Down the freeway, a cop rolled his cherries in my rearview. I put a fresh piece of gum in my mouth, pulled over and waited. I watched him walk toward me in the side mirror. I wondered why they allowed cops to get fat. I waited until he got to my window and tapped on it, and then I rolled it down. The dogs started barking. I told them to stop, and they did. I looked up at him and waited for him to talk first.

“Hello.”

“Officer.”

“Know why I’m pulling you over?”

“Tell me.”

“You were going 81. Where’s the fire?”

“Florida,” I said.

He squinted at me, “Huh?”

“Sexy little Italian number waiting for me. I’ll slow it down.”

He cracked a helpless smile, then became serious when something hit him, “Have you been drinking, sir?”

“Not a drop. Just in a hurry to get there. Apologies.”

He looked down the length of my car, “Any drugs in here?”

I’d gotten that a lot in my life. It was my eyes, they were constantly pinned, from birth. I smiled at him, “Nope.”

“Any objections to my searching the vehicle?”

“Only that it’s going to make me late. But if you need to do it to clear your mind, do it. I would only ask that you do it quickly, please.”

He tapped his note pad, “What do you do for a living in Washington?”

None of his fucking business, but I was in Georgia, and he wasn’t playing games.

“I’m a writer.”

“I see, and do you have your license, registration, and insurance card?”

I pulled my wallet off the dash and handed him my license. He stared at it and called me in. I looked at him, “The rest is in my glove box.”

He put his hand up and talked the language into his receiver. I stared ahead, down the road. He handed me my license and told me to pop the back. I did, he fished around, closed it, and then looked in the back windows, “Writer, huh? As in books?”

“That’s right.”

“Anything I might know?”

I looked around the seats. I had an old copy of my last one on the floor in back, along with a few new ones, leftovers from Seattle I’d meant to give to the rest of Blagg’s roommates. I handed him one. He looked at it, flipped it over to the author shot and smiled at me. He handed it back. I looked at him, “Keep it.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as the hope that you’re not going to write me a ticket.”

He stared down at me, “Hell of a deal for you, son. But my wife would sure appreciate it. You got time to sign it to her?”

“Of course I do.”

He laughed and handed me his pen. I signed it to Barb. He told me to slow it down and disappeared. I drove off, spit my gum, and some fast metal shuffled in on my playlist. I didn’t know what his wife was used to reading, but I hoped she liked foul language and whores, but also the occasional digression on life at large. I reached in the glove box and grabbed my shades behind a vial of some Valium Blagg had given me. I popped two and let Converge pound the engine south.

Today I heard the voice of opportunity.

It came in the form of floral walls and lipstick.

Stand pretty once more, and they may like you.

Make them laugh, and they may respect you.

Tell them what you carry, and you'll drown in pity.

Your day was better then mine.

I drove down to Tijuana and went to jail. In there I was beaten repeatedly. I was arrested for absolutely nothing. One minute, I was walking past a prostitute after I had parked and locked my car, walking around Mars, past the strange billboards and faces destroyed by poverty, in a town destroyed and dependent upon lust and drugs. I was walking around a people who hated me for needing me. The poor sat in file on the sidewalks, their palms out. The faces on the necks reminded me of shrunken fruit. The owners of strip joints and fruit stands and street-side booths were happy to see me. Their English was broken and desperate. The prostitute followed me. She was offering me anything. Her face was a novel. It was carved throughout with lines of grief, with angry knuckles and damage from the sun. Her hair was like black straw electrified on its post. Her eyes were sorry. Her whole self almost brought me to tears. I reached into my pocket in the middle of that dark orange sea and handed her a five-spot. She handed me a crumpled up baggie with nothing in it. She hustled off. The next minute, I was dropped on my face, cuffed and stuffed and wiping the blood from my forehead onto the back of a torn leather headrest.

In jail the big Mexicans pummeled me in turn. One guy tried to get my pants off. I fought them wildly. After a while they gave up, from time to time walking by the corner I was thrown into and kicking me, spitting on me. The cops held me for nine hours, took everything I had and kicked me in the ass out into the dark. Back at my car, my rear windshield was shattered and the whole car was gutted, saving the driver’s seat. They even got the mirrors. My bike was gone, my music, my books, my backpack, my life. They had my keys back in that dungeon. I could hear the Mexicans laughing at me behind the rusted bars. They were sitting on that diseased, urine stained concrete with no windows, sweating and laughing about me. I broke off my ignition switch with a rock so I could turn the wheel. I had never jump started a car before. I learned quickly. The guards at the border showed no interest in my face.

I drove to Yuma, bitterly. I was low on fuel. It was December. The desert was cold but my face burned with a heat I’d never known. I pulled into a gas station and explained to the Indian behind the counter what had happened. He shook his head. I asked him for ten dollars in gas so I could get to Phoenix. He said nope. Up the street I found a Shell station. The old lady said that I could gas up and she would treat it like a drive off. In the bathroom I locked the door and looked in the mirror. I looked like a mask. My whole face was twisted and swollen. I looked diseased. I fell back against the door and sank to the ground.

I drove north with a sympathy cup of coffee and a full tank. The wind from the opening in back chilled my neck and shoulders, the exhaust billowed inside and choked me, made me sick. The smell flavored my coffee. One of my eyes had just swollen shut so I drove the limit, confused.

I reached Phoenix before dusk. At a stoplight two girls stared at me like I was an animal. I could feel them. They honked. I looked over. They were laughing with the two guys that were in the backseat. No mercy. By the time I found my sister’s house I was sick from the exhaust and the desert on top of the germs from the floor of the jail spreading under the cuts. I was certain I could not go on for another second. The house was empty. She had moved.

I called one of my brothers collect in Illinois, woke him up. He gave me her new address. He asked me how I was and so on. During the conversation I would throw up while he was talking. I told him everything was fine and that I was home for a while, at least until after the holidays. He told me he loved me. I threw up. I made it back to my car and used up the rest of my strength finding the address.

I parked. Her house was bigger. I could see the Christmas tree in the window. I had nothing to carry inside. She lived in a better part of town. I hadn’t spoken to her for a long time. I thought it was funny that this would be the second time in a row I showed up at her place badly beaten. Only this time was worse. I had long hair and was older, taller, a little heavier from working labor. I didn’t want her to see this. I made it to the door and pushed the ringer.

My father moved in a whore and her son when I was at work. My clothes were folded behind the couch. I saw their suitcases. They were in the kitchen talking. I walked into my room, sat on the bed and looked around at his things. My father walked by and looked at me. I asked him what had happened. He threw me disgust. I walked into the kitchen where they stood. She was a fat brunette, high hair and a glittering dress, her fat feet crammed into pumps. Her face was whiskey and batter and trade. Her son was a skinny, long hair in the back and wired on speed. My father walked in.

“Jeff. This is your new family. Billie and Brett.”

She gave me a slimy nod. Her son tilted his head back and stared me down. I looked at my hands, walked into the bathroom and ran the water. My palms were bloodied from a spill on my bike riding home from work, working double shifts to save for a car. My father rushed in and slammed the door. In the mirror he asked me why I was being so rude. I kept washing my hands. He asked me again. Through the mirror I could see that he had been up for days. I could see that he had just met her at the bar, and I could see him moving their suitcases up the staircase into our apartment. To my left on the counter I saw a clear vanity bag containing make-up, hair brushes and a small glass pipe. I looked back to the sink. He caught the side of my head with a solid right. It echoed in my skull and left my ear ringing. The hit knocked me into the wall. I resumed washing my hands. He told me that this is the way life was, that if I didn’t like it, to pack my shit and get out. He closed the door quietly. I collapsed to the floor and held my ear with both hands, coming up with blood on my palm. The pain was incredible. I washed the ear, walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. It occurred to me that this would be the way it was. I walked into the bathroom and grabbed up my things. In the living room I saw her chopping lines of cocaine on the coffee table. They watched the blade and nothing else. I sat back on the bed and began putting the things my father had missed into one of my pillowcases.

I heard the whore whisper to her son to come talk to me. He walked in and stood over me while I sat on the bed. He nodded down to me and curled his lip back.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

He was sweaty junk. His lower jaw orbited his skull, and his eyes were disgusting. My father and the whore appeared in the doorway, and my father smiled. In his smile I saw terrible things. The whore yelled at her kid.

“Brett! That is no way to treat your new brother!”

He ignored her and twitched, “I asked you a question, faggot.”

I looked at my father. He told me I had to fight my own battles. Her son nudged my shin with the toe of his sneaker.

“Get out of my room.”

My father laughed. He said that if he were me he’d get out of the room before Brett taught me a lesson. I asked him if he’d lost his mind. He was unresponsive. Her son flipped his fingertips against my sore ear and told me to get out again. I stood up and punched him in the teeth. A few slipped back. He fell into the closet doors, and they fell off their tracks. It was loud. My father came for me. I ducked him and her son was up, hand over bloody mouth. He had tears in his eyes. My father had fallen behind the side of the bed. He was grumbling threats, and trying to stand.

I caught her son with a left this time, in the throat. He fell back into the closet and screamed like a girl. His mother came at me in a blind rage. I kicked her hard in the crotch. She stumbled back and dropped in the hallway. I felt a hand on my shoulder spin me around, a flash of meaty knuckles and my lights were turned out.

I woke up hours later. My head was pounding. It was dark in my room. I was under the covers with my shoes off. It occurred to me in the dark that I had turned seventeen the day before. I sat up and walked into the bathroom. The place was pitch black. I flipped the light on.

The whole area above my eyebrows and down to the center of my nose was dark blue and kidney shaped, like a dark birthmark. My neck was stiff. I touched the bruise. Shockwaves of pain rolled around my head. There was the clear vanity bag to my left. In a cup in the medicine cabinet sat a plastic cup with dentures at the bottom. I walked into my room and put my shoes on.

Through the bathroom light I could hear them passed out in the living room, down from days of speed. I watched the room from the doorway. My belongings were no longer packed behind the couch. In the bathroom I lifted the dentures from the cup and crushed them under my heel, returning the crumbs back into the cup. They floated there. I closed the medicine cabinet.

Out in the living room I stepped over my father on the floor. The other two were sharing the couch. She was sleeping on top of her son. I was heading across the street to the store for aspirin. Outside sat my belongings in a duffel bag next to my bike. I wondered why they hadn’t been stolen. We didn’t exactly live in the hills. I closed the door. My father jumped up and locked the deadbolt.

I wheeled the bag on my bike across the street. The Sun was coming up behind the supermarket. I placed my bike and my bag next to a register and found a bottle of aspirin and a jug of water, a candy bar, some medicated cream and a box of gauze. When I went to pay my wallet was empty. I had three weeks’ pay in there. Both of my pockets were empty. The lady at the counter asked me what happened to my face. I told her I had just been mugged. She pointed out that my tooth was chipped in half. I felt it. My upper lip was swollen and my front tooth was chipped. Since she’d mentioned it, it hurt to breathe in. I left the store empty. My sister lived six miles west, in a worse part of town. It was still hot in Phoenix. October meant nothing. The bag was without straps, and I had to stop every few blocks to balance it on the frame. I walked my things to her house.

She was at work and the kids were in school. She had three kids from three separate marriages, living in a two bedroom duplex in Glendale. I didn’t want to walk into her work looking like I did. I hopped her fence and fell asleep under the trampoline.