Gaylene

We're listening to Slowdive. We pass the wine bottle back and forth. He's driving. I'm watching with my knees bunched to my chest. I imagine what he's thinking. He's in love with me. He's infatuated with this Montana scene. He watches the rain in the distance. The sun punctures the clouds and creates a stained yellow across the landscape. The long grass inhaling, exhaling with the wind. The mountains loom over us—gentle this time in their rare, effervescent green. We pass ranch houses on disparate hills facing stunning scenes. This is my childhood terrain. I can tell he's so lost, even though he's driving straight. He's thinking about narratives, images. Only a shell. An incarnation of a man I sometimes call by name, but usually text whenever I'm bored.

I never realized how much I missed these mountains until I moved to New York City. Every night of my dumb college life, I dreamed of their peaks, their crags, their shade. I also dreamed of the sky. The deep blue, the muddled blue, the gray blue, the diffused blue. I'd wake up and yearn for evenings sitting high on a hill watching the sun set. I didn't get New York City. No one knew my name. I sat in the back of class. I never said a word. I felt stuck, impossibly cornered, so far removed from my life. My mother, a therapist, called me several times a week. I told her not to worry. I'd be fine. I'd occasionally hang out with this expert on neoliberal thought. He liked to kiss me on the cheek and touch my neck. We'd sit in cinemas so high I'd concentrate on the curtains and disappear.

So, when I returned to Montana, mother was surprised at my long uncombed hair and baggy eyes and bad posture. We talked for hours in the kitchen. I unloaded. I tried to uncensor my thoughts, my feelings, but I still felt cold, unavailable, so impossibly distant.

"Take a right here," I say. He slows down. We are not driving without a purpose. We have a destination. When we first met at Chico Hot Springs, he talked about Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan. These literary men who've overshadowed my entire life. If it wasn't for Thomas McGuane's bus stop detour, my parents wouldn't have moved here. They fell in love on the West Coast and followed others to Montana, hoping to capitalize on the wilderness and cheap rent. They befriended these writers and "artists" and never looked back. I used to watch Jim walk down the streets of Livingston with his fishing guide. I liked to observe him eying the girl who worked at the wine shop as she placed each new box inside his car, occasionally grabbing her ass. I had read all of their novels. Reckless. Drunk. Macho whatever. My favorite was a McGuane short story about two junkies looking for a totem pole.

"It's to the right," I say. He slams on the brakes. The wine bottle almost slips from my hand.

He swings into the driveway and cuts the engine.

"This was Jim Harrison's house," I say.

"Really?"

He's thinking about the infamous episodes of Jim Harrison on Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. Bourdain eating a meal at this house. Bourdain wandering the grounds. Bourdain and Harrison talking romantically about food and literary mumbo jumbo. It's funny they're both dead. I'm surprised Jim lasted so long. His presence will never leave this town, nor will his books fade into oblivion, even though some of them should. His horny ass thoughts often remind me of older men's eyes. I stare at Christopher in the fading light. The rain has let up. I'm slightly intoxicated. I take another drink from the bottle.

"Let's walk around," I say.

"Really? We can do that?"

"Yes," I say. "That's the point."

I'm not sure if I believe in ghosts, but my mother always says nothing ever dies. It resides somewhere deep below, collecting some incredible force, propelling us to what, I don't know. We move beyond a small barn to a small building behind—Jim Harrison's studio. We aren't interested in the empty house. Everything has a darkness to it. Christopher peers into the dirty window. I remember my father driving me here to shoot clay pigeons. I plugged my ears and watched as they shot the orange discs high in the air. I remember Jim laughing. I remember Jim handing me chewing gum. I remember Jim telling my father I'd be a writer one day, a sort of Dorothy Parker on the ranch. My father didn't laugh, but solemnly acknowledged. I join Christopher near the window and grab his arm. I pull him close and kiss him. I break away and keep walking. I think about Gaylene, but I don't want to think about Gaylene.

"I want to be the next Jim Harrison," says Christopher, behind me.

I can't figure out if I want to laugh or vomit, but I also want him to kiss me. I want a memory of this, something for myself. I've done this before, catered to men's delusions, tried my best to mold my behavior to their liking. It's thrilling, sure. Ariana, my best friend, understands. She knows the story of Gaylene. I'm grateful for Ariana. I text her, "I'll see you later tonight at the Murray. I'm with Christopher. I think you two should meet."

Christopher touches my waist. I feel his hard-on against me.  He unzips my pants. I wouldn't mind fucking him here, but I turn around and walk back. I look over my shoulder at him. He stands alone framed by evergreens. I've shown him another piece of Montana. His mind is swimming in scenes of my ordinary life, but I know what I take for granted fills him with endless images of another self. It's a similar story. I've met so many men in the wake of Jim Harrison. Every summer, they populate the scene with their fly fishing meditations. It always leads to more alcoholism, more vaudeville acts. I still want Christopher. I like his lips, the distance of his eyes between his nose. He returns to the car and drinks the last of the wine. I turn up the volume on the Bluetooth. We sit in the driveway and I say, "Now you can tell somebody you've been somewhere."

We meet Ariana at the Murray—the cultural epicenter of town. It's an old bar with aging neon. There's a bullet hole in the upstairs suite from the latter years of Sam Peckinpah. Of course, there's a bluegrass band playing to ladies in vintage dresses and cheap cowboy boots dancing with Patagonia men with perfect jawlines and weathered cowboys with delicate manners. There's Alex sitting in the corner wishing she was a man like all the men she grew up with. I've always liked her. She used to slap the back of my head in high school and call me a bitch. I've been absorbing these types since I was a child. Like my father obsessively tying flies in the basement listening to Dave Matthews Band—emptying all emotion and drifting into idyllic dreams of floating down the Yellowstone to catch another meaningless rainbow trout.

I've known Ariana my entire life. Her family is one of the oldest in the region. I'll one day marry her brother, who, like Ariana, is haunted, doomed by a family curse—most likely inherited by some member double crossing the Crow. They will never leave Montana, nor Paradise Valley. They will be stuck in alcoholism and Hollywood reiterations of the western hero archetype. Larry McMurtry based Lonesome Dove on their great-great-grandfather. The cowboy dream has long since vanished, and Ariana's father indulged in the seventies madness of drug-fueled trips and fast car antics. He wavered in the saloon with Warren Oates, McGuane, and other nameless masculine loudmouths and death-defying maniacs. Now, Ariana runs the costume department at the new faux Western town in the Absaroka mountains. We often wander its skeletal architecture, smoking a joint while laughing at our shadows and the mean-looking gaffer eyeing us from his outpost.

"He looks so weird," said Ariana, talking about Christopher ordering us drinks at the bar. "Are you going to fuck him?"

I don't answer, because she already knows my answer. I like his resemblance to my father, his damaged mentality, his interest in music other than bluegrass. He denotes a possible tick in excitement, maybe even a detour from my own emotional paralysis. I act like it started in New York City, but the city's overstimulation and countless horrendous encounters with hollow boys only compounded an already debilitating situation. I want to tell Christopher, but I don't want to tell him. I only want to feel something. I can't even speak to my mother about it.

I drink the beer Christopher ordered. Ariana's talking to Christopher about Bill Pullman's foot size. I observe the scene and fade out. I've been watching Chantel Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles every weekend. I put it on in the background as I cook dinner for mom or draw another nonsensical picture of an elk. I'm often thinking about Delphine Seyrig. Her ennui, or perhaps Akerman's ennui. I watch Christopher sipping his Rainier, talking to Ariana about David Lynch's Lost Highway. He's oblivious.

We go out back and I bum a cigarette from Dan. He's sitting with his elbows on his knees. His face crinkled, aged, wonderful. He's the one who told me about Gaylene. I've known him since I was a child. He used to talk to mom, but now they're estranged. He's like a father figure. He talks about the past, as if he's confessing past crimes. He knows everything, but right now he's stuck. His best friend shot himself two months ago. He can't speak. He sits in the shadows, drinking lager after lager. Sudden, tragic loss is expected around here. Trailer in flames. Drug overdose. Suicides. Drunk-driving casualties. Men freezing to death. No one said it'd be easy. Even Jim Harrison spent his winters elsewhere. For now, it's the ideal. Another beautiful July night. Thank God. I watch Christopher again talking to another old timer. It's a story about Jeff Bridges meeting his wife in Paradise Valley. I roll my eyes. I know what he's thinking.

"I want to make a movie one day," says Ariana, suddenly. "I'll walk the streets of Livingston with my fountain drink and jerky. I'll be a lapsed member of the Church Universal Triumphant. It'll be a comedy. I'll fall in love with a Lana Del Rey lookalike; she'll be married to a billionaire who just bought a ranch in Paradise Valley, hoping to find refuge from the paparazzi hounding his ass for funding another war overseas. I'll rescue her before a pack of rabid liberals blow up his mansion."

I flick my cigarette in the rocks and laugh. I love Ariana. What would I do without her? Christopher comes back and stands awkwardly next to me. Ariana pulls me close and whispers in my ear, "Let's take him to the rodeo."

I am drunk. Christopher's drunk. Ariana's drunk. We're walking past quiet homes, down wide streets. We walk through the empty parking lot of our high school. Christopher likes the school at night. I know he's trying to picture us both in high school. I'm sure he couldn't imagine the soft speech of Mrs. Yorke and the long-legged boys destined for grueling mine work and generational alcoholism. Ariana skips to the county fair ground and squeezes through the gate. I follow her. Christopher climbs over.

"I'm going up," says Ariana, which means she's climbing up the bleachers to smoke. I give Christopher a look over my shoulder to follow me. I walk past the stands and climb over the fence. We're in the ring. I've watched so many countless rodeos here. I kiss Christopher. We make out. His hands start around my back and move down my body. I separate and keep walking.

I don't stop. I climb over the other side of the fence and continue into the dark golf course. I text Ariana to go home. I wonder what life would be without drugs, alcohol. A friend now dead once said, I don't believe in sobriety. I try to stare at the beauty around me. I try to absorb the miraculous. My mother says go deeper, move closer, pull it all out, but what does she know? She's my mother, the therapist. Christopher's behind me, walking slow. I fall upon the green. Christopher joins me and grabs me close and kisses me, stops, and stares at me long. It's difficult to look him in the eyes. It's intimate, sure, but I don't want to be reminded I am here. He touches my body. I kiss him and move underneath him. He takes off my clothes. I pull his shirt off. He struggles to yank his jeans off and eventually gives up, classically fucking me with his boots on, denim bunched around the ankles. I tell him, slow down. I feel the dampness of the green under my back. He looks at me and I stare beyond him. I'm already gone. I hear him, but no longer feel him. It replays in my head. Gaylene entering the saloon with her beautiful blonde hair, tight Wrangler jeans, polished cowboy boots, plaid button-up. She orders a beer. It's 1973. The bartender knows her name. Men watch her. She likes their attention. It isn't anything new, except tonight her husband slams into the bar. He's drunk with his uniform untucked and his sheriff star unhooked. He pulls out his gun and fires several shots straight into her body. Blood drips upon the sticky floor. I picture it as a scene in a movie. Slow motion. Her shoulders lunge back, her legs buckle against the leather seat; she's descending, past the bar to the floor, and beyond. I can't stop thinking about Gaylene. I can't stop thinking about this stupid fucking town. I start to cry, but I close my eyes and turn away. I don't want Christopher to see me like this. I look back up and he's so lost—too buried in my shoulder to notice. I stare at the sky, the constellations. Ariana says Gaylene is the key to Livingston. To what? I listen, not to Christopher, not to the river nearby, not to the wind, not to the birds or animals or whatever noise of night. I hear my blood circulating through my veins, pumping through my heart, and I know somewhere deep below it's Gaylene twisted in the fabric of my organs about to commit an undeniable act of vengeance.

Taylor Lewandowski lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has work in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Creative Independent, Bookforum, Interview Magazine and others. He studied at Columbia College Chicago and Butler University. He teaches high school and manages Dream Palace Books & Coffee.