Breaking Pavement
by Amy Weiner

Bright orange light from the side of the road flashed in her eyes before she whizzed past it. The wind blew strands of hair in her face but she didn't bother to brush them away. She reached over, took her sunglasses from the dashboard and thrust them onto her nose -- the world through rose-colored glasses. And it was still the same miserable place as before. Even the pink-tinged stars which she had once loved so much seemed cold now.

She swerved to miss the car ahead of her. Andrea cursed the highway as she got off it and drove to Dennis's apartment building, nearly crashing into a telephone pole along the way. She parked and stared at his window for a moment. The light coming from his room was pink. Sighing heavily, she plodded to the door and rang his bell.

"Yeah?" He sounded completely exhausted.

"It's me. Dennis, I'm waiting fifteen minutes for you to get your ass down to my car. If you're not here by that time, I'm leaving without you. Don't forget your toothbrush."

Andrea released the intercom button and turned away from the door. She headed back to the beat-up convertible. The green it had once been had faded to a gray patina which appeared purple in the glow of the street lamp. She shut the rusting door and stared at her watch.

The first few drops of rain on her bare head simply worsened her mood. She refused to put up the roof until she heard the crash of thunder. Andrea scowled at the steering wheel and reached into the trunk. The old canvas covering was full of holes, but it was better than nothing, so she stretched it over the metal supports. She knew that the faded upholstery had sustained her in past hardships just as it would be her home now, at least until something better turned up, and though gaps in the cloth roof let some water into the shelter, she felt comforted and warm.

Dennis greeted her with a dripping nod and threw his stuff in the back. She cursed, told him to shut the door and peeled out of the parking lot. Streaks of pinkish lightening momentarily gave the wet road a metallic sheen, making it look shiny and flawless even though it was full of cracks. Andrea smiled. She loved thunderstorms.

Another huge boom rent the air as Dennis mumbled something.

"What?"

"I said, why do you have those damn sunglasses on? It's dark as pitch!"

She glanced at him and giggled shrilly. Lights flickered and went out in the nearby buildings. "I'm wearin' them because I feel like it! Besides, everything is prettier in pink."

Dennis stared at her for a minute. He spoke softly. "But Andrea..."

"Don't you think this is beautiful?" She cut him off. "I mean, all the rain cleansing everything, the thunder and lightening adding some drama to an ordinary shower? It's just too bad that on nights like this, you can't see the stars."

She knew he could tell that something was wrong, but he didn't pry. He simply changed the subject, "So, do you have any idea where we're going?"

That was what she liked about him; the fact that everything he said was straight to the point. She ignored the uneasy, angry feeling in her stomach, concentrated on the road and didn't answer because she really hadn't the faintest idea. All she knew was that they were leaving the city.

He sat silently next to her. She thought that perhaps bringing him was a bad idea. Like he really needed to know all of her problems on top of the crap he was going through. But she had wanted someone who could listen to her and understand. That someone had to be Dennis, simply because he was the only person she knew.

The old automobile shuddered as gusts of rain beat against its worn sides. Both wipers squeaked and groaned as they struggled to clear the windshield. The streets were deserted at 2:17 a.m., which proved to be to her advantage because she hated driving in traffic and was reckless on a good day. He had nodded off, his soft snoring just loud enough to keep her awake. The roads helped also, their unpredictable bumps and ruts jolting her around so she could refrain from dosing. Brick apartment buildings gave way to smaller houses, and then to black forests of gnarled, stooping pines. Her eyelids kept closing. She knew that she had to stop for a rest or they'd go off the pavement somewhere.

Andrea spotted a diner at a truck stop by the edge of the road. The lights were so bright that they appeared as a single, furry wash that enveloped the entire building. She pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. Dennis's irregular breathing became even more pronounced before she grabbed the sleeve of his ratty T-shirt and dragged him out of the car. He woke with a start and yelled in surprise, so she let his heavy body go. His back hit the sopping pavement as he grunted and swore. Instead of helping him up, she continued towards the pink neon lights, looking forward to a mug of steaming coffee. Dennis leaped forward and playfully pulled her down into a mud puddle. The dirty liquid splashed them, and Andrea rolled over with tear-tracks on her muddy cheeks.

"Hey, I didn't mean to get you upset or anything. It wasn't fun wakin' up the way I did, ya know!" His features showed hurt and confusion. Ordinarily Andrea would have just punched him back and laughed. He reached out to her and touched her shoulder. She knew he could feel her trembling. Dennis stood and wiped his hands on his muddy jeans, took her arms and hoisted her up. Then helped her to the diner because her leg muscles wouldn't work properly by themselves.

They sat in a greasy, red booth. Flaking formica tables crowded the room; faded movie posters clung to the walls. Andrea recognized Audrey Hepburn adjusting Bogart's homburg in Sabrina, Marilyn Monroe's skirt billowing in The Seven Year Itch, James Dean astride his Harley in Rebel Without A Cause, noting that some posters were much more shabby than others. Years of handling had worn away most of the pattern on the cheap steel cutlery, which was hardly as stainless as it proclaimed.

Dennis pulled some napkins from a broken metal dispenser and handed them to her. Andrea wiped her face and hands while a waitress passed them ripped menus. He read the first two entrées as hot dogs 'n beans and American chop suey and quickly put the menu face-down, appearing nauseated. Andrea picked up hers and stared at drawings of pinkish french fries as a greenish Dennis ran to the restroom. It puzzled her just why the table, napkins and the menu were in shades of red until she tried to scratch the bridge of her nose and realized that she hadn't taken off her sunglasses.

Andrea ordered black coffee. Though loud, the hammering rain on the leaky tin roof of the restaurant soothed her.

He returned from the lavatory a few minutes later.

"Geez, you'd think they'd at least bother to patch the ceiling in there! I mean, there were freaking rain puddles wherever I stepped. Somebody was tryin' to use the pay phone in the hall and he might as well've been standin' under a hose!"

She wasn't paying attention, and finally he stopped and looked at her sharply.

"Andrea, how come you're acting so strange all of a sudden? And what's with your attachment to those glasses?! They're driving me crazy!"

She considered removing them, then decided to see what he'd do if she didn't. His hand snaked out to rip them off, but she saw it coming and blocked his attempt.

"Leave my glasses alone! They aren't bothering you, so don't bother them. If you want to know what my problem is, then why don't you just ask me, instead of snatching my possessions from me and trying to read my mind! What's with you? You've been acting like a psycho ever since we got here. Where's the never-beat-around-the-bush guy that you've been for as long as I can remember?"

The coffee was taking an awfully long time coming. She looked across at Dennis, who glared at her. The waitress saw her wave and brought the steaming mug to their booth quickly. "Kin I getcha anythin', sir?"

He shook his head. The waitress grinned, revealing several brownish teeth and pulled the check from her pocket. The woman dropped it next to the coffee.

Andrea turned the cup around in its saucer. A large chip was missing from the rim on the other side, and a crack ran from there to the bottom of the mug. The liquid inside looked very much like mud. She drank it all in one swallow, gulping as loudly as possible and trying not to taste it.

The music crackled and spat from decaying speakers in the ceiling. She thought that the juke box was trying to play Hotel California, but the sound was so inconsistent that it was hard to know for sure. Glancing over the rim of the cup, she took in the rest of the room and its occupants. Two men in stained sweatshirts sat at the counter eating stale pie and grunting to each other. In the farthest corner from the door, a woman covered with shredded shawls sat on the tile. She refused to accept a chair, booth, or the command to leave the premises if she wasn't going to order something. Andrea felt sorry for the old woman, but felt it wasn't her place to intervene.

Dennis was staring at her in disgust. She finally put the coffee down and grinned.

"At least the crap was hot!"

"Andrea, tell me what's bothering you. I know you dragged me out of my room in the middle of the night for a more important reason than to just have me sit here and watch you drink sludge!"

She reached up, slowly pulled the glasses off of her face and placed them carefully on the table. Squinting in the artificial brightness, she brought a hand up to shield her eyes while they adjusted. The room was no longer pink when she looked around again. Instead, tables and people had a purple-green haze around them, which would dissipate soon. Her uncovered eyes met his squarely.

"There was a huge crowd shopping today. You know, 'cause its Saturday and all. But I was at the bar most of the afternoon so I wouldn't have to deal with the screaming, and the laughing and the noise. There must've been hundreds, maybe a thousand people there, I dunno. But around eleven thirty or so, lots more showed up. It was dark and the stores had been closed for a while, so I thought it was kinda weird that everyone was coming then. I wanted to see what was going on, but the bar was too far around the corner. People walked by the window and turned the block, so I couldn't tell what they were doing in the Square. I went out there for just a second, ya know? And it was like they all came rushing toward me at once, so I ran. It was a mob, a riot even. I don't know how it started or when it ended, but eventually the mass caught up with me and the next thing I knew, I was being pulled along with it. It was the worst feeling, 'cause I didn't want to go where they were forcing me. I couldn't do anything except run with them, though. The cops came after we'd only gone a little way. They tried to stop the crowd by shouting. Then they tried to round us up, but there were too many bodies. Tear gas and clubs came next, and people got kinda crazy. Some were trampled in the hysteria, and I finally found an alley to sneak into. It was fulla trash. I stayed there anyway, till most of the screaming had stopped."

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. He looked sympathetic, but not surprised or even disbelieving. Her voice was beginning to crack.

"When I got home, the whole building was messed up. The outside was covered in spray paint and the lobby was totally wrecked. My key wouldn't go in the lock. They kicked me out without telling me! Said I was too messy and too loud all the time when I asked 'em, that I wasn't paying my bills and all. Said they didn't want my kind of trash hangin' around their high-class establishment. Too bad the powers-that-be don't know half the stuff that goes on in that place...I don't think they even noticed that the entire damn building had been rearranged!"

Dennis waved a hand in front of her face.

"Your eyes were looking kinda glazed for a sec there. We're in a diner now, away from people, so you're okay. Calm down. And you can let go -- it's not goin' anywhere."

She rubbed her sore fingers where they had been gripping the edge of the table. He was right, of course. They were all okay now.

"Are you absolutely sure this is what happened to you? Because I didn't hear anything about a riot erupting at the Square on t.v., the radio, nothing. Maybe you're overreacting a little bit...? I mean, you were in a bar for what, eight hours. Don't tell me you were clean when you left that place, I know you too good for that."

She lifted her head and stared at him. He had voiced doubts about her in other situations, but from the way he was looking at her, this was a full-fledged attack on her rationality. Maybe it was all just an alcohol-induced hallucination of some sort; she supposed she had had a few too many drinks.

"But the people, Dennis. Too many of 'em. Just too many to be unreal. It was like a stampede, and I don't even know why they were acting that way. No one bothered to tell me. I felt like they were gonna run me over or something. I was choking to death from the amount of people." She sobbed once.

"And those idiots told me I don't have a place to live anymore! What the hell'm I gonna do?"

"Well, first of all, you could stop crying," he said, reasonably passing her the handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans. Of course, he had to stand up to get it out which would have caused a scene if the waitress and the two truck-drivers hadn't already been staring.

"Dennis, let's get out of here. People are staring!"

He nodded, red vinyl crackling as they both slid out of the booth. Andrea picked up her sunglasses and put them on, noting as she did so the frustrated wrinkle of his brow. Not that she cared what he thought about her wearing them, not really. She smiled sweetly at him. He dropped two dollars on the table and walked to the door ahead of her so she could be sure he didn't knock her down again.

Slashing drops of rain stung her bare skin and drenched her thin cotton clothing almost the instant she stepped outside. Damn, it was worse than being sprayed in the face with a hose. She ran in the general direction of the parked convertible.

"Over here, Andrea!"

She could just make out Dennis's thin voice over the noise of the storm. She swerved to the left and practically fell into the car, bumping her knee on the rear fender in the process. Her sunglasses slipped easily off and hit the ground with a tiny 'crack' that Andrea didn't hear. She stepped forward, and felt plastic crunch under her rubber soles. Her knuckles were scraped by the rough asphalt as she stooped to salvage the pieces.

"Ow, dammit!" She groped for the handle with numb fingers, finally pulled the passenger door open and sat down with a slight 'skoosh'. Andrea took the greasy towel he offered and wiped her face and hands, managing to push oily water around on her face for a while. The wet clothes were miserable. She sighed, shivered, sneezed once and put the heater up to blasting. Andrea yawned and curled her legs under herself.

"So, aren't you going to...drive somewhere?"

"I guess we should. It's getting, uh, early." He grinned. "So...yeah...um...hmm..."

Dennis swung out onto the road with a considerable amount of screeching. With the hot air bombarding her shins and face, she felt drowsy and almost too warm, despite the saturated state of her garments. She pressed her cheek against the window and sat back a second later to observe the foggy patch disappear. It seemed less thickly dark outside, though still pouring incessantly. Several breaks in the roof of clouds which Andrea could just barely make out separated the sky into sections. Hmm, a huge pie in the sky. She giggled. Maybe she was just pie-eyed. Or starry-eyed, because in between the areas with rain and lightening, Andrea picked out a few wobbly stars. They were dancing in joyful circles around their celestial studio, and she watched with a sort of glassy awe. And puzzlement. Because they really shouldn't have been pink if she wasn't wearing her glasses.

"Hey, wake up!"

Someone was shaking her.

"We're here."

"Where's 'here'?" She stretched her cramped knees.

"How the hell'm I supposed to know? This seemed like an okay place to stop, so I stopped."

Andrea nodded. She really couldn't care where they were, and she had no place else to be. It felt sort of nice not to have to react to anything for a while. She appreciated the calm silence as the patches of sky began to lighten a bit. Dennis raked anxious fingers through his hair.

"I think we should go back, Andrea. If you really have to, you can stay with me again, until you find somewhere of your own. But this is absolutely the last time! And I think it's time you quit being such a damn hermit and pretend you're equal to the rest of us for once."

Andrea glared. But she couldn't stay angry with him for long, especially since she was going to live on his twinkies for the next month or so.

Maybe what he said made some sense, and maybe it didn't.

"I'm not gonna promise anything. After all, I kinda like the way I am and the way I live!"

"But your favorite sunglasses are history."

"Hey, how do you know that? Just because I'm not wearing them right this second doesn't mean that something happened to 'em." She glanced at him. Dennis's teeth flashed a sly smile at her in the dewy, pinkish, morning sunlight.

"You talk in your sleep."

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