Alex Miller
Something nice about Olivia is she lives in a luxury apartment. I don’t know what she pays for it, but clearly it’s out of my price range. Actually there are many nice things about Olivia. She is sweet and works in the public relations office of the Denver Library. She loves dogs, especially boxers, and on more than one occasion I have witnessed her give money to a panhandler. Olivia deserves all the luxury apartments in the world. I am lucky to have her as a friend. Lucky she invites me to her hot tub parties.
Everybody is in the tub already by the time I arrive. Doug, who does social media for a suburban police department, has turned the jets up to full blast. All the guys in the tub drink IPAs from cans. Some of the girls drink White Claw, and other girls drink wine from cans. The cans are important. No glass is allowed at the hot tub. I take off my shirt and hope Ashley notices I’ve been working out. Really my chest is becoming a thing of beauty. I settle into the hot tub and crack a can of Voodoo Ranger IPA.
Ashley wades over. She wears a black bathing suit, and her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Every girl in the tub has tied back their hair to keep it dry, because hot tub water is disgusting. Right away Ashley asks where my girlfriend is tonight. My girlfriend is Hannah, and unlike the people frolicking in the tub, she is not a public relations professional. She writes Java Script for a web design studio. This weekend she is skiing in Breckenridge with her sister.
“Hannah must be a real Coloradan,” Ashley says.
“She is. I think her family came out here a hundred years ago to work a silver mine. They ski like crazy. They all started skiing when they were babies. I can’t keep up.”
“There’s more to life than skiing,” Ashley says. “Plenty to do in the city. You can watch the Rockies lose a baseball game. You can abuse marijuana in the safety of your own home.”
I ask where she’s from. She tells me she grew up in California. After college she lived in LA for a few years before coming out here for a job at a crisis communications firm. I admit that the only part of LA I’ve seen is the airport.
“LA is amazing. Really, it’s an impressive city,” she says. “But it’s massive. It’s so big, everything feels kind of hopeless.”
Ashley drinks from a can of Underwood Sparkling Rosé. She asks where I grew up, and her face lights up when I say Tennessee. She visited Nashville once for a bachelorette party. They went bar hopping downtown and had so much fun. I tell her I grew up in a small town.
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes. It’s beautiful down there. Mild winters, too. But the politics are bad. It’s gotten worse since I was a kid. Everybody thinks Trump is their personal savior. Everybody wants to round up all the brown people and send them to death camps in El Salvador. I can’t ever see myself moving back to Tennessee.”
Ashley and I drink from our cans and talk about where to emigrate after Trump overthrows democracy. Mexico appears to be on an upswing, but the cartels worry us. Canada seems like a safe bet. I like talking to Ashley but feel a little guilty. I really do love Hannah. And I’m not out to destroy my life.
I wade through the tub. The pool deck is surrounded on four sides by apartment towers. No trees or grass in sight. Everything is glass and concrete, what architects like to call the built environment. If a person spent enough time here, they might forget about the real world altogether. The hot tub smells like chlorine and my colleagues’ BO.
Ryan complains about work. He does PR for a town on the Western Slope, and he is all stressed out. Reporters have been blowing up his phone. The town is taking a Methodist church to court for allowing homeless people to camp on its property. The town ordered the church to close the camp, but the church refused. They say it’s a matter of freedom of religion.
“This is a PR nightmare.” Ryan says, tugging the skin of his throat. “My town looks like the bad guy. I’ve got to spin this so they look good, but what can I say? My town looks like the gestapo.”
“Tell the media about the good things your town does to help the homeless,” Olivia says. “Talk about the rehab program for drug addicts.”
“My town fines people for sleeping outside,” Ryan says. “When they can’t pay the fines, we put them in jail.”
“Absolutely don’t mention that,” Olivia says. “Leave it out of the press release.”
I feel bad for Ryan. I’ve been in tough situations at work, really sweated it out. On a good day, public relations is easy. On a bad day, everybody kicks you in the teeth. That’s why our employers pay us so well. They pay us to say what no one else wants to say.
I lean against the tile of the hot tub and enjoy the steady bubbling of the water. I remember when I was a kid and would swim in a creek on hot summer days. One year I met a girl at the creek. Every day we swam together and swung from a rope into the water and hunted crawdads. I can’t remember the girl’s name. I loved her with all the passion my fourth-grade heart could muster, but now I can’t remember her name. I left Tennessee to go to college and never looked back. When you are away for that long, you start to forget.
Across the hot tub, Doug chats up Ashley. No good can come of this. Doug has big sexy muscles. I hate him, a little, for those muscles. Doug has put in the work. He’s been rocking his biceps. Blasting his abs. But all is not lost. Maybe Ashely isn’t into guys with tremendous abs.
I wade over and join the conversation. Doug tells Ashley all about his new skis. An expensive pair of Nordica Enforcers. According to Doug, the skis are incredibly fast, and his turns are smooth as silk.
“When I strap on those bad boys, I’m the lord of the slopes.” Doug repeats the nickname, in case we didn’t hear him the first time. “Lord of the slopes.”
Ashley takes a big swig of Underwood wine in a can. Her eyes are bored. Ashley looks dead inside. I would be dead inside too, if Doug was hitting on me.
Ashley turns her back to Doug and talks to me until he wanders off. She asks if I miss my girlfriend when she goes skiing. I do miss her, but it’s for the best. When it comes to skiing, I only hold her back.
“I have an amazing idea,” Ashley says. “Hannah and I could share you. She’ll get custody during the week, and then on weekends she can go skiing and leave you with me.”
“Hannah will really like that,” I say.
“We’re going to have so much fun.” Ashley brushes my arm with her fingers. “We will go to all the good restaurants and bars. Do whatever we want. We could just stay home all weekend and watch movies.”
“Netflix has a lot of great movies,” I say. “Golden age of cinema.”
Ashley touches my arm excessively. She punctuates every sentence by putting her hands on me. I am having a nice time chatting up Ashley and letting her touch me, and I probably would let things go on like that all night, if not for the security guard. All the sudden, the lights of the pool deck switch off. And there he is, standing like a sentinel by the hot tub. The security guard is dressed like a cross between a riot cop and an Army ranger. He wears a black bullet-proof vest and fingerless leather gloves. He tells us the pool deck is closed for the night and we all have to leave. Everyone in the hot tub boos the security guard. Everybody laughs at him. I laugh too, even though I feel bad about it. Really he’s just doing his job. But why is he dressed up like The Punisher? If he had come as himself, some nerdy guy in a Hawaiian shirt, I would have respected him. I would have chatted him up about the new Legend of Zelda game.
Once the party winds down, I dry off and get dressed and say my goodbyes. I set off down the sidewalk in the direction of the train station. The sidewalk is cracked and broken, but it will get me where I need to go. I haven’t been walking long before a car pulls up and lowers a window. Ashley. She tells me to get in the car, says she’ll drive me home. She has taken her hair out of the pony tail. Her hair hangs like satin curtains around her face. I want nothing more than to get in the car, let her take me wherever she wants to go. Instead I tell her no thanks. I mumble something about how I am almost at the station, and anyway I like walking in the city at night. She tells me to be safe. She raises the window and drives away.
Resisting temptation makes me feel like the greatest boyfriend of all time. Hannah is lucky. She has the greatest boyfriend of all time.
I hustle toward the station. The truth is that I hate walking in the city at night. I’m afraid some crackhead will jump me. The streets smell like black rubber tires and gasoline. I step carefully to avoid the homeless people sleeping in blankets beneath the overpass. My imagination kicks into overdrive. I envision switchblades gleaming in the dark. A lot of people like to think they would hold up well in a fight. This is because they’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood action movies, where the good guy always wins. If a crackhead jumped me, I would fall all to pieces.
The situation is better on the train. It is well lit, and I get a seat all to myself. Only a few people ride at this time of night, and all of us stare down at our phones. Out the window, a desolate strip of warehouses rushes by in a blur. Some guy starts bugging the passengers. Walking up and down the aisle yelling about murder. A transit cop arrives and makes him shut up. I catch my reflection in the glass. I was a child once, and now I am this man.
I close my eyes and wish I was safe in my bed asleep. Behind my eyelids, I see Tennessee. Vivid. Not a memory, more like a dream. Or the echo of another life calling to me from beyond vast chasms of time and space.
I stand on the porch of a farmhouse in the quiet hour after sunrise. Smells like it rained last night. Plank steps creak under my boots as I descend to the lawn. Dew clings to grass and dandelions. I walk in the direction of the old hay barn and stop to catch my breath before an apple tree. Tall and wide trunked, like it’s been standing for a century. The limbs of the tree are weighted with apples, red and ripe. I am hungry for apples. I am wild to pierce the firm skin with the points of my teeth, suck the sweet juices. Beyond the green hills, a train whistle rings out like a church organ. I raise my hand to the branches and take hold of the fruit.
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Alex Miller is the author of the novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books) and the story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel (Unsolicited Press). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flyway, JAKE, and Colorado Review. He lives in Denver.