she’d high tailed it out of there? And so she had a little money, and she had a place to stay the night, another shitty hotel, yes, but *all by herself*, well but then she’d spent a lot of time all by herself before, but this time, only difference was now, when night came, he didn’t, and she was still all by herself, and she was achingly lonely, as lonely as a washed out sunset across a frosted field, dotted by little black birds settling down and disappearing for the night, and here comes Orion again, arcing up across the sky, bow drawn, always taut but never released, chasing that little dog, or the little dog chasing him, impervious to the cold, oblvious that there was a planet below, falling apart, teeming with warm blooded ridiculous chaotic life, full of tangled-up intertwined big messy knots of stories, everyone’s stories just all up in a big tangled ball that’s never going to be straightened out, that doesn’t have a moral, that doesn’t even have much of a plot, that just keeps going on and on and on and then did she dot her way across the midwest this way, getting rides, buying groceries at little superarkets in small towns, staying in cheap hotels, and did that work out for a while obviously, but soon she realized it couldn’t go on like that forever? Where does a girl like her even get a job? Has she ever really had a job? SHould we give her one more night to not have to? One more night in some litte town somewhere, maybe the glow of a bigger city somewhere over the horizon, looming orange and suggestive in the deepening dusk? How often does she think of him? Is it every day? Every night? WHen she’s taking a bath in a hotel bathroom does she stop for a second in the luxurious empty silence and does her whole body strain towards any noise outside the door, instantly sure it’s him, it’s going to be him, he’s back, he’s found her, he’s come “home” to her? And when it isn’t, is she shaken? Does relief flood her like it does when she wakes up the next morning, totally alone, totally free, after she’s had another dream of him? THe dream where he’s back, things are back to normal, and it’s his money and he’s in charge of where they go and how they spend it, and also how they earn it, how she earns her part, pays her keep, nobody gets to live for free you know, he reminds her, everybody’s got to do their part, and there’s this sinking feeling of resignation, it’s not a nightmare exactly, there’s no shreiking demons or gore or chase scenes or anything like that, it’s just this dull acceptance, this, oh, right, yeah, this is how things are, this familiar beginning to rearrange your expectations and your idea of what life is like and your days and your nights, and the letting slip away of some other kind of memory, some other kind of life that you almost knew but of course you should have realized that wasn’t real, but this is, because he’s back, he’s here, and we’re doing this again, and this is how it always was and always will be and there’s nothing you can do about it, so might as well make the best of it, and she tries to make the best of it and pushes up against his hard rough body in the bed he’s just got into and made cold because he’s just come back from outside, and the pressure of his skin sends a little electric shock through her and if he’s in a good mood and not mad about something and if he’s not wild eyed and absent maybe at least she can make him warm, and maybe they’ll start to rub together, and maybe having sex with him will make her forget for a minute, bring some kind of oblivion, erase the others, the strangers, the rough, the cruel the unheeding, the distant, the alien, and she’s just about to get into that rhythm, that rhythm of giving herself away again, and she touches herself andmoans softly and he moves away and looks at her as if he doesn’t even know her and her desperation turns raw and inside out and she knows she’s going to debase herself, humiliate herself, and she rubs herself harder and starts to buck, to push with her hips hard against a pillow and when she wakes up, wet, open mouthed, dry mouthed, with another little moan, and when she wakes up and morning light sneaks in around another hotel room curtain, but a different one, a different color perhaps, facing a different direction, and reality starts to form around her in pieces at a time, and the full realization settles in that she’s alone. She’s alone and he’s not here and he’s not coming back and she clamps down on the pillow with sinewy knees and rubs and rubs and swirls tight little circles and rubs and rubs and swirls until she comes, hard, and cries out into the empty morning air, alone, and relief washes over her in great ridged waves and the tears come and then the sobs come, great wracking sobs and then she cries and cries and the sound echoes through this random hotel room like a stray dog howling about something, anything, nothing. Cars pass on the highway and she stares at the ceiling, humming, glowing, tingling, wide awake and ready for-- For what?