Oibara

Christina Cries a Lot

We drove out of town in a slick black 1963 Volvo P1800.

"Beautiful car," I told him as I slid into the three-door sports coupe.

That seemed like a neutral enough topic. All guys dug cars.

"It's not mine," he said. "Found it outside of Madison, Wisconsin."

I didn't ask.

We passed the sign saying 'Welcome to Quilayute: Home of Chester Peeves, Record Holder for the Longest Half-Marathon Run on Ice!'

Chester Peeves was an agoraphobic shut-in now, years after earning his local celebrity status and the nickname "Ice Man". The National Geographic Channel made a documentary on him, wherein he discussed how he has been chaste his whole life. He felt practicing chastity helped him control his internal body temperature. All of the town's spinster daughters fawned over him, trying to be the one who stole his lucrative virginity. He now shot cats with a BB gun out of his back door and hired a professional grocery shopper so he wouldn't have to make runs to the store.

The St. Marks' trustees hated that sign. They felt it painted Quilayute as an oddball town, a place to go in between visiting the Corn Palace in Iowa and the world's largest twine ball- not a bastion of education and young mind-formation.

At the thought of possibly never seeing ol' Chester's house again, I started to cry uncontrollably.

After many minutes of sniveling, I tried to get a hold of myself. I searched the pockets of the car door and underneath the seat, looking for Subway napkins, tissues, something to wipe my nose on. In the center console I found a pack of what I thought were baby wipes and scoured my face.

Suddenly my eyes stung and I smelled ethyl alcohol. As it turned out, they were Lysol wipes.

I started screaming. The car swerved, the driver no doubt startled by my yelling.

"Here," Luke said, shoving a water bottle at my hands. "Rinse them out with this."

"Crap, crap, crap!" I scratched at my eyes.

"For God's sake, tilt your head back," he barked.

I leaned back, and he upended the water bottle over my face. I was drenched from the top of my hair to the base of my bra. For several minutes I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sting away, and rubbed at my eyes.

Luke grabbed my hands. "Don't rub. You'll irritate it."

I jerked away from him. "Fine," I said, more than a little scared that he touched me.

The situation overwhelmed me.

Give me murderers or give me Lysol in my eyes, but don't give me both. I broke down again and spent the next hour intermittently crying and hiccoughing.

Even though I was hysterical, I still tried to keep an eye on Luke. It was bad policy turning your attention away from the psycho.

Every now and again, I would catch him looking at my drenched boobs. The damp shirt clung to my chest, outlining the top of my A-cups and the slope of my boobs.

Luke let me cry. He didn't say anything, which I appreciated. He did turn up the radio, and I oscillated between being grateful and offended by the gesture. Then I became just plainly confused, because I was obviously caring what this... this man thought of me, even though he had no right to influence my feelings.

And then he started singing. "I've got the world on a string, I'm sitting on a rainbow..."

He sang quietly but shrilly over the radio. The disc jockeys on-air were discussing the murders in Quilayute.