The Wait

What Happened in Arizona

Before I left the desert I took the worst side of my personality — the side with my temper, each of my insecurities, and my propensity for over-sharing and for being swallowed whole by emotion — and I locked her in the trunk of the car and drove her over the State border into Arizona, where a tall man in a stetson named Emmett Marking shot her in the head and left her for dead.

I'd arranged to meet Emmett in a diner in Nevada, in a small town called Boulder City near the border. I like the way Americans name all their towns 'cities', even when all they have in them is a junk shop and a hardware store. This means I must be from a city of 300 people in rural north Wales, I thought, nervously sitting up at the counter with a strawberry milkshake and trying not to stand out.

When Emmett arrived he walked right up to me and said "Where's the client?" just like that, like he really didn't care who heard him.

"In the trunk of my car," I said, handing him the case of money which he opened right there and then, counting out the dollars like he didn't care who saw him.

We drove in silence, across the Hoover Dam and into Arizona, and when we pulled over I popped open the trunk and Emmett seemed caught off guard all of a sudden. He was shocked, I think, to see that the 'client' — lying knocked out — looked exactly like me. Same hair, same clothing, same face, same frame… same thin white skin made for small Northern islands and the constant threat of rain.

"This is her?" he asked, dumbfounded, and both his posture and the pitch of his voice changed, making him seem a little frightened. I was relieved that he was showing a pathetic human side because, as I'd written his character in the silence of the car, I'd briefly considered having to fall in love with him. Be careful, ladies, of being a woman who is attracted to confidence. One day you may end up falling for an imaginary hit man.

Emmett composed himself, threw the body over his shoulder, and walked off with her behind the boulders. I waited at the car. I was curious, of course, but really — who wants to see something that looks exactly like you get shot in the head, even if it is only the very worst parts of your personality?

The car was too hot to sit in, so I stood in the sun and kicked the sand around for a while. The road was empty and stretched from one horizon to the other and I wondered what was taking so long. I spotted a lizard sitting on a rock and I lay down on the ground and got close to it, really close, right up to its face with my camera. I was just about to reach out my hand and catch it when a gunshot sounded out behind me. The lizard darted off and I knew it was all over. I got up, dusted off my shirt and jeans, and felt better.

On the drive back to Nevada, Emmett twisted and fidgeted in the passenger seat and started to irritate me.

"So, she was your twin sister or something?" he said, eventually.

I was quiet for a moment, just staring straight out at the road in front of me, then I said: "Yes, something like that," and I turned up the radio so he wouldn't keep on talking to me.

The Meeting

Leaving Las Vegas

If you ever feel like you've been reading too much meaning into things and everything you see fills you with nostalgia and/or regret, just find a large group of young gay men from Los Angeles and go walking up and down the Las Vegas strip.

How did you end up here anyway, sweetness?

I think she said she's a fugitive of love or some shit.

The fuck? A fugitive of what?

I don't know. I guess she's an asylum seeker or a refugee or something.

Oh, okay. Well, that's cool man, that's cool.

Vegas is everything they say it is in the movies, so if you've ever seen a movie then congratulations: you're excused from ever visiting. Out on Route 395 I check in to a small roadside motel by myself. It's good to be alone and I take a lukewarm motel shower, wonder what I'm going to do next, and then lie down on the synthetic motel pillows and check my phone for mail.

There's an email from Cathy (I kiss the screen), ten corporate messages about nothing (delete, delete, delete), and one proposition from a woman I know in London called Astrid. She's flying to San Francisco to make a music video for Cornershop: do I want to shoot some footage? She's going to film life in Oakland and she's attached references of people 'turfing' – a mixture of breakdancing and bodypopping. She has a Lumix GH2, one local guy called Desi to act as an escort, and she's arriving next week. Am I interested?

I write back and say yes to Astrid and goodbye to Las Vegas.

Motel California

In the Canyon

Sam is an old dog and the sun is hot and after a while she's panting so hard that she actually starts throwing up. I try to give her some of my water but I have nothing to pour it into except my cupped hand and she laps at it with her crazy tongue until it's all over the ground. I wonder if maybe we'll meet a hiker, but we haven't seen anyone for over an hour since we started walking.

A thin river runs down below us at the bottom of the canyon, so we slip and slide down the rock until we're at the trickle of water. Sam drinks for a while then drops down under the shade of a boulder and I lie on the ground and look up at the sky above me. I can feel the sun burn into my skin and I wonder what I'm doing here because I know I wasn't made for the desert and the desert wasn't made for me. I was made for the constant threat of rain on small islands in the North Atlantic.

Two eagles circle above me and remind me of being in Tibet, which reminds me of being in China, which reminds me of all that heartache, and I wonder when everything is just going to stop fucking reminding me of something.

*

On one of my last nights in Chengdu — as it was becoming clear that things back home were not well — I'd hired a Tai Chi teacher to come to my hostel. The sickness in my stomach was stopping me from eating and the language barriers were stopping me from communicating and I was prepared to do anything just to get some rest from thinking.

It was apparent as soon as Xiao Chen arrived that I was in the presence of a great master. He was in his fifties, wearing loose black clothing, and floated rather than walked. As we stood together on the roof garden, with the hazy Chengdu sun setting over the city below us, I felt a little calmer. Or did I? He didn't know any English, but he spoke softly to me in Chinese and gently straightened my posture. When our time was up he took my hands in his and said something to me so very intently that I knew it was sure to be of great help to me. Had he sensed my anguish in my posture? I gestured at him to stay where he was: Please, wait here Xiao Chen, while I get someone to translate for me. Xiao Chen had smiled and bowed his head and I ran off down the steps and in to the hostel.

"Does anyone here speak English? Please? Somebody? I need someone to translate for me – it's an emergency!"

A girl at the bar stood up and said I do, I speak some English, and she ran after me, back up to the roof garden, two steps at a time, come on, please, hurry.

"Here," I said, out of breath. "Please ask this man exactly what it is that he needs to tell me."

The girl nodded and Xiao Chen spoke to her directly, and then she turned to me.

"He wants you to guess how old you think he is," she said.

*

I cried myself to sleep that night and I didn't care who heard me. I didn't know which part was worse: that my relationship was over, that I was still in China, or that every single one of us is as vain and as shallow and as self-absorbed as the next great Tai Chi master.

No, not everything you encounter in life has to mean something. I look at Sam lying under the boulder — calmer now she's had water — and she licks her lips and thumps her tail at me. The eagles are just two birds above a canyon in the middle of nowhere. It is what it is in Nevada: the rocks, the sky, the dog, and me.

Birds

In the Darkness of a Northern Californian Forest

We drove over the Cascades and into northern California and I was glad we weren't taking the coast road because, as any fool knows, coast roads are only for couples and happy people.

The shadows of the mountains suited me and I sat in the back of the van with the dogs, leant my face against the window and looked out at the moonlight flashing through the forest. The Magnetic Zeros played on the stereo — home, let me come home, home is wherever I'm with you — and Lauren said hey, let me know if you want to change the music.

Do you have anything that isn't about relationships? I asked, already knowing well that no such music exists, and Lauren spent a long time scanning her iPod until she turned to me and said I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't look like we do.

Eventually we were all too tired to drive anymore and it was gone 2am so Chris pulled the van down a track through the trees until we found somewhere to park. They set up their bed in the back and I took my tent and my backpack and walked a little further until I found a clearing. The Californian pines are massive and they blocked most of the moonlight and I was glad I had a head-torch to wear while I pitched my tent in the dark.

I put on all my clothes — three pairs of socks, two sweaters, my fleece — and got into my sleeping bag and sat up at the edge of the tent long after I saw the lights in the van go out. The last patches of winter snow were still clinging to the base of some trees and it was hard to believe we'd be in desert the next morning. I listened to the stillness of the forest and the occasional rustling in the bushes and wondered if it was raccoons, or owls, or bears? Eventually I began to feel sleepy so I zipped up the door and lay down and tried to figure myself out.

I'm afraid of rejection, but I'm not afraid to say it. I'm afraid of getting hurt — of pain and loss and anguish — but I'm not afraid to sleep by myself, in a tent, in the darkness of a northern Californian forest.

Crossing Nevada

Learning How to Drive

Lauren's been working all day and by the time we leave the interstate it's dark and she's asleep in the back with the two dogs. The van is bigger than anything I've driven before but it's okay. The moon is nearly full and it lights up the lake and the warning signs that just say ROCKS up ahead of me. The headlights on the van are weak and Chris shrugs and says he doesn't mind driving if I'm uncomfortable but it's okay, I like it: I feel good and in control and free.

On my first night back in the States there'd been a terrible storm and I'd woken up to the sound of something knocking. I'd got out of bed to investigate and found America sitting in the basement. She was up on top of the dryer, swinging her bare feet and banging her heels against the metal. She looked about ninety years old, wearing a red silk slip and smoking a cigarette, but her skin was so creased and her chest was so flat that for a second I couldn't tell if she was a woman or an old man in drag.

"Where've you been?" she'd snapped at me.

"I was away," I said, afraid of saying the wrong thing, trying to think of something that might excuse me. "I was learning some long, hard lessons about life."

America didn't flinch. "And during recess?" she asked.

"During recess?" I'd repeated, giving myself a moment to think. "During recess, I was learning how to drive."

On the Road

How to Say Yes

Chris and Lauren are going climbing in Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Vegas, and I'm welcome to ride with them through California if I'm prepared to share the driving. I'd met them at the party last weekend.

"Can you drive stick?" asked Chris. "We're taking the van."

I said yes, of course I can, and I didn't mention I've never driven here before. This opportunity is too good to miss. Nevada is an 18 hour drive away, but that's without any stopping. I'll need to bring a tent – we'll camp in the Sierras on the way.

"Do you climb?" asked Tom, and I'd hesitated and then said no. It's one thing pretending to be able to drive an American van on the other side of the road, but I don't want to find myself caught halfway up a rockface in the desert just because my mother never taught me how to say no.

"But I'll bring my camera," I say, and they say okay then, neat.

I like that they used the word 'neat', because of course what I really am right now is an unhinged mess. But that's between you and me. It's the weekend on the west coast of America, and there's no reason why any of them need to know that about me just yet.

Route 97

Correspondence

Dear Annie

You may remember me from having contacted you some years ago after searching for knitting patterns on the Internet. I didn't find quite what I had in mind, but I did find your blog.

I am sorry to hear of your recent upset. I followed your last railroad trip here with great interest as I too had taken a similar journey, albeit by automobile in the 1970s. I read now with some excitement of your intention to head south towards the Nevada desert. It is a long, lonely route and you must take good care not to run out of gas. Don't assume that you will make it on what you have left for another 40 miles — you most likely won't reach a filling station for another fifty.

After my husband left it was all I could do to sit and sift through the letters and photographs of the time we shared together. It was many months before I too found it in myself to pack my case and move on. Annie, you have taken many beautiful pictures of the men and women who have graced your life, but you should be cautious not to look back with rose-tinted glasses. May I suggest that in your next relationship you try photographing petty arguments, inertia, and eating crackers in front of the television.

I think you will find what you need out in the desert.

Yours,

Esther M. Clarke

Mail

Telepathy and Airmail and Love and Stuff

Portland is good and friendly and it feels like living in a never-ending music festival. There are bands and food stalls and vintage shops everywhere and I'm pretty sure I won't be leaving without getting some kind of a face tattoo.

On Saturday I was cycling around the city when Fiona texted me. There's a letter for me at home, arrived via airmail. She'll leave it by the telephone. I sat down on a bench at a farmers' market and wondered who it might be from. Dearest Annie...

No.

Farmers' markets, I'm going to warn you, are for couples. Do not go there alone. Do not sit there, alone, thinking back to how this was something you used to do together. Things get divided in break-ups, you know. If he's going to keep making elaborate breakfasts then I'm going to keep wandering around sunny markets. He can keep New York, and I will keep the Wild West. He can keep the cinema, and I will keep listening to lonely country music late at night when everyone else has their heads down getting some well-deserved rest.

But really, late last night I was at a party, with a guy called Tom from Los Angeles who owns the cowboy boot store down the road. I wasn't going to accept the invitation — I did not come here to party, Los Angeles, I came here to brood — but my mother's voice rang in my head: sweet suffering Jesus, Annie, just go.

We arrived early and stood in the kitchen with a handful of people and I wished there was a dog to stroke. Tom broke the ice and said: “Annie has a great story... do you want to tell it or should I?" I didn't quite know what he meant by 'story' but seems my special superpower is oversharing I jumped right in with all the details anyway. I took them to Everest and back again, right up to the anxiety attack at Shanghai airport when I realised I was going home to no home. That's the story you meant, right Tom?

Er, not exactly, no.

Oh.

But my audience was understanding. Especially the blonde girl from California who later grabbed me on the sweaty dance floor and ground her body up and down against mine – ice well and truly broken. “Oh girl,” she said. “You are in so much trouble.” Alright California, I know.

Yes, Portland is good and friendly, even if I can't always tell if I'm happy to be somewhere good when I'm sad, or sad to be somewhere good when I'm unhappy. It shifts, and there are better days and bad. I made David and Fiona laugh three times today. Three times! Each time I went upstairs to make a note of it in my journal. Dear Diary: I just made David and Fiona laugh. Am I getting my sense of humour back or do they just have gas?

Another thing I like to note is that despite this sorry, sorry break-up stuff, I'm not always missing the feeling of love. I can feel it in this house that I'm staying in and I felt it when Jacob helped the widower with his dead wife's stuff. I feel it in the emails from friends, when unexpected letters arrive via airmail, and whenever a stranger gets in touch.

I can feel it inside me, too, you know. I felt it, eventually, on that bench at the farmers' market, where I broke all the rules of our no-contact agreement and telepathed at him very hard. “I don't want to divide up the world,” I said, with my head down and my eyes shut. “I want you to have everything you want. I hope that right now this very minute you're having an elaborate breakfast and wandering around a sunny foreign market.”

Then I opened one eye, checked the time, and added: “Even if it's three in the morning wherever you are, over on the other side of the world.”

The Letter

A Pair of Boots & Two Sacks of Clothes

There's a pair of cowboy boots sitting in the window of a shop downtown. The heels and the toe are a little scuffed and I wonder who they belonged to. The label says $89 and I decide to go in and try them on. Who knows?

The store's owner, Jacob, says of course I can try them on. They're a real bargain — hardly worn. He reaches for them from the window and I sit down in an old armchair to pull them on.

The door jangles and a large, nervous-looking man squeezes in with two old sacks of clothes.

"I'm sorry," says Jacob. "But we're not really in a position to be buying any more stock right now."

The man puts down the sacks and takes off his hat. "I thought you might just like to take a look," he explains, and I think I hear his voice crack. "They were my wife's clothes."

Jacob is not the kind of guy who turns away a man whose voice is cracking while he's walking around town carrying two sacks of his dead wife's clothes. He says well, let's have a look and see what you've got there, sir, and I leave them to it and walk up and down the shop floor. The boots fit, and I'm beginning to look better. Do I really need another pair of shoes to make myself feel tougher? I have limited funds and I was hoping to get on the road — maybe through the desert as far as Nevada. I think about the case full of dollars. How much is left? I don't know.

Jacob and the man go through the sacks of dresses. They don't look like much, and I think that this must be the difference between vintage and just plain old. But Jacob is gentle: he says hey, look at this one, and this one, and this one here is beautiful. Yeah, Jacob is a good guy, maybe he'll write out some kind of a cheque after all.

I can't watch and I don't feel I should be here anymore. So I quietly put the boots back in the window, sneak out of the store, and close the door. When I get back to the house I pull the case out from under the bed and count out the dollars. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty... There's $860 left. It's enough: enough for boots and the next two months and enough to get to Nevada through the desert, I'm sure.

But when I get back to the store the next morning, the boots aren't there anymore.

$860

That Way Around

David and Fiona's spare room in Oregon is sunny. They'd put a large vase of flowers on the dresser and marked three drawers with my name on them, so I knew to make myself at home. I woke up late for the first time in weeks, and I could hear them laughing with their tiny, beautiful new baby. Lola's toenails tapped across the floorboards outside my door, and for a split second I felt peace and warmth wash over me, and I tried to hold on to it for a while.

They'd all come to meet me at the airport the night before, and Fiona had said hey, you don't have to do anything for the next few days except bunk down and get some rest. I know I look like shit. My skin is bad, and I have large bags under my eyes from waking up early every morning just to fit in a few extra hours of missing him. There's a map of the world hanging on the wall, and I lie there in the bed for a while just staring at the impossibly massive distance between Beijing and Portland. It's been a long journey, this separation, and the two cities couldn't be further apart. I know, I know, they're actually quite close in terms of the globe... but I didn't get here that way around.

In almost two months now I've only spent two short hours with him — the man I used to begin and end every single day with — just so we could say goodbye. It's been hard staying strong and I'm exhausted. The worst is over though, right? I'm away again, new city, no memories, China is dead to me, and all my stuff back home is packed up in boxes. Louise had helped me shift them across Dublin, where we'd overshared with the guy at Storage World, Aidan.

"She's running away to America," said Louise, as we unloaded the boxes. "And she doesn't know when she'll be back."

Aidan had nodded and ticked the form: No Return Date Specified. Of course I'd mistaken this for compassion, and carried on talking.

"I promise you, Aidan," I'd assured him. "One day I'll travel the world when my heart isn't breaking."