We pause in the hardscrabble town of Kingman to gas up the car and grab some fast food for lunch.  Rash speaks affectionately about his wife and how her vegan sensibilities would be outraged by the double patty hamburger in his hand

He doesn’t seem to mind that our conversations are largely one sided.   He points to sparse ruins that glint far beyond the road, hints of places people once squatted before leaving for unknown reasons. Whether they were boom towns rising from the promise of gold, silver or copper, they were used and then forsaken.

I squint behind my sunglasses and try to ease the ache in my wrists by loosening my grip on the steering wheel.  I feel it pressing on me with each passing mile; the memories, the expectations, the very visceral fear of becoming a national (hell, even an international) laughingstock.  When I glimpse a battered sign for the town of Consequences my nerves begin to dance with one another beneath my skin.

Rash notices.  “You all right there, Loren?  You look a little shaky.”

“Not shaky. Sun’s getting to me. And please call me Ren.”

He unzips a black canvas case.  “Well Ren, looks like we’re coming down the home stretch here.”  He pauses, drums his fingertips against the canvas.  “You mind if I record for a few minutes?”

I don’t answer.  I’ve had weeks to prepare for this yet my insides are liquefying.  Who the hell was I kidding?  I can’t do this.

“Ren?”  Now he’s concerned.  He’s back to the fatherly voice, the one I imagine he uses when he’s trying to figure out his own daughters.

“Fine,” I manage to say.  “It’s fine.”

Rash slips the camera out of the case.  “Boss’ll have my ass if I don’t get something.”

“I know.   It’s your job.  Record away.”

I’d been imagining that when the camera was turned on, every inch of my skin would recoil.  But it is surprisingly mundane, and painless.

“I assure you that once the first spell of self consciousness fades you don’t even feel them.  You forget they are there.  You forget you are acting.” – Margaret O’Leary 

Years ago I was wandering the aisles of a used bookstore in a shadowy corner of L.A. and nearly tripped on a box of movie magazines from the 1950s.  I sat right down and turned brittle pages, unsurprised to immediately find an interview with my fiery screen goddess grandmother.  I memorized that quote on the spot.

From the time I could talk, Lita would drag me to readings and screen tests.  She was a natural stage mother; ruthless, overbearing to the point of cruelty.  She just needed an offspring to exercise her ambition on.  I was never a good match for her goals.  When shoved before the yawning maw of a black camera lens I stiffened.  Whatever graceful qualities existed in those prior generations was lost on me.  I’m no actor.  I never will be.

“Tell me about where we are,” says Rash in a gentle voice.

My eyes don’t leave the road when I answer.  “We are right outside the town of Consequences.  Twenty miles from Atlantis.”

“Atlantis…” Rash prompts.

“Atlantis Star.  Once a grand movie set synonymous with large scale western films, then the private retreat of the Savage family.   It’s now just an exhausted has-been.”  I grab my soda from the cup holder and take a long sip.  The ice cubes have melted and the taste is flat.  “It’s kind of like us I guess.  But that wouldn’t be really accurate either.  Becoming a has-been means something somewhere was accomplished.  We’re never-been’s.  That’s us.”

I hear myself talking and try to shut off the words.  They were meant to sound casual, lighthearted, a simple rendition of history.  Instead the more words that emerge the more bitter they become.

Rash says nothing when I close my mouth and concentrate on the road.  He pans the camera over the dusty town of Consequences, aptly named when one of the area’s early residents was discovered to be a bank robber and murderer on the run from eastern justice.  Rather than await due process, town vigilantes hung him from a cottonwood tree in the town square.  The last time I was there, the stump of the ancient hanging tree remained as a ghoulish monument.  I’m sure it still does.

Rash might sense my agitation.  He doesn’t push me for the time being.  Instead he busies himself with panning the lens over the landscape and does not bug me anymore.  It’s nearly irrelevant anyway.  We’re within a few miles of Atlantis.  Soon there will be plenty to talk about and no getting away from it.

There are no signs that lead up to Atlantis.  After all, it’s not a town, not a tourist attraction.  It’s the crumbling refuge of an era, of a family.  The old fake brothel is still the tallest building.   Before I see anything else I see the sagging balcony adorned with the French-style wrought iron embellishments.  The vertical wooden sign running down its side is all but illegible.

A memory suddenly surfaces as I follow the narrow dirt road that branches off from the asphalt.  If you didn’t know exactly where the road was you might miss it.

The memory in question is six years old.  We’d left Los Angeles before dawn.  Lita produced copious hysterical tears and gave everyone a headache while August cheerfully piloted the Lexus deep into the neighboring state.  Monty and Spence rode separately in an old pickup my father had purchased so they were spared five hours of our mother’s complaints.  After a little while she stopped resembling anything coherent and sounded like the ‘Waa Waa Waa’ speak of Charlie Brown’s mother.  Ava worriedly twisted her hair, recently dyed blond, around her index finger and stared out the window.  Brigitte watched movies on her laptop and ignored everyone.  For my part, I was hard at work trying to process everything.  I watched mile after mile of nothing pass by while my mother seethed and my father drowsily pointed out landmarks to a disinterested audience.

I’d been to Atlantis once before, when I was very small.  My father had hauled us along for one of his frequent day trips to check on the place.  All I could remember was that everything was sharp and hot.  The grounds were lazily kept by a man August had hired to clean up once every few months.

Lita had nothing but contempt for the place.  “Why the hell do you hang on to that godforsaken eyesore?”  The real estate wasn’t worth much, never was.  Perhaps it was just old fashioned sentimentality that caused my father to keep it.  Or maybe he figured some day he would need it.

Whatever his reason, I know August Savage had high hopes when we crossed the desert that spring afternoon.  He was sure he’d made a decision in the best interest of his children.

Maybe that’s why I can forgive him fairly easily while I will always feel like spitting nails over the mention of Lita.  He wanted what was best for us.  He just went about it the wrong way.

In the end my father must have been horribly disappointed by the way things turned out.

As I get closer to the smattering of tired buildings that are all that’s left of the Savage estate, I see unfamiliar vehicles, expensive ones.  Leaning against the side of the crumbling church are a pair of cameraman who smoke cigarettes and laugh about something private.  One is young, tanned, with a wisp of black hair hanging in his eyes.  He carelessly pushes it back and I stop breathing.  But then the man moves his head so that I can see his profile more clearly. It isn’t the face that haunts my dreams and squeezes my heart.

It isn’t him.

I’m glad.  And then I’m not.

We’d been out here for over a year when he arrived, full of attitude and sexual confidence that fascinated me from the start.  What happened between us was beautiful.

But how it ended was sad and so terribly painful.  I haven’t seen him since then and I don’t know where he is.

Two years ago I scrounged up enough cash to hire a cheap private detective who worked out of a hotel room.  Oscar has good reason to hate me and I had no intention of showing up in his life to ruin whatever peace of mind he’s managed to find, but I wanted to know that he was all right.  The detective was unable to find any trace of him.