A traveling heart
by LC
3/21/03Written for We Invented the Remix, this is a "meanwhile west of the mississippi" version of Steph's fabulous story slide between, and you should read that first or right after.
Penguin-kisses to kel. for encouragement, threats, and super-fast beta. Thanks also to the Indigo Girls for the title and moral support, from their song "Leaving."
There's no salon in west Texas that will dye his hair bright blue. Chris knows this without looking because he's been here before. He drives for hours until he can't feel his ass and his throat is scratchy from belting out Indigo Girls songs. The water bottle from the last gas station ran out miles ago. He keeps meaning to refill them at motels but he never gets around to it. The angle of the bottle and the sink is too awkward, anyway. The bottles aren't supposed to be filled up again. He's got four in the backseat, and they roll back and forth when he brakes.
Some days it's not about the driving. Sometimes he goes as far as the next town, or sometimes not even that far, some days he stops at anything and everything along the road. Three days ago he found a store that sold nothing but cow memorabilia. He bought gifts there, because a cow store was clearly a sign from God that it was time to buy gifts. They were sitting in the trunk now: a pair of thick black socks embroidered with smiling brown cow faces for Justin, a silverware set with white and black plastic handles for JC. The stainless steel against the cow patterning seemed oddly elegant, and Chris had known immediately who it was for.
For Joey, he got the oven mitts shaped like udders and for Lance, a surprisingly adorable plush cow that Chris plans to doctor extensively before actually presenting it. He's gotten as far as piercing one ear with a huge gold hoop that lends the cow a very rakish, gay air. It sits next to him now, in the passenger seat, as he moves west.
He was driving through the hill country yesterday, under the pink mountains, and walking back down the side of the pink granite he decided to turn his hair blue. It was hot and the sun bit at the back of his neck, drew sweat out of him to soak his shirt. He knew exactly the color he wanted.
Each time he leaves he never knows what to say. How to explain it. Lance is the only one who doesn't ask anymore, so of course it's when he's with Lance that Chris feels like he has to try. Lance says, "stay as long as you want," because he learns, which the others don't. Chris was born to hurt people, it seems sometimes.
"I'll miss you," he said, the night before he left. He said it to the back of Lance's neck, the warm skin. He said it with his eyes closed. The sheets held them together, wrinkled and sweaty. He thought maybe Lance would pull away and turn around and look at him with angry bright eyes and say, so why are you going, then? And Chris would have to say something, maybe sit up and he would have to explain himself. He was maybe looking for a second chance to explain himself.
He'd been back almost a month. There was no work to do, a year before they could even start thinking about the next album, and Chris hated feeling aimless more than anything, except feeling helpless. He started itching, his whole skin itching, after a week, but he held out because he remembered how he'd promised, last time, to stay longer. So he stayed. Twenty five nights and twenty one of them he woke up in the same bed as Lance. They slept back to back or sometimes back to front, not all wrapped up together the way they used to. But they woke up close enough that Chris could lie still, eyes closed, holding on to sleep with one finger of one hand, and feel the heat slide between their bodies.
He picks up the dye at a Walmart off the highway, in some half-town of strip malls and gas stations. Another water bottle and a couple trashy thrillers from the magazine stand go in the basket along with the brightly colored box, the one with a sullen teenage girl on the front twirling her blue hair between her shellacked fingernails. The girl at the register is half-asleep and keeps rubbing her hand over her eyes. When she tears off the receipt and makes to hand it to him, it drops between her body and the counter. She mumbles an apology and bends to get it, but Chris waves her off.
"Forget it," he says, and he grabs the bag and goes.
When every place he goes is a twenty-four hour chain, Chris forgets the difference between nine at night and four in the morning. Listening to the ring on the other end he remembers right away, but this is good, this is better anyway, so he talks for about two minutes to JC's machine until he can feel the beep coming on and closes it up.
"I miss you," he says, "I miss you guys, you better not die or go to Canada or anything, okay?" And there it is, he knows this phone machine as well as he knows anything, he knows all their machines. He remembers little things.
All the postcards--fourteen at last count--and the calls, every two or three days to confirm he wasn't dead or maimed, he hadn't sent anything to Lance. Hadn't called him. There was a box in the trunk of the car, a cardboard box with no lid because it'd been ripped off years ago when Chris helped somebody, somebody's girlfriend, sister, move across town. He kept the box, and it's in the trunk filling with gifts, with disposable cameras, with a handful of pink rocks Chris carried down the mountain in his pocket.
He can't mail these things. He can't stretch out his hand.
Four in the morning, just about, and Chris has never been less sleepy in his life. Not wired, not like he has to go jumping on beds and doing suicide runs down the hotel hallway. But nothing like sleepy, nothing like closing his eyes for a second. He goes into the bathroom and slides into the latex gloves that come with the box. The latex hooks on the ragged ends of his nails like the last time he did this. The last time he did this for himself he was twenty-three. It washed out in four days.
The dye stinks and waters up his eyes, and Chris swears at it as he rubs it in, feels the low burn begin at his hairline. Loves this feeling, the warm alive tingle, even though it drives him absolutely bugshit not to scratch at it. He peels off the gloves and tosses them, then flees back to the clean air of the main room to watch TV until the color's done.
The thing is this: he wants to come back changed. He wants to be so different nobody knows who he is. Eyes could skim over him. Hands could pass by.
He wants Lance to look at him and find exactly what he's looking for. The thing is this: he never sees.
When they got back from Europe, when the tours were over and the heat let up just a little, Chris took off and came back two weeks later to find JC and Joey ready to tag-team rip him apart.
"What the fuck are you trying to do?" Joey snarled, shoving him, and Chris stumbled back and looked over at JC for help but JC just watched, his arms crossed tight across his skinny string bean body, looking at Chris like he might--well, not throw a punch himself, but maybe pass out drinks while the punches were thrown. It was a really bad look for him.
"What, what, Jesus, what," Chris said, ducking another shove, and slid to the floor with a thud when Joey growled,
"Lance, you fucker," which Chris probably should have known. And then there was more hitting, and a very tightly clenched lecture from JC, and Chris sat on the floor and nodded contritely and tried to figure out how much they were exaggerating about all the crying, because. This was Lance, after all.
So Chris walked into Lance's room, and he maybe got pushed down the hall a little but he walked inside completely of his own free will, he'd been heading there anyway before Joey'd grabbed him. He walked inside and lifted his hand but before he could say anything Lance looked up from his magazine and said,
"You leave again without telling me and I will do something really fucking horrible to you, okay?"
"Yeah?" Chris said, gave him a crooked grin but the buttombottom of his stomach was plummeting hard because they hadn't been lying at all about the crying, not at all.
"I haven't figured out what yet," Lance continued, his eyes running over Chris, top to bottom, "but you know, I have a good imagination under stress."
"You do," Chris agreed, and thought, he's not even going to ask me to stay. The way Lance looked at him made Chris want to empty out his pockets, pop quarters into him like a vending machine.
The way he looks at him.
It's darker blue than he'd imagined. Should've bleached first, he thinks, but no way is he doing that again, not without being tied down and held at gun point. Tingling was one thing, but Chris doesn't go in for chemical burns, not even the mild kind. So it's dark, like if his head were a crayon it'd be almost midnight blue, halfway between midnight and the regular, 8-pack Crayola blue. Once it's dry it lightens a little, but only a little.
So he's a little less flashy than he planned, but he can work the subtle thing, and blue is still blue. Chris figures he got his money's worth, at least. He doesn't need to check the box to know it'll wash out inside of a week; the crazy colors always do. He'd bet anything the stains on his fingers will stick around, though, two weeks at least. The color sinks in deep to the skin.
He thinks, pulling out and onto the feeder, he thinks east might feel different, after two weeks west, northwest, like maybe there's a magnet in his brain like a bird and the background hum in his head will switch keys. But it's nothing, the road is the same.
Into Louisiana, the road is the same. He drives, he sings and rolls the window down, so the wind can shiver through his hair. The blue, he finds, glows brighter underneath the sun.
The mountains are pink, kind of. They're more pink than brown. I like the idea that Texas is famous for its pink mountains, though. It makes up for a lot about this state.