It’s so shallow and man made
I'm scared to death if I let you in that you'll see I'm just a fake
It had been time for an exploratory foray into Searchlight. Celeste puttered into town in a late-model Chevy, purchased stolen, of course. She had spent an hour of the day exploring on foot. If there was something sinister lurking in the air, she didn’t really feel it, but perhaps she wasn’t supposed to. Whatever force was at work here needed to be insidious, working its way into the citizens’ veins without detection.
As night fell, the brunette found herself at Terrible’s Roadhouse. They had slots and a bar, and that sounded an agreeable way to kill some time and get the measure of the place. You could tell a lot about a small town by its nightlife scene. Celeste got to work exchanging some cash for quarters and ordered a drink.
It wasn’t long before she grew bored. She much preferred higher stakes games of chance when it came to gambling. Tossing quarters into a machine and pulling a crank just didn’t do it for her. Celeste slugged down her third vodka soda and felt her stomach rumble with hunger. The brunette ventured into the restaurant-side of Terrible’s and found a table.
This would do.
At first the clunking sound of quarters pummeling the coin tray the way a thunderstorm might rage against a tin rooftop had been deafening. They had casinos in Washington state - she knew the signs and had been to the reservations once in a while with her friends but never really got into the gambling scene. The Portland night scene was inherently different.
But as the days stretched on Nesryn got used to it. Those clunks, the soft hoots and hollers or the loud peal of the machines when the rare circumstance came that a Jackpot was won. All hell seemed to break loose, then.
As chaotic as the place could get, she found she liked it. It kept her busy; it chased away the nagging sensation that she had left behind something important in Portland and helped her forget the shame and guilt of vanishing on her family.
The diner side tended to be quieter. Once in a while she’d get a customer who was having too good a time stumble over but for the most part things were decent. Later on in the nights when things started to settle down she found herself watching the clock and waiting to go home.
That particular evening was similar to all of the other ones. Her name tag gleamed in the lights of the neon signs as if proclaiming to everyone else who she was - Nesryn. Fingers were deep in a moist rag tracing circles on a nearby table when the brunette stepped up and took a seat.
“Hi there,” she called politely, offering a smile. A quick wipe of her hands on a dry rag hanging from the side of her apron and Nesryn all but danced over to the stranger. “Can I get you started with something?” A small menu would be set down, pushed delicately toward the woman and brown eyes would watch with interest.
Celeste ran her fingers through her dark hair. She had been staring out the window, her transparent reflection on the glass as the street lamps outside clashed with the lights inside the diner. She looked up when the server approached, noted the balletic movements and easy smile.
She slid the offered menu toward herself, fingers sticky against the laminate. She scanned it quickly, everything looked pretty typical. “Yeah…” Celeste zeroed in on the name tag. “Nesryn. I’ll have the bacon and eggs. Toast, well-done, eggs scrambled.” Breakfast for dinner sounded okay to chase the alcohol down.
“Interesting name, by the way. Sounds mythical.”
The way her name dropped from the lips of the other woman warmed her ears. She listened, taking a moment to jot the order down on a small notepad produced from her apron. Ink was navy blue, an in between of pitch black and a blue she didn’t care much for in hue.
“Great. Need anything to drink? Besides alcohol, anyway.” Most of the time that was the answer she got - ‘put a bit of rum into the coffee’ or ‘you got Bloody Mary mix back there?’ - and she had to remember to polite remind those patrons that the bar was on the other side of the building hanging out with the loud machines and the ominous Sasquatch.
Most customers ordered the breakfast. She wasn’t much of a drinker lately, though in her younger days she was known to imbibe a few beverages for the sake of a good time.
“And thanks, I don’t really know what the origin is.” Her name was something close to Wild Rose but she’d never bothered to look it up on a database anywhere.
“Let’s do...Sprite. It’s too hot for coffee, anyway.” Celeste leaned back against her chair, the cogs in her brain working quickly. Nesryn had an open, kind-looking face. If she worked in Searchlight, especially at one of the few hubs of activity in the town, she might know something interesting. It took a certain kind of person to converse honestly with strangers, and this woman might be that type.
“I’m actually thinking about moving here. At least, temporarily.” The brunette toyed with a salt shaker. “Do you just work here, or live here, too?” Celeste smiled.
Sprite.
It was jotted down in her near perfect cursive next to where she had illustrated a broken egg next to a wiggly strip of bacon - and of course with the instructions for preparation. Maybe doodles were a bit childish but the cook seemed to get a kick out of it and so far no orders had come back incorrect. Well, except for that one…
The pad and pen would go back into the apron pocket and her eyebrows arched a bit.
“Really? It’s a nice little place. Quiet. I guess like any small town. I just moved here a few months ago from Portland.” It had been a bit of a shock as far as culture and landscape was concerned but she got used to it.
Had this woman been drawn to this place the way she had? Maybe. But this one didn’t smell like a wolf.
Portland. Celeste smiled to herself. She had a fun time there a few years ago, during her West Coast phase. That city was diametrically opposite of everything she had experienced in Moab, in all the best ways. There was a fling with an artist that actually was going somewhere maybe a little more permanent than a fling, but then deeper questions started popping up and the brunette had to let him drop.
She shook herself out of her reverie. No time for rearview thinking.
“Are you off your shift soon? You probably get asked that a lot,” and here blue eyes quickly took in Nesryn’s more-than-attractive figure, “but I’m just trying to get to know people. If you have time to talk, and want to, that is.” Celeste tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Soon. In about an hour,” Nesryn confirmed. The idea of talking sounded exciting. She had made a few friends here but no who were close and fewer who ever really wanted to do more than just gossip.
“Let me go put your order in and I’ll come back to chat.” A twirl and she was dancing away to fill the stranger’s order. The sound of paper separating from the spine coupled with a spurt of words from the cook beyond the order counter and Nesryn was filling up a clean, tall glass of Sprite.
It wasn’t too long before she rejoined the woman at the table. The cup went down, and a straw next to it, and the petite brunette sank down into a vacant chair.
“You said you’re looking to move here, right? Why not Vegas?” She was curious. The bright lights and variety of people could be tempting. Maybe this woman just craved a bit of peace and quiet, away from the neon signs decorating the strip, the chapels. Or maybe she hated Elvis.
Celeste watched the server move through the restaurant with amusement. It was like dinner theatre. Nesryn was oddly graceful, given her setting. It didn’t seem like slinging hash was her natural calling.
She ripped the straw from its paper casing and dipped into the glass. The bubbles made the plastic bob up and down for a moment, and she took a long sip, syrupy sweetness coating her tongue. Soda was still an extravagance to her. Growing up, it was overpriced sugar water, and wasn’t readily available to her. Celeste did, however, assist her mother and siblings with picking up empties to return for the deposit. It had been the cause of her first bee sting.
“Vegas is okay,” the brunette opined. She grabbed the half-empty glass bottle of ketchup, putting it next to her utensils. She liked to drown her eggs with it. “But Searchlight has something kinda special, doesn’t it?’ Celeste didn’t lay it on thick, but it was meant to be a leading question.
“Something kind of...magical.”
Tilting her head as she listened, her ears picked up on the inbetween. Sentences, phrases had layers that not many could catch and she knew she had to be careful regardless of who was around or not. This place was special, that was the problem with it. It could’ve been a paradise save for the way it seemed to draw the strange and unusual.
Her lips never faltered with the smile and Nesryn would oblige the woman. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it? I felt like I was drawn here.” She had never heard of Searchlight before those few days leading up to her escape.
She knew little if anything at all about magic but that seemed to hit the nail on the head in a metaphorical sense.
“Is that why you’re interested? The magical ambiance?” It was a fair question even if they were talking in general terms.
Fate was kind of lucky sometimes. On this particular evening, Celeste didn’t feel like being the usual asshole she was. The walk around Searchlight had helped matters. Despite her restlessness, for the first time in...well, she couldn’t even remember, Celeste felt like she was right where she needed to be. Like meeting James in that shop, instead of some dippy snakeoil salesperson.
As a result, Nesryn would be meeting a version of Celeste that didn’t make itself known very often: the friendly one. As much as she was able to be, anyway.
“Exactly, you put it so well. Drawn here.” She was nothing of the sort, at least not until being clued in that the town even existed. She fiddled with the discarded straw wrapper, folding it like a tiny accordion.
“I’m interested in a lot of it. That’s why I think it’d be so useful talking to you, Nesryn. I could tell immediately we were on the same wavelength.” And here, she adopted the terminology of a past acquaintance who had previously annoyed the hell out of Celeste with such talk.
“Well, I’m no expert,” she began, shrugging a shoulder though her smile didn’t waiver. “I’ve only been here for a little while but there’s definitely something about this place that I like. Even when I drive to Vegas for shopping I just can’t seem to wait until I come back. Isn’t that strange?” Maybe it was because her apartment was here, but if she was being honest she didn’t know exactly why the yearning to be here was so strong.
Her fingers fell to the flat of the table, the pads of the left drumming lightly against the solid wood.
Somewhere near the bar area the sirens for a Jackpot were going off; bellowing coupled with the sound of quarters slamming into the metal tray became the ensemble. Nesryn wrinkled the end of her nose and laughed softly, musically.
“You get used to that, too.”
“Oh, I bet you do.” Celeste turned to drink in the scene of Terrible’s. It was stimulation overload. A dance of different energies, if one were attuned to that sort of thing. She had been reading about that, a bit, in the book from Curiosities. It was partly in-born intuition, yes, but the author also maintained that such sensitivity could be trained. The Utah-native was nothing if not adaptable.
A tinkling bell caught her attention, somehow, over the din. She turned to the source, saw a short order cook impatiently ringing the bell, a plate of steaming food on the expo window. Celeste nodded to Nesryn.
“I think my food’s ready,” she said, slightly apologetically.
She heard the bell too as that large palm connected with the poor thing sending it in computation with the blaring sirens across the building. A blush would creep into her cheeks and Nesryn lifted a finger before sliding out of the chair, “Sure, one second!”
And then she was gone from the seat and sent to retrieve the bacon, eggs, and toast from the warming window.
It didn’t take long for her to return. The warm plate would be set down along with a rolled up napkin clutching pristine utensils and extra napkins.
“Thanks, this looks great.” It looked like basic eggs and bacon and slightly burnt bread, but Celeste had never turned her nose up at a hot meal. She looked back up at Nesryn as she began dolloping ketchup over the scrambled eggs.
“If you don’t have any other customers, you can keep sitting with me. I like the company. I’ve been pretty solitary for awhile.” That wasn’t a lie, but she didn’t need to add that was her preferred default state, anyway.
Celeste picked up a piece of bacon, took a bite. Salty and crunchy, a food that didn’t need to stand on ceremony. Terrible’s delightfully over-poured when it came to their alcohol, and she had slammed three drinks in quick succession. This was much needed.
The invitation was accepted. She slid back down into the chair, one leg curled beneath her while the other stretched out slightly. “Really? Me too. All of my family and friends are back in Portland.” It was just like her to up and leave on a wild hair and chase the horizon.
“Sorry if I missed it, but I don’t think I caught your name?” Maybe it’d come when the sirens were blasting for the Jackpot winner’s celebration. Or maybe it hadn’t been said at all. Either way that didn’t help the curiosity.
A wanderer or two may mosey in but at this hour she was liable to finish her shift with no more cash in her pocket than she had just then.
“It’s Celeste,” she answered breezily, as she began to spread grape jelly onto the toast. She deliberated internally. How much did she want to shoot the shit? Then she shrugged, popped a piece of bread into her mouth.
“I left my whole family behind. They’re probably happier for it, and the feeling is more than mutual.” Again, she looked out the window, watching herself. Black t-shirt, blue jeans. The image wavered, just a little, just subtle enough to be imagination or from the slight alcohol buzz.
“Do you miss the rain?” Not, do you miss your family? The thought didn’t even occur to her.
“Celeste,” she repeated, tasting the name on her tongue. “Beautiful! It reminds me of the stars.” Celestial, ethereal. In a way she supposed that it was fitting for this woman.
They seemed to have a lot more in common that she originally thought which caused Nesryn to feel endured to Celeste, and a bit homesick as the next question was posed.
“The way it smells in the trees,” she murmured softly, dreamily. A hand had captured the place beneath her own chin, supporting her head as she thought back to the landscape. The way the dirt felt beneath her paws, bare feet, as rain trickled down through the canopy and across the thoroughfare.
“That smell is nice,” Celeste agreed thoughtfully. “There’s even an official word for the way it smells, after the rain. Petrichor. I think that’s my favorite word.” Her voice took on a similar dreamy quality. She dragged her fork through the eggs, separating the pieces. “It wasn’t something I smelled a lot of, back home. Actually, I grew up somewhere not that different from here.”
She twirled a piece of egg into her mouth. “We had desert, too.” To Celeste, the desert was the same as death, but not in a negative way. It was, after all, teeming with more life than most people realized. But also decay, often very natural. The brunette thought of carrion, the lifesource for a lot of creatures that surrounded her home. It was a testament to her upbringing that such memories didn’t put her off of her food.
Everything had to die, after all. Well, maybe everything. She was learning that from her new book, too.
“You said you were drawn here. It had to have been something more specific than just a feeling to leave everything behind.”
Petrichor. That sounded right in the same way that moving here on a whim sounded right. There was little comparison to the scent of raw earth laden with the nectar of the sky, at least in her opinion anyway. The insects, the birds, the flowers all seemed to rejoice and never once had Nesryn heard them complain.
“I think that’s become my favorite word, too.” In that short amount of time Nesryn began to feel some sort of small connection with Celeste though she couldn’t quite yet place it. It seemed like a puzzle with many crooked little pieces that had yet to be put together.
And then she found herself at a dog-eared page in the book of her life, one she had been dreading. Making herself smile, she would sit up a fraction and square her shoulders as she began to gather the words.
“I left home because there were things that I decided I didn’t want to deal with. Before I left I tried my best to plan - I didn’t know where I wanted to go, I guess I could’ve gone anywhere. I literally flipped open a Mapsco from somewhere in 2000, and my finger landed on Searchlight. It just felt right and I made my mind up to come here.”
A hand would lift in a gesture that said simply - and here I am. It wasn’t a glamorous story mostly because she’d left the good parts out. You couldn’t play all of your cards at once, could you?
Celeste borrowed a moment to ponder why Nesryn was so easy to talk to. The conversation had turned sincere quite a few beats ago. She had only been looking for an inside source on the town, but she began to see the woman sitting across the table from her in an entirely different light. Of course, her company might turn tail and run if she knew Celeste’s true intentions vis a vis the whole apocalypse thing. But that wasn’t quite at hand yet...unfortunately.
“Running feels good. Anyone who’s ever said otherwise probably never did it right. The trick is not to look behind you.”
The corners of her eyes creased with a wince. She liked running in the right situation and she did it to keep herself in shape, but this type of fast paced trek was one she’d done nearly with her tail between her legs. But it had been that or a lifetime of misery, guilt whether she had stayed or gone. But that was what made life interesting, wasn’t it? The dynamics.
“I haven’t. I haven’t thought of going back and I probably never will.” Maybe. She’d always been a good girl. Always been good to those who had been good to her, but then things had changed. “Maybe I just needed to stretch my legs, or my wings - however that saying goes.” A soft laugh. Her nose crinkled and Nesryn offered a genuine smile.
Absolutes could be dangerous - always, never - but they felt good. They were dependable.
Nesryn’s eyes were dark and warm, and when her nose crinkled, they seemed to become even warmer. They were a perfect foil to Celeste’s, the cold and calculating blue. If someone weren’t perceptive, one would simply call them pretty. A friendly restaurant worker and a girl who welcomed the end of the world like waiting for a long-lost lover. Not exactly a natural duo, but certainly an interesting one.
“I know exactly what you mean.” Celeste twisted her napkin, studied her chipped nail polish. “I lost the only person I’d go back for, anyway.” Why did she tell her that? Why even speak that out loud?
“When that happens, it’s easier, though. To leave. There’s nothing holding you back now.”
That surprised her a bit, the confession. Those large brown eyes would widen with it though she did her best not to be nosy or pry. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Genuinely she was. She had dated a bit back home, nothing serious. At least not in her mind. And then there had been the proposal out of the blue encouraged by her parents, the catalyst to her abrupt relocation.
“My daddy used to say that freedom came with its own price tag. Whatever the cost, you paid it. I guess the cost was better than what was ahead of me.”
Few knew the whole story and all of them lived in Portland. To know the whole thing she had to expose the inner beast inside of her and she wasn’t quite ready to take that plunge with a woman she barely knew in the middle of the diner.
“Everything has a price,” Celeste countered evenly. “It’s when the price seems a little too cheap that you need to be suspicious.” Nesryn sounded like she meant it when she said sorry. That was unfamiliar to her, the sincerity. It had been awhile since anyone had apologized to her, never mind actually meaning it.
The brunette shook her head, rolled her blue eyes, and smiled. “We’re getting way too deep, aren’t we?” She pushed her plate away, she was pretty much done with the food.
“So we’ve talked about why you came here. I guess what I really want to know is, why have you stayed?”
That was a fair rebuttal. Nesryn nodded. Everything did come with a price.
At the gesture of those blue eyes rolling Nesryn emitted a musical, soft laugh and shrugged. “There isn’t anything wrong with opening the door to the closet as long as you’re okay with seeing the skeletons in there.” She didn’t mind sharing. Maybe she was too trusting and naive, but she also craved companionship. Her pack had always been there, her parents. Now she had only herself and connections were rare for her.
“I don’t know yet.” It was an honest confession. “Here, where nobody knows me, I can be me. Free. Whatever I want, whoever I want. I can start from scratch and build whatever I want. I think that’s a good reason to stick around somewhere.” And if she hated it she could always pack her bags and hit the highway.
“But I think you should consider staying for a while. It’s a nice town. The people are quiet, they keep to themselves, and I don’t feel like I have to watch my back all the time.” She wasn’t saying to walk outside in the dark but it was safer than a big city.
“I know all about starting from scratch in a new place,” Celeste assured her companion. “My problem is when a place isn’t new anymore. I always get this…” She frowned, rolling her shoulder slightly, trying to find the right word. “Itch to tear it all down. Tear everything down.”
Her gaze became slightly unfocused. “I’m not so concerned about the skeletons. Even they can have their uses.” A memory, unbidden, took her back to tiny hands, a small boy sweating restlessly in an unmade bed. Sick. Celeste hated that word, sick. Someone had leveled that insult at her before, and they didn’t mean with the illness that had stolen Bobby away from her. She had been called a lot of things, but that ruffled her feathers more than she would ever admit.
“I’ll consider it,” Celeste added, zoning back in on the conversation. Then she grinned. “You’re pretty convincing. Maybe you should work in sales, instead.”
That sounded beautiful and destructive and self-deprecating. “Oh,” she replied, though she didn’t quite understand. But there wasn’t any judgement - destruction could mean a lot of things in the right context but then again hurricanes could be perceived as destructive except they could also be cleansing and purposeful.
She worried about her skeletons; the human shaped one and the canine shaped one, each with their own set of problems. But she would smile anyway and nod.
That grin would only widen at the next part. “You never know until you try, is all I’m saying.” New could be scary, the unknown, the risk. But she liked it so far.
“Try everything at least once,” Celeste concurred. And in the years since leaving Utah, she had tried a lot of new things. Most of them weren’t legal, but still. She reached into her bag, pulled out a twenty and slid it across the table.
“For the food, the service, and the company.” She tilted her head appraisingly. “Talking to you has been really helpful, Nesryn.” And she meant that. It was good to know that Searchlight truly did possess a magnetic quality. That would be mightily important for whatever was to come next, Celeste was sure of it.
“I should probably head out, though. I’m staying in Vegas still and it’s about an hour’s drive. Well, you probably already know that.”
At the presentation her eyes widened a bit. “Oh wow, thank you. That’s so nice!” It was more than she earned from a single person though not more in total. It would be a good addition to what she had gotten that evening, though, considering it hadn’t been as busy as she expected. She slipped the bill into her pocket and would make sure the food was covered.
“If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always around somewhere.” It was a promise she felt she could keep, even to a stranger like Celeste. She found the other woman easy to talk to, also.
Rising to her feet, she collected the glass and the plate. “Have a great rest of your night, Celeste. I’m so glad we ran into each other, and be safe on your travels. Don’t stop at any chapels and if you see Elvis, tell him I said hello.” She laughed softly and turned, twirling away from the table gracefully to take the dishes and settle the bill.