Further Out Than You Thought (10 page)

After that, she told him she could drive herself to the club.

She picked her shoes and costume off the floor and slipped through the curtain. No point in being onstage without music and lights.

In the dark hall, Devotion was on the pay phone. “Okay. Okay,” she said, and hung up.

She turned to Stevie, her face close and pale. “Riots. There are riots all over the city. We have to get out of here. I promised my mom.”

“Riots?” Stevie said, thinking she misheard.

“Riots.”

What, exactly, did she mean? Stevie wondered. Riots? What were riots? There had been the Watts Riots. She'd seen photos of them—burning buildings and cars and people flooding the streets, throwing bricks through store windows, looting, and the military with their rifles. But that was so long ago. That was the sixties, when people were fighting for what mattered, for civil rights and getting out of Vietnam. That was before the eighties, before the glam rock bands with their flowing hair and vapid lyrics, before shoulder pads and thick gold chains, before the world turned apathetic and shallow.

No. She couldn't mean riots. Not those kinds of riots.

She saw Devotion throwing her clothes from her locker into her bag.

“You're leaving?” Stevie said.

“Fuck yeah. Aren't you?”

“I guess. Should we tell Joe?”

“Tell him if you want to; I'm splitting this dump.”

Stevie opened her locker and put on her jeans, her T-shirt, and her flip-flops. If there really were riots, she'd have to find Leo. He'd be on the streets; he'd need a ride home.

Joe was in his office, messing with the switches, looking for power. “What the hell,” he said, making out her street clothes in the dark.

“Devotion's leaving, too. She says there are riots. It isn't safe.”

On her way to the dressing room, Tony caught her arm. “Hey,” he said. “What's going on?”

“Riots. They're everywhere, I guess. I'm going home.”

“You should come with me,” said Tony, holding her arm, not letting her go. “It'll be safer in the marina.”

“I have to pick up Leo. He's out there without a car.”

“Be safe,” he said. In the dark, he pulled her close and, before she could turn her head, he pressed his thin lips to hers. She felt a surge, warmth, wetness between her legs. How long since she'd been kissed on the lips by anyone? She and Leo hadn't touched in weeks. Even close-lipped, the kiss felt intimate. And she didn't mind.

“See ya, Tony,” she said, turning, feeling his eyes on her as she walked.

Backstage, she grabbed her purse and her almost empty bottle of water.

Brett was dressed. She wore her Derby hat, had her bag over her shoulder. “You coming?” she said. Her arm was akimbo, her head cocked.

In the cool, dim room it was the two of them. Stevie wanted to grab her arm, the way Tony had grabbed hers. She wanted to pull her in and kiss her on her lips. Lightly. Barely. The way girls kiss. If she were a guy, she'd do it. Do it now. She wouldn't just think it. She'd act. But they were walking, too fast. They were almost at the door.

“Brett,” she said.

Brett stopped and faced her. “Yes?”

“I'm glad you're back.”

Brett smiled at her. A sly smile. Her eyes danced. Stevie felt a wave of heat move through her; she felt her face burn.

They pushed the back door open to greenish, smoke-filled skies. At the gas station across the street, cars were lined up down the block. And the cars that weren't in line were speeding down Century Boulevard. She had, she thought, a fourth of a tank of gas, certainly enough to get her home.

“How far you going?” she asked Brett.

“Silver Lake,” Brett said, pulling the front of her hat down, ready for anything. “You?”

“Miracle Mile.”

Stevie leaned in to kiss her cheek, and Brett took her in her arms and pressed her tight. Stevie breathed her in—Brett's chest and neck and hair, her smell. In Brett's arms, she felt small and, for that instant, safe. If ever she could stop time, it would be now. This would be the moment she would choose, she thought.

And then Brett let go. And they were in their separate cars. They were moving into the river of traffic, becoming two of many.

THE 405 WAS moving—not fast, but it was moving. She passed Arbor, Hillcrest, Manchester. Her window rolled down, she felt the hot breeze messing with her hair. Maybe things weren't as bad as Devotion had thought. Maybe she'd drive straight to Pico and pick Leo up and it'd be just like any other day, only they'd have time at home, together, like in the old days. Time to talk and play music and write. And if they had time, maybe she'd tell him.

The freeway was moving, and then it wasn't.

In their cars, the people looked straight ahead. Sitting ducks, no one would risk interaction, the wrong sort of look that might draw the wrong sort of attention. They had their windows rolled up, air-conditioning on. White noise. And over it, Gwen imagined, their radios issued warnings—which routes not to take. How to play it safe. Sit tight, and everything would be fine. Everything would stay as it had been. No broken jaw and arms and ribs. No bricks bashed into your skull.

South La Cienega was empty to her right, a few cars veering off the freeway down it. If she took it, she'd have further to drive up Pico to find Leo, but if it was moving, it was worth a try. She should check the radio, know what those helicopters flying low over her head knew—where the riots were in full swing, where you didn't want to be. But her car didn't have an antenna so the radio wasn't an option.

As far up the freeway as she could see the cars were inching. And the cloudless sky had darkened from absinthe to a dull gray-green in the time she'd sat in her car, deciding. She was creeping ahead, and in a minute she'd be past the exit. In a minute, she'd be stuck. If cars were taking South La Cienega, it couldn't be that bad. The section of town it traversed wasn't the best. She knew that much. It was run-down, and while prices were a few cents lower at the Arco she passed on a regular basis, she never felt comfortable stopping there for gas. The street—a thoroughfare, a freeway substitute—was a means of getting to and from. And it was open.

Fuck it. It was worth a try.

She pulled into the right-hand lane and put the gas pedal to the floor. She could smell smoke, and as if speed would help her escape it, she drove faster, down South La Cienega, past the hills and the metal oil pumps that always reminded her—with their long, slow necks rising and falling—of dinosaurs drinking water, what were they called, brachiosaurs? She drove past the fields of clover and mustard—fields—as if from another time, so green and yellow, so open. Past the cemetery, through green lights and into the outskirts of neighborhoods, past dollar stores, pawn and gun shops and places for payday loans, to where the river of traffic grew turgid, to where the smoke was thick and then thicker, the black smoke, and she was stopped, trapped, cars in front of her, cars behind her, and on the other side of the street, not two lanes away, the gas station was on fire. The Arco station she'd driven past a hundred times was sending its massive smoke signal to the sky. She could hear what sounded like distant screams.

At first, she wasn't sure what she was seeing. Hundreds of people were on a street where there should have been only cars. People were running across the street, between the stopped cars,
toward
the flames. It took her a moment to understand. Through the smoke, behind the gas station, was a Kmart. And the people running toward it were men—black men—in groups of five, six, seven. On the sidewalk, other men, white men, were walking with their video cameras that read NBC, ABC, CBS. They were recording everything—the looters, the flames, the traffic, the black air. This was news. People across the country—hell, all over the world—would want to watch this; with a bag of potato chips, they'd prop their feet on the coffee table, open a Coke and settle in.

Here she was, in the middle of a full-blown riot. Her attempt to avoid it had landed her a front seat at the spectacle.

She looked in the rearview mirror at the car behind her, an old blue Pontiac. Four black teenagers, looking ready to fight, filled it with the power of youth and rage. They were wearing muscle shirts and had the muscles to go with them. They were sweating, waiting for the perfect moment to jump from the car and join the action. The one in the passenger seat—who looked the youngest, all of sixteen—gripped a baseball bat.

She rolled up her windows and locked her doors. She went to put the inside air on—her car had no air-conditioning, but at least she could keep the smoke out, or try to—and her hand was so shaky she turned the tape deck on, too, and Bing was singing.
Would you rather be a fish? A fish won't do anything but swim in a brook. He can't write his name or read a book. To fool the people is his only thought.
Yes. Without a doubt. She would rather be a fish. A pig. A monkey. Anything but a human.

She turned it off. She had to concentrate.

Where were the police? The fire engines?

The line of cars ahead was backed up as far as she could see and the black smoke from the flaming gas station was a wave, an ocean she was under.

And she'd never felt so white.

Yet she was part Latina. One-fourth, to be exact, from her mother's mother, Carlotta, from Globe, Arizona, a dancer with fire in her blood. But no one would ever guess Gwen's ancestry. Her skin was pale, the majority of her ancestors having come from England, that cold, damp, dismal island, breeder of consumption, of whalers, and of slave traders.

Her right foot shook as it pressed on the brake. Drinking the last from her bottle of water, she spilled most of it down her shirt.

This, she realized, was anger. Manifested, en masse. She was surrounded by it, stuck inside it. Nothing to do but feel the heat, watch the flames spread and rise. Anger. It was the emotion Gwen had the hardest time feeling. Even when she'd acted, it had evaded her, like a memory just beyond her reach. She longed to feel it percolate inside her, to feel it seize her, as it did in her dreams, when it was Leo at whom her anger was aimed.
Get a job. Make it happen—something, anything. Stop smoking so much goddamn pot.
She longed to close her hand into a fist and punch. To bloody a nose, make a mouth swell. If she were angry right now, her leg wouldn't be shaking. And if she were black, she'd be angry all right. She'd be indignant. Out to take the city, to take what had been denied.

She wished her skin were black, and then she realized that not once had she wished this before. She remembered, as a child, having felt somehow fortunate, and also guilty, to have been born white, to have the world open to her, like the door to some invitation-only affair. And that was the seventies. Martin Luther King had triumphed. And there were those who, still alive, had transcended the oppression, the hate, and the fear and were beacons for all.
The Jeffersons
was on nighttime television, and there were the Jackson 5 and Donna Summer and the Pointer Sisters and all of those black ballplayers, but in that north-central section of Phoenix, the African Americans she'd met were waiters at the country club, they were maids or nannies. The kids she'd gone to grade school with were white. And in high school, when there was busing, the races hadn't mixed. The races. As if they were real. As if we all weren't a mix.

She felt like she'd been punched in the gut. She felt sick. She wanted no part of it. America—home of the free. What a joke.

The smoke billowed and, feeding on the gasoline, the flames reached high and wide, and still the traffic hadn't budged. Her gas light blinked on. She'd had less fuel than she thought. She'd forgotten to check and now it was too late. She was sweating. With cars on all sides, she couldn't breathe. The teenagers in the blue Pontiac opened the doors and jumped out. She wished she had a gun. A crowbar. A knife at least. They ran, scattering, and the young one with the bat stopped in front of her car. He looked at her. In his eyes, she recognized her own terror. And then she watched him turn and run past a flaming stream of gasoline.

She had to get away. She nudged her car into the right-hand lane. Careful, so careful. Smiling her pretty-please. Praying not to offend. And then she heard a boom, an explosion. She felt her car shake. And the smoke was so thick she couldn't see anything beyond the windows.

This was it. The way her life ended, hers and the child inside her. In the chaos, she'd forgotten she was pregnant. Now she had two lives to save.

She took to the shoulder of the road. If she hit someone, she hit someone. She had to get out. She had more life to live. What was she doing here anyway, in this city, living so close to so many people, fighting for her share of the air? Pressing down the gas pedal, her foot shook in the flimsy little flip-flop, and she thought of beaches. Boundless stretches of sand without humans. She thought of the ocean, and San Clemente, where she and Leo had driven one early morning last autumn to watch the sunrise, where they swam in icy waves and rode them to the shore, where they'd wrapped themselves in towels and eaten green apples. She wanted more. More dawn skies, more salt air, more apples. She gave the car more gas.

Hell, yes. Thank God. Out of the jam, she could see again. She could breathe.

And here was a street, a side street, the entrance to a neighborhood. She turned right, slowed as she realized: the street was awake. It was eyes and dark, glistening skin, everyone in front of their apartment buildings, their tiny houses with chipped paint, with small, sliding windows guarded by black iron bars. In their patchy, treeless lawns, women held children on their hips. One woman in a dress with pink and blue flowers, strangely vivid in the haze, was crying, screaming after a man as he ran from her, ran with the other men down the street, heading for the thick of it.