"Chihuahua" by Krista Diamond
Originally published in Mojave Heart Review (Dec. 2019)
I like a second-story hotel room overlooking the highway. I like the sound of the individual cars becoming traffic—the rumbling of engines, the whoosh of the air—all of them headed east across Texas and then on to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and then who knows where. I like the television in the room on low so that the local news channel is a constant murmur. I like to walk to the nearest Applebee’s and order a chicken caesar salad. There’s a comfort in knowing that wherever I am, it always tastes the same.
#
When I arrived in El Paso, I rented a two-door sedan and took it out on the highway. Every mile or so, an electronic sign above the road read 984 deaths on Texas highways so far this year.
When I got to the hotel (A Holiday Inn Express, which I prefer over Holiday Inn), I checked in and immediately looked up Texas highway fatalities on my laptop.
I thought of the Don’t Mess with Texas t-shirt I had bought at the airport gift shop. I buy t-shirts from every airport gift shop. The cashier had told me about how the saying wasn’t about Texas bravado at all; it was just a marketing slogan from the Texas Department of Transportation that was meant to remind people to not toss out litter along the highway.
I put the t-shirt on, watched two hours of local news (rain was in the forecast, a barn had caught on fire, a politician had made a speech at a high school) and went to sleep, listening to the highway thundering below, all of those people keeping me company without knowing it.
In the morning, I stepped out into the smoggy yellow air and peered across the border into Juarez. A giant red X marked the space where Texas bumped up against Mexico—La Equis, or The X. The teenager at the front desk said that it was meant to either symbolize bloodshed from the drug cartel or American-Mexican unity. He couldn’t remember which.
El Paso wasn’t beautiful. The sun had bleached the buildings, the parking lots and the earth, leaving the city beige. The air was stiff and hot. I dabbed the sweat from my forehead, slid my sunglasses on, and wondered where Roger was.
#
I had started in Orlando, where I’d heard he was working as a waiter at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant at Disney. I’d paid the entry fee to the park and walked the perimeter of the property until my Fun in the sun in Florida! T-shirt was soaked with sweat. The cool darkness of the restaurant came as a relief.
The restaurant showed clips from sci-fi movies and had technicolor cars fashioned into booths. I settled into a purple Corvette and kept my sunglasses on. Overhead on the screen, tentacles waved from swamps and astronauts floated away from spaceships into the Milky Way.
“Is Roger working?” I asked the waiter.
“Who?”
“Roger. Roger Guzman. Young guy? Like 27? Good looking?”
“I wouldn’t know if a guy was good looking,” he said, tapping his pen on the little notebook where he wrote orders down. “But Roger got fired. I heard he moved to Atlanta.”
I didn’t smile. It would be better if I didn’t give this waiter any clues.
“Do you want to order something?” he asked, tapping his pen faster.
I glanced over the menu. It was mostly burgers. I had already decided that I would order a burger from the TGI Fridays near the Best Western where I was staying.
“Just a Coke,” I said, because that was the same everywhere too.
After that, I high-tailed it to Atlanta—another humid city. It was summer, and I walked the tree-shaded sidewalks for days. My tourist guidebook said that 36% of the city was covered in trees, and I was grateful for that. I stayed at a La Quinta and ordered the All-American Slam from Denny’s (three scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, two bacon strips, two sausage links, hash browns and white toast) each morning for breakfast. It tasted the same as it had before I met Roger, and I marveled at that small truth, pushing each bite of eggs and greasy bacon around in my mouth as I searched for traces of him online.
He had a very minimal web presence. His last Facebook update was a post from over a year ago. It was a photo of him in a black leather jacket leaning up against a brick wall, laughing into the camera.
I’d memorized every comment on the photo.
Looking good, man!
The cutest! Miss you.
U r awesome.
The photo was posted on April 11, 2016, the day before we met.
#
On April 12, 2016, I attended an event that was too sophisticated for me. Jennifer from high school had invited me to a housewarming party in Dallas. We’d been out of touch for years and I suspected it had been an accident—either that or she had so few friends that she was really scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill her house with people.
I had always wondered what the big, beautiful houses in Dallas looked like on the inside, plus my air conditioning was out, so I put on the only dress I owned and went. The house was at the end of a long driveway with pine trees standing on either side like soldiers at attention. The oak door had a heavy gold knocker and I could hear airy jazz from the other side.
Jennifer opened the door with a wide smile on her face that faded only slightly when she saw me.
I have the kind of face that people forget. My features are flat and my height and weight are exactly average. My eyes and my hair are the exact same shade of light brown. I would make a good extra in a movie because I blend in with the scenery without detracting from the central action.
“Shannon,” she said, wrapping her skinny arms around me.
The party was sparsely attended. My second suspicion had been correct; I was a sort of filler guest, meant to make her look like she had friends.
Bowtie-clad waiters circled with trays of bacon-wrapped scallops. Everything existed in a golden glow of tinkling piano, light laughter and manicured hands holding stemmed glasses. The furnishings were all a deep red oak, giving the room the feeling of a cool, elegant cave. I milled about, playing the part of Party Guest. I eyed my watch. I would stay until 5 p.m.—exactly 40 more minutes. In my head I parsed through the various excuses for leaving, settling on I have another engagement because it sounded fanciest.
At 4:55 p.m., Roger appeared in the doorway.
A cartoon version of a handsome person, I thought. All of his features were oversized, exaggerated. He had big, square teeth, apple-green eyes and large, smooth hands. He wore a black leather jacket and jeans. He didn’t belong there either, in this oak house surrounded by women in silk blouses and men in ties. He belonged in the corner booth of a bar with a glass of whiskey, listening as the band went through their sound check. His expression was bright and inquisitive as he handed Jennifer the housewarming gift he’d brought her—a potted cactus.
I knew then I wouldn’t be leaving at 5 p.m.
“I wasn’t sure if you liked plants,” he said smiling broadly. “But then I thought, who doesn’t like plants? But I brought you the receipt just in case you want to return it.”
He had a nervous twitchiness about him for someone so extraordinarily handsome, and I fell in love with him immediately.
The next morning, I woke up in his big white bed, his body rising and falling beside me like a sleeping animal.
#
Someone named Mitchell had posted on Roger’s Facebook: Thanks for stopping by Atlanta, man. Good luck in Idaho!
It appeared he had only been visiting friends. Another half-hour on the internet got me the name of the town he’d gone to in Idaho.
Finally, I thought, Some cold mountain air.
I took a flight to Idaho Falls, bought a shirt with a potato on it, rented a room at the Hampton Inn and ordered the spicy shrimp tacos from Chili’s. It was July. The days were sunny and the nights were cold. I looked for signs of him, and when I wasn’t doing that I walked in circles inside the mall. American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Journeys. All of the stores getting the same shipments as their sister locations across the country.
Idaho Falls was another false start, and I thought about going back home to Fort Worth, enrolling in community college or something, maybe talking to my old boss about getting my job at the grocery store back. My credit card was $23 away from being maxed out.
But by then I’d figured out he was in El Paso. I bought a ticket and wrote down the flight confirmation number on the notepad by the bed. I thought about ordering an Oreo cookie milkshake at Applebee’s to celebrate the discovery, but no, not yet.
#
For the first few days in El Paso, I didn’t leave the hotel unless I was going to Applebee’s. Each morning, I woke up and took the elevator down to the lobby for breakfast. Of all the chain hotels, Holiday Inn Express serves my favorite breakfast. I could smell the biscuits and gravy, the sugary maple syrup and the buttered toast the moment the elevator doors opened. I filled my plate with heaping piles of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and fresh fruit. I shoveled big forkfuls into my mouth. I was voracious, thinking about Roger.
The thing I like about continental breakfasts at chain hotels is the feeling of dining in silence with people from all over the state, the country, maybe even the world. There’s always a television overhead showing the local news. People gaze up at it, nodding along politely as if it’s their news too. A family on their way home from a reunion or a wedding or a funeral discusses the best route for avoiding traffic. A couple takes a few apples for the road. Everyone is going somewhere. I like to think that I am going somewhere, too.
Breakfast was from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., and I sat and sipped black coffee until the end, and then I changed into my bathing suit and went to the pool where I floated on my back and listened to the cars moving along the highway. I took a nap in the sun on a busted lawn chair and afterwards I went back to my room for the evening news. At dusk I turned off the television. It was time.
#
Roger lived on the ground floor of a nondescript apartment complex near the University of Texas El Paso. I parked three blocks away and sat behind the wheel with the engine running. The piece of paper with his address was in my back pocket, but I’d memorized the information, so I crumpled it up into a ball, stuffed it into my mouth, and swallowed it. I thought of the red wine we’d lifted from Jennifer’s kitchen, how we’d sat in the grass, passing it back and forth, the way he’d whispered, “I’m going to take you home.”
I cut the engine and got out. Behind me the traffic on the highway roared. The sun set over Mexico, lighting Juarez on fire. I leaned against the hood of the car, watching the sky turn from orange, to purple, to blue, to black, and when it was finally dark enough, I made my way to where he lived.
There were no streetlights, and I was able to slip through the neighborhood like a phantom. Earlier that day, I had sat at the bar at Applebee’s and had one last chicken caesar salad, watching a baseball game on TV.
“I’ve seen you in here before,” the bartender said.
“No,” I told him, “You haven’t.”
I stood in the bushes outside of Roger’s basement apartment. The window to his bedroom was at the same level as my feet. The light was on. Roger’s leather jacket was draped over a chair. He was on his back on a mattress, reading a novel. I couldn’t make out the title. I held my breath, hoping he’d put the book down so that I could see his face. He was barefoot, wearing tattered jeans that hugged his rounded knees. His arms were tanned and he wore a gold wristwatch.
I watched him and recited the facts I’d learned about El Paso in my head to calm myself down. The night had been so long ago but I could still feel his hands on my neck, his knees pushing my legs apart. I could still see my dress on the floor.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” I’d asked him that night, drunk in the passenger seat of his car on the way to his house, my heart as swollen as the San Marcos River.
“What?” he’d asked.
“Nothing.”
From the other side of the window of his apartment, I watched him lower the book and gaze up at the ceiling. He wasn’t thinking of me. Somehow I knew that. I waited until he turned the light out and then waited another 15 minutes (it takes the average human approximately seven minutes to fall asleep).
I didn’t have to break in; he’d left the door unlocked, almost as if he were expecting me. Perhaps he was. Maybe all of his running around had been from me. I turned the knob slowly and stepped inside. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness (a process which takes approximately 10 minutes), I made my way through the living room and down the stairs to his bedroom. I stood in the darkness beside Roger’s bed, listening to him breathe. He didn’t snore, just as he hadn’t on the night we’d spent together. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him there, just as I’d felt his presence as he’d stepped into the house in Dallas that night.
Finally, I thought. We’re together, Roger.
My whole life had been an illusion before him. How beautiful he’d looked, standing in the golden light of that doorway, and how much I’d come to wish I’d never met him.
I stepped closer to the bed. Roger stirred, but didn’t wake. I knelt down until I was right beside him. My heart was beating so loud I was afraid he might hear it. My face was so close to his that I could feel the warmth from his skin radiating in the darkness.
I slid the knife out from my back pocket.
Roger’s breath moved in and out and I remembered how he’d pressed me against his car in the driveway of his house, how he’d grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, how I’d thought, maybe we’ll fall in love.
But of course it hadn’t been like that. I’d fallen asleep in my clothes and woken up to him undressing me.
And maybe that was why he was running. Maybe he’d raped other girls too.
The morning after it had happened, I’d stood shaking on the sidewalk outside of where he lived. I imagined him in his bed where I’d left him, swimming deep in the river of sleep, someplace cool and safe. Was I in Dallas? Was I in Fort Worth? Was I somewhere else entirely? I walked for sixteen blocks, hoping each cross street would have a name I knew. The sunlight was platinum and it cut into me like metal. When I finally saw a familiar building my racing pulse slowed. Applebee’s. And sure, I’d never been to this Applebee’s, but I’d eaten at Applebee’s with my parents every Friday night in junior high and then high school. I knew that they were all the same. So I stepped inside, sat down at a table and ordered the same thing I’d ordered as a teenager. A chicken caesar salad. My parents were not sitting across from me and I was not wearing my field hockey uniform from the game, but the salad tasted the same. Vaguely sweet lettuce, blackened chicken, the kind of croutons that were crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Even though I didn’t know what town I was in or who I would become when I left that restaurant, I knew that this one thing would always be as it had been before Roger.
I warmed the blade with my palms so that it wouldn’t startle him, and then I pressed the tip to his throat. I rubbed his shoulder with my fingers, and for a moment I slipped into the dream life I’d thought he was going to give me. The life of a girlfriend, waking up her boyfriend in their apartment on Sunday morning. The dream life was made up of endless Sundays, standing at a kitchen counter in underwear, making plans to ride bicycles through the park, to go for a meandering drive, to drink coffee in bed and watch old movies.
But I didn’t dream anymore.
“Hey Roger,” I murmured, pushing his hair back.
He was awake now, and he was about to say something, but I didn’t want to hear it.
Krista Diamond is a Las Vegas based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Narratively, HuffPost, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by Tin House and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her website is www.kristamariediamond.com and she can be found on Twitter @kristadiamond.
