Fraught Across State Lines

          If a woman hooks up with a man in his dingy studio apartment and the government isn’t around to condemn it, did they even have sex? 

          Playing, he had called it. Screwing, boning, taking her to bed. It was crass and carnal, a compulsion, so nobody could blame the body for its want. Making love, she had countered, sort of kidding, with a voice masked by sardonicism. The joining of two distinct souls. But Pei and Thomas were not best friends, so the joke lost itself in translation. 

          In all her life, Pei had kissed five boys, and Pei had loved five boys. Before Thomas, she’d only had sex with one of them. She was a romantic, she told herself, but it wasn’t true. Thomas was brash, petulant in his youth, and not the kind to stay over after the deed was done. Maybe he was tomorrow’s mistake, a face—a country. Maybe he was nothing. 

          Thomas ran his thumb along Pei’s birthmark, hairline to cheek, and grinned, loopy and fearless, while Pei thought about sex and the death penalty, the death penalty’s sex, sex’s death penalty, sex’s sexy death. 

          “You’re so pretty,” he said. He tried flirting and capsized his watered-down Manhattan on ice with a crashing elbow. 

          “Your hands are cold,” Pei replied. 

          “But not… you look real. You’re pretty in a believable way, you know?” 

          “I don’t know.” Pei laughed. She didn’t know if she should have, if he was trying to be funny or insightful or backhanded. She could never tell with guys like Thomas, what they meant when their erudite facades crumbled under the pulse of alcohol. “Can you explain?” 

          But Thomas didn’t want to explain; instead, he cupped Pei’s cheek and leaned in, and Pei felt months of semi-formal relationship whirling between them. With their proximity came a fruitless thought: had Thomas approached her, armed with the pretense of friendship, because he’d wanted this, nothing more? They really shouldn’t make those top shelves so tall, he’d said as he stretched to collect an item she couldn’t recall now—he didn’t own a headboard; she felt undressed through her t-shirt—and when his stance flattened, he’d winked and noted her Vanderbilt hoodie. You’re smart. I can tell. 

          Would they be friends in the morning? 

          She pulled back. “I’m moving next year. When the spring semester’s up.”

          Nothing shifted. “To where?” He kissed her neck. 

          “North. Vermont, maybe. Connecticut, if I can afford it. I know it’s… predicable—” she had almost said cliche “—but I want to live in New York eventually. I think I liked the wrong things about The Bell Jar, Catcher in the Rye. They make the city sound so sensual. Church-like.” 

          Thomas latched onto Pei’s jawline with a cannibal hunger. She felt sick, suddenly, like a child that had feigned fever until the heat became real. “Or maybe Jersey. Newark. I don’t mind commuting.” 

          Her words stumbled, liquor-drenched. The bed spun when she tried to move. She waited for Thomas to care. 

          Instead, he scrunched his nose. “New York. So filthy there. So…” He threw his arms up flippantly, painting the city’s most grotesque features in the space between them. “You’d be miserable. Anyone would.” 

          “I like Nashville.” 

          “Nashville is tame. New York has teeth.” Thomas’ lips were lust-bitten, though they hadn’t kissed anything but a chapped mouth, his shoulders rolling forward, forward— this was foreplay. Anything Pei said would only get him off. “It would eat you alive. Even you, with your optimism.” 

          He choked on the word half-swallowed and laughed to himself. Pei said, “My optimism?” She felt herself brighten and she lulled towards him, sickened, exotic. 

          “Yeah. My ex lived in the city, and it broke her.” 

          And then, they were kissing again, only this time, Pei heard the twilight moan, the walls of the apartment howl in earnest—or was it protest? 

          They undressed after a while. Moved like a sloppy time signature, hastened as the moon shrunk from view. She must have been enjoying it, Pei thought, since neither of them asked to stop. “Do you have…” Pei huffed, caged between Thomas’s arms. Thomas reached into his bedside table and revealed his contraband. 

          “My brother’s. Saves his leftover rations for me. He and his wife want a baby, poor bastards.” And then, Thomas grazed his teeth against the nape of Pei’s neck—a lion brutalizing his gazelle—an appetizer—and she groaned. Her vision went white with snow. 

          Encouraged, Thomas moved in for the kill.

 

—

 

          His car sped through the lip of Tennessee with a periodic cough, the white metal exoskeleton shaking, bloodless. Thomas hadn’t moved his eyes from the road since their departure. How quickly their evening together had soured in the days that followed. At each mile marker, Pei balanced on the cusp of a quantum event—did she exist if he didn’t observe her? 

          And she had been right; Thomas had asked her to leave before dawn. 

          “Sore throat?” 

          Thomas glared at her a moment, and Pei materialized. 

          “It’s just, you haven’t talked in a while. Are you on vocal rest? Did you catch a cold?”

          He reddened. “No.” 

          “Good.” She adjusted the AC. It was too hot to drive. “We’re making good time. Should be in Virginia before sunset.” 

          “Uh-huh.” 

          “Okay, then,” Pei drawled. But Thomas’s Honda Civic could not carry two tempers, so she pivoted. “Sahar says she can meet us for lunch or dinner tomorrow, depending on when we drive through Philidelphia.” 

          Nothing. 

          “She says we’ve got to try an authentic Philly cheese steak.” 

          And yet again, the observer made his object a frequency wave. 

          Pei hummed away the half-hour. A sign off the interstate announced the toll booth up ahead. She blanched. Tennessee wasn’t forgiving—not like the North. 

          “Pull over,” said Pei, her throat scratchy with novelty. “I have to hide.” 

          Thomas did as he was told, glowering through petty inconvenience, and in a gravelly CVS parking lot, Pei folded herself into the trunk. She ached immediately. 

          “Okay, I think I’m ready.” A tremor in her voice, a solemn prayer to some atheistic god, and Thomas pressed a false wall to Pei’s body. Now, his trunk appeared smaller and empty. “Does it look real? Can you see me?” 

          “I think so,” said Thomas. Pei shut her eyes before the trunk closed, as if she could repel the darkness by inviting it first. “Stay down.” 

          Pei heard the rush of the road, felt the skin of her cheek jostle against her coffin and winced but made no sound. Eventually, they slowed. Thomas rolled down a window. It sounded tinny and frank and cheap. He said, “How are you doing, officer?” and “No, no, just me today” and “Go right ahead; nothing here.” He kept his tone light as he talked through opened doors, mirrors, center consoles (and laughter like a bullet. The cop found cigarettes and vitamins and dubbed it all ironic). Finally, the trunk opened. Pei’s body itched with unreality. The black whispered, Do something—do anything. Prove you can affect the unaffected. 

          There was the sound of the road and the jangling of keys, the unending pulse of a timid heart—pounding loudly, ritualistic—and the trunk was shut again, and Pei’s lungs burned to breathe. The police officer said something about an ID, gender certification, and while Thomas rummaged he laughed about how “you could never tell these days.” 

          “Thanks for making my job easy,” came the gruff voice one last time. “Bunch o’ chicks on a girls’ trip used up all my pregnancy tests. Couldn’t let them off ‘cause half of them looked it.” Thomas laughed. 

          Pei’s joints throbbed long after she reclaimed the passenger seat. 

 

—

 

In Virginia, they stopped at a gas station. Thomas had to pee. She waited there, doors locked. There were men on either side of her—men standing by the gas pumps, men with their women, men walking in and out uncaring—and Pei wondered if she was stronger than the gangly guy by the trash can, the stubby one with tattoos.

          Thomas returned with a Coke and a pack of Marbolos. Pei coughed in anticipation of the stench. 

          “You smoke?” 

          “You know I do. You made that bitchy comment after the toll booth.” 

          “Don’t call me bitchy.” 

          “You said, ‘That’s so dumb, Thomas. You’re killing yourself willingly.’” 

          Pei tutted. She thought about asking Thomas to accompany her inside, but he’d only laugh. “So, you do listen to me. You can quote me verbatim.” 

          “Just the annoying bits.” 

          “Don’t call me a bitch, please.” 

          If she softened the ask, maybe he’d listen. Thomas liked soft women. Or, maybe he had a kink for rounded the edges of sharp ones. He’d never called her a bitch before now. “I didn’t call you a bitch,” he sighed. “I said you were being bitchy, which isn’t permanent or anything.”

          “There’s no difference. Bitch or bitchy—it’s all the same.” 

          “No, it’s not. ‘Bitchy’ is something you can fix.” 

          Inside, licking the residual taste of diesel from her lips, Pei breathed real air. She counted the tiles from the register to the door. On it hung a shoddy sign that read, “Smile—you’re on camera,” but Pei hadn’t seen any cameras at the front. 

          Because the cameras were in the bathroom. Two lenses, one pointed at the sink, one at the trash can. Blinking. When she sat on the toilet, the latter just missed her knees. The eyes of Virginia law ogled her. Pei hated to exist this way. 

          On her way out, Pei brought a lemonade to the register, an excuse to pry. 

          “I have to ask—the cameras in the bathroom. Are they…is that normal? I don’t live here.” The attendant scanned her surroundings, then the lemonade. “They’re new. And legal, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her tone exhausted disgust, but her face was flat. “Because they don’t record audio.” 

          “Why are they there?” Pei steeled herself between question and answer. 

          “A girl tried to force a miscarriage last month. Used a hanger she brought from home. She got caught, obviously. Someone called the cops.” 

          Pei didn’t want to know. She asked, “Is she okay?” 

          “Okay? No, I think she died on the way to the station. Will that be all for you today?” As if she’d told this story a hundred times. 

 

—

 

They pulled over for the night at a Maryland rest stop. Pei needed every dime she had for the procedure, and Thomas refused to swing for a motel, so she made her sweatshirt a privacy curtain and tried to sleep. Couldn’t, flipped on the radio, tried again.

          Thomas turned it off. 

          “I need that. I need noise.” 

          “Well, I can’t sleep with it on, and I’m driving tomorrow.” 

          “Then I’ll drive. I saw you getting tired earlier. Road hypnosis, maybe. Please.” Thomas faced her, numb in the space between life and death. “Talk, then.” A beat. “Come on. You were wiped after our pillow talk.” 

          Pei hardened. Felt her stomach—its pulse, its shriveled promise. “Don’t joke. You’re not funny. You were never funny.”

          “Whoa.” Pei imagined the moon exploding into thousands of meteors. “You haven’t been much of a comedian either.” 

          And there, she felt anger stir in her throat like bile. She screamed: “Because I could get arrested.” Thomas looked unsure. “I could. And don’t you dare say that you could too. They let men go.” 

          “I’m…” He wanted to say ‘sorry,’ but Pei didn’t think he was. He settled on, “I know.” For a moment, they said nothing. Pei cocooned herself in a hug. She was nauseous. Too early for morning sickness—perhaps it was rage. 

          “There were cameras in the bathroom today. At the gas station.” 

          Thomas huffed. “Did the owner have a fetish?” 

          Oh, his indifference, small lightning in every muscle. “No.” But she left it there. “I’m excited to see New York, honestly.” 

          “Excited?” His nose twitched. “We’ll be there for half a day, and you’ll feel like shit the whole time. No one’s ever visited a big city and left a better person.” 

          The clouds parted overhead and the moon beamed in full. 

          “You mentioned your ex-girlfriend earlier. Red.” Thomas grunted, but Pei wanted to know him, for her own peace of mind. “Is that really her name?” 

          “No. Her last name’s Redding.” 

          Unpleasantries huddled in his brow. She didn’t pry. 

          “We’ll be in Philly by lunch. Sahar found a sandwich spot.” 

          Thomas turned over. He turned the radio back on. 

          “Thank you,” said Pei. 

          “Don’t thank me,” Thomas said. “Just go to sleep.” 

          But Pei couldn’t sleep, so she told Thomas about the last book she had read—The Stranger by Albert Camus, about a man who went, pathetically and without protest, to his death sentence because he couldn’t think of something he’d rather do instead. 

          Sahar sat opposite Pei and Thomas like the child of two dysfunctional divorcees. “You know, it’s very 90s—the president having an affair,” Sahar said, laughing like she’d forgotten how but had been given the parts—the lips, the eyes, the teeth, and a vague recollection.

          “No,” said Pei. “It’s passé. Give the 90s some credit.” She stole a fry from Sahar’s plate. “Back then, people cared a little.” 

          Thomas scoffed. “People care. There’s just a lot to care about.” 

          “What does that mean?” 

          “Bombings, the Middle East, the Pope—I don’t know. The president had sex. It’s not political.” 

          “He runs the goddamn country!” Pei heard her voice expand and winced. She hadn’t meant to feel so deeply. 

          Thomas sipped his Coke, the only one of the three who could afford it. “Too many women think their opinions make them better people.” 

          “What, as opposed to men, who believe in nothing until they’re forced?” 

          “I believe in plenty. You act all moral during dinner table conversations. You wax moronic about things you can’t change.” 

          The air crackled. “Nothing affects you—nothing!” 

          There was a small silence, and then Thomas excused himself to “freshen up.” Sahar watched him leave; Pei watched Sahar thumb the bruise below her cheekbone and switched sides of the booth. 

          “So, Thomas is the worst.” 

          “What’s wrong?” Pei asked. “You seem tense.” 

          “I should be asking you that. Him? Really?” 

          “I know. He’s got some vendetta against his ex-girlfriend, too. He might just hate women.”

          “The way most men treat us, I think they’d be happier if they just kissed each other.” Pei let the joke die. “Sahar. What’s wrong? Tell me.” 

          Sahar sat on the edge of her seat, like she couldn’t bear the comfort of a headrest. “My job offer fell through. The one at Citizens Bank. I haven’t had an interview since.”

          “That was a month ago.” 

          “Six weeks, yeah. So, I’ve…” Sahar’s smirk cried wolf. Pei felt the teeth of her stomach grinding themselves to nubs. “ I do sex stuff.” 

          “Sex stuff.” Deadpan. “What does that mean?” 

          At their large public school in La Vergne, chock-full of burnouts and self-righteous geniuses who studied by skimming their notes once, Sahar was one of the few who tried—painstakingly. Salutatorian, Type A to a fault, social butterfly. She deserved to get out, go Ivy League, skip class reunions. 

          Sahar had a second bruise on her upper arm. She looked ten years older. 

          “Like, I go to hotels, men—mostly men—meet me there, they…” Tears hung from her waterline. “It’s not always bad. Sometimes, they just need someone to talk to. They’re lonely.” Her voice broke, and she cried. 

          Pei hugged Sahar until their skins fused, and the thick brown hair she stroked as Sahar wept was tangible. She couldn’t stop seeing it. 

          “It’s these student loans—they’re killing me. I thought…” she sniffed. Pei grabbed a napkin from their pile and handed it to her. “I thought going to UPenn would guarantee job offers, but everyone has a master’s and a book deal and they’ve cured ten mutations of syphilis.” 

          Pei snort-laughed through tears of her own. Sahar smiled too, and for a moment, they were sixteen again, alight with the prospect of better days. 

          “I’m drowning. I didn’t know what else to do. My landlord just increased rent, Dillon moved in with her boyfriend…” 

          “Are you keeping safe?” 

          Sahar glanced down at her purse. She nodded. “I get birth control—” she mouthed the words “—in the city.” 

          Two shattered bodies walk into a diner; they leave pieces of themselves between floorboards. “Pei,” Sahar sought her eyes. “Please, don’t think less of me.” 

          Pei took Sahar’s hands in hers. Squeezed. 

 

—

 

An hour from the New York State toll booth, Thomas mentioned his ex-girlfriend again. A slip of the tongue this time. He had been careful not to say her first name.

          Windows down, cold air cutting down the endless Interstate, he knotted the chorus with the bow of his lip and said, “Bebe loved this song.” 

          And Pei didn’t have to ask if Bebe and Red were the same person because there was that awful look, the ashy outline of atomic love. Thomas’s plain features were made lovely by her mention. 

          Two miles from the New York State toll booth, Pei asked, “Will we still be friends after this?”

          Thomas’s gaze split. “Sure. If you want to be.” 

          “Do you want to be?” 

          The car jerked amid New Jersey nothing. “I don’t know how to be friends with you now.”

          “Because you got me pregnant?” 

          And there was the thing left unsaid, the ink sac ballooning in Pei’s chest, waiting to burst. Thomas said, “No. Because we’ve had sex.” 

          The toll booth loomed ahead, so Pei fell silent and thought it was apt. The falling, that was. Something impossible to escape from, a clammy curl of Ursula’s spell. 

          She didn’t have to hide in the trunk this time, but the attendant checked their IDs and asked to check any loaded weapons because those required a permit. Thomas said “no” for both of them, and then they were in New York. 

          Thomas’s knuckles whitened. He blasted the radio. And finally, Pei searched for her voice beneath her seat and for Bebe Redding’s voice online. 

          At first, nothing. Pei had one bar. Loading. She reached for the volume dial and felt—rather than saw—Thomas slap her hand away. She looked at him. Her mouth wouldn’t close. “Leave it,” he said. 

          “Why did you do that?” Pei’s voice walked a loose tightrope. 

          “Do what?” 

          The car hit a pothole and jostled Pei in her seat. She saw civilization smoking up ahead. “You hit me,” she said, but the music drowned her out. 

          Her phone had two bars now. Her search loaded. The first link was an article from The New Yorker. 

          “Brooklyn Playwright Bebe Redding Drops Assault Charges Against Thomas Vaughn.” Another from The Post: “Bebe Redding and The Baby That Almost Killed Her.” And then, “Redding vs Vaughn Case Closed with Prejudice Among Abortion Lockdowns.”

          “You hit her, too.” Thomas heard. “You hit her!” Again and louder, again, but she wasn’t right. Not completely. 

          She saw red (Red, Red, Red). 

          “You got her pregnant.” 

          The car moved too quickly. Thomas hit another pothole, and Pei’s phone fell to the car’s carpet— pop, they swerved as a tire gave out— Pei heard the browns of dead land call out to her—

          Pei braced herself for something— Pei knew nothing about anybody— Pei was too troublesome to die—

 

—

 

They didn’t say anything. They pulled into a service lane. A tow truck arrived. Pei introduced herself as Peyton because it sounded more American. Thomas blamed her for the accident, threatening to call the police if she did anything rash. She paid the mechanic out-of-pocket.

          They didn’t say anything. They found a hotel room. It wasn’t dark yet, but Thomas fell asleep on the bed and left her the floor. Pei didn’t fear termites. She didn’t care. Where was the money? This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t safe, she wasn’t safe with him, with herself. Red was Bebe Redding, and Thomas had ruined her life. 

 

—

 

That night, while Thomas slept, Pei went down to the lobby without her room key, and within the hour she was on a different floor, with a different man, feeling screwed up and begging to feel screwed. If you get pregnant, he told her, it’s not my fucking problem. But he didn’t have to worry, Pei said. Not about her.

          He has a condom because married people get rations—like Adderall prescriptions, like a doctor’s order, take two after breakfast and one before bed. 

          He didn’t ask her name. Pei closed her eyes and felt nothing. 

          When they were done, the man offered a white towel and asked her to leave. His wife would be back soon. 

          Pei returned to her room and knocked until her fist was numb. It was her money, but she slept out in the hall anyway. 

          Thomas placed the room key at her feet and left with the car. Pei had just enough money for a plane ticket home. At the airport, she called the doctor’s office. Her phone rang twice. Click. “Hi, my name is Pei Marshall. You can give my appointment to someone else.”

Charlotte Hass is an aspiring author studying Writing for Screen and Television at USC. An editor for Spotlight Magazine and a writer for Televised Magazine, Charlotte’s original work has been recognized by publications like Scholastic and The Adroit Journal. Charlotte feels happiest while writing sappy poetry in urban indie coffee shops.