Talks & Walks: “Like Red on a Rose” Chapter Three, Part III
Absurd thoughts told Piri she could be home in four hours, at the most. She read that humans walk, on average, three miles an hour. With ten miles ahead of her, four hours made sense. But there was no accounting for stamina. Yes, she was healthy. Yes, she wore gym shoes with gel insoles. Yes, she had a worthwhile goal. All of those meant nothing since she was near the end of her day, after spending a chunk of it on her feet. Her expectations with time would be a series of diminishing returns. Still, she headed east, passing Kennedy Avenue and Downtown Highland.
Paranoid thoughts drew her attention to a house atop a grassy incline. There was nothing particularly unique about the house; it was one in a row, save for it being empty with its lights on. It was too nice to be a squat, unless the person wanted to get arrested in a hurry. She couldn’t think of a reason why an empty house would have its lights on. Except it being a murder house. She had seen many crime scenes and kinds of death, and what they had in common, aside from tragedy, was that she felt them before she saw them. Intuition was very important to those who could only depend on themselves, and a vagabond life sharpened that blade acutely. The knife edge of danger told her that house had secrets it wouldn’t share. Or rather, she wouldn’t want it to share.
Morbid thoughts told Piri to do very bad things to each driver who didn’t offer to give her a ride. Not to her squat; just three or four miles to knock them off her journey. She was easy to spot in her fireman’s coat, with reflector strips irradiating neon under their passing headlights. The driver in the Taurus, she wanted all their tires to burst so the car could go into a sparking spin-out into a gas station. Pump Five. The driver in the Camero, she wanted their car to remember it was an Autobot, but was bad at transforming, so it tried repeatedly with the sack of guts and bones still behind the wheel. The driver in the Hummer, the car she hated the most, she wanted to have a nervous breakdown, pull over, cut the interior to shreds with the key, eat all the pieces from pedal to muffler, and die of reverse-dysentery. She never saw a biker with sidecars, but she had something vicious ready.
Superstitious thoughts taunted Piri with notions of choices that were “good” and “bad”. If the next light stayed green when she got to it, she would make it home ok. If the stars didn’t come out from behind the clouds, she wouldn’t make it home ok. If the raccoon saw her when it crossed the street, she’d make it home. If the next building she passed was a bike shop, she wouldn’t make it home. If the next street started with an “h”, she’d be homebound. If a passing car played 4 Strings’ “Take Me Away”, she wouldn’t be. And on. And on.
When the bad weather began having its say, hours after Indianapolis Blvd. and now in Illinois, Piri’s phone rang. Her sole contact aglow. In a relative moment of clarity, she only had two thoughts: disappointment and desperation. Theda sounded drunk, asking if she could get a ride to her place. She showed off her new car to friends at a bar in Downtown Highland, and now they’re post-gaming at her apartment with “Head of the Family”. Piri asked if she took Ridge Rd., and Theda barked something about taking I-80 West. Piri asked if she remembered anything she was supposed to do. Theda thought about it, then laughed her way through no. Piri hung up, deleted her sole contact, turned off her phone, and cried about her fucked-up life.
As she sat curled in a storefront’s doorway, Piri was depressive about what she should do. It was easy to get to Hegewisch from Highland: west on Ridge Rd., then north on Torrence Ave. The problem was there was a lot of Ridge Rd., and even more Torrence Ave. She could practically touch the latter from her stoop… but there were so many steps left to take. Her feet were already aching. It was too late, or early, for buses. Her paranoia about a ride to her squat was still vibrant. If she went south, she could escape everything. A forest reserve was a mile down the road. Another mile or two, a huge, abandoned bar. Perfect places to restart her vagabondage. She always stayed clean to make a few bucks from blood donations, so she wouldn’t have to worry about money when what she had ran out. She mastered poverty, anyway.
But she knew where that road ended, and she knew that wasn’t where she wanted to be.
Disaster Must Be Earthed
Whenever Piri recalled that night, the Torrence stretch always had a touch of amnesia.
She remembered turning onto the street, but her next thought was being a few houses away from her squat under the morning sun. The stinging pain in her feet and the stiffness in her legs made only the shortest steps possible. Exhaustion made her eyes burn to be let close. Those things were vivid years later, yet she never could remember how she got there.
Despite being at the end of her interstate odyssey, she still had to obey everyone’s schedules. In seventeen minutes, she could pass out on her air mattress. The sole thread to her sanity was knowing she didn’t have to go back to work for two days. A thread she held onto as if her life depended on it for seventeen minutes. When the time passed, she swung from that thread into a slumber that lasted almost a day.
Piri’s first thought was that she could’ve had a taxi drop her off a block away. Her second thought involved jumping into a TARDIS and smacking herself with it at the gas station. Her third and fourth thoughts involved the strongest Icy Hot product she could find and fingerless gloves to hide her hives. All of this to distract herself from the dull pain from her toes to her hips, and see how badly the damage of being on her feet for around 12 hours straight was. When she finally did and saw it wasn’t nearly as bad as she imagined, she wanted to give Dr. Scholl’s a blowjob.
When it was time for work, she walked a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, but she had an apron full of Icy Hot Pro patches and dark tights to hide them under. She took her clearheaded advice about taxis for a few days, then one of the girls at work mentioned the Erie Lackawanna Trail that went from Hegewisch to Highland and beyond. Pedal power could get her to work in an hour.
Thus Piri’s first paycheck went to a ten-speed she found at the Lansing Goodwill, and called it “Hardstyle”.
Available September 3rd, in paperback and ebook, wherever books are sold.
