Alice & Dorothy (34 page)

But first he had to play catch-up. The rain was pounding down on them, and he was so very late already. He throttled the car and sped off toward the heart of the storm, toward Alice. Toward everything. He could feel the importance of time catching up to him; threatening to pass him and leave him behind altogether. He had to move quickly if there was any chance at all. His jaw hurt, but it was a reminder of everything that was at stake and he could handle that.

The car hit a puddle and roared. For a moment there was the sensation of disconnect as the tires crashed through water.

“Easy,” Devon said. “You don’t have to drive so damned fast, we’re gonna catch ‘em.”

Oh, but I do.
“I’m late,” Rabbit said, and hit the gas.

Alice lay back against the seat and closed her eyes, but just for a moment. She didn’t dare relax too much while she was driving. All it would take was three or four seconds and she could be in the ditch.

Once the initial pain and shock of the bullet going through her had subsided, it had been replaced with a slow burning fugue that left her both dizzy and sleepy. She knew that most of it was the blood loss. There were motes flashing in her eyes; popping and crackling in her vision. It reminded her of eating fancy sushi with its little pockets of fish eggs that burst in your mouth when you chewed them. Or perhaps they were like pop rock candies, which she’d once heard was just carbon dioxide that had been freeze-dried like beef jerky. In the back of her mind she still believed they were some kind of magic, like when she was a little girl.

Beside her, Dorothy was hugging Toto and talking about the places they would go when this was over. It was a nice, listening to her talk, and it filled Alice with a gentle, sunny feeling. Like a summer picnic. As she drove, the wipers pushed amber coloured rain to the sides of the windshield. They passed houses shaped like animals with birthday parties on their lawns. All manner of creatures attended the parties, from rabbits to foxes to turtles with pink and blue bows on their reptilian heads. They passed cakes and soda fountains and presents piled high in pyramids that stretched for miles. They passed abandoned cars and garbage heaps and burnt out homes as well. They didn’t concern Alice much. She welcomed the change.

It was almost as though her real life with Dorothy and the one in Wonderland were becoming interposed on each other, the way two pictures might become double exposed on the same frame into a single, wondrous image. These days, she didn’t imagine that happened much anymore, with digital cameras replacing all the old film standbys.

Just another example of technology killing the magic of things
, the Hater cooed, and Alice had to agree. There was nothing magic about her life with Dorothy. It was a brackish world of pain and reality. The only thing it was good for was escaping.

“
Alice,
” Dorothy said.

What do you want
, Alice thought,
aside from dragging me back into this miserable freak show?

“ALICE,” Dorothy said again, and then reached over and shook her. Alice moaned, but then her eyes fluttered open. She’d been driving down the middle of the road. Somewhere behind them a horn blasted, but all she could make out were lights and a green block.

“What do you want?” Alice said.

“You were falling asleep,” Dorothy said. “Where are we going?” She sniffled and wiped her face with the back of her hand. She was covered in blood. It darkened the wrinkles and pores on her face around her mouth and her nose.

“There might be a gas station ahead,” Alice said. “It’s been a long time since I was out this way, but there’s a little roadside town or something. We can maybe get a new car there too. The cops will be looking for this one.”

“What are we going to do?” Dorothy said.

“Relax,” Alice said. “And don’t worry your pretty head about it. I’ve done this a dozen times before. We’ll get a car, grab some beer, and head out into the rain like a couple sunflowers.”
I talk a good game. I wonder if I can make good on it.

Alice was right, though. Twenty minutes later they were seeing signs telling them about a roadside turnoff, a place where truckers could park their trucks, get great prices on diesel and propane, and all the travelling supplies they might need. There was also a sign advertising cheap
Axe fuck sex
, but she thought she might be imagining that one because she couldn’t think of anyone who’d want such a thing. The Hater thought it might be a perfect birthday gift for someone he knew, and Alice pushed him away.

The turnoff was actually a service access that they almost passed while looking for the gas station; it was a narrow paved road that allowed truckers to bring their rigs in and slow down off the highway and out of traffic. The gas station was populated with a half dozen different vehicles. Further back in a large parking area off to the side of the gas station there were three rigs parked like slumbering dinosaurs. The one in the front was decorated with a big MacDonald’s hamburger and some writing Alice couldn’t make out in the rain. The vents on the dashboard kicked out stale smelling air, but it was warm enough.

“This is crazy,” Dorothy said. “You don’t need a gas station, you need a hospital. I need a fuckin’ morgue.” She giggled morbidly and kept her eyes on the service road, but all her attention was on Alice.

“I’ll just get some tampons,” Alice said, then chuckled. “I’ve got heavy flow.”

“This isn’t funny!” Dorothy sniffed. “You have a hole in your shoulder and you’re bleeding all over the place. You could die!”

“No hospitals,” Alice said. “The cops will be looking for us. The first thing they do at the hospital when you come in with a gunshot wound is call the cops.”

“This is so fucked!” Dorothy cried, dragging her hand through her hair.

“It’s not fucked,” Alice said. “Everything is fuckin’
fine
. Just find us a car and then go in and grab some stuff. Bandages and alcohol. We need to clean this hole in my shoulder.”

Dorothy looked like she was ready to collapse herself. She was pasty and trembling, and her face was red and scratchy from crying. “Me? I can’t. Look at me, for Christ’s sake.” She held out her bloody arms for inspection, pleading Alice with her eyes. She looked like she’d bathed in blood. She was red from her nose down to her knees. The wound on her chest had bled and bled, and even though it was all done bleeding Alice could see the folly of sending the girl into the store. She looked half dead.

“You should stay here,” Alice agreed.”You’re too fucked up. If they see you like this, someone will call the cops for sure. I’ll go.” She held out her hand and Dorothy slapped the last of their money into Alice’s palm. It was about a hundred bucks or so.

“Grab smokes too,” Dorothy said. “And beer.”

Alice coughed something metallic into the back of her throat, but she swallowed it before she had a chance to look and see if it was blood. She could tell that it was. She took the money and folded it into her pocket. Then she nodded and got out of the car. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be right here,” Dorothy replied.

Alice pulled the hood up on her sweater to keep the rain out of her eyes and then stalked across the parking lot toward the store. The bullet hole in her shoulder was obvious if you were looking for it, but thankfully the sweater was black so the blood running down her side was invisible. It was dripping and leaving pink spatters on the ground, but that couldn’t be helped now. Her gun was in the front pocket and she kept one hand curled around the handle just in case she needed it.

When she reached the door she looked back at the Volkswagen. Dorothy was lying with her head against the door, already asleep. Lightning roared across the sky with the sound of a million kettle drums, and Alice went inside.

The automatic doors guillotined apart as Alice entered the cool artificial light and air inside the store. There were a couple truckers standing around near the front counter, rough and tumble types with a week’s worth of stubble on their faces and the kind of grimy, weather born faces that told the world their version of air conditioning on the open road involved a rolled down window and the occasional welt from a bee travelling by at seventy miles an hour.

Walking the aisles was a family of four collecting supplies. They had the look of people who spent most of their time working in office jobs and doing family outings with their kids on the weekends, as if that might be enough time spent with them so they didn’t grow up with a deep seeded resentment toward anything paternal. The husband was an impatient man, probably used to meeting deadlines in whatever rat race career he was in, and now he was expressing his displeasure that his two sons couldn’t decide on chips or chocolate bars for their snack. He was leaning toward the chips, as though they wouldn’t make a mess with them.

Alice walked down the pharmacy and auto aisle, past rows of motor oil and cherry scented car refreshers, and stopped in front of identical rows of lip balm, suntan lotion, and a handful of first aid essentials. She grabbed a box of cotton bandages, pictured the blood on Dorothy’s shirt (
just get me some tampons, I’ve got a heavy flow, ha HA!
) and grabbed another box. Then she grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some antiseptic cream.

She thought back to the night they’d cleaned up in the bathroom of that gas station after escaping from Rabbit’s house. They didn’t know they were sitting on his drugs then. Had things changed so quickly? That night had been full of terror, but also promise, and they’d kissed each other’s blood off and she’d cleaned Dorothy up, wiping the smell of Rabbit off both of them. She looked so helpless.
It’s impossible not to love her and hate her at the same time.
Dorothy’s vulnerability made Alice want to protect her and keep her safe, but it also made her want to slap the girl and tell her to get a fucking grip. But she was Dorothy’s lover and her protector, and she knew that Dorothy would follow her into hell if Alice asked her to.

But she hadn’t asked at all, had she? She’d just grabbed Dorothy by the hand and dragged her down into a world Dorothy had only seen in Scorsese movies, where people killed each other and fucked for money and smoked heroin. Where they shot cops and got shot in return.

Now they were here again, not in a circle really but maybe a number 6, because they’d started off somewhere good and quickly dropped into a toilet bowl, and they were swirling around in circles waiting for the final splash of water so they could be sucked down into the sewage system of the world and be spit out somewhere down river as decaying matter.

Alice wondered what Dorothy thought of her now. If her entire life had been like this. What her path must have been like to end up here and now, and to be so calm and in control about the entire fucked up scene, like Alice had been there a hundred times before and it wasn’t any big deal to bleed out in a stolen car while being chased by drug dealers and killing cops. Then she thought back to the motel bathroom where she’d gouged out the Hater’s eye with her fingers. Maybe this
was
normal.

Maybe for Alice a fucked up situation was something so totally batshit crazy Dorothy couldn’t imagine it. Babysitting the Hater was a fulltime job, and if she let it do its own thing for a while it was like sticking your tits in a bear trap; it made no sense and caused nothing but chaos and pain and asked more questions than it answered.

What if they had been right keeping me in that hospital?
Alice thought.
Maybe I really needed the therapy and the drugs and the walls and doors with their wire mesh windows and shatterproof double-paned glass.
Now there might not ever be time to find out, because she was fading quicker than she wanted to admit. She hoped they could clean up her shoulder, but it was really a crap shoot either way.
This isn’t the movies, kiddo. You don’t shake off a bullet wound and go on with your life. You lose blood until you pass out and die.
But that wasn’t the only thing that could happen. They weren’t ever going to a hospital. How could they take the risk? Alice might get an infection that rotted her organs from the inside out. She could get a blood fever so high it liquefied her brain.
One day I might just not wake up when it’s time for breakfast.

Of course, there was no reason for both of them to die, was there? Dorothy was hurt bad too.
She’s taking a cue from me,
Alice thought.
She’s hurt worse than she’ll admit to
. But she didn’t have to go down with Alice.
She hasn’t done anything except get hurt.
If she got really bad, Alice could dump her at a hospital. They’d arrest her, but Dorothy could tell them it was all Alice. She could plead crazy and tell them Alice had killed people and she was afraid for her life.

After all, they were a couple crazy bitches on the run, weren’t they? That’s what her lawyers could say. They’d broken out of a mental health facility in the hospital. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to convince a jury that they had belonged there. The state had already made that decision for them.

Alice took her medical supplies past the beer cooler and grabbed a six pack on her way by.