I guess most people newly freed from responsibilities take naps. But not me. My dog and I slept in a motel room that inexplicably had four beds of varying sizes. We were Goldilocks.
My dog, who has thick cataracts and is blind, sniffed at the walls. The next morning I tried to drive us to Sedona, but I realized halfway there that the terrain and view were replicas of Kings Canyon, which was 40 minutes from my house in Fresno. But by then it was too late. I was behind a row of cars whose drivers were elderly, their feet fluttering constantly against their brakes.
When we pulled into the resort area, I found a way to turn around and began making my way to New Mexico. An hour in, I stopped at the gas station; my dog hates the car so I took her with me to the restroom after I pumped gas. The stalls were full except one, and when I got out, the women were gone. Instead a white woman in a uniform was washing her hands. I stood by her and washed my hands, too. This place is a shithole, she said.
She was wearing a pair of wraparound metallic blue trucker shades. Some people just shit in their trucks and throw the bag out the window, she said. They do? I said, amused. Might as well hire monkeys to drive trucks now.
Are ya? Yes, I said. I am, I said. I could have left, but I went after her. I got back to the car and held my dog and shook. Children get their first taste of invisibility before they can even remember. Then, they thrill in magic tricks. A parent can hide and then surprise them with their sudden return. Birthday clowns make coins disappear. Children watch cartoons where a mouse takes a dip in a paint pot that holds invisibility ink. Harry Potter wears a cloak, women in Canada and America and Afghanistan and Lebanon and France wear niqabs, humans are surveilled through closed-caption video cameras, drones can spy activities from high above and can also strike men dead, or hit a wedding party.
