Permian Basin​

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In a rented room outside Odessa, everything tasted like bug spray, even her lips when she allowed it.

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“Do we have cigarettes? I need a cigarette,” she said, pulling a brush through her tangled acorn-colored hair.

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“They’re around here somewhere,” I said.

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She put the hairbrush down and began opening drawers, moving around stacks of books and magazines and digging through her cosmetics box until she found what remained of the Marlboros.

 

I sat on the edge of the unmade bed, pushing on my eyes until color blossomed across my retinas.

 

“I’m just so anxious, already,” I heard her say before the flick of a lighter.

 

When I blinked my eyes open, she was taking her t-shirt off in front of the mirror, the burning cigarette smoldering atop the dresser.

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Before she fastened a bra and changed her shirt,  I caught a flash of flesh that somehow, in my hangover, seemed more sexual than actual sex.

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I stood and started kicking around the wrinkled clothes piled by the air-conditioning unit, looking for a relatively-clean pair of jeans.

 

We’d only been in Texas for a few days but we’d already made a mess of things.

 

At night, drunk on wine and cheap whiskey, we talked, parsing the details of traumas and grievances like UN workers excavating unexploded ordinance only to wake the next morning and find that all these issues remained unresolved, the explosives reinterred. 

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As I dressed, she sat down in the only chair and began painting her fingernails a deep red that made me think of the hawk’s razor-sharp talons after a kill.

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I’d come here looking for work in the oil fields and so, in the mornings, I’d go down to the diner and chat with the workers, inquiring of foremen and the hiring process as the men downed eggs, bacon and flapjacks before driving their pickups out into the Permian Basin.

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“Could you roll me a joint?” she asked, holding her fingertips to the box fan.

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“I need to get going."
 

“I’m just so anxious. I think a joint would help me and anyway my fingernails are drying.”

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And so, I pulled a pinch of weed from the bag and spread it across a Zig-Zag.

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On the drive across the country, she’d sat in the passenger seat breaking up the bud on her Vogue magazine, tossing the seeds out the window saying, “maybe they’ll take root and grow. That’d make me happy, if I just came across a roadside plant."

 

On the table, by the sun-filled window, a mirage of morning light glared off the crumpled bag of Doritos that she’d tossed aside the night before.

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The work day was about to start for the oil men, so I needed to hurry.

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“Can you light it for me?” she asked, now blowing on her fingernails.

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And so I lit the joint for her.

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“So, what're you doing today,” I asked.

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I’d hoped she'd accompany me to the diner so as to inquire about a position waitressing. In a town full of gruff, burly men, a cute waitress could pull some good tips, I imagined.

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“You know,” she said, “focusing on self-care is what's important right now,” she said, smoke curling from her lips, reaching for the TV remote.

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The screen powered on and it was a nature documentary about spider cannibalism where the female spider, according to the narrator, would eat the male before, during or after copulation.

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I picked up my keys and walked towards the door, stepping into the work boots that I'd purchased just before we'd headed down to Texas.
 

“Babe,” she said, coughing out a cloud of smoke, “could you leave me a few dollars? I’m just so wound-up, you know. I'm up in my head and I might need a few drinks, a bottle of wine or something here soon.”

 

And so, I opened my billfold.

 

“How much do you think you’ll need,” I asked.

 

“How much do we have?”

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As I counted out some bills, in the corner of my eye, I noticed a spider, waiting mercilessly on a cloud of ornate web.

 

“I think this should be enough,” I said. “And, if you don’t spend it all, please hold onto it. We might need it later.”

 

“You know,” she said, putting what was left of the joint into the ash tray, “I think the reason I like you so much is that you remind me of myself. We’re both such caring people.”

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“You might just be right,” I said, opening the door.

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And in this way, I became like the Permian Basin; palpated, scorched and self-abused.