American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,128

bends forward and starts rubbing the side of her head and rocking back and forth.

Jesus, Bonnie, says Mal.

Bonnie whimpers and looks away.

Get out of the goddamn car.

No.

Get out, damn you.

I need to cook up, says Bonnie.

What! Like hell you do. I let you cook again and you won’t even be fucking walking. You’ll fall asleep. You’ll be dead.

I won’t. I’ll walk fine. I promise. Just let me cook up a little.

No. Get fucking going.

But it’s mine anyway, you gave it to me, says Bonnie. She reaches for the bag on the dashboard.

Mal hits her so hard for a moment Bonnie thinks she’s about to pass out. Bonnie leans up against the window of the car, the side of her head contracting, expanding, contracting, crunching like eggshells with each contortion. She blinks hard and looks around, gaping.

Mal says, Who the fuck do you think you are?

You hit me!

You’re goddamn right I did. That isn’t how this works, girl. You get what I need then you get what you need.

I want to go home, cries Bonnie.

You want to go back to that shit-ass apartment? Is that really what you want? Because you can rot in there if you like. I’m damn near tempted to drop you off back there.

And Bonnie wants to say no, no, that’s not her home, not really. She almost tells her what she really wants, but she is so ashamed she can’t even speak of it.

All right, she says.

Good, says Mal. She leans over and throws open the door of the Suburban. Go on, she says. Get.

Moving slowly like a beaten dog, Bonnie slides out of the passenger seat of the car and takes the lamp, the gloves, and the wooden box.

Wait, you got to let me light it, stupid, says Mal.

Bonnie holds the lantern out, and Mal strikes a match and sets its wick alight. Now go on, says Mal.

Bonnie says, This is it, right?

This is what?

The last time.

Mal looks at her for a while. Yeah, she says. Yeah, it’s the last time.

Because I don’t want to do this again, Mal. You don’t know what it’s like in there.

If you do it now, you won’t ever have to know again, either.

No, says Bonnie. I’ll always know. I can’t go back. Not from that.

Then she turns and walks down the ravine and into the tunnel.

At first it is the same. A tunnel like any other, filled with the echoes of her footsteps and the wind being dragged across its mouth. It goes on and on and on, underneath the town and maybe even farther. The lantern’s light is weak, turning the corrugated metal sides of the tunnel into a flexing, pulsing accordion with each step. They have to use naked flame because flashlights don’t work where Bonnie’s going. She’s never been sure why but she’s heard she is not the first person to try running the tunnels for Bolan and his people (whoever they are). Apparently there was someone they used before and he went in with a huge flashlight in his hand, like one of those mini-spotlights or something, but when he came to that one place (the threshold, the door, the hollow place) it went POP and just fucking exploded, exploded in his hand like it was a claymore mine, and he came running out screaming with blood pouring out of where his hand had been, and his side, even his face, and they tried to take care of him but then oops, so sorry, he up and died right there in the ravine, whimpering like a stuck pig.

He doesn’t know it, but he got lucky. He never saw what was at the end of the tunnel.

Bonnie keeps walking. She wishes she were high right now. Well, she is high right now. But she wishes she were that special kind of high, which, sadly, is getting harder and harder to attain these days.

Bonnie’s heard the phrase “chasing the dragon” before, but Bonnie’s not chasing anything so exotic. What Bonnie wishes to see when she lays the needle to her bare skin, what she hopes to smell and hear and taste when the heroin floods her arm and comes rushing into that vast space behind her eyes, is, in this order:

The light from a flashlight filtering through yellow blankets, used to make a fort.

The sound of fish frying in an iron skillet.

Ankles, slender, bony, with feet in battered red heels.

A box of old batteries and buttons and chess pieces.

Sunset peeking through the limbs of the Arizona ash

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