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The two men in the Corvette are silent as it speeds into that dusty desert night, surging along the pale ribbon of road that unfolds like quicksilver beneath the beams of its headlights, the hum of the pavement beneath the tires a metronomic pulse to keep time with the blood singing in their veins and pounding in their hearts, the atmosphere between them fraught with tension.
Then the passenger speaks, opening his mouth just long enough to spit out ten simple words. "I don't know what you're trying to prove here, man," Buz Murdock rasps, his blistering glare hot enough to sear the needles right off the cacti as he stares out at the passing scenery.
"I'm proving to you that Hannah Ellis is not who you think she is, man," Tod Stiles replies through teeth clenched as tight as the fingers that are wrapped white-knuckled around the steering wheel, his inflection aping his partner's derisive tone, his comment a lightning bolt of danger darting between them.
"I don't know what you're thinking I'm thinking, but I know it's not what you're thinking," Buz lashes out, and even to his own ears that sentence sounds absolutely ridiculous, but his anger has twisted his usual patter of poetic eloquence into childish nonsense. "She's just a nice lady that…"
"No, she's not!" Tod thunders, his palm slamming against the steering wheel, for he knows what Hannah Ellis does for a living and it's not something a nice woman would do.
"But you've never even given her a chance, Tod," Buz accuses with a stormy scowl. "You don't know what she's really like."
"And you do?" Tod volleys back. "So the two of you exchange potted plants and some gooey-eyed sentiments, and you have what…one conversation with her and that suddenly makes you an expert on her life?"
"She's lonely and lost and she needs me," Buz snaps defiantly.
Tod snorts, shaking his head. "She needs you, she needs you. That's rich. Hell, Buz, I know her type, they've been lonely and lost all their lives and they latch on like a leech to some poor sap like you and bleed them until they're dry, then they move on to the next poor victim…"
"Hannah's not like that!" Buz's fist pops sharply against the Corvette's dashboard, making Tod jump a little in the driver's seat. "She had a little boy that she gave up for adoption…"
"And let me guess, you remind her of her little boy, right? She thinks she's found her son and you think you've found your mother, right? That solves both your problems, doesn't it? She gets to work out her regrets and you get to have a mommy after all these years. Well, sonny boy, let me show what your mommy does for a living." Tod's words are scathing as the wind rips them from the air, tossing them like poisonous darts into the black night behind them—
Poison.
It's quite fitting, considering.
This town and that runaway boy they returned to the state orphanage and that sloe-eyed barfly at the trailer park is the poison that has seeped between them, spiking what once was a solid friendship with the bitter dregs of suspicion and the acid of accusation.
Because the way Buz sees it, it was wrong of them to take the runaway back to the orphanage because he knows what it's like to grow up cold and unwanted and mostly disregarded in a sterile institution like that, he knows what it's like to go to bed hungry at night, to be at the mercy of the bigger kids and the vicious teachers, to wear the hand-me-downs the rich families donated in order to make themselves feel good about their "charity", to hope and pray that maybe someday some nice couple will come along and adopt you and give you a home and a name and an identity that doesn't have a serial number and a case history behind it.
And Buz doesn't think that Tod gets that because even though Tod's mother died when he was a young boy, he still got to have a mother and a father—Tod Stiles has never had to wonder where he came from, wonder what his parents were like, wonder if he's got grandparents or siblings or aunts and uncles and cousins, wonder who he looks like or sounds like or takes after the most. Buz envies—maybe even resents, if he's honest with himself—the fact that Tod has never had to question whether or not his parents loved him, while Buz wonders daily if his own mother or father even gave him a second thought before they handed him over to the orphanage and moved on with their lives.
Then Hannah Ellis comes along with her sad eyes and her even sadder tale of giving her son up for adoption when he was a child, and even though she cannot keep it straight how old her son was when she gave him up—the last time I saw him, he was six years old…he was only two hours old when I gave him up—Buz is drawn to her, fascinated by her and the broken carnage that has been the theme of her tragic life. Oh sure, he knows she's not his mother, but she offers him the reassurances he has waited to hear all his life, that sometimes even though parents love their children, they know the best thing to do is give them up so that they may have a better life.
Because he doesn't want to think that his mother and father gave him up because they never loved him at all.
But Tod knows Hannah Ellis is not the paragon of virtue Buz has put up on a pedestal and staked his heart and his hopes upon and Tod hates her for that, for making Buz so desperate to see bright shining goodness emanating from that Mother Mary that he is blinded to her faults, her flaws, unable to realize that she is nothing more than a trashy, used-up Mary Magdalene, shaking her tits and her ass in a too-tight dress, begging for attention at the feet of men who will fuck her and forget her before the night is through. Hannah Ellis is no more someone's mother than Tod Stiles is the President of the United States—she is trouble with a capital 'T', cruelly capable of leaving miles of bitter heartbreak in her wake, and Tod only hopes he can tear the blinders from Buz's eyes before it is too late.
And Buz's heart is the one left broken and dripping blood in Nevada's desert sands.
********
Tod leads Buz into the dumpy little dive that is the Roadside Inn, tinny burlesque music blaring in their ears, the air curtained with a thick haze of cigarette smoke, the stink of sweat and cheap cologne and even cheaper booze assailing their noses. The sounds of laughter and dice clicking on tables around them clutter their ears, a few men catcalling and whistling at the buxom beauties who wobble unsteadily on the tiny stage, out of step with one another and decidedly out of step with the rinky-dink music. Tod scans along the bar until he spots a familiar auburn-haired figure in glittering red satin, her shoulders hunched over her drink, and he moves towards her, Buz trailing behind him. "Buy you a drink, lady?" Tod asks the woman with barely concealed distaste.
"Any nice young man can have a drink with Hannah Ellis any time," she replies, her voice already loaded with the booze that flows in her bloodstream, the beads on her tacky dress swaying tawdrily as she turns around on her barstool, that phony smile plastered across her heavily rouged face, tiny beads of sweat gleaming from the sloping valley of her breasts revealed in the cleave of the low-cut gown. In the dim light of the bar, she looks even more faded, more beaten down, the story of her life written into the harsh lines etched on her face, in the cigarettes-and-whiskey rasp of her voice, hidden in the dark circles that surround those cold gimlet eyes that lost their zest for life decades ago when she started shilling for drinks and dime-a-dancing, selling herself and her soul for a little attention, a little booze, a little money earned on her knees or on her back.
And in that moment, the blinders fall away and Buz sees the truth as she blinks blearily at him for a moment, trying to place him, her smile fading as she realizes who he is. "Sorry to see you here, young man," she tells Buz softly, her own gaze dropping to the floor in embarrassment. "Sorry to have you see me here." And the truth is, she IS sorry, for she hasn't yet auctioned off that corner of her conscience that makes her feel ashamed of what she has done—she knows she was wrong in selfishly allowing herself to fantasize that Buz was her long-lost son and she was even more wrong in feeding him a lie…
Because oh yes, Hannah Ellis used to be somebody's mother and oh yes, she gave her son up for adoption, but not because she loved him so much that she wanted to give him a better life.
No, she gave him up because she never really loved him at all.
Hannah tries to recover her smile a bit, forcing a bit of false brightness into it as she looks up at the two men—she is nothing, if not a trouper in the face of adversity, mustering up a brave front as she slips behind that chipped, overly made-up façade of Madonna-cum-whore. "I don't drink with friends in public," she demures as she gathers up her fur wrap, trying to look away from the pain and disappointment that glimmers open and needy and wanting in Buz's eyes. "I only drink with strangers." But as she slides from the barstool, she finds a little bit of pride to pluck from her heart and cast before the two men. "Don't pity me," she tells Buz, tapping him gently on the chin with her fist, then she grabs up her beaded clutch purse, the satin of her dress a mournful whisper as she slips past them, the sequins of her gown glinting like the fake jewels they are, the tatters of her pride and her courage floating in her wake on the drift of dimestore perfume and cheap gin and sour sweat as she escapes into the crowded bar.
After all, if there is one thing Hannah Ellis is good at, it's escaping—everyone is running from someone or something in their lives and Hannah Ellis is running the hardest and the fastest of all, trying to lose herself in the sweet lure of liquor, trying to lose herself in those bodies she lets grunt and sweat over her, trying to lose herself in her lies because if she ever faces the truth about herself…
She will cease to exist.
Buz watches her depart with a queer little smile quivering on his lips, a child trying to be oh so brave as the wizard behind the curtain is revealed to be nothing more than a pitiful sham, leaving him with his heart shattered before him, leaving him to realize he still does not know where he belongs in this world. Turning to Tod, he hates him, hates that knowing look shining out of his eyes—that knowing look that says you thought you found your Mommy and she turned out to be a two-buck whore in a sleazy bar. He'd like nothing more than to wipe the floor with the man he once thought of as his brother, pummeling him to bits, leaving him as broken and bloodied and irreparably damaged as the truth has left Buz's soul. Buz finally finds his voice, rising thick and bitter like acid in his throat. "Outside," he says softly—there is always a calm before a storm, that conversational tone and that eerily placid look upon his face belying the tornadic fury churning in his dark eyes.
But instead of being contrite, Tod is angry as well that Buz's stupid pie-eyed worship of Hannah Ellis has forced him to reveal the truth about her in such a sordid fashion—perhaps he went too far, but it was better than leaving Hannah and Buz to their mutual little fantasies because sometimes fantasies hurt worse than real life, leaving behind bruises upon your memory and scars upon your heart. He and Buz size one another up over the space of that hatred between them, both of them acutely aware that the fate of their friendship rests upon whatever happens in the next few moments.
Then Buz reaches out and grabs Tod, his fingers closing tight around the rough cloth of Tod's coat, yanking him by the arm and pulling him so close that for a brief moment, they're breathing each other's air. "Outside!" he demands sharply, pleased at the flash of rage that flares on Tod's face as he twists out of Buz's grasp with a grimace, the two of them stalking angrily to the door. The minute they're outside, Buz lights into Tod with a fury, his dark eyes burning coals flaming wildly in his skull. "You couldn't tell me what it was all about, could you!" he accuses, hands flailing as he gesticulates madly like he always does when he's angry. "D'ya think I care what she does? Okay, so she leads a hard life and maybe she's a front for a shiller of crap tables, but so what?"
"Oh, you're such a nice guy, you're gonna be so big about this," Tod snides back, his hands shoved into his coat pockets, his own eyes flaming green fire, his breath smoking like dragon's contrails into the chilly night.
"You couldn't tell me what it was all about, could you," Buz repeats angrily. "You had to bring me face to face with her and make her ashamed!" The emphasis on the word 'ashamed' is makes it clear that Buz is ready to fight to the death to defend her honor because for a brief few moments, she was his mother, and little boys always fight for their mothers, no matter what.
Tod stares at him for a second, shocked that Buz is willing to fight for such an unworthy cause, then he speaks. "Let's go!" he growls, pushing past Buz, wanting like hell to get back out on the road and just be gone from this goddamned state, for he's already tired of the dust that grits on his tongue and stings his eyes, he's tired of the neverending sun and the stink of cattle that never leaves his nostrils, but most of all he's tired of…of…whatever this is that is between he and Buz, and he wants nothing more than to either repair their friendship or end it so the two of them can then move on.
Buz, however, is not so willing to forgive and forget, for it was his heart that got pierced by that razor-tipped arrow of oh so bitter truth, so he follows Tod, seething. "And I'll tell you one more thing," he snaps, stopping Tod in his tracks, jabbing a finger in his face as he speaks. "I'm gonna go in there tomorrow and I'm gonna apologize to her, and if she needs my help, I'm gonna give it to her!"
"You're gonna help?" Tod barks back in astonishment.
"That's right!" Buz returns defiantly.
"And how? You gonna buy her a little house in the country somewhere and then introduce her to all your fancy country club friends?" Tod harshes out, his words snapping and biting the air like a rabid dog. "You're gonna help her," he sneers, his lips curling in derision as he slings the words that he knows will wound Buz even more. "You got enough trouble helping yourself! You're a sentimental slob and you go all soft inside, and you think that's nice and kind!"
And that is it for Buz, the anger that's been simmering inside of him ever since they returned that kid to the orphanage erupts into a white-hot, blinding fury, and he swings at Tod, who ducks it easily, grabbing Buz and slinging him backwards over the trunk of a car.
Then that electrical storm that has been lurking behind their eyes and thrumming urgently through the sinews of their muscles finally breaks, exploding into a furious fight—every single irritation with one another that has rubbed on their nerves, every single hurting slight that has gone unacknowledged, every single wounding wrong has gone unrighted, every single unfair injustice they have ever done one another over the course of their friendship is released in the pent-up energy that they expound upon each other. Their breaths huff harsh in the chilly air as they wordlessly slam and punch one another around in an almost beautifully choreographed battle, raging fists connecting hard with flesh, scrabbling dirty in the gravel, scrabbling violently against parked cars, their eyes crazy-alight with all that rage that has built up. They come to a draw as Buz pins Tod against the trunk of a car, Tod gaining enough purchase to fling Buz off of him, the two of them eyeing one another wildly as they gear up to attack each other again, Buz with his hands clenched tight in preparation to sucker-punch Tod, Tod's fist drawn back to bash Buz's nose in, their faces streaked with sweat and grime and blood, panting heavily from exertion but ready to kill one another like they nearly did on that dock in that eternity that existed before Tod's father's death, and then…
The battle is over just as quickly as it started, for in that gulf of gravel between them, they see all the times they have shared—all the triumphs and tragedies, all the joys and heartbreaks, all the hardships and the deep black sorrows. They remember what it's like to have someone to share an inside joke with, someone to vent to when needed, someone to buck you up when you're feeling down, someone to share all of life's mysteries and miseries—
Someone to lean on, to love, to live for.
And that love they share, it that is of brotherhood, a love that is unconditional and undemanding, given willingly without question or hesitation, the two orphans coming together out of a need to belong somewhere, to someone, just to fill that aching void in their hearts that has been left there by the losses they have endured over their young lives. Because in the end it doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, for blood is not always the strongest bond to tie two people together—
But friendship is.
And as they stare at one another, they know if they continue with their fight, their friendship will be something of the past, of what once was, rather than what is now, and neither of them is willing to call it quits, not for as long as they've been together now—
After all, they still aren't done catching stars, still aren't done having adventures, still aren't done searching for their places in the world.
So they lower their fists, neither man victorious, neither man defeated, and Buz swipes at the blood dripping from his nose, his voice a question as he asks his opponent, "Alright?"
Tod nods. "Alright?" he echoes in confirmation.
Buz's shoulders slump, the fight gone out of him entirely. "Alright," he says softly, and Tod nods again, echoing Buz's single word once more, and in that single word is forgiveness, hard-earned and hard-fought, but there just the same. "Another crazy fight," Buz says, thinking of the one on the docks, the one that first forged their friendship.
"Come on, let's drive you to your trailer," Tod tells him, and the two of them wordlessly cross the parking lot to the Corvette, the fight already starting to become a memory in the dust left behind by the Corvette's wheels as they leave the rundown little bar with the rundown Hannah Ellis inside, plying her trade for a drink, for a few bucks, for some strong arms to hold her…
Because sometimes in that blank, lonely blackness of the night, we're all motherless children in need comfort, searching for that someone or something to keep us safe and warm, to make us feel loved and wanted and cherished—
Making us feel like we belong in this world.