Marsha hadn't stopped smoking cigarettes since we left LA. She was kind enough to keep the window down so her Marlboro Light fumes went out the window, but I couldn't help but feel like her filthy smoke fumes were drenched in my hair. I had the urge to tell Marsha to tone it down, but guilt stopped me. She had just been presented with divorce papers and a 23-year-old mistress on the same day. She was entitled to smoke as many heaters as she wanted without protest.
Marsha convinced me that an impromptu road trip to Vegas was the only thing that would clear her blues and I didn't argue. As her loyal friend and co-worker of nearly 20 years, the woman was closer to me than both of my sisters. We would drive out into the hot desert in her 2004 Chevy Malibu without air conditioning on a Tuesday night in July with no real plan and she was already half-way drunk. Viva Las Vegas.
We wouldn't make it to the California/Nevada border. Our detour started just outside of Barstow when we stopped for gas, snacks, a bathroom break, and some of those little bottles of Livingston White Zinfandel.
I brought the supplies back to the Malibu while Marsha finished throwing up in the bathroom – holding up a long line of road trippers looking to empty their bladders.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"I heard Marsha scream from behind me just after I undid the clasp of the trunk...
The first thing I saw was a virginal white dress splotched with blood. I soaked that in for a few seconds before I even looked further and saw the blued hands, the swollen, beaten and bruised face and took in the death posture, the body stiff and stuck in the sprawled body position you might find yourself in after a brutal night of rage drinking.
The trunk smashed close before I could even try to make out the body's face. All I had time to take away was the sex – female – her dark and delicate features shined through the sloppy, wet mane of hair that laid across her pale face.
"You weren't supposed to open that," Marsha screamed in my face.
I looked to Marsha and saw her throwing her eyes around the dusty parking lot.
"Do you think anyone saw? You think anyone saw?" Marsha rattled out.
I looked around. The four or five travelers being cooked on the asphalt like steaks on a cast iron stove didn't appear to give half a shit about the two middle-aged women who smelled like cheap wine arguing behind the trunk of a car that was worth less than $1,000.
"Just me. That was too many," I said. "What was that Marsha?!"
"Oh my God. What the fuck did you do?"
Marsha's entire being crumbled right in front of me. Her body slacked, tears welled out her eyes and down her cheeks in streams as wide as a country river.
"Let's just get in the car," I offered the only solution I could think of at the time.
The car reeked of body odor and alcohol. I'm not sure why I didn't notice it before. Then again, maybe it was just the stench of Marsha's soul sweating out of her pours.
Marsha cried into her hands and tried to tell me what happened. I could only make out about every third word in between the sobs, but it was all I needed, I could fill the rest of the morbid spaces with my own intuition.
Marsha found out about her husband leaving her for the younger woman. She went through every one of her husband's friends on Facebook until she could figure out which woman it was based on her constant "Liking" of her husband's Facebook material and by remembering seeing her a few times in random places they just happened to be, as if her husband and the mistress were getting off by exchanging passing glances in public.
