FEATURE: Signal Faded by Joe J. McGinniss

So now I'm hustling, late, actually. There's one store in Green Valley, all of Las Vegas for that matter, that sells rose petals, fresh, not dried out, but soft, cool, fragrant. It closes in 10 minutes, which two hours ago was two hours and 10 minutes, but I took Hope's call, agreed to pick her up, help her pack the rest of her things, including two framed paintings she did in high school and her massage table, go with her to Caesars Palace.

Hope got out of the car without her bags. Her shoulders were tan and slim, her jeans low and tight. Everyone watched her, like they always did. The bellhops who loaded her bags onto a cart, the valets who no longer cared about parking my car or any other for the time being, the white guys next to the heavy black man with the cane. Everyone watched, stole glances at her brown hips and navel ring, the tops of her smallish breasts. They watched when she came over to me, squeezed my arm, told me she'd check in while I parked.

The suite was huge and dark at first. A cream colored couch was pushed against the wall. And though it had these massive pillows caved in from their own softness and all I wanted to do was collapse on it because my head throbbed and spun from not sleeping, I walked past it to the window, pulled the curtains open, squinted in the bright orange sunlight that poured in. The rest of the Strip and the pink homes of Green Valley where I grew up, the desert, and I-15 to Los Angeles where my father lived, lay before me. I gazed down 21 stories below at the Garden of the Gods, clear blue rectangular pools and burgundy cabanas. Hope told me I looked tired. I glanced at the couch, then at her, told her I never felt more alive, and laughed.

"You need me to come back?" I asked.

"If you want," she said.

"Julia gets in tomorrow."

She laughed and pulled her faded jeans to her ankles, clumsily stepped out of one leg, then the other. Her thin legs were tan and her underwear black. She stared at me.

"What?"

"I'm going to miss this," she said, looked small, young, standing in her underwear and white T-shirt, jeans tossed on the bed. "I got used to doing it like this so easily."

"You'll be fine."

"It's going to be weird knowing you're not there, looking out for me."

"So stop."

"I might," she said, her expression serious. Then she grinned and I knew she wouldn't stop, would spend the summer in this suite because she couldn't bear the thought of being alone, in that house in North Las Vegas, driving herself to appointments in hotels, leaving alone, going home alone, trying to fall asleep alone. I used to drive her, meet her clients, let them know I'd be outside, downstairs waiting, would be back in an hour.

I looked away when she started to pull her T-shirt over her head, watched as shadows stretched across the pools of clear blue water, tan baking bodies lying prone along the concrete below.

"This is what I want, what Julia wants, the rose petals, red, pink and white, scattered along the aisle between the white wooden folding chairs. And I thought of this too, to give whoever shows up for the ceremony cups of petals that they can throw in the air as we leave, shower her with rose petals."

When I turned around Hope was gone, the bathroom door closed. I heard the water filling the bathtub. I pushed the door open, told her I was leaving. She told me to come by later, if I felt like it. I asked her if she needed me here, if she had any appointments scheduled. She hesitated, continued to bite her fingernails, finally nodded her head, said she'd be fine without me.

Something about the way she sat, legs crossed, hunched over, biting her fingernails, watching the water and steam rise, made me feel sad, not convinced that once she got in, she'd ever get out. But I was standing, fully dressed and ready to go, so I kissed her forehead, told her I'd see her later and left.

The city looks dirty in the gray light of early evening. It's unusually hot and the news says it may not end, may be this way right through summer, which gives me great satisfaction, knowing I'll be in Palo Alto where, Julia likes to remind me, daytime summer highs may hit 90 on a bad day.

Across the street there's a huge billboard with a black and white image of a male model in white underwear, long hair falling in his eyes and the question hanging over him: "What Kind of Man Are You?" My nose starts to bleed again and I twist the ends of a Starbucks napkin, slide it up my nostril, remember that we still need our marriage license and a ring, and that I need to write vows, need to find something to say.

I make it to the flower shop a few minutes before they close, which seems to annoy the heavy, tired-looking woman working there. She stares at the long, wet scratches stretching from my earlobe across my neck to my collarbone, and beneath the collar of my T-shirt. The antibiotic makes them glisten, look worse than they feel. I laugh and tell her my sister's ferret got me. She doesn't respond, gives me the rose petals, change and receipt, glances at my neck once more.

The store isn't far from my mother's old house, on the upper edge of Green Valley, overlooking most of Las Vegas. I like driving there, away from the city, past the bronze statues of children and parents painted in bright outfits that line Paseo Verde, up the wide thoroughfare that rises to the homes nestled in the rim around the valley, the bowl of lights below.

I take a left on Black Mountain Drive, a smooth asphalt strip lined with street lights and occasional traffic signals that glow and hum and click for cars that don't exist, and for life that isn't being lived yet, because the road just ends, turns into desert a few feet from our development. It used to freak me out, the way everything just came to an end so abruptly, life then nothing.

I sit at the end of the street, engine idling. I look at myself in the rearview. My eyes are red from the dry air, face and shaved head sunburned from too much time after school and on weekends by the pool at Caesars Palace or Mandalay Bay or the Mirage, waiting for Hope to finish inside.

There are only a handful of homes on Starlight Way. Our old house sits dark and empty like every other house here, Mediterranean, seashell pink, Spanish tile roof, plot of thick green grass in front. I look at our bedroom windows, remember sneaking out of Carly's room, each of us hanging from the roof, dropping to the lawn, running all the way to the abandoned golf course to play flashlight tag or smoke cigarettes and drink wine coolers that Hope would bring from home.

The driveway is empty, the garage door closed. Hope and Carly once ran away together, put cigarettes in their bike-lamps where the battery would go, used thick blue chalk to write on the garage wall that they were leaving and going to Chicago where one of their friends moved. They wrote that they were running away because "
Life is boring. You have to be careful where you go because it's filled with crazy people … Tanya, Kelly, Callie, Ricky, Drew and Tice, that's all ffffolks! Good luck to you all. Have a nice life. And Chase you're right and Dad is too—Las Vegas sucks, and gambling takes away all your money … bye-bye!"

They went west instead of east on I-15 and ended up spending two nights at Whiskey Pete's in Primm. My mother meant to wash the message off the garage wall but never did get around to it. I was 10 and figured that was a good sign because the longer it stayed on the wall the longer we'd keep the house even though I wanted to leave, go to Dad's or somewhere like it, somewhere green.

Sometimes that summer I'd come downstairs when everything was so still and quiet that I couldn't sleep at all and find my mother standing at the window in the kitchen. All the lights would be off and only her silhouette in the kitchen window and the orange glow from her cigarette was visible. I'd watch her as she stared out the window into the blackness.

Carly told me our mother was in a lot of trouble with money. She said we would have to sell the house and move to an apartment and that we might go to Indiana with our grandparents. Dad had stopped sending money earlier that year. Carly went through mom's checkbook and other papers in her nightstand drawer. I asked how much money she owed and Carly said she thought it was a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars though she was 12 and not very good with numbers so it could have been much less. But watching my mother that summer, alone in the dark kitchen smoking cigarettes, I knew that Carly probably wasn't too far off.

I needed something to hold on to. This is what I realized sitting alone on the edge of the bed in Hope's old trailer on Boulder Highway. Not that the little red light on the smoke detector went off an hour earlier. Not that I was 25, that a year had passed since I convinced Julia to choose Stanford and move to Palo Alto instead of schools back east, because I was supposed to go to San Francisco for grad school and we could share a place somewhere in between, and that I was no closer to going to graduate school in San Francisco than I was last year and wasn't sure that I wouldn't just end up in Las Vegas like I had before.

I stared at the Kandinsky print she'd sent me, my piles of sketches, failed and incomplete, ideas I'd been sure would lead to something worth painting, something that might sell, start my career. I wouldn't say anything that made her feel any better when she'd ask why I was still living alone in a trailer in a place that made me miserable. Instead I'd tell her I was getting somewhere, that I had to do it like this, to please stop asking me when I was coming. She knew the answer: I was coming when I was coming, when I had something worth bringing.

Because if I didn't and it wasn't, what did that mean, where did that leave me?

I tried to sleep but instead ended up thinking about my mother getting old alone and who else was there in my life, what kind of life was this, cashing in another $400 in Bally's chips that my grandmother left me, using it to pay Hope for the past two months in the trailer. I still hadn't paid AOL or DirecTV or student loans and my mother back for the groceries and car insurance.

I decided after an hour or so that what I needed most was something to hold on to.

I didn't say the same things I always said when I called to apologize to Julia, for being a "complete bitch," as she would say. All I said was that I couldn't wait to see her, that maybe it was a sign, the National Black MBA conference being held in Las Vegas this year. "Maybe," I said, leaning back on the stool at my drafting table, this cocky grin on my face, "we can stop by a chapel."

It's after midnight and I'm on my way back to Caesars Palace because Hope called an hour ago and said, "Could you come?" Even though I was finally drifting off, watching television with the volume down, listening to the click of the air conditioner, the winds rattling the window which I kept telling myself I'd tighten, but never did. I thought of the couch in her huge suite and sleeping late and ordering room service breakfast tomorrow, told her I'd come.

The lights are bright and white at the Circle K Mobil on Maryland. I can't fill the tank because I only have $10 on me, the rest of the $212 from the change I converted Monday for the ring which should be ready tomorrow. Two pretty girls argue by a green dumpster, while a third is on her hands and knees, drunk I guess, vomiting onto the asphalt.

It feels hot on the Strip. The desert air that pours in all day is trapped here, slows tourists and the homeless and teenagers who ride their bikes in circles at a red light at Bonanza. I'm watching a dazed overweight mother suck on a straw from a McDonald's cup and push a small child in a stroller past Circus Circus when a black SUV filled with white teenagers pulls up next to me. I hear laughter over bass so heavy it makes my steering wheel vibrate. I pull my blue bandana low on my forehead, like a white Crip. I wait for something to happen, feel tense, breathe in exhaust and warm air. I run my tongue over the swollen part of my lower lip from where my face hit the floor Monday morning. The thought that he's next to me, in the SUV filled with his friends, occurs to me. I swallow. My neck feels stiff and the cuts on my neck tingle, burn as I start to perspire. Whoever's next to me is staring. The light won't turn and I'm sure that they will, at some point, try something. They want me to look and the feeling that they're pointing something at me, poised to fire something into my open car, overwhelms me.

When I give in, turn cautiously to look, they're white teenagers but no one I recognize from school, and only one is looking at me. They're in the left turn lane and the kid is pointing, asking if they can cut in front of me when the light turns. I nod and he gives me a thumbs up.

On bad mornings when I was sure I couldn't walk into that building one more time, I'd call her when I hit Twain off of Boulder Highway heading west. "They're lucky to have you," she'd say, or something like it. Sometimes I'd be worse and it wasn't the school and teaching and the rats that bothered me but something deeper, messier that I couldn't express directly so I'd call and just sit on the phone, silent, waiting for her to say one thing, anything. If she mentioned anything to do with us: visiting, finding an apartment together next year, seeing her family, I'd say something like, "I have no f--king interest in going to Philadelphia for four days," or "I don't even know if I'm going to grad school or San Francisco or anywhere near Palo Alto."

Monday was like that, one of those mornings.

When I called she wasn't there, or didn't pick up and I didn't leave a message. It was a hot, bright morning and wearing the same jeans, button-down shirt as yesterday, stained with white paint and pasta sauce, I slid lower in the seat, drove faster and struggled to remember why I was pissing away 25.

I'd read a story in some magazine the night before about this 24-year-old artist in New York whose murals sold for $10,000 apiece. He sold three in the first two hours of his first show. He was pictured with a smiling actress on his lap. He was unshaven and thin and wore corduroys and this smug-little-white boy-genius expression on his face. I hadn't painted in a month, hadn't finished anything since October. Stuck in traffic, getting later, realized I had no money for coffee or lunch or laundry and still needed to get to Von's to change the jar of coins in the backseat before going to school.

At the grocery store I pushed the last coins through the teeth of the change machine, still had eight minutes to get to school. But the machine choked, then stopped, and I lifted the lid and a few coins remained and the panel went blank, red numbers vanished. Shook it, called for someone who ignored me when I told them I was late, that the machine broke, that it read $210 or $212. When I asked if they could just give me money they said needed to call someone else and I cursed and they didn't care and it took another 15 minutes to get the machine back on, the ticket printed that read $214.33, which the guy in the red apron counted out for me, slowly, on purpose, winked at me when he finished, realized as I left that I was 40 minutes late.

The song was "Bottom Feeders" by Smut Peddlers, and I played it loud every morning on my way to school since March when I bought it. I'd drive along on the edge of the city, the volume so loud that people waiting for buses or in cars that I sped past with their windows down would turn their heads. I'd lean back, blue bandana pulled low over my shaved head, hold the vibrating steering wheel loosely with my left hand my right one free to press the skip back button on the CD player, hear the song again.
I'm not too bright, my brain's like oatmeal. On normal mornings, with normal traffic, running as late as I usually did, I could hear the song five and a half times before I had to turn it down, when I reached Annie Oakley Drive, where I worked.

The school was this massive, beige building that seemed to blend in with the desert sand and mountains in the distance. It used to be a prison. There were no windows and the center of it was hollow. The courtyard in the middle was where the inmates used to spend their hour of recreation time. Now it's filled with desert rats who may as well have been prisoners too, because they weren't going anywhere.

I'd recently given up trying to teach anyone anything about form and structure, lines, shadows, depth or colors. No one cared. So I drew or painted myself, worked on my own things during class, told them that they could watch me, do their own work, or if not, sit quietly, keep their mouths shut, finish homework for other classes, sleep if they weren't too obvious about it.

Monday morning, I missed most of first period, Advanced Studio Art. They were all seniors and they were going to UNLV or UC-San Diego or nowhere in the fall. They were mostly white, mostly tan, drove their own cars. They smelled like coconut or candy or something more acidic, citrus-like, and cigarette smoke or weed. They were like every other high school class, a few with potential, some with something intelligent to say, an opinion, but most without ambition, all there because they had to be. I hated them all. And only the thought that I was leaving in seven weeks got me through the days. Not one, I decided, would go on to anything worthwhile in this world. That every teacher I had when I was a student here thought the same thing about me occurred to me for some reason Monday morning. I looked yet again at the clock.

Standing in front of the class, leaning against my desk, I took a deep breath, exhaled as I tried to think of something to say.

"You look like shit," someone called out from the back of the room.

"Feel like shit," I said.

"Look a little loco, actually, dog. What's that mess on your shirt?" someone else said.

I looked down at the spaghetti sauce and white paint.

"You're not going to shoot us, are you?" someone asked and people laughed.

"Would it make a difference?"

"You should shoot yourself." Another voice.

I looked at the clock. Someone else called out, "Twenty-one minutes of this shit."

More laughter.

I took another deep breath and closed my eyes, shook my head a little, looked out over the room filled with 17- and 18-year-olds and said, "You're not going anywhere." I told them, "Maybe you, Isabel, if you stay focused and stop hiding in your fat suit, and Anthony, yes, you could do something. The rest of you—" I laughed and kept laughing until they laughed, too, then stopped. "You can sleep or do whatever it is you want to do the rest of the period. I've got a headache so please try to keep it down."

"Teacher of the year!" someone called out and people laughed.

"Thank you. Stay the course. Keep hope alive. Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll be among the stars. Now please don't bother me for the next," I looked back up at the clock and someone called out, "18 minutes."

"Thanks for not shooting us," someone else said.

Between first and second period I left to find coffee, realized that I forgot to put on deodorant, noticed the sweet smell of some girl's perfume as she passed too close, her soft bare arm brushing against mine. For no reason that made any sense I turned, watched her for a moment, long enough to notice her bare legs, and for an instant wondered what it would feel like to slide my hands around them.

A hand slapped my chest. I heard a male voice, then laughter. I saw a kid named David who always had this cocky, half-smile and walked around with a bunch of other white boys who acted black. Word had it they drove around the city in SUVs robbing homes, fighting, videotaping sex with teenage girls and prostitutes, high on whippits or ecstasy or sticky weed.

He pointed at me, said something to his friends, who laughed. He brought a silver phone in his ear, took a call.

Something about his tone of voice and his green eyes and three quick steps and I could smell his hair gel or lotion, something sweet, and I grinned, told him to put his phone away and he laughed. I leaned in quickly, head first, like I saw a basketball coach do to a player on the bench so that their heads hit, but like it was unintentional.

He shoved me and I cursed at him and he grabbed my balls, squeezed so hard I gagged.

I pinned his slick, gelled head against the locker. Everything seemed to stop in the hallway, all conversations and laughter and yelling fell silent when his head hit the locker again, still greasy in my grip, which grew tighter. And again. And silence. And again. And again. Until I noticed blood, and felt hands grabbing, pulling until I was on the floor, held there, the cold tile floor against my sweaty face, legs and sneakers, the bare thighs and black clogs of the girl who passed, watching from a safe distance.

I'm crouching in the closet of Hope's suite at Caesars Palace. I was drifting off to sleep on the cream couch that was as comfortable as it looked when Hope apologized, gently woke me, asked if I could wait in here, promised she wouldn't be long. I sat up, confused, exhausted, heard a knock at the door, understood. So now I watch her light candles, change into something tight and sheer, call out to whoever knocked that she'll be right there.

Black and checkered skirts, slinky tops and jeans hang over my head. I shove thick platform shoes out of the way so I can sit. The point of an iron sticks me in the ass and my knees scream from bending so low and I realize I've got to find a more comfortable position because I'll be in here for a while. I shift and turn, move the iron, extend my legs, slide to the floor.

Hope peers down at me through the crack in the closet door.

"I don't want to see this. Tell him to go downstairs for Altoids or some shit and I'll go."

She smiles. "So you're really going to do it?"

"What? Get married?"

"It's all very sudden."

"Not really."

"After all the back and forth with her."

Another knock at the door.

"I need to make some changes."

"You think?" She winks at me. "Stay low."

"I shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't."

She slides the door closed. I slide it open, just enough.

Joe J. McGinniss is a writer living with his wife in Washington, D.C. Signal Faded
is his first novel.