Page 25 of Dirty Diana
I wrap a towel around me. I don’t want to be in this room anymore, so I stand in the hallway and dry myself off, careful not to make too much noise. I’m tired, but I don’t know where to go next, so I slide to the floor and sit for a while. Jasper’s photograph is opposite me, leaning in its latest spot against the wall, still waiting to be hung. I wish I could recognize the town, the horse, any detail that might suggest I’d been there before, but none of it is familiar.
My phone rings from the kitchen and I hurry to answer it before it wakes anyone. It’s Alicia calling, for the third time today.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Sorry to keep calling.” Her voice is shaky.
“No, tell me—”
“He’s gone.”
My heart drops to my feet. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.” She sniffs. “What a fucker!”
“Alicia.”
“What? Now I have to miss him all the time.”
“I should have come sooner.”
“I said goodbye for both of us. He knew. But you’re coming now?”
“I’ll be on the very first flight I can find.”
Santa Fe,
New Mexico
—
Then
Chapter 9
—
Out the windshield, the desert sky is bruised purple and pink, and I lean back against my headrest as if I have all the time in the world. I want to get so stoned tonight that my worries soften into clouds, my head fills with loose tufts of cotton candy, and I forget that it’s my birthday.
“You feel anything? I don’t feel anything.” In the passenger seat, Alicia blinks at me from under a curtain of thick black bangs. “Sorry, Diana. I think I bought you dirt weed.” Her eyes are so red and glassy she could play the stoner in an after-school special.
“You’re baked,” I assure her.
“I’m completely freakin’ sober.”
I take the joint from her fingers. She has painstakingly writtenHappy 25thBday!on the rolling paper in tiny cursive letters. I suckgently and watch the writing disappear, then snuff the joint in the car’s ashtray.
“Whoa—hang on.”
“We’re late.” I angle the rearview mirror and fuss with my hair—last night, in a moment of prebirthday impulsivity, I cut my blondish-brown waves into a choppy bob, using kitchen scissors. Now the hair stops just below my ears in frizzy layers. Alicia watches me, then digs through her bottomless tote bag. She pulls out a small glass bottle and rubs a few drops of oil between her fingers, then runs them through my hair. The oil smells of magnolias and honey. My hair calms down and looks almost as shiny as hers.
“My dad’s new lady friend sent it to me. I’m sure she got it for free.”
My car’s passenger-side door has rusted shut, so Alicia follows me out by gracefully unfolding two long khaki-clad legs over the driver’s seat and hopping onto the pavement. I zip my hoodie to my chin and jump up and down to stay warm. The air smells of burning cedar. Across the parking lot, the art gallery glows warmly. At my side, Alicia does a chicken dance, like a hippie at a Grateful Dead concert.
“You’redefinitelysober,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Could I do this if I were stoned?” She playfully humps the bumper of my Toyota Tercel. The rusted bumper heaves once, then falls to the ground. This sends us both into hysterics.
