I’d saved for it, new brake pads and rotors, but the money disappeared before they finished the job, so I called up Rex and told him, “Feel free
to keep her awhile till I get, like, I’m sorry, just other stuff happened–– you know how it is,” but he just said “yeah yeah yeah” and hung up the phone. A couple of days later, Alida and I walked through town, a gray, late-fall day, cold, the sidewalks paved with a soft bed of blackened leaves, and we shortcutted through an alleyway and came around back of Rex’s shop, where the too-far-gone jalopies and the generally abandoned sulked and squatted near-undercover of meadow grass, the mountains stark and blue and cold-looking so far behind. And there sat Big Mona, my decrepit ’89 Bronco, fresh brake pads and rotors. I told Big Mona, “Baby, if I could just run off with you,” and Alida said, “I’ve been waiting just to hear you say that.”

How I’d ended up here in La Jara, Colorado, I cannot tell you. Maybe for the dispensaries, like Maggie’s Farm north of us, or the little shop just south in Antonito. But I didn’t like smoking anymore, except cigarettes. There were, in fact, no substances involved whatsoever in the untimely squandering of my vehicle repair money.

Alida was a dancer in Alamosa. The first time I saw her, a couple days before, I’d just put the Bronco in the shop and borrowed Leslie Crowder’s––with whom I’d been putting up fence at Stokes Ranch–– little Honda Accord, his other car, his wife’s car.

I’d driven to the Fox Barn in Alamosa for a Saturday night lark with my buddy Keaton Wayne, and the moment I saw her there with a set of dark eyes that held, in some way, a kind of mute philosophy, skyward and beyond religion––I could just see it there––I knew I’d needed to swing by Marvin’s the next day and buy that eighty-dollar Levi’s denim jacket, those ostrich skin Justin boots. So, I did.

It wasn’t all the car money, but it was enough to keep Mona captive in the shop awhile, plus I needed to spend a little money at the Fox Barn, too, a great deal of money, in fact, to convince Alida I was there for love and honest love alone.

I was lucky she was even there the next night, a Sunday night, the place practically empty. In the little back mirrored room I let it be known, very clearly, that the sharp new clothes and the wad of twenties in my pocket were for her.

We sat and talked, though, longer than the dancing, and the other stuff. She said she was from Romeo, Colorado. Romeo! I had a vision, then: Alida and I, together, sucked through the club’s pink neon tubing, shot out of a pink neon double-barrel shotgun into the sky, and jitterbugging now among the planets––something of this nature. That night, she ended up at my place. In bed, I had to tell her it wasn’t my Honda which brought us there, that I wouldn’t be getting my Mona back because, do you want to know why? Because of you.

So we stood there, together, days later, in Rex’s junkyard on a cold, late fall day, funereal here with our gazes fixed upon the newly mended Mona, and Alida said to me, “I know a couple guys.”

“Bet you do,” I said.
“Not like that. They could get back your keys.”
“Hell, if I was going to rob Rex I’d just do it myself,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“I wouldn’t be getting jealous yet if I were you,” she said. “I’m simply taking you out to test.”
“Oh, if you were me?” I said. “Besides, love at first sight, remember that.”
“That’s what was said,” she told me. “But that was the other night.”

“Ever broken into a car?” she said. We’d been walking up Broadway toward El Vallecito for enchiladas, a little grandmother’s kitchen of a place off 285 where they served sweet tea––which I’d missed so badly from back home––and smothered everything in red chile sauce.

I didn’t want to answer her question because I didn’t know the right way.

Then, finally, I told her, “Well, I mean, when I was a teenager, yeah, I got into a lot of that stuff.”

This was a lie, though it was a very balanced thing to say. It should’ve pleased anybody. Alida, for a time as well, failed to comment.

“Okay, but I can tell you,” I said, “that I don’t know how to hotwire a car anyway, if that’s what you’re getting at. Besides, I think Big Mona’s above that sort of thing.”

Now we sat down in a booth, and the little lady sidled over, wearing a hibiscus printed apron, a tattoo of Felix the Cat on her hand. She took our orders, dropped off some tea, and I felt then, already, that Alida, after such a short time, was slipping from me. What were the right things to say, ask, to suggest? I looked into those eyes because, on the first night I saw her, I was certain inside them lay answers, proverbs, and the lessons of Romeo, Colorado.

They, all of them, were still there.
“I love you,” I said. “I know it’s crazy.”
“I think I can feel it too,” she said, and reached across the table, did a little wave with her fingers. I wiggled my fingers back. We wiggled fingers in pursuit across the smooth tabletop until they touched.

The old couple at the booth across the dining room stared at us. I didn’t care. I was ready to do my first break-in.

“Well Rex, I know, he keeps a garage door opener in his car. It opens up the back of the shop. So we’ve just got to get into Rex’s car. No hotwiring involved.”

“What for?” she said.
“My keys’ll be in the shop.”
“You’re smarter than I figured,” she said.
“I know I am.”

Over enchiladas, we said nothing. Too much flavor here. Things couldn’t have been better in that moment. My phone buzzed. A text from Leslie Crowder. It said: You gotta get that Honda back or my wife’ll kill us both dead.

But I told him that I’d need it another night, just one. He did not respond. We left El Vallecito, went to my place to make love all afternoon.

My place was an apartment above the garage in back of an invalid’s home, Mr. Schaefer. I could go three months not paying rent before Schaefer even noticed. He’d wheel his way on out and fix himself before the garage doors, shouting, “Money! Money! Money!”

I’d crack the little window, stick my head out and say, “Old Schaef, you didn’t see it there, put it in the mailbox, yeah? I’m sure you’ve got, like, some sort of pile in your home. That’s where you’ll find it.”
He would grunt and wheel away, only moments later returning to cry, “You’re a liar, Banks.”
“My Jesus,” I’d say. “How could I––well, hang on a minute.” And I’d drop an envelope out the window, wishing it would drift down onto his lap––he couldn’t bend himself––but normally, no, I’d have to run down there and fetch it, which always seemed to easily sweeten his perception of me.

This was the type of story I wasn’t sure I could tell Alida; same situation as the question concerning car theft. But where does the line exist between being a bad man, a scoundrel, or just a joker, someone bearing the cache of a kind man with a good, clean wild streak? That’s what you can’t ever figure with folks like Alida. Though now, under the spell of sluggish after-sex ecstasy, I told her of my run-ins with Mr. Schaefer, and she poured her flesh upon me and said, “You are such a high-flying son of a bitch,” and I’d never heard those words said better in all my life.

Alida said she’d call up one of those boys she’d been talking about, the ones she knew, about whom I was suspicious, and she said, “Ronnie’s got a Slim Jim kit.”

“He going to ask what for?” I said.

“It’s none of his goddamn business. We’ll tell him you locked your keys in the car.”

“But this is how it’s going to go,” I said. “He’s going to figure on meeting us at whatever car’s locked up, probably using the Slim Jim himself, and then he’ll like to get straight back home with it.”

“We’ll tell him we need it overnight,” she said.
“Ridiculous. Nobody would need a Slim Jim overnight.”

“Then suck it. I said it was none of his business. I think you’re scared.”
“I have never been scared, for the love of god, I have never been scared,” I said. “Tell him you’re working, and to drop it off there.”

“But I’m not working,” she said.
God, I felt, then, a plunging. I could barely live to once more open my mouth, even, to issue forth a single syllable conveying optimism or joy. It was the comedown after sex, it was Alida’s disagreeableness, it was love come and gone quick as heat lightning. Just as suddenly, though, it would return. I touched her breast, dipped my head against the nape of her neck, and smelled her. There it was.

“Let’s do it again,” I said. “I need it now more than ever.”

“Don’t get this way, Christ,” she said.
“We don’t even have a destination,” I said.
“When we get Big Mona back,” she said. “We go West. Farther West. That’s what people do, isn’t it?”

“I believe that’s true.”
“I told you, I want to be an actress.”

“You never told me that.”

“I did,” she said. She patted my head, and massaged my earlobes between her fingertips. “I certainly did.”

Alida’s friend Ronnie dropped off the Slim Jim on Mr. Schaefer’s front porch. We never saw sight of him. Alida had cooked up a pretty good story, the locked car stranded in Santa Fe––she’d have to make a full day of it.

I held the tool in my hands, big hook shaped like a little brass shepherd’s cane, and said, “How do you even––”

“I think you just stick it down in there and have at it,” she said.

“I must, I mean, I’m going to have to get drunk for this.”

Midnight at the Black Cat, four whiskeys in apiece, we fabricated stories concerning our future, laughed about them, Alida’s half-drunk eyes tearing up as though touched with nostalgia, as though these things had already happened, receding far into the past where you can only talk about them with wavering accuracy, as though we had now reached a tranquil, less exciting time in our long lives, well-settled now into the sorrow of age, commitment, and love.

First thing we did that evening was drop Leslie’s Honda off, a good deed. I threw Leslie the keys, and he caught them and said, “Thanks, motherfucker. Need a ride someplace?”

“No,” I said, though Alida had started to open her mouth.
But we would never again need a ride anywhere from anybody. We turned onto the road and I’d hoped Leslie didn’t see the Slim Jim, this big hook I swung around like I’d needed to hurt somebody.

Alida and I then advanced onto Broadway heading for the Black Cat, reaching toward the beginning of something.

So six whiskeys now, and that’s just good enough. We paid the bartender. Rex’s house wasn’t too far off, but just far enough from the shop where Big Mona waited. Down the darkened street Alida started trembling. I asked her why. She said she couldn’t get over the excitement.

We walked the few blocks toward Rex’s place. This town kept right under a thousand people, wasn’t too far getting anywhere. I could’ve gone, in fact, without a vehicle altogether. I have at times considered myself a walker. But I couldn’t have gone far that way with Alida. So readily she clung to me. I knew she did not want to remain in Alamosa, much less settle down here in La Jara. She was twenty-three and lived with her mother. She lied about her dancing job. She worked at Ace Hardware days to help her mother pay bills, and nights at the Fox Barn was just get-the-fuck-out-of-here money. Her mother simply figured she was a dope fiend, Alida out so many nights until three, four AM, often not coming home at all. But her mother didn’t care.

Alida said she’d had a premonition upon first sight of me. It was, likewise, all in the eyes. She said she could see inside them a very good man, a tender man. But she was also okay with me breaking into somebody’s car.

Walking down Pine, I slung my arm around her waist. She rocked her head against my shoulder, just banged it and banged it, and laughed. She had short, oily hair that kind of just danced all over the place at the slightest motion. We kept undercover of shadows, avoiding the streetlamps that shone upon sidewalks overtaken by crabgrass, cigarette butts, and the hieroglyphs of children dragging sticks across fresh- poured concrete decades ago.

“We should’ve packed up already,” she said.
“You have, like, two outfits at my house.”
“Well, you should’ve packed up already.”
“I don’t need much. Mr. Schaefer’ll find something to do with the rest of that shit. Don’t start worrying now, like you do.”
“Like I do?” she said. “We’ve only known each other, what, three days?”

“Two,” I said. “And two damn good ones. It’s fun though, pretending we know each other like that. You know like, Oh, that’s just like you, honey.”

“Just like me,” she said.

We came upon Rex’s front lawn, and you could see the blue television glow through the window, the blinds closed half a turn. I walked right up to that window and Alida hissed, “Are you absolutely bat-shit?”

“Hush,” I whispered back. “I don’t see him.”

We stood by the driver’s side of his Chevy Blazer. Dogs were barking. Everywhere. I’d hoped Rex didn’t have one. Pretty sure he didn’t, but my hands rattled. I’d hoped Alida didn’t notice this as I dipped the hook into the crack of the window channel. “Please,” she kept saying. Not hurry up, but please, please, please, over and over again. I liked hearing her say it. I took my time.

A pair of headlights lit up the street and I dropped down and rolled underneath the Blazer. The vehicle passed. I rolled over again, leapt to my feet, and Alida started laughing. “You think I’m scared, don’t you,” I said.

“It’s cute,” she said. “Truly. Give her a kiss.”
“Maybe once we get done.”
“No. Now.” She pulled me in. I held her.
I’d been married once, very young. But I don’t remember ever holding my wife like this. Ever. And that had lasted years.
“I taste good, don’t I?” she said. “I think I see him there, sitting on the couch.”
“The car light’ll come on,” I said. “He’ll see it. We can’t open it up until his ass goes to bed. Jesus. It’s two fucking AM. Go. To. Bed. Sir.”

“At least get it unlocked,” she said. “I’m literally going to vomit.”

And, with utterly zero method, I pushed and pulled at that hook until the lock clicked, and so we waited. But Alida said she couldn’t wait any longer, it was now or never. I took this in a number of ways, none of which I liked. I opened the door a crack. The dome light ignited. I reached for the visor and yanked out two garage door openers and slammed the door. We both dropped to the ground. “That was. Fucking. Loud,” she said.

Rex’s front door opened. We rolled under the Blazer, tucked beneath the driver’s side, holding each other, eyes gaping, so fearful, each into each. I could see his feet upon the front lawn. He looked to be rocking from side to side. I heard the crack and hiss of his beer can opening.

He turned and went inside. It really could’ve been any car he’d heard.

There were cars parked across the street, cars next door, cars everywhere. In this town, it seemed there were more cars than people and places.

We lay there a long time, until Alida said to me, our noses touching, “I feel safe now,” and I could not tell you how these words made me feel, only that, immediately, I rolled out from beneath that vehicle, took her hand, and we duck-and-ran along the parade of parked cars lining the other side of the street. We passed a house with the windows lit up, folks on the porch drinking and laughing and listening to some kind
of serpentine slide-guitar thing, many people over there having a time together, and I prayed they would not see us pass. We again advanced into darkness. And beyond, like a streetlamp-lit cathedral of strange, high, intersecting colonial gables pitched upon a slanted vestibule of corrugated sheet iron, an old grain elevator towered alongside the dark and empty train tracks, tracks from which you now of a night seldom heard, as in earlier times, the lulling music of searing iron, of blazing horn.

“I don’t know which one of these works,” I said. We walked again through the dead leaf-carpeted alleyway, and into Rex’s junkyard. I walked over to Big Mona. I petted her.

“You just love this,” she said. “Taking your time.”
“Told you I wasn’t scared.”
“Please,” she said.
I tried the first opener, got nothing. I pressed the other one, and this great door arose, and made such a horrible sound of shrieking metal, its rollers lurching through their tracks, and a kind of metallic roar that caused me utter fear far beyond language or even thought. It would never end. I just stood there. I didn’t even perceive Alida’s standing there. When the garage door ceased rising, we entered. I turned my phone on for light, searching the walls for switches. When I found it, and flipped that switch, things changed. The fluorescent-lit garage appeared like a marvelous theater of phosphorus. Alida covered her eyes, fell into me, my god. I closed mine and many colors danced on the backs of my black eyelids. I opened them now. I’d been here before, but never like this. Shiny sports cars jacked up with creeper chairs rolled underneath, a topless ladies-calendar hanging above one of the shop tables, sweet-smelling oil puddles on the dusty concrete floor. I told Alida, “I want something like this in my life. I want to own something.”

“I imagine you will,” she said.
“But I want a motorcycle shop.”
“California’s good for that. You ride?”
“Dabbled,” I said. “But I had a buddy get in a pretty bad accident. That sort of thing, it’ll make you think. But I’m ready to get back into it.”

“You’re ready to get back into a lot of things,” she said.
Above the shop table, by the topless ladies-calendar, I searched the hook-board for Big Mona’s keys, snatched them, dropped them in my pocket and told Alida that, as much as I’d wanted to stay and pretend I was Prince of the Auto Shop, we needed to light out of here.

I pressed the button and the garage descended with its terrifying steel jawed-sound again, and I said, “Well, what do we do with this?”

Alida snatched the garage door opener from me and underhand tossed it into the garage just before the thing got all the way shut.

I opened up Big Mona, slid inside her. “You like?” I said.

“All I’d ever been dreaming about,” she said.

Schaefer’s house lay just outside the town limits, on Estrella Street. Alida leaned and rested her head on my knee, and I put my arm around her, clutching the shifter, and removing it from time to time to bury my fingers into that oily hair. “I don’t know if I can handle the drive tomorrow,” she said.

“Just go ahead and sleep,” I said. “We’re almost home,” she said.

She called my place home. She did. It could’ve worked out between us here, in La Jara.

A vehicle swung off County Road 5, revved up and gunned it so close as to likely rear-end us. Its brights now shone and Alida shot up and tilted the rearview mirror. I couldn’t see a thing. The vehicle would not relent. I held her hand. She closed her eyes. “Please,” she said, to somebody. “Please, please, please, please.”

I mashed the gas. I passed the turnoff to Schaefer’s house and just kept going, hitting seventy, eighty, eighty-five. The vehicle drove into the other lane.

It nosed by us, but it did not pass.
I did not see the driver’s face.
Alida said, “This is too much. This is just way too much for two days. Too much, it always ends up too much.”

And what could I do, now, but just hammer the brakes and let the stranger pass, turn around, drive home, lay her to bed, vanish into another room, and get on the phone? She said she saw in my eyes a very good man. A man who might call up Rex and say, “Listen, I’ve got something kind of crazy to tell you. I am sorry. I have been so desperate, Rex, I have been so desperate, and I am telling you this without a single lie in my heart.”