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Thread: pale as a pile of bones.

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    Several dozen miles southeast of the shore, the earth had already fissured itself into crumbled, desert sand. He imagined the sea floor to look like this, ironically dry, crawling with empty riverbeds and wide canyons brimming with miscellany. He had never been one for biology or oceanography or anything sounding scientific. The real sciences were the ones of the insides, he imagined, the ones that could be put on paper from human memory alone. Anything that resulted from the subtle memories of our births and the impeding knowledge of our deaths. Those were the topics worth studying.

    He thought of Lydia, her wild rope of hair and the bed she once slept in several dozen miles northwest in their comfortable home. He thought of crisp white sheets and the six CD changer they kept in the room, what albums were on rotation. He remembered Zappa and Spoon and something new. He remembered the echo of music from the new speakers and Lydia's swaying backside in prim, white cotton panties, like a good bride. His t-shirt, his tie.

    He lay down on the dry crackle of the ground and poised the camera across from him, its timer set. He stretched out an arm, settled his head back and heard the prominent click. The photo was captured on celluloid. Later, in his makeshift darkroom, the one he would establish somewhere, he would develop the film and hang it up to dry. He would cut reels of footage shot on his flickering Bolex camera, wind the film back into place and find some way to project it. A flat white wall is all he would need. Maybe even gray. Or whitewashed brick would even do. Flatness was an option.

    He sat up, pulling his legs in front of him and crooking his knees. He hunched over them, the camera dangling between, staring out at the way the Nevada sun made the air ripple like a bright stone in clear water. It was picturesque. The car was parked on the side of the small highway he had wandered away from, its green metal glinting in the late afternoon. There was a memory of metal gnarled like arthritic hands and something that looked like it had turned itself inside out. He heard a ripping sound, like a needle scratching on vinyl, like the world tearing itself apart. He felt a slippery flood and a stiff disappointment between the palms of his hands.

    Somewhere out east, he imagined, somewhere blisteringly cold in the winter and tolerable in summer. He had made the decision that he needed variation. He needed to be mad eyed, to drive until he could drive no more, to pick up hitchhikers at risk of death or robbery, to sleep in the closest motel when he was most exhausted, to stare at the American landmarks he had only ogled in history books.

    It was an adventure sparked from the flare of tires and spitting sand that had dusted his Chevy in a light brown silt. He would wash it on the east coast, like one would celebrate with a victory meal. He would span the country with wings outstretched and be nameless in another world where there was nobody left to say they were sorry.

    <font color="#000000" size="1">[ May 19, 2007 01:22 AM: Message edited by: midnight radio ]</font>

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    <center>normal 05

    I saw those stars go off. I saw those stars go off at night.</center>

    <font color="#000000" size="1">[ May 19, 2007 01:24 AM: Message edited by: midnight radio ]</font>

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    By the time the gas tank started wavering when he made left turns, his eyelids had begun fluttering with sparse designs and glimmering lights. It was a time reserved for sleep. Inside, he was hollow, the cavity of his torso rumbling with hunger and breath. The motel lights flickered about a half an hour past exhaustion and fifteen minutes into delirium. He pulled the Chevy, a shade of green metal and brown desert earth, into a makeshift spot and threw the thing into park. The sky was clear and the air was cool, like typical desert air was meant to be.

    From the backseat, he pulled his black duffel bag out and sorted through his things. He had packed his trunk with all the known belongings he could salvage. Clothes still on hangers. Wrinkled shirts, creased ties, pairs of the same type and style of jeans. Records out of order, the face of Revolver or Quadrophenia staring up at at him, battered and worn at the creases and folds of glossed cardboard. He stuffed clothes in the duffel bag for the morning. A clean shirt. Clean underwear. He could survive on the same pair of dusty jeans. His camera was shoved in and he marched dusty boots into the motel lobby.

    The plush carpets under his feet felt crunchy and springy. Behind the desk, a box fan whirred, cutting the sound of the radio up into pieces. The desk clerk was round and oil-faced, like a pig who had learned to read the paper.

    He cleared his throat and the attendant looked up.

    "Thirty bucks for an hour," he grunted before turning back to his paper. "A hundred if you're spending the night."

    "Just the night," he rasped. He realized he hadn't used his voice since a phone call in Capistrano County, from a pay phone. He cleared his throat again to shake off the dust. It was an eager sound.

    The desk clerk slid a clipboard and pen in front of him and pointed to the fields meant to be filled in. Name. Billing address. It was like telling the enemy your hiding places.

    He bent over the paper and scrawled his information in familiar fashion. Nick Archer. 1053 Farver Circle. Partridge, CA.

    "Where can I eat?" Nick asked plainly. The desk attendant pointed over the skinnier man's shoulder. He turned and peered out the window to the neon sign across the street.

    24 Hour Diner.

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    "Take out your pigtails."

    With her hair over her shoulders in one dark fall, she looked more like a woman. Naked, she looked more like an adult, swollen hipped with a slight pudge to her thighs. She looked real. He held to that. Moving in, he touched her, piece by piece. The pink caps of her breasts, a handful of pale skin in his palm. Franny's head tipped back and her red-painted mouth hung open. It could have been an act. It was all an act. Even he was acting.

    They were ugly and naked, two pale bodies against a dirty coverlet. He had bent her over, her face against the pillows. Behind her, he stroked her with two fingers, slid them inside of her like he was testing the temperature of bathwater. His thumb rolled beneath and she wriggled. She arched up onto her knees and pressed back into his hand. There was a thrill in the tick of her hips. She gripped the headboard. Sound hiccuped with each snap of her body.

    He let her ride him, her bony hands on his chest, her pale backside slapping against the flat of his thighs. The wet noise escalated. He gripped her thighs, spread them apart. He toppled her, knees splayed. His jaw was tight. He did not open his mouth. He did not look past the way her breasts moved circularly, like they were orbiting. He heard every shriek from her mouth, every dirty curse word, every plea, and said nothing in return.

    His palms in place, he felt a wetness spread. He watched as baby blue eyes rolled open and wide. Franny's spine tensed and arched up off the coverlet. By then, she was gripping the backs of her thighs and he had mashed her breasts in his hands, holding them still as he rocked sharp hips. It was not fast. They were not rushing. They moved like a rocking ship, a hull rolling and creaking. The bedsprings were not creaking. The headboard did not slap the wall. The neighbors did not protest.

    On hands and knees, Franny came again, staring at her own face in the dirty mirror over the dresser. She watched them, watched him watch her, watched her watching him. Her orgasm crept up with a scream between counting the freckles on his shoulders and noticing her chipped blue nailpolish needed a second coat. It was unexpected and well-received. She would have applauded if she wouldn't have plummeted face first into the floor.

    Nick was washed in the feeling, pulling from the sticky crook of the girl's legs. He came in her mouth, easily. It was better that way, he supposed. While she pulled her hair into a ponytail, still nude in front of the mirror, he watched from the bed, counting out bills.

    "I'll pay you an extra forty if you sing while you do that. While you get dressed."

    Franny peered over her shoulder at him and blinked. "Any requests?"

    "Dusty Springfield."

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    <center>200318490 004

    North and south and east and west of your life.</center>

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    <center>73740052

    Every morning, I've got a new chance.</center>

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    At two in the morning, Nick hunched over coffee and a piece of pie. He had become immune to caffeine. The exhaustion still crept behind him, cobwebbed. He traced lines in the cracked formica. His stubble was more than a day old. A hand smeared at the cut of his jaw. He was delicate, he reflected, peering in the mirror behind the head of the aging waitress. He looked almost bony and fey in this blaring yellow light.

    A few stools down a girl in a pair of shorts and a halter top, cherry red, spun on a seat. She was a woman, he surmised, pale bodied. In her twenties. Her black-tinged pigtails fell over her skinny shoulders and when the waitress brought her a plate of pancakes, she dug in with fervor. Pretty, but there was nothing attractive about her in this light, devouring carbohydrates with the zeal of a marathon runner. Syrup dripped in the corner of her mouth. She wiped it with a thumb and tapped a red heel on the metal rung of the stool.

    "She's a regular," the waitress rattled at Nick, raspy and cigarette laced. "Hooker. Blows the truckers that roll in here for a couple bucks a piece an'then buys pancakes with the cash."

    "Hm." He considered it. His hips shifted forward on the seat and he leaned over to tap at the counter space between them. "Scuse me," he drawled. His voice was still crackling from the lack of use.

    The girl peeked over, nervous as a bird, her mascara lashes blinking curiously. "What?"

    "How much?"

    She pointed at the pancakes. Nick shook his head and pointed down at his lap. The look of realization on the girl's face was a transformative one. He didn't know if now she decided that she had to be alluring. It became beneath her to eat pancakes. The plate, half finished, was pushed aside.

    "How much you got?"

    "Enough."

    It felt strange to play this role, the tough-talker, the heartbreaker.

    "Whatchya wanna do?" Her dark brow lifted, like she was the one propositioning him.

    The waitress turned. "Not in the diner, Franny."

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