Under the ceiling fan, sweating: And another thing about Texas.

“Texas is like a white trash Canada. It should feel like its own country, new and different, but it feels inbred. You seriously feel like a psychologist when you have to stay here, you feel like a genius in a field of retards.”

He leans forward and lights a cigarette. Coreen stares at us, “Oh. That’s not true at all. Texas has a lot of beauty to it. True, it has some bad qualities, but anywhere does.”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat a redneck shit sandwich.”

She shakes her head at him and looks over to me, “Oh, I don’t want to have to elaborate.”

—No time to elaborate. The fire and wind and flowers are fusing. I check my watch and wipe off the back of my neck. The cherry sunsets of Venus are lost, the vastness of its lemon iron heart is lost. Streets streaked with penny gold and laced velvet windows are gone now, gone forever, and where they once stood is now a city with a blank face. Sun dead and grey, fields which harvest nothing but replication of dirt and weeds. We have been left and forgotten here. Left to breathe, fuck, and rot. Which is fine. I imagine it was always like this. It was always a displaced sky. I smell their skin from across the room, sulfuric and salty. I remember Angel’s take on the ocean. She said it was delicious. I saw it for the first time in 6 years with her. We had parked by the pier in Pismo, and I’d tasted her stomach beneath the bloody wind. We had intercourse in full view of the water, and I convulsed into her from behind, holding up the back of her dress, yellow and bright, while she gripped the rail at the end of the pier. Two bums were fishing off the side behind us. We were quiet and heavy there, and gulls made hungry swoops close to us but the fishermen on the shore threw stones at them.

Angel rests her hand on my knee. We’ve been driving since Albuquerque. From there we had driven from Stockton. I’d met Angel while she was there with her parents. We had a three day fling. Her father was stationed in Germany. Her mother was from Spain. Her real father was doing life in a Spanish prison for murdering her mother’s lover, a teenage boy she’d met on the streets of Badalona. Her stepfather met her mother by chance somewhere in Europe. He’s from Stockton. Her mother was poor, and she married the bastard because she and her daughter were almost homeless. Angel is seventeen. I’m twenty-seven. Her stepfather used to stand in the shower behind her and masturbate. He never had sex with her, he said he was waiting until her eighteenth birthday. When Angel told her mother about it, her mother hit her and called her a liar. Angel is heartbroken over her mother. Angel’s English is broken and hot. She called me collect from Germany for half a year. The phone bills were insane. I didn’t care. When they flew back over before summer, Angel ran away from them and we hit the road. We’ve been on the run for weeks. We’re sitting in Dallas with my brother and his girlfriend. They know our story. Angel and Coreen have bonded like sisters. Coreen had similar problems with her mother’s husband, but her mother pressed charges and left him immediately when Coreen told her. The guy took a deal. He’s out now, but he’s out of the picture. Coreen and my brother are in their thirties. My brother builds houses. Coreen works at her mother’s cafe. Billy met Coreen in Phoenix. They lived there for a year. She wanted to move back to Texas.

Billy’s a tough motherfucker, but when it comes to Coreen he’s a small child. Coreen’s a tall, healthy Texas girl. She burns up any room she walks in. And now I have Angel, and Angel’s one sexy bitch. I hate to call her that, but she is, she’s the ultimate bitch. She’s tall and sculpted. Her skin is bronze fire. Her coal hair hangs in her face when she sleeps. Her lips are red and full. Her nose is flawless. Her eyes are deep black. When I watch her I can see God Himself rubbing his thumbs across her frontal lobe, smearing her brow with golden skin. He has a long beard with blood and flesh wiped across his smock. He crafted her as a completely separate project. When she talks my skin jumps. Her fingers are long and slim. Her feet are arched and smooth. Even her toes drop me to my knees. Angel loves me. Angel doesn’t love many people, maybe no others. She grew up hard and mean on the streets of Spain. She’s seen more death and disgust than any American. She likes to lick my eyes. I fight to keep them open while she does it, but I hang strong. She tells me my eyes are the doors to Heaven. She won’t let me cut my hair anymore. It hangs down to my chin. She bites it while we fuck. She tells me when we stop running somewhere she wants me to give us a baby. She talks about how beautiful the baby will be. She’s seen the child in her sleep. It is a boy and he is a perfect mixture of us and God. I don’t believe in God, but I don’t tell her that. I obsess over her ass and her thighs, over the grip of her sex. She sleeps nude on her side. I watch any available light carve around her body. She owns the Sun and the Moon, the ocean and the earth. All is her slave.

Billy lights two cigarettes and hands one over. Coreen doesn’t smoke. Angel won’t touch them. I take the smoke and blow rings over the table. Angel smiles and breaks the rings with her breath. She squeezes my arm and rests her knees on my lap. She turns eighteen in nine days. We’re getting married at the time of her birth. Angel’s mother became blind for survival. The prick she’s married to is in relentless pursuit of Angel with her. I know he married her mother to get Angel. I know he wants my head. They have the cops involved. He’s playing on that soldier bullshit. He’s an upper-ranks man now. I know it drives him batshit to think about my mouth in between Angel’s hot ass cheeks. It doesn’t matter. In nine days she’ll have my name. I only have fifteen hundred saved in my pocket. Billy is going to pay me cash to be a laborer. Angel is fine with being at the house with Coreen. She can go to work with her and help in Coreen’s mother’s shop. I don’t think Angel likes Texas. But she understands. One of my buddies lives down in Morelia, and he told me when I get some good coin saved up I can slip across the border with Angel and live there. Nobody gives a fuck about us in Mexico. Coreen goes into the kitchen to make drinks. My brother and I are flying on mescaline. It’s my first time. I’m sweating bullets. Angel laughs at me. I tell her I’m thirsty. She gets up and walks into the kitchen. Billy watches her ass, “Goddamn, man. You better hold onto that shit.”

“Tooth and nail.”

The girls come in with the drinks. Wild Turkey and water. Billy leans back with his drink, “So this cocksucker has a bead on you?”

Angel looks at me.

“Jad,” I say to her. She rolls her eyes and sets her drink down. Her breasts are fucking perfect. Her shoulders and neck, all of her screams at every moment. My brother glances into her dress. Coreen slaps him. He laughs, “His name’s Jad? Fuck, man. He was born to be an asshole.”

I put my smoke out and wipe the air clean for Angel’s face. She kisses my neck. I pick up the glass, “I bought the car off this dirtbag in Modesto. I transferred the plates and title in Reno. I insured it in Medford. It took a few days of zig-zagging, but we appear to be heading north.”

Billy smiles into the ashtray, “That was smart.”

“I’m not worried about it. If by some fucking chance they find me first I can say I had no idea about any of it. I’ve never met him. I’ve seen a few pictures. He doesn’t look too bright. But you can’t be sure.”

Angel picks up on some of the words. I rub her knee, “But if I can get a few months of straight work here, we’ll be alright. We can coast off the money in some Mexican shithole by the water, and come back in a few years.”

Billy takes a long drink from his whiskey and lights another smoke. A drop of sweat plunges from his brow into the paper. It wears the paper away and the tobacco creeps up to the surface. He laughs and sets it on the table, lights a new one. Coreen grabs the empties and goes to pour the refills. Angel kisses me and runs after her to help. Billy and I stare at each other and sweat. He peers over my shoulder. I look back and watch the guy across the street park his truck on the lawn. Billy laughs. Coreen sets the drinks down on the coffee table and lets the dog out. Angel comes in and takes her place by my side.