Day Out of Days Read Free Page A

clearly hear voices I don’t recognize at all. Strangers. I’ve never heard them before. Voices conjured from water running in the sink, gurgling coffee, pissing in the creek, bacon frying, distant moaning highway trucks. They just appear; volunteer themselves, uninvited. I’m eavesdropping like—listening at the door to another room. Sometimes, they drop way off into the background and vanish. Something else takes their place. Some tone comes up. Some rhythm or other. Some tune. Sometimes, pure silence and my heart sings. Just like that it can happen. You’re standing there in a blue field and everything suddenly stops. Miraculous. Then it all starts up again. Churning away.

Williams, Arizona
(Highway 40 West)
    The actor wakes up. It’s 6:45 a.m. Mountain Time according to his Indiglo Timex. He’s staring at the sun-faded color blowup of the Grand Canyon mounted above the TV in a cheap frame. The picture’s warped. The wall it hangs on is phony pink adobe. Actually, it’s sheetrock with pink crud smeared on it like curdled Pepto-Bismol. The “Fun Things to Do in Williams” brochure propped up by the lamp on the bedside table, accompanied by yet another dizzying helicopter view of the deep gorge, reminds him that he has spent the night at the “Gateway to the Grand Canyon.” The giant sun is just beginning to burn through the one window. The High Desert peeks in; yucca and candelaria. Now he remembers. He’s on his way to L.A. to finish up some looping on a film he shot last summer. A film he cares nothing about anymore and can’t remember why he wanted to do in the first place. A film he can’t even remember the title of. Is that true? It must be, he says to himself. Yes, it’s true. I can’t remember the title. I have no idea. No inclination. He swings his very white legs out from under the Navajo print blanket and just sits on the edge of the mattress staring out the window for a while. He’s trying to adjust. His eyes. His breath. He sees a low red bluff in the distance turning slowly to blaze orange. A crow flies languidly past. He pictures the same old route he’s always taken east to west; down through Kansas City on 35, cutting across to Wichita, down to Tucumcari, picking up40 West, paralleling the fabled and long-abandoned Route 66—the highway he grew up on. The highway that shaped his youth. He stands slowly, hoping his trick knee doesn’t suddenly give out on him. He remembers the last news item on TV before he fell asleep. It just pops into his head. A very attractive blonde reporter with flashing teeth all excited about Special Forces closing in on Osama bin Laden somewhere near the Hindu Kush. Supposed sightings of an extremely tall figure dressed as a woman, riding a donkey over the mountain pass. Very biblical. Suspiciously vivid. They were sure they had him cornered. The CIA had reliable contacts, they said. They’d infiltrated the villages. He walks to the TV and flicks it on then heads to the narrow bathroom and throws water on his face. His face—He can’t stand his face anymore. Pathetic—no longer young. A self-pitying shroud around the eyes and forehead. Widow’s peak receding dramatically. Teeth (which never were his best asset) have grown gray and his disappearing gum line gives them the aura of wax fangs or an Appalachian miner’s mouth. There’s a stale breath stench too, which is a bad sign, he thinks. (He’s always looking for signs.) He wonders if maybe it’s an indication of some deeper internal disorder; something to do with the liver or lower intestine or maybe worse. What could that be? He shudders to think. There’s a sharp voice from behind him that makes him jump and turn around. A punctilious female voice. He turns off the water to listen then remembers he’d left the TV on. He listens while he brushes his teeth, bearing down on the plaque ferociously. A woman is being interviewed by Larry King. What is it about Larry King’s voice, he asks himself,