Evidence of Things Not Seen (12 page)

When Karla walked into that bar, she stopped being a hooker or a prostitute or a little bitch, piece-of-trash whore. When Karla walked into that bar, she became a party girl. By the end of the night, she became Russ’s party girl. By the next day, she was his girl for keeps. He brought her back to the house he said he shared with two other guys, Sean and Tad. It was a big house with more bedrooms than people to sleep in them. It looked like a mansion with a wall all the way around it and a pool in the backyard. He told her Sean and Tad were his business partners. They didn’t look a thing like cowboys. Russ wore a bandana around his head with aviator sunglasses. His beard was shaggy, and when he laughed his belly jiggled. Karla couldn’t tell how old Russ was. Maybe forty. Sean and Tad were skinnier versions of Russ. Definitely younger. None of them looked as old or as mean as the cowboys she met with her momma.

Russ told her he would take care of her if she’d be his girl. He gave her pills to help her stay up all night. He slipped hundred-dollar bills in her jean pockets so she had some spending money. Sometimes Russ and his business partners had parties for their customers at their house. That’s when all the bedrooms got used. Sometimes Russ asked Karla to have sex with his customers as a favor to him. He didn’t make her do it. He asked her if it was all right first. Sometimes he stayed in the bedroom, watching her do it. He said it was to make sure she was safe. When it was over, he told her she did real good and then he had sex with her. He kissed her. He closed the bedroom door so he could do it with her all alone. Then he slept with her. Karla had never slept with a man before. Sometimes he kissed her before they went to sleep. Karla had never been kissed that way before. All these “never befores” made her feel special. Sure, she didn’t like it when he paid attention to other women, but he told her that was normal, the way he let some men pay attention to her. She was still his girl.

For four weeks, Karla climbed on the back of Russ’s sleek black Harley and wrapped her arms around his belly. She loved pressing into the back of him and smelling the salty sweat on his neck. Sometimes she thought she could smell some kind of perfume on his skin. It reminded her of the soaps in the motels where she and her momma stayed. She didn’t like it.

Every once in a while she’d see her momma’s car parked in front of one of the cowboy bars. She wanted to stop and introduce her momma to Russ. She’d landed in a way better place than her momma. Karla had a place to live, and every day was a party with Russ. She was going to make it. Who knows? Maybe she and Russ would settle down. It could happen. Maybe she’d ask him to stop and meet Momma next time.

Only it never happened. Six weeks after Karla walked into that biker bar, Russ left. He took off when Karla was still asleep. She woke up with Tad crawling on top of her. She pushed him away.

“Get off me. You need to ask Russ first.”

“I don’t need to ask Russ shit. He left you to me.”

Karla felt an ice-cold current shoot through her. It jerked her out of bed. It kicked Tad to the floor.

“What do you mean he left?” she yelled. “He couldn’t leave. I was going to be his old lady.”

“You ain’t shit,” said Tad, gasping and holding his stomach. “He’s got an old lady and a kid and a farm past Austin. He comes here to make sure our product is clean. You know, quality control. When he goes back home, I get his leftovers.” Tad tried to get up. Karla kicked him again and again, until he stopped moving, and then she stomped out of the room.

She ran to the other end of the house and slammed into Sean’s room.

“Where’s Russ?”

“Holy crap, Karla.” Sean rolled over. “Knock first.”

“Where the fuck is Russ?”

“His farm. He’s gone. He might be back in six months. Maybe a year.”

Karla glanced around room. Sean had gigantic pictures of mountains all over his walls. In between two peaks hung a small pickax. She grabbed it.

“Hey, what the fuck? Put that back.”

Karla leapt on top of Sean and swung the pickax so it pierced clean through the pillow into the mattress.

“Next time, it won’t be next to your head. Where is he
exactly
?”

“Some town outside Johnson City. Off Highway 281. West of Austin. His number’s in my cell. Jesus Christ, Karla.”

Karla looked at the bedside table and grabbed Sean’s wallet, cell, the keys to his truck and a baggy full of white, green, and black pills.

“Hey, that’s my—”

Karla stood on his chest and leaned the top, flat end of the pickax against his throat. She put her weight against it. Sean choked.

“I’m taking your goddamn truck, Sean. And if you stop me, I’ll kill you.”

Sean didn’t move. He watched Karla empty his wallet of cash and stuff it and the cell phone in her pocket. Then she fished two black beauties out of the baggy, popped them in her mouth, and took a swallow of the leftover rum and Coke by the bed. She walked out of the room with the pickax slung over one shoulder and the bag of pills in her hand.

Karla didn’t let herself think as she drove.

With each pill, Karla could hear her heart race faster. She could hear her blood
thrum, thrum, thrum
by her ears. It focused her, kept her alert, made her keep pressing the gas pedal so she could get to Russ. The thrumming sounded like Russ. As long as she could keep that sound in her head, she would make it. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to stop.

But she had to stop twice. For gas. Stopping meant thinking about something other than Russ. Stopping meant going to the public restroom. Stopping meant thinking about all those bathroom stalls, all those men with their pants unzipped. She bought another Coke and swallowed five white crosses from Sean’s baggie of pills. She had to get that thrumming back. She had to get Russ back in her head. She had to stop thinking about the men and Momma. She had to stop wondering where her momma was and what her momma would do.

For five hours, Karla drove like this. Popping pills, drinking Coke, and listening to the thrum of Russ. When she pressed his name on Sean’s cell phone, it was after midnight. She heard his sleepy voice and almost hung up. She could imagine that he was sleeping next to her and she almost didn’t want to disturb him. But then she thought of the woman next to him. “I’m in a fucking pull-out. I passed some ranch called Stillwell about a mile back. If you don’t meet me I’m going to fucking come to your house and kill you and your fucking family.” She heard him say he was coming and hung up.

Karla paced in the pull-out. She took another pill. The thrumming had changed to
he’s coming
,
he’s comin, he’s coming, he’s coming.
She squatted and peed. For the first time, she noticed that the hot sticky marsh air was gone. She’d never been anywhere but up and down I-45. She didn’t know that there was a whole world different from the one she’d grown up in. She guessed that some of the men they met came from different places, but her momma told her not to ask. “Don’t chitchat, Karla Ray. If you do, they’ll start asking questions like how old are you and why aren’t you in school? You don’t need to be in school. You’re smart enough as it is.”

Karla shook her head. She stood up and paced around the truck. Then up and down the pull-out. She didn’t want to think about her momma or the men. She wanted to think about Russ.
He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming.
She was going to get him back. She was going to make sure he loved her, that he never let her go.

When Russ finally drove into that pull-out, Karla wasn’t sure it was him at first. He wasn’t on his beautiful Harley. He was driving a stupid pickup like all those cowboys. When he stepped out of the cab, he looked old like all the other men. Where was the Russ she’d fallen in love with? How did he get so old all of a sudden?

All the miles of driving, all the liquor and pills were pacing inside Karla. She roared into him. She was mad that he’d changed. She wanted him to be the man she’d fallen in love with. She wanted him to take care of her. She tried to pull him into her with her arms, her legs, her mouth. He kept pulling away from her. He untangled her arms from around his neck and held her so she couldn’t move. Each time she tried to squirm away, he said things like “best I ever had” and “I wish I could but” and “I can come see you in six months.” Karla knew he didn’t mean any of it. She knew he wasn’t any different from any of the men who’d been her customers. She stopped squirming. He let go of her and turned to walk back to his truck. Like all the men who had zipped up their pants and turned away from her. They boiled inside her. She thought Russ was different. She wanted him to be different. But he wasn’t. She wanted everything about her life to be different. But it wasn’t.

Karla reached into the pickup for the ax.

JUNE 15 . SIX WEEKS MISSING

MARY LOUISE

Tommy watched me paint.

When he first came into the art room—I think it was in January—he didn’t see me in the back until I started cleaning up. He looked really startled. Really. You know that expression “deer in headlights”? That was his face. I got a little worried, like maybe he would stop breathing from being on the spot, so I told him to chill. Like it’s cool to hang out in the art room. I went there at least two lunches a week to work on my pieces for the senior art show. I invited him to come back anytime. That’s where I’d see him. In the art room. Writing in his journal. Or reading some complicated physics book.

He was so cute. I pointed him out to Leann one time. She called him “adorkable.”

At first he sat way on the other side of the room, but one day he sat, not closer exactly, but so he could see what I was painting. I caught him looking over at the canvas so I asked him what he could see. It was a landscape and he said, “Trees.” Then he said, “Eyes.” I swear I did not put eyes in that painting, so I asked where he saw the eyes and he said, “In the spaces between.”

That’s when we started having these long, trippy conversations about art and truth and beauty. Only he came from this science-y place and I came from this art-philosophy place. But the two aren’t very different. I swear if they taught science the way he thought about it, I probably would have liked it. Maybe gotten a better-than-passing grade.

Well, we talked about whether or not the trees I painted were real. Like if there were no trees in the world, would the trees I was painting be real? Would I have the thought about trees if there were none in the world? Or would I imagine them, and if I imagined them, would a tree start existing out in the world because I thought it? He made me think a lot about what I
wasn’t
painting, what I
couldn’t
see, what
might
exist if I could see it.

The eyes? You mean like was he paranoid? Like maybe he thought someone was after him? I don’t think so. It didn’t seem like he was hiding out or looking over his shoulder or like someone was out to get him. I think the eyes were his eyes. Like he was an observer. Like he could see all the spaces in between. Or maybe it was he could see all the connections in between. Yeah. That seems more like it. Because of how he talked about physics.

Well, okay, I’m not like a science girl, okay? So I’ll probably get this all wrong, but he explained how matter looks solid but it isn’t. There’s like space between all the particles, right? So, like, even the most solid looking thing has space in it. Like even you and me, there’s space in our cells and our blood and yet we’re one thing.

I think that’s how Tommy sees the world: all connected together even though there’s like a bunch of space in between and inside each thing. It’s so cool. It made me think about how people love falling in love, how they’re trying to fill up the spaces inside themselves and feel connected in the world. You know?

He made me think about God. How if a god made this world, then of course that god would design it with spaces in between, because when we feel connected to art or to another human, that’s when we feel God. We never actually talked about God, but that’s sort of what particle physics sounded like to me. God and the origin of things.

Did Tommy have a girlfriend? Uh, I doubt it. I mean, I saw Rachel get on the back of his bike a couple of times. They looked really cute together. But they could have been going off to do a science experiment. For real. He seemed pretty innocent to me.

Like he was supersmart but not in a real-world kind of way. He would get tripped up in simple conversation. When I’d leave the art room and I’d say something like, “See you next time.” Instead of saying, “Okay,” he’d say, “What next time?” It’s like he had to be superliteral about everything because he was thinking in so many different dimensions. So if I said something casual or unspecific, it caused like static in his brain and he had to stop and tune the channel.

Yeah, I’ve heard people saying that the reason we haven’t found him is because he’s in another dimension. I’m not sure that’s possible, but if it was, it would be so cool.

Because it would be like he’s still alive. It’s been a really long time since Tommy disappeared, right? Yeah, six weeks. If Tommy’s dead, we can’t see him anymore. Everything he was in this life stops. But if he’s in another dimension, it’s like he’s alive. I know I’ll remember my conversations with Tommy for the rest of my life. Like the way we talked expanded me somehow. If he’s dead, those conversations are a memory. If he’s in another dimension, it’s like that conversation could still continue. Like maybe he could come back from another dimension, only he’d be the same age as now and I’d be older because time is different wherever he went. Maybe that’s why he was such a stickler about time.