Limbo by Jim Etchison This is a short story I wrote about my trip back from Colorado. It's all true, and a work in progress. I'd love to get feedback on how you think it could be improved.

My rented truck hummed like a chainsaw as I headed South on I-25. I didn't really know where I was going. I only knew I was leaving Colorado and headed to L.A. I had to be near my kids and nothing else mattered. I didn't want to think about it, though. If I could have switched the truck to autopilot, I would have. My friend Todd had said I was in "bend over and grab your ankles" mode. I wanted to hit him when he said that. Everything I owned was with me. My belongings were packed willy-nilly into the truck, and my car—a piece of shit 1988 Dodge Colt—held its nose up to the world as it scooted behind me on a tow dolly. I knew that the friends I'd left behind would slowly fade away, and that all my old born-again friends in L.A. would no longer speak to me. So it was my shit and me; that was all. I don't mean to whine, but I didn't even know what "me" was anymore. After nine years of marriage you can lose your identity like you can lose your own birth certificate. I would have settled on finding a Xeroxed copy. In spite of all my friends, who told me I was a good guy—a wonderful guy, even—I was still the man who cheated on his wife. I was still the man who left her when she learned the truth. I respect what my friends say, but what is left for me but honesty? I did those things. Even Jesus knew the hard truth: you know a tree by its fruits. I wanted to put the truck on auto-pilot, take the path of least resistance, and think as little as possible. The best way to do that was to think of the trip in chunks. Chunks were measured in bites, and bites were measured in songs on the radio and bags of sunflower seeds. The spaces between sunflower seeds were measured in thoughts. Those intervals were kept as short as possible. My goal for the day was a town called Las Vegas, New Mexico. I could have made it further than that, but I had driven through the town before and remembered it as having a magical air about it—something wonderfully simple and evil, as if embracing arms of the Sangre de Cristo mountains hid my own essence. From Colorado Springs, Las Vegas was an easily achievable goal. I was shirtless five hours later, and drawing nigh to Las Vegas. By then the sweat on my back had turned the faux canvas vinyl seat into sandpaper, so I was anxious to stop for the night. I vowed to find the very first hotel where I could pull in and park without having to back up in the morning. Fate, I decided, should fate should play a part. The first motel met the criteria. The sign's letters were made of shimmering red sequins that said "The Inn at Las Vegas." The building walls were cracked pink stucco. $25 a night. Color TV. Telephones. The long driveway went around the back of the building and emptied onto a dirt road that would allow me access back to the highway without having to back up. I pulled in further, locked up the cab and the Colt, and went inside to pay. The sun was winking down over the horizon as the door clinked the bell above the lobby entrance. If the place had been a cheaper or seedier, I would have still stayed there. If I had met a $10 whore, I would have bought her. No one at the hotel spoke English. This was okay, since I didn't want to talk anyway. I gave her the cash, and she gave me a key with a number 25 on it. The front desk clerk said something in Spanish and pointed at a glass door. I grabbed my overnight bag, and headed through. The hotel had not seen its glory days in a long time. My guess was that it never actually had glory days. But it had badly wanted them. The glass door led me into a room for which there is no word. I believe it had once been a parking lot that the owner covered with a roof. The room was so big it seemed as if the walls had once tried to run away from its own hideous green indoor/outdoor carpeting. Two floors of rooms lined two of the four walls, and the entire architectural nightmare was lit by a smallish neon tube that gave the room the feel of a warehouse. A curved, balustraded staircase lead up to the second floor, as if this place were Tara. I saw an open door that led into a tiny bar. There were two pool tables. Good I thought, something to do tonight. My room had no windows, except the one that opened out into the Le Ballroom Grand. Three paintings festooned the walls. Two still lifes and a seascape that looked as if it were painted by Gaugin in his early "ugly brown" period. In fact, the two other paintings were predominantly brown. I realized that the entire room was coated with a golden nicotine patina. Conveniently, the orange bedspread and brown carpet matched. I wondered if the designer knew of the shading entropy that would occur and designed around it. Smart person, if so. I flipped on the Quasar television and took off my clothes. The phone worked, so I made a call to my friend in Flagstaff to arrange for a place to stay the next night. She was there, and was glad to help out. I called my boss in Seattle to get the blah blah blah about the blah blah blah. After hanging up, a foreboding thought leapt out of the veneer wood panels around me. You are in Las Vegas, New Mexico. You are neither where you were, nor where you are going. You are in the Las Vegas Limbo—Motel of Mysteries. This is a magic place. Someone famous probably refused to sleep here. It was only 8:00 and somehow knew that adventure was lurking down on the main deck. I showered and dressed, and headed downstairs to play pool. Though a mighty inertia had propelled me, I was the first one in the bar. I learned that even the people in Las Vegas, New Mexico had a sense of fashionable timing. The place was silent, and the Latino bartender was getting ready for the night's commerce. He was alone, and I asked if he had any ales. He just smiled, and I looked at a black letterboard with the listing of beers. "Do you have anything on tap?" I asked. He just smiled again. I made a motion. Pull tap. Hold glass. He smiled. "No." "Corona," I said. He gave me a Corona. "Tres Dolores." He was trying to rip me off. I looked at him skeptically and asked "Three dollars?" He smiled broadly. I smiled back as if to say you're lying to me. I thought to myself what the hell. He's ripping me off. I'm going into financial convulsions and he thinks I give a shit about three dollars? I bellied up the three bucks and tipped him one fifty just to spite him. He took the cap off a Corona and gave it to me. No lime. A short, unattractive woman walked in from the back. She worked there too. Since I wasn't planning on driving anywhere, and had only to stagger up the grand sweeping staircase to make it to my bed, I planned on drinking until she looked like the prom queen. I took a long swig of the beer and made a mental note to not bring her upstairs no matter what she looked like. I put two quarters into a pool table and racked the balls. At least the pool was cheap. A while later, a few more patrons had wandered in. Most of them sat at the bar jabbering in Spanish. The juke box apologetically played mariachi music for much of the evening. Mariachi music reminds me of bad linoleum you stare at in public bathroom stalls. I liked the fact that no one knew me. In that bar I was judged by two things: what I looked like and how well I shot pool. Frankly, I looked like shit. I'd stopped eating after my separation and weighed 140 pounds. At 5' 11", combined with the cuts on my face from shaving with my only unpacked razor, I looked like a homeless man who'd happened upon some decent clothes. In the middle a game with the ugly bartender, I thought briefly about the home I'd just sold. I pictured the view of Pikes Peak from our bedroom window, with dozens of Christian rooftops below. I'm sure a lot of people were praying for me, though. In spite of their prayers, I was becoming a feral child. A pool-playing manic wonderboy chasing demons with distilled spirits. I finished off my third beer and the bartender was still ugly. But I was beating her and everyone at pool, so things were looking up. Then Theresa walked in. Theresa had a cute, roundish face, blonde hair, tan skin, and a belly button peeking out from under her halter like the eye of God. All the criteria I needed for true love. She fit in this place like flood pants. She was with some mediocre-looking guy, as is the rule. Theresa went to the juke box and played "Leaving Las Vegas" by Sheryl Crow. Cute pun. Big improvement over "Juan Ton Amera" (sp) She and Mr. Mediocre started playing pool on the other table, and the room began to take on the static hum of spiritual balance. Everything was in it's place. I placated myself at pool, and contemplated Theresa's navel. Blessed balance. I in my perfect state of limbo, Theresa's perfect navel, the perfect high point achieved through alcohol. Good pool. Good friends. Balance. It didn't last, of course. It never does. Balance would not even be a concept if we all weren't painfully familiar with imbalance. In fact, imbalance prevails. No matter what all the dumb-ass ecologists and philosophers say. We live in a world that is constantly stretching and contracting. We live in a rubber band world. However, there is that infinitesimally small moment between expansions and contractions when all that matters becomes a singularity. In that moment, my entire world was this bar. I lost a pool game to a tough-looking Mexican in a cowboy hat —an omen that could have been caused by the hand of fate or the foot of Mr. Corona. I wanted to meet Ms. Wonder-navel anyway, so I plopped two quarters down on the table where Theresa was playing, and leaned on my cue stick provocatively. I noticed that Theresa and Mr. Mediocre weren't really talking much. In fact, there was a distinct tension between them. He would go to the bar during his turn, and she on his. They were both drinking quite a bit. I made some jokes, since that's what I do. I bullshitted about their pool game and before long Theresa started talking to me. I had a hard time wading through her Southern drawl. The way she spoke was more than an accent—it was a way of life. She was from South Carolina. "Who's your friend?" I asked. He was sipping something at the bar. He looked over at me and she smiled awkwardly at him. He had overheard the question. "Rau," he said. "Rau?" I asked. "Raww," corrected Theresa. "Raw?" "Rahn," she said. "Oh, Ron," I said. Oh my god, this guy is deaf and can't pronounce his consonants, I thought to myself. I adjust my internal rabbit ears to tune into Theresa's accent and Ron's incoming verbal tide. I figured Ron was actually Theresa's brother. Somehow she didn't seem the type to date a deaf guy. Thus the non-couple-like behavior. This was promising. After talking to Ron a bit more, though, I realized it was a false alarm. He wasn't deaf at all. He was just from the woodsier part of South Carolina. Ron had left South Carolina for a job with a phone company, and was laying fiber optic cable all over the southwest. Apparently, that wasn't all he was laying, either. "Ever trah a slippery nippow?" Theresa asked. "A slippery nipple?" I asked. "Is that a drink?" "Shore is," she said. She said something to Rahn. "Ah'm gonna bah you one, Jim," he said. I thanked him. I was now playing Theresa in pool and we were both shooting with careless imprecision. Theresa was playing "Leaving Las Vegas" for the fourth or fifth time in a row. I was starting to think that this song was a blaring signal to Rawn. "So is Ron your boyfriend?" I asked, even though I knew the questions was rife with subtext. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and shrugged. A non-verbal answer, which was probably an aid to the communicative process. She was obviously frustrated with Rahwn. "I cuhm all the wayee out here from Columbia to surprahse hee-um. And he's actin' lahk he doesn't wahnt me here. Fahn! I'll jest fahnd someone ay-ulse!" Ron waved us over to the bar. Theresa followed me. "The bahtenduh doesn't know hau to make a Slipp'ry Nippow. What's in it agin?" he asked Theresa. "Ah forget," she said. "Make sumethin' up." Ron reached behind the bar and started grabbing bottles. At five bucks a drink, you'd think it wouldn't be self-service, but Ron didn't care. In fact, it looked like he was having fun. He was probably the type of guy who liked to fix his own television set. He topped off our slippery nipples with a dollop of whipped cream, then set the can of whipped cream back on the bar. "Yer supposed to pour it on your breast and have the gah suck it off yer nippow," Theresa giggled. I knew we wouldn't be imbibing in that manner. We drank normally, then I picked up the can of Redy-whip and put its white plastic tip into my mouth. I held the can down, so I wouldn't get the cream. I exhaled, then shot the nitrous oxide into my lungs. Ron and Theresa stared at me. "It's a great high," I said. "But it only lasts for a minute or so." Theresa went back to the juke box, and suddenly my image of the world took on the half-tone dot-pattern of enlarged newsprint. I smiled. I felt dizzy and steadied myself on my cue stick. I knew that for the next minute or so, my grasp on reality would be tenuous at best. "My shot?" I asked. "Not even your game," said Ron. "Theresa and I are playing, remember?" Suddenly, his accent was gone. "Y'know," I said. "My life is over and I didn't even like it." "There's always love," said Ron. "I had it," I said, then took another swig of my beer. "It lasted eight glorious days." Ron didn't say anything. Theresa played the Sheryl Crow song again. The periphery of my vision took focus. I blinked a few times and was back to normal. The best highs in life are pitifully short. (Actually, that didn't happen—that little thing about the nitrous. I didn't suck in the nitrous, although I wanted to. Ron didn't lose his accent and I didn't tell him about my only real love. The love part was unfortunately true. I would forever after heed the advice of Romeo's uncle to "love moderately.") We drank the Slippery Nipples, then I bought another round on a credit card. That credit card company would later regret having me as a customer. Theresa ran off to the bathroom and I took the chance to get more information. "So what's going on with you and Theresa?" I asked Ron. He was surprisingly vulnerable. "I don't know ... I've been gone for six weeks and she shows up without any warning. I've started seeing somebody else and she's expecting sumthin' ... I dunno ..." his voice trailed off and he shook his head. He and Theresa both had head-shaking in common. The juke box blurted another line from the tiresome Las Vegas song. "I'm standing in the middle of the desert, waiting for my ship to come in ..." I liked Theresa. I liked Ron, too, but I had no qualms about taking Theresa back to my hotel room with me and I think Ron probably knew that. I don't think he cared. Theresa was probably neutral about the whole thing. Neutrality in limbo. I loved it. Then El Diabolo came in. The second he walked in, the state of limbo had to leave. I knew there would be trouble with a capitol T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. El Diabolo wore a white T-shirt with a nude woman silk screened on it in black ink. She had exaggerated breasts and an exaggerated trimness in the waistline. The only color on the shirt was two pink nipples—each resembling a nose cone on a super-sonic jet. Everyone in the bar was drunk, so to say that he was drunk would be redundant. But he was the kind of drunk that isn't smiley-face-laugh-and-puke drunk. His eyes looked like someone had just killed his brother. Everyone in the bar knew it; I had a feeling they'd seen him like this before. El Diabolo stood at the bar emitting short bursts of Spanish at those around him. I could understand the word maricon' a few times. The quiet responses were acquiescent and soothing. Then he laughed loudly at nothing. You could practically smell the testosterone. Then, El Diabolo began hurling insults at a particular woman at the bar. I hadn't even noticed this woman. To be honest, I am cruel about who I notice and who I don't. She wasn't attractive and the bar had become crowded enough for her to have all the noteworthiness of a shaker of salt. But as El Diabolo's tone got louder and the bar quieted again, we all noticed. I will call her Rosa. Rosa had a bad complexion, long black hair, lanky features and eyes that looked like they'd seen too many incoming fists. I found it interesting that El Diabolo, as big and powerful-looking as he was, decided to terrorize a woman. There was really nothing likable about him. He makes a good villain, but as most villains, he would not settle on mediocre villainy. Mediocrity is never remembered—especially in Limbo—and El Diabolo wanted to be remembers. So, he called Rosa a puta. Rosa began yelling back at El Diabolo. It was all in Spanish. I recognized a few words like Chingala, and Chingala Madre, as this is elementary Spanish. Other than that, I was limited to interpreting only her tone. Rosa's tone transcended anger. She hated. I don't know if she hated El Diabolo specifically, or even if she knew him. But Rosa hated someone. Or maybe everyone. In that inebriated moment, El Diabolo at least embodied what she hated, and pure hatred transcends fear. She hated him so purely that as she was screaming at him, she rounded the corner of the bar to scream into his face. She got within inches of him and hurled Latino insults like a Chihuahua barking into a rat's hole. Middle class white guys like me don't often see a woman truly filled with rage. That's probably because most middle class white women are taught that anger isn't ladylike. Instead of getting angry, middle class white women usually cry. It's a shame, too, because Rosa's anger was a beautiful thing. El Diabolo was an asshole, and no one should allow themselves to be treated like he had treated her. If this were a middle class white bar, the woman might have cried, or slinked off to the ladies room, or asked a man to help deal with her problems. There would have been far less drama, and no one would have been taught any lessons. Everyone would have stayed in Limbo. But this wasn't a middle-class white bar. Rosa wanted to rumble. And she knew the first rule of brawling, which is size doesn't matter. She got right into his face, like I said, and was spitting insults faster than El Diabolo could process them. I suppose she crossed that line first, because in her fury she slapped his chest. (This was a surprisingly intimate way to strike him, though I.) Escalation was imminent. El Diabolo struck Rosa with a fairly forceful backhanded slap. She did not fall, but she winced and took a few steps back toward me. I had a friend named Joe with whom I used to argue about time and free will. I said that our existence is like a Tesla ball. Our movement emanates from a central point, and could go in any direction, like the jagged bolts of electricity that make their way to the surface of the glass sphere. Our decisions at each moment change the shape of our path, but ultimately we reach some point of the surface of the coil. Joe disagreed. I remember he was sucking the meat out of the leg of a king crab's leg when he said this: "There is no ultimate destination, no edge of the sphere. Instead, I see each moment in time like an atom in a crystal. There's no beginning point or end point, just rows and rows of options. We just make decisions, twisting and turning with no real goal. What is left is an apparent order." Eloquent guy, Joe. Without a doubt, it was a stupid argument. One of us saw, if not a purpose, at least a quasi-direction. The other saw no direction but an apparent holistic shape. What we did agree on, however was that at each moment we are all faced with decisions, and those decisions influence who we are and where we are going. The moment I'm describing was just such a moment for me. I was standing in that bar at the Inn at Las Vegas, while Sheryl Crow played—as became the custom on many radio stations—for the 10th time, cheap cigarette smoke tainted the air, and beautiful Theresa and mediocre Ron looked on. That is the moment when El Diabolo's hand came down on Rosa's cheek. I was in Limbo. I was between all that I once was and all that I was going to be. Each moment during this embryonic stage would have all the influence on me as a mother's kiss on a newborn child. Nothing was new, but everything was new. There were no limitations, only options. I felt a lot of things. I felt anger. I felt outrage. But I did nothing. I should stop him, I thought. No one else is stopping him. I should stop him. I wanted to act, but lacked the impetus. I spun the cue stick in my hand 180° so the thick end was up, and I stood on the balls of my feet. I think I it was mostly as a gesture. I think I merely wanted to look as if I were taking action, but wanted to protect myself at all costs. It disgusts me now to think about it, but that's the honest truth. El Diabolo took a step toward Rosa. The next few moments exonerated me in part. You see Rosa didn't need me to protect her. After taking a few steps back from the blow, she leaned over my pool table—a game for which I had paid fifty centavos—and she picked up the 1-ball and the 7-ball—one in each hand. And she threw them at El Diabolo with devastating intent. However, her anger affected her aim, and both missed. El Diabolo turned his body sidelong to her and curled into a fetal position while standing on one leg. After both had missed, he quickly stood tall and took a step forward. Rosa grabbed the 13-ball and the 8-ball. El Diabolo retreated again. Rosa fired off two more furious salvitos, screaming Spanish obscenities. El Diabolo dodged them and stepped forward again. It was a dance that could have lasted seven and a half bars. But with each round El Diabolo came a tiny bit closer to Rosa. He was like the rubber band, expanding and contracting. Pool balls were ricocheting off the walls like bullets in a spaghetti western. When you think about it ... there was a certain balance in that moment. Rosa's action, El Diabolo's determination, and the bar patrons' perverse amusement at the scene. I wonder now what Theresa thought in those moments. Was she amused? Was she terrified? Did she turn her pool cue around in her hands as well? I know that I must not have felt perfect hatred of El Diabolo's boorishness, because I felt afraid. I don't really know if I was afraid of getting punched by El Diabolo as much as I was afraid of taking action—for fear of affecting those future moments lying so tentatively ahead of me. Punch. Pain. Fight. Jail. Soreness. Regret. I think in those fleeting moments I was mapping out all of these things and deciding if taking action was worth it. By the way, I once had a friend named Jack who could stick three pool balls into his mouth. We live in a weird world. While I stood paralyzed with thought, Ron and a big Mexican guy in the cowboy hat stepped in. Ron stood in front of El Diabolo, using his nicest, most soothing (albeit unintelligible) voice to calm him down. The guy in the cowboy hat wasn't as nice and began shuffling El Diabolo toward the back door El Diabolo took a swing at Cowboy Hat. Cowboy Hat dodged his punch and countered with a powerful jab to El Diabolo's jaw. The sound of it was surprising. It didn't sound like the mighty whollups you hear in the movies. It sounded more like a bitchslap. But nevertheless, the punch was effective. El Diabolo went down, and fell back behind the corner so all I saw were his two Levi-clad legs as they flopped up, then down. I'd never seen a man get knocked out cold before, and I wonder if El Diabolo wasn't such a coward that he was actually faking it. He laid pretty still, though. Then there was a bit of confusion. Theresa and the ugly female bartender rushed to Rosa's side. Lots of yelling in Spanish, Rosa in hysterics, cursing the prone El Diabolo. After a few long moments, El Diabolo regained consciousness and ran out the back door. But the lessons didn't end there. Ron and Theresa both talked to Rosa at length, they were in consolation mode. Which was nice. But Rosa was very drunk and if there's one thing I've learned it's never try to reason with a drunk. Especially if you're drunk too. Which they were. We all were. "Don't try to reason with her, Ron," I said. "She's pretty out of it." "Ah know," he said. "But ah just cain't stay-and tuh see a woman crah." I nodded, and continued rounding up the pool balls. One had bounced behind the bar, and several patrons were joining forces to find the missing pool ball. I went ahead behind the bar since certain social barriers don't exist in a crisis. Ron joined in the hunt and Theresa consoled Rosa. I heard Rosa respond to Theresa. "No! We are not all equal! Can jew imagine a world where we are all equal?" I overheard, and said, "it doesn't mean we're all the same—just equals." Rosa's expression was not pretty. She got a sour, hateful expression and looked at me. "Shut up. You ugly." I laughed, even though it did kind of hurt my feelings. She picked up an empty shot glass. "You want I should throw this at you?" Apparently she was still riding the adrenaline wave. "Go ahead," I said. "You're a bad shot." Theresa distracted her with more consolation and I kept hunting for the red 3-ball. We found all the balls, and Ron and I continued our game. Theresa began talking to the guy in the Cowboy Hat. Cowboy Hat guy was enjoying the feeling you get when you've just knocked out the bad guy. He spoke in Spanish and put his arm around Theresa. She nuzzled into him. Women and men. Women and men. Women say they just want a good man to love them, and they end up going for guys who backhand them. Men say they just want a good woman to love them and if they get anything more than a slippery nipple they despise what they have. If this isn't hell, then hell doesn't exist. I played a bit more pool and immersed myself deeper into my Corona fog. After awhile, I noticed that Theresa and Cowboy Hat were both gone. Shit. Ron was talking to some other people, and I couldn't help but wonder if Theresa was being touched by a hand with bleeding knuckles. Theresa is in her own Limbo, I thought. She has taken her own action. I left. Upstairs in my room, I removed my clothes and clicked through the channels. It was a still very hot and humid. I looked in the mirror at myself. I was gaunt, white, sweaty, and haggard. When I put my dick into that woman, I had no idea it would come to this. I made a funny face at myself. "Them's the breaks, asshole," I said. I smiled, looking at my smile. Would it ever be real again? I thought. Then I laughed at my own drunken maudlinity. As I drifted to sleep, I thought about Theresa, and what would have happened if I had been the one who'd punched El Diabolo instead of Cowboy Hat. I bet I would have made Theresa want me, and right at that moment my bleeding knuckles would be playing at the periphery of Theresa's navel, and I'd be telling a better story. The next morning, I went back out to my truck. I had that feeling that you have just before you set off on a long journey. Foreboding and promise at the same time. I checked out the car and the truck. The morning was bright. Bits of glass in the ground reflected the sun, relics of old brawls and tossed beer bottles. I heard a honking sound, and giggling. Two young girls were sitting beneath the huge "Inn at Las Vegas" sign, and one of them was playing a clarinet. It must have been a recent gift because she honked on it without the slightest knowledge how to blow it. She mostly made deafening squeaks. And the moment she got the vibration right and emitted a blaring honk, both she and her friend erupted in uncontrollable laughter. I wanted to rush over to the girls and say to them, "I know how to play a woodwind instrument! Here, let me show you how to blow it properly! I am nice! I take action when there is something good I can do!" I didn't of course, but it was a nice thought. Instead, I hopped into the cab and pulled around the back of the Inn at Las Vegas, rounded the hotel and got back on 25 south. I couldn't stop thinking about how my life would never be what I'd wanted it to be. I was leaving Las Vegas, but I felt as if I would always be in limbo. Copyright 1998, Jim Etchison