Sienna loves Cactus
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Patchwork People XXIV: Cactus Country free porn video
XXIV. Cactus country.
The day was cool and clear. An auspicious day for new beginnings. The
cloudless sky stretched tight, a blue tarpaulin snapped to the horizon.
It was almost enough to give Marcia a feeling of hope. Between all the
preparations, hastily made as they'd been, throwing together a pair of
travel bags, gassing up the truck, collecting maps and whatnot, they were
on the road a little later than they'd planned. Traveling south on I-640,
traffic was still light but picked up as noon approached. Marcia stared
down at the Google directions in her lap and then up at the road ahead.
Walt had slipped a CD he'd recently made of one of James McMurtry's
latest and felt Marcia's eyes on him when she turned from the windshield,
a question unspoken formed in the crenellations of her brow.
"Something the matter baby?"
In all the hustle and excitement of the morning it had escaped Marcia's
notice until now. The police had called Walt. They hadn't contacted
Claire, as you might have expected, or Marcia, who might have at least
expected to be the lesser of two evils as far as Phoebe was concerned.
Instead they'd called Walt, who had no reason to expect to be called at
all.
"It seems that she told them I was her father," Walt said, as
nonchalantly as he could manage. "Look, you can take it two ways. Yeah,
it could be a rejection. She doesn't see you as her father, but, then
again, you never saw yourself that way either. You've said as much. Maybe
she's come to accept that now."
Walt had a point, albeit a sharp and painful one. Fatherhood aside,
Marcia always felt out of sorts as a parent. All parents felt like
impostors to one degree or another, at least the thinking ones did. What
sort of parent was one-hundred percent sure that they always knew what
they were doing? What parent didn't suspect that they'd made mistakes
along the way?
Answer: a bad parent.
But for Marcia this normal parental anxiety was compounded by the crisis
of her sexual identity. An impostor as a man, it followed that she could
only feel like an impostor as a father. She'd been playacting the role of
both, her grip on what she perceived she was supposed to do in any given
situation that much more tenuous. None of it seemed to be coming from
within, but was modeled, mimicked really, from some vague and ever-
changing notion she had of the ideal father, of what a "real" man would
do.
As a father, as a man, she felt like a total fake.
Okay, so maybe Phoebe was realizing that Marcia had been miscast in the
role of a father. Maybe she could forgive Marcia her shortcomings. Still,
it left Marcia tasting the bitterness of once again having failed someone
she loved. And again, she considered the tragedy of not having come to
know herself earlier. All the pain she could have spared those she'd
involved in her life. Phoebe, at the top of the list. But also,
somewhere on that list, and far from the bottom, was Claire.
"So where does that leave me? Phoebe already has a mother. Two mothers,
actually."
Walt turned from the road, fixing her with an inscrutable sunglass-stare.
"Two mothers? Where are either one of them now? Apparently two aren't
enough. She needs a third."
* * *
The motel was the best of the bad lot they'd passed after crossing the
state line. It was going on midnight and they were both travel-weary.
They'd stopped for dinner at Ma's Flapping Good Flapjack House. They each
had the signature dish. Walt's stack sparsely studded with pecans,
Marcia's with shriveled blueberries. They hoped for the best digestion-
wise and continued on, keeping an eye-out, as the sun began falling
behind the horizon, for a reasonably clean-looking place to spend the
night.
The Cactus Sleepover was a row of attached units less
than fifty yards from the road. It was all but hidden among nondescript
trees in the darkness. A neon sign featuring a one-armed cactus--it's
other arm burned out--announced its presence. Otherwise they might have
driven right on passed.
Two pick-ups, a camper, and a car with what looked like a house-full of
possessions piled on top were parked in the lot. Walt had to hunt down
the desk clerk. He found him in the breezeway, tinkering with the broken
ice machine.
"They're all quiet, sir," he said, when Walt asked for the quietest room
available.
"Then let me clarify. I want the room furthest from any of the other
quiet rooms that are currently occupied."
The clerk must have caught something in Walt's clipped tone and did a
double-take. He was a skinny guy wearing a greasy ballcap and he had a
large Adam's apple bristling with salt-and pepper hairs. He looked like
he'd been at the job a long time and had seen a lot. Reconsidering Walt,
he came to the decision that anything further in the way of snappy
comebacks weren't in his best interest.
Having been on the road all day, tired and wanting nothing more than a
shower and a good night's sleep, Walt had a grimmer and more bad-ass
appearance than usual, unleavened as it ordinarily was by his natural
friendliness and good humor. He signed for the room and paid with his
credit card. Marcia assumed that Phoebe must have taken hers from her
wallet on the morning she left Hope Crossing. Having checked with her
bank, she saw the record of deductions that Phoebe had taken at various
points along the way. If she had only noticed the missing card earlier,
they could have been on the trail a lot sooner. Marcia decided against
freezing the account. They all agreed that Phoebe would be far safer
having access to cash than not.
Sliding the room key across the desk, the clerk wisely limited himself to
the formulaic spiel about rates and check-out times.
"Have a pleasant stay, sir."
* * *
The key had a big plastic cactus on it, the green all but faded away.
Coincidentally, as if in imitation of the sign, one of its arms was
broken off. Walt slid the key into the doorknob and turned on the light.
Functional, that was the best way to describe the room. Brown and gold
was the scheme to whatever color there was. A slight smell of mold.
"Well, it'll look better in the dark," he said.
Marcia walked over to the rickety, scarred dresser. She couldn't resist
yanking open a drawer, though she was almost afraid of what she might
find. Thankfully, there was nothing inside. Just a sheet of crinkly
tissue paper and two pennies. She looked up and stared at herself in the
mirror.
Ugh, she thought, I'll look better in the dark, too.
"You look fine," Walt said, reading her expression in the mirror. He was
testing out the bed.
"How is it? I'm so bone-tired I could sleep on a rock."
Walt bounced lightly on the mattress. "Then we've come to the right
place. "
They undressed and took turns using the bathroom.
Marcia jumped in and out of the stall-type shower just long enough to
soap herself once and rinse off thoroughly. It wasn't the type of shower
in which you wanted to linger. Stay in there a second too long and you
felt dirtier than when you entered.
When she returned to the room, Walt was lying on top of the bed, leafing
through a motorcycle magazine. He'd turned on the gasping air conditioner
in the hopes of removing the stale mustiness from the air; the unit was
working, but minimally. The same could be said of the television, which
got a faded wavering picture, as if it were an old flag rippling in a
stiff breeze. The best reception came from a channel broadcasting a
soccer game in Spanish. This they left on just to make the room feel a
little less like the setting of a low-budget slasher film.
Beside her, Walt had already drifted off to sleep, the remote still in
his hands. The weight of it startling him awake each time his hand
started to fall. Marcia slipped gently it from his fingers. She turned
off the television and put the remote on the nightstand. She brushed her
lips against Walt's forehead.
"Good night," she whispered, "and thank you."
Then she laid back and stared at the shadow pattern of tree branches on a
lighted up patch on the wall.
Her mind was swarming like a hive of bees, buzzing with thoughts,
anxieties, possible outcomes. The asthmatic air conditioner masked the
traffic sounds, but it was hardly any comfort. She lay there a long time.
The clock radio, which they'd had to reset, read 2.10. Then 2.35. Then
3.34.
At 4.27 she finally gave up. She crept out of bed and went to sit by the
window in a fusty old armchair that smelled like centipedes. She watched
the headlights on the interstate, trucks mainly at this hour. Among the
thoughts that kept orbiting her mind stood out more prominently than the
rest. It was the fact that Phoebe hadn't asked for either Marcia or
Claire, hadn't identified either of them as her parents. Did Phoebe just
assume they'd come? Or did it mean that she pointedly didn't want them to
come?
If so, here Marcia was in this miserable motel room on her way to what
would no doubt be another rejection. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong
time yet again. The air conditioner wasn't giving out much in the way of
cool, but it was enough to chill--and evaporate--the tears on her cheeks.
* * * *
Author note: I plan to publish "Patchwork People" in its entirety in
weekly installments here on Fictionmania. In the meantime, the complete
novel is currently available as an Amazon Kindle ebook for $2.99.
For more of my writings, drawings, erotica, and photos please visit my
blog Bad Pussy
sissyforlife(dot)blogspot(dot)com.
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