Man Down Read Free Page B

rested with his successor, a chunky man in his fifties with a blunt East Coast accent.
    Somehow the accent had lulled Tanya into believing that the professor’s politics were left of center and, at the meeting, she’d launched into a scathing critique of Arizona’s reactionary governor, the treatment of illegals and rounded off with a jibe at the number of executions in the state, comparing it to Iran.
    It was only when she was too far into her diatribe to stop that she saw her superior wore a look of distaste.
    After the meeting ended Tanya lurked in the corridor, hoping to talk to the professor and perhaps placate him, even though this went against her nature.
    He walked out with a buxom woman, another associate professor, the kind of hot pants little blonde that Tanya was allergic to, and not wanting to speak in front of this bimbo she’d hung back, unseen by them.
    The blonde, shaking her head, said, “The wit and wisdom of Tanya Turner.”
    “Good God, that name,” the professor said, “like a third rate karaoke singer.”
    The bimbo laughed a flirtatious laugh and nudged him with her hip and Tanya knew in that moment that they if they weren’t already fucking they soon would be.
    “An unfortunate name for an unfortunate person,” the blonde said.
    “Yes. She’s a . . .”
    “Say it.”
    “No.”
    “Oh, go on. I know what you want to say.”
    “You do?”
    “Yes. So say it.”
    “No.”
    “Come on, don’t be so politically correct.”
    “You say it.”
    “Oh, I’m allowed to say it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why? Because I have one?”
    “Because you’re gender sanctioned to say it.”
    “ Gender sanctioned ?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that even a definition?”
    “It is now.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It’s the world in which we live.”
    “Okay. Tanya Turner is a cunt.”
    “That she is.”
    “You’re still not going to say it?”
    “No. Now it would be redundant.”
    They laughed and walked on and Tanya ditched her afternoon classes and got into her car and drove away, knowing that she would not be asked to return for the next semester.
    She did what she so often did since arriving in this god-awful place where she was friendless and alienated: she cruised the freeways, stopping her car and pulling over to the roadside when the city gave way to the desert, staring out at nothing, part of her wanting to drive on into the endless expanse of sand and dust and become something or someone else.
    But, like always, she started the car and turned it around.
    Tanya fucking Turner.
    Going nowhere.
    But there was a place she was going: a place called crazy.
    Jesus, now she was starting to think in country song lyrics.
    Fucking America.
    Country songs and jingles were eating her mind like the parasitic worm that had incubated in the brain of that Arizona woman who’d pigged out on pork tacos in Mexico.
    Served her right.
    Served her right for cramming slop into her face.
    She was probably obese, too, like most of these fucking people.
    Just as Tanya had this thought she saw the skinny boy standing at the side of the road. Not hitching. Just standing there, a hot breeze teasing his lank, greasy hair.
    Tanya couldn’t help herself.
    She had to stop.
    It was that kind of a day.
    She unlocked the passenger door of the Subaru and he climbed up next to her. He wore baggy jeans and a T-shirt and had pimples and blondish down on his face and smelled unwashed and she liked that.
    “Where are you going?” Tanya asked.
    “The city.”
    She clicked the car into gear and drove.
    “What were you doing out here?”
    He shrugged. “Waiting for you.”
    “What’s that? A pickup line?”
    “No, you’ve already picked me up.”
    “Oh, so you’re a comedian?”
    “No. I’m a seer.”
    “A seer?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Like a sight seer?”
    He sniggered. “Sure, I see the sights. But I see other stuff too.”
    “Like what? What do you see?”
    “I see you don’t belong here,” he said.
    “I think you’re