IN A MCDONALD'S PARKING LOT, hitting a low-burning cigarette, jittery from a 10-hour drive, from F to E, tumbling down, down, down; miles and miles of blacktop darkness. It was 3:30 a.m., and you thought you could stop.
My door half-open, a leg stretched out numbly.
Odd hours, you'd think about Wes. You'd wonder if Wes found somebody else, somebody softer, stationary, stable, somebody unlike you.
I'd left my cracked iPhone 6 wrapped in toilet paper in a bathroom in New Jersey. My first pass through Jersey.
I wanted to be untraceable, but I wish I'd warned him.
Impatiently, I looked up. Mist had begun to haze, pinprick my windshield, stirs of early morning stillness. Everything too dark to understand. They threw away a lot of trash nightly, and I could hit a jackpot behind a rural 24-hour McDaddies. Nobody around to catch you dumpster diving. Employees ignore you.
What I'd find varied. Fries. Buns. Patties. I'd scavenge for anything salvageable, less soggy, less drenched in crusty ketchup. Don't feel sorry. I'm not the only person who has done it, I promise. Chances are you've all known somebody hungry enough to try it.
Kevin hanging behind Junior's Pizza at 10 p.m., closing, digging up a pizza from a dumpster to scarf down. Janie scoring behind BeBe's Burrito's for her and Jessie. I'd remember in a blind-flash, drop a rubbery patty, lose my appetite awkwardly. Who were you? What had you let happen?
By a Saturn. My fingers crushing a Camel. I felt alarmingly awake, and yet, asleep, nodding off in a drizzling daze. Where was I? When had it happened?
Do you know when you wake up in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar darkness, in unfamiliar skin?
I'd pulled in hours ago, but I couldn't find a glimpse of daybreak. Night didn't always end: it kept going and going and... going...
I lifted my cigarette into a crack in my window, flicked it quickly. My fingertips were icy. Frigid. Cold seeping in slowly.
Go. I'd been restless, I couldn't sleep, I needed to keep going, too. Go. Go. Go. What if—
"Hey! Hey!"
Something stunned you; paralysis on paper, I'll never know how to describe. It feels choppy, jarring, stiffening to an acute awareness of your own immobility.
I remember blinking, robotically, shifting inch by inch, glancing at it a few spots away. Its doors duct-taped, undisturbed. I'd been beside it—him—for hours, hadn't I?
In the backseat of a blue Saturn, in a foggy window, a chubby, ruddy-faced blur. His elbows wrangling up, a hard knock. "Hey!"
Had I dozed off?
"Can you—"
Knock.
I flinched.
Had I just woken up—months ago—off I-95? Everything slick and sleepy, a Nonstop to Nowhere.
"Hey?" Probably drunk. We've all been there, I know. "Hey, I know you can— Hey, don't—" Knock. Urgency. It jolted my system. I straightened, blinked it away, looked away, looked back at him. My throat was dry. His vague silhouette. "Help, I..."
Nobody else but a few employees inside a 24-hour McDonald's. Doors were locked. Drive-thru only.
I'd already stubbed my cigarette. Vaguely I thought of Dean. Trouble. Nobody wants it. I leaned up, jammed my keys into my ignition—
"No, hey! Hey!"
He was climbing between his front seats, fumbling face-first into the driver's seat, a blur of grotesque flesh and baggy clothing.
"No, no, don't go! Help!"
Everything muffled by a few feet of gravel and glass tinted too darkly. I swallowed a bitchy remark as I rolled my passenger window down. His body bobbing around, rocking it back and forth, resurfacing, balancing, and a groggy, glassy-eyed confusion in his gaze.
Thump.
It was the side-heels of his palms hitting it, pounding off a silvery reflection, and I felt my breathing hitch. His wrists were bound.
"It's locked," he slurred, looking down, around, away from you. His head lolling. His hands were tied together: bent fingers, bloody knuckles, blackening bruises, hues of darkness you'd recognize. Fuck, you needed t... "It's... it's locked, it's locked," he kept saying, saying, saying. "They locked me in, and I—"
"What?" I tried to say.
"It's locked from inside, I need—" His breath fogging up a cloud in a window. Heaviness. "Help me, please, I'm..."
Fuck.
"Let me out, okay? Fuck if I know what... I..."
I left my keys, but I threw my door open and circled my hood quietly. He paused. Everything unfinished. My footsteps crunching across a leave-strewn curb. His expression dropped, faltered, as I approached him, so... fucking... slowly.
Sweat brewing on his brow. His flushed, flabby skin hung reddened, as if in jowls, dropping, melting...
He's dying, I thought.
"It's locked, it's locked," he kept saying, skittering up, down, away from you, a spooked deer off Route 9. "Open it, yeah, right— I need you to open from..."
So, so, so drunk.
My fingers curled behind an icy handle, and I yanked it, jerked it quickly.
When it cracked open, he fell out, face-first again. His pants around his knees, his stained, holey briefs slunk too low: a flash of a plumber's ass crack. "Oh, oh," he rasped, fumbling up, falling over again. He kept trying to untie his hands, bite at a bloody rope around his wrists, but I found myself backing away slowly, surely. "In the trunk. They put him— in-in-in th-the trunk, and I need to..."
He's out of his fucking mind, I remember thinking.
I kept going, hearing myself shuffle, scuff up dry leaves, aware of how crisp and damp it felt, how slick, how darkness seemed to cling to him stickily, cling to us...
But I dropped into Dirt Nasty numbly.
I slammed my door shut, jerking my gearshift, and whipped around, gunned it, backing up in a blind panic—GO GO GO GTFO. Whatever you're running from...
When I pulled away, looked again, I didn't see him. I never saw him again. I wondered if I ever saw him. It was only a blue Saturn with Massachusetts plates, its trunk popped open. Nobody else.
*I was dying to write about a particular ✨ encounter ✨ at a McDonald's in Massachusetts. It was jarringly scary, I'll never be able to explain it. He was so fucked up, I think, and I wanted abSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH WHATEVER BULLSHIT HE WAS MESSED UP IN. Don't trust anybody.
