Free Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger Page A

dinosaurs.”
    I slid the door shut and sealed out the midday silence of the desert. I heard my blood rushing through my ears, then the hum of the wires, the sleepy rasp of your voice.
    “Did I wake you?”
    “It’s okay. I was just napping. How did your interview go?”
    “It’s in about half an hour. I’m not worried. How’s business on the promenade?”
    “Slow night downtown. What’s the position you’re interviewing for?”
    “Short-term consulting. Lab stuff I don’t want to bore you with.”
    “No, it’s fascinating. You can tell me.”
    Christ, leave it alone.
    “I don’t know the exact nature of the contract. Are you working later?”
    “No, I was hoping to see you. Are you coming back?”
    Maybe. I didn’t know where I was going, with whom I was meeting, whether I’d make my next call from jail or the return trip in my own trunk. Throughout the drive, the scenarios ran through my brain in ceaseless succession. Otto was a cop. An informant. He worked for a rival chemist. I should confront him. I should abandon him. Each notion negated by its own idiocy the instant it surfaced.
    “There’s a chance I’ll need to meet someone else tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll find a hotel and crash for the night, then drive back tomorrow afternoon.”
    “No.” Your plea melted me. “Come over tonight and you can drive back tomorrow morning.”
    “You want me to double back to Riverside twice in two days?”
    “I want to see you.”
    “I want to see you too. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
    “Please. I won’t keep you up late, I promise.”
    The feeling of being so wanted was new to me.
    “I’ll do what I can. I should go now.”
    “Hey,” you said. “What color are my eyes?”
    “Come on. Don’t do that.”
    In that second, the wire stretching from the desert to your bed became infinite, and every word was a ripple in the middle of the ocean that became a crashing wave thousands of miles away. I spoke too quickly and I could hear my resentment crash down on you from a distance.
    “I’m sorry,” you said. “I miss you. I’ll see you whenever you get back, okay?”
    “Your eyes are green.”
    “Good guess.”
    I could hear you smile through the wires.
    “Bluish green.”
    “You’re sounding like a palm reader.”
    I’d taken a photograph from your refrigerator and dropped it into my bag before I’d left, a snapshot of you laughing somewhere warm and sunny with an umbrella drink in your hand, but I didn’t need it. Just as it did when I spoke to you that day from the phone, your face comes into focus more and more as I hold you here beside me.
    “There’s a large speck in the blue green of your right eye. A small bump on the bridge of your nose. A lock of your hair always falls over one eye, and you’ve got a tiny mole on your right cheek, right on thecorner of your smile.”
    “You have quite a memory.”
    “My memory’s terrible,” I said. “But I can picture you when I hear your voice.”
    “I’ll help you with your memory.”
    “Fill in the blank spots?”
    “Yeah. That’s what I’m good at.”
    “So long as I can see you.”
    “In your mind or in person?”
    “Both.”
    You sighed, and the waves going over the wire washed me with calm.
    “I miss you.” You broke the silence. “Please come back tonight, if you can.”
    “I’ll try. I miss you too.”
    We said our good-byes. I listened to the electric monotone of the dead line for a minute before I hung up. I opened the glass floodgates and the miles of silence crashed through.
    The house had been trashed, abandoned, boarded up, squatted in, sold, reoccupied, raided, reabandoned and reboarded. Otto and I waited on the porch, four miles up the road from the ghost motel. The sky looked bigger, a stretch of luminous blue with clouds so massive I didn’t know how they stayed in the air.
    “It’s sturdy,” Otto said, like a child telling himself there’s nothing under the bed or in the closet. “You’ll know