Stuck Outside of Phoenix

(excerpt)

Andalusia’s Offer

The Waffle House at Baseline and Priest Roads in the southeast suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona—no one really knew to which suburb the restaurant belonged; it lay right next to the freeway which was part of neither Tempe nor Chandler nor the little village of Guadalupe—was for those who still found breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. It was mostly truckers, for whom the eggs, pork, and hotcakes might be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending upon when their shifts started, and the local Tempe lie-around that would sit for hours at the counter sucking down coffee. Formica. Flannel shirts. Baseball caps without logos.

Sometimes corporate types found their way there, pushing through the glass doors and pulling up a seat at the counter. Their eyes demanded service. Two eggs, bacon, sourdough toast with butter, real butter, not the kind their wives gave them at home. The waitresses served the suits quickly, as if the whole place couldn’t relax until these professional types were fed and gone.

Josh Hotle, “Hote” to his friends, if he had any friends left in the Valley, watched from his booth near the plate-glass window. He sipped his coffee. When this cup of coffee is gone, I am gone. No more suits. No more Henchmen. No more lame music scene. Phoenix, as I sit in the middle of it, is already dead to me.

“Where you off to, Hote?” Mona asked, stopping as she hustled by, noting his road atlas, which lay open at the opposite lip of the table. She adjusted herself under her tight yellow waitress uniform. A coffee pot hung from her hand.

“Why,” Hote said, smiling at her, easing back into the vinyl seat. “You disappointed?”

Mona’s lips moved closer together, knowing that her answer would affect her tip. “Where you goin’?” she said.

“Tell you what,” Hote said. He leaned across the table and turned the atlas towards her. “I’m gonna let you guess, Mona. Take a look at this map and you tell me where I’m goin’. I might just go there because you picked it.”

She looked at him from the corners of her mascaraed eyes and leaned over the map. Her long, black ponytail lay against the curve of her back. Hote had always liked the way she looked, the way she bent and leaned and held the coffee pot, the way she poured the coffee with quick jabs, the way she played hard to get. He didn’t know how old she was, but she was much older than him, maybe in her late thirties, with a kid in college somewhere on the East Coast. That kid would be almost as old as Hote, probably out there in New York or Boston or D.C. seeing things Hote could only imagine. Hote was already behind. He had to get on that interstate.

Mona’s eyes combed the map. She’ll guess Los Angeles for me, knowing that I’m a musician, thinking that’s where we all wind up.

“Well, you’re definitely not a California boy, so that’s out…New Mexico’s nice, but it’s too close to home. You’re young. You’ll be looking for a grander statement…Now, Colorado…”

“Colorado?!” Hote grabbed back the map. Colorado. Over his dead body. Not since Jim, his mom’s old boyfriend, drove the three of them to Denver and bored him to tears with the mountains and Estes Park. Nothing would ever happen in Colorado, nothing alive and electric, ready to announce itself to the world. Hote pointed to a green patch in the upper-left corner of the map, next to an expanse of light blue, the Pacific Ocean. “Seattle,” he said. He leaned back into his seat, folded his hands over his chest.

“Good God,” Mona said. “You know it never quits raining up there.”

“Listen to you,” Hote said, motioning out the window. The sun already oozed over the eastern horizon. He hated this attitude in Phoenix, this strange belief that rain was an evil demon. The thermometer touched 118 in ’89, and the predictions were worse for the summer coming up. “It’s gonna get to 120 degrees in your backyard this summer, and you’re talking about it raining too much. What do you got against water, anyway?” he said.

“I like the dry heat,” Mona said. “It keeps you tan, keeps the mosquitoes away.”

“Well, it keeps sane people away, too,” Hote said. “Don’t forget that. The heat in Phoenix keeps anyone with half a brain away.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Mona said. They laughed a little. She, like him, probably thought of the ponytailed guy at the counter whose nasally voice could crack right through your thoughts.

A group of truckers, three of them, beards and suspenders, filed past Mona on their way into the restaurant. Mona scratched her head with the end of a pen, watching them as they went by.

“Well, if you don’t like it here, why don’t you move?” Hote said. “There’s plenty of need for waitresses in other places. You don’t have to live here if you don’t want to.”

“It’s home, I guess,” Mona said, ripping off Hote’s ticket and setting it next to the atlas. “Well, if I don’t see you again, I hope you have a good time in Seattle. It’s been good knowing ya. Don’t drown.” She grazed his cheek with her fingers and walked away.

Don’t drown. Hote couldn’t help but smile, the tingle of her fingers still on his cheek. He withdrew a ten dollar bill from the thick, tight patch of green in his wallet. Okay. Last extravagance. Thirteen hundred minus ten leaves twelve-ninety. He laid the bill next to his full coffee cup.