Read Online Fast Lanes by Jayne Anne Phillips - Free Book Online

stood near us in her bathrobe, an empty glass in her hand. She seemed unaware of us and looked upslowly. The dim little room was crowded with furniture and smelled faintly of bourbon. Thurman’s sleeping father was in shadow.
    “Mom, you should be in bed. You might fall.” He walked over to her and took the glass. “I’ll put this in the kitchen for you.”
    She stopped Thurman and grabbed his wrist. “Listen,” she said slowly, in a tone of confidence, “Barnes never answers a letter, never calls. Where is he?”
    Thurman led her to the bed. “Don’t pull that on me.”
    “She isn’t,” I whispered, “she really—”
    Now she was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Thurman put his hands on her shoulders and shook her once, gently. She looked him in the eye. “Who is that girl?” she said.
    “A friend of mine, Mom, you met her earlier today. Here, lie down before you wake Dad.”
    She said nothing and clutched Thurman’s hand; he leaned closer involuntarily. Her eyes widened, her face caught in the light of the one lamp. For a moment I could see how he favored her, how she must have looked at twenty-five: the clear, ruddy complexion, the cast and blue directness of the eyes, the thick auburn hair, maybe worn in a braid to her waist. This close, their faces nearly touched. Her profile was a broken, feminine version of his. I turned away.
    “Mom, lie down.”
    “Don’t you be leaving again now.”
    “Go to sleep, get some rest.”
    “I don’t sleep. Don’t you be leaving.”
    “Thurman,” I said. I heard him straighten. Her body shifted in the bed, then he was beside me in the hallway, pulling their door shut. He stood breathing quietly, listening. No sound. The mottled living-room walls lightened as our eyes took in the dark again. Colors of dun and gray, cracked. In one corner, patches of missing plaster were ragged star shapes where the boards showed through. I reached for him.
    “I shouldn’t come here,” he said.
    “It’s all right.”
    He stood there, looking at their closed door. “Who saves who?” he said.
    I pulled his head down, close to me, touching him, his face. “Let’s sleep outside.”
    I got some blankets and we spread them in the yard. The acacia bushes were a thick bank, bulbous and shadowy, smelling of sweet dust.
    Then we hit New Orleans. Checked into a motel. Went to that bar where everyone was dancing.
    What happened was scary and stupid, and whirling and sick and drunkenly predictable, and in the cards from the first. Afterward, things were different, and Thurman had no illusions about saving me. He must have worked things out himself after he left the bar alone, while he was waiting for me all night in that motel, the aqua drapes moving over the air vents behind the blue glow of the television. I remember almost all the motel rooms, and I remember that one especially, the big Zenith console TV and those cheap drapes blue as fired gas. In seven hours, Thurman could have watched three movies and twelve sets of commercials. He left me at the bar at two A.M. and I pulled into the motel parking lot in a taxi at nine. He was just drawing tight the ropes of the tarp and the door to the room was standing open. I got in the truck after exchanging one look with him, and nothing else passed between us until Georgia, when we got in the lake.
    Then, we kept going.
    “Don’t drive in the fast lane unless you’re passing.” Thurman, his voice gravelly with wakefulness.
    “Why not? I pass everything anyway, so I might as well stay in the fast lane. I like fast lanes.”
    “Oh, you do. Well. Someone even faster is going to come roaring up and eat your ass. How will you like that?” He switched off the radio. “God dammit, will you listen to me for a minute?”
    I looked at him at once, and kept driving.
    “Pull the truck off the road,” he said.
    “Are you going to beat me, Thurman?”
    “Pull off, right now.”
    I pulled off on the berm and shifted into neutral. A cattle