If I say I’m not thinking about her I’d be lying. If I insist that my own actions deserve an ounce of pride I’d be lying about that too. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve royally screwed up.
Since it’s summer, the park is pretty crowded. It’s mostly families of all shapes and sizes posing by the rim, grinning ear to ear before a backdrop of one of earth’s most stupendous wonders. Snaking down the Bright Angel Trail behind slow-moving crowds and tourist-laden pack mules isn’t appealing at the moment so I decide to go hunt down a place to settle. I grab a spot in the middle of a crowded campground and pitch the cheap tent I’d impulsively purchased in town.
It doesn’t take long to get set up. The faint breeze blowing through the tall evergreens is a welcome change from the bleak blaze that scorches the central part of the state. But once I get a look around I realize this is bound to be pretty far from the journey of serenity I had in mind. There are kids tearing pell-mell every which way, music blaring, couples bickering, grills smoking and dogs barking. The campsites are so close together I can almost reach one-handed into my neighbor’s site and spear a brat from the hibachi.
On my other side, a family rolls into camp in a stuffed minivan that spits out two restless little boys as soon as the wheels stop moving. A man who probably spends as much time outdoors as I spend dressed in a kilt spills out of the driver’s side and I expect to hear him start bellowing at the kids. But he just smiles at them indulgently and leans against the van as his boys start fencing with long sticks. After wiping his sweaty red face with the hem of his shirt he starts unloading a ton of crap from the back. His tent is one of those monsters that’s large enough to be a small house and I can tell he’s gong to have a hell of a time getting it to stand. He seems to realize that too. Dismay is written all over his face when he gets a load of the size of the thing and all the poles and stakes involved. Meanwhile, a woman exits the van, checks the kids and walks over to him. She’s pretty. Petite and dark-haired, with a gracefulness about her, she takes the man’s arm and rests her head on his shoulder in a way that any red-blooded guy would envy.
He kisses her on the forehead and says something, pointing to the two boys. I shouldn’t be staring and listening but I can’t hear anything anyway because someone nearby has decided everyone within a one-mile radius needs Taylor Swift telling them to shake it.
The woman nods, kisses his lips, and calls to the boys, who apparently have rhyming names ending in ‘aden’. The three of them wave at the man and start walking cheerfully away as he begins surveying the tent pieces at his feet. He probably sent them on a hike so he can figure out how in the hell he’s going to get this thing upright without losing his man card in the eyes of his wife and kids. He pulls his phone out, squinting and scratching his head. When I catch a few words and realize he’s watching some ‘How To Put Up A Tent’ video that he probably found on YouTube, I’ve had enough. I hop off the flat rock I’ve been sitting on and decide to be useful.
He looks up expectantly when he sees me closing in. “You staying right next door?”
“Yeah. Look, I’ve got time to kill. Don’t mind helping you get your camp sorted out if you want.”
He stares at me a moment, apparently decides I’m non-threatening and then extends his hand. “Appreciate it. Name’s Steve.”
“Oz.”
“As in wizard?”
“As in short for Oscar.”
Steve turns out to be chatty. He’s a financial adviser from the Phoenix area and this is his first family vacation in two years. The people who look like his wife and kids are in fact his wife and kids. The way he talks about them, with a kind of shining pride, marks him as one of the good guys even if he can’t pound a stake into the ground to save his life.
After I get the stakes in and the tent upright there doesn’t seem to be much point in hanging around. Steve’s family is bound to return sooner or later and it would be better if I wasn’t here saving the day. Anyway, there’s got to be a less traveled trail I can explore for the remainder of the afternoon. As I’m grabbing some water from the truck and getting ready to head out, Steve calls me back.
“Thanks for the hand, Oz. Listen, I may not be winning any prizes for outdoor survival anytime soon, but I can cook up a mean rib eye on the grill. Why don’t you drop by later and take advantage?”
I have to grin over his earnestness. “I may just do that, Steve. Thanks for the offer.”
When I’m out of the carnival-like camp atmosphere, I pause, check the position of the sun and start heading due east. I’ve got a bit of time before dark sets in and I plan on using it to clear my head. The other night when I drove out of Atlantis, I was just fine for the first hour as I rehashed current events.
I thought I’d climbed out of the shadows and jumped back into Ren’s life just because I needed to see if there was anything left between us. But now I think maybe I wanted to torment her a little in the process. That’s tough for me to admit to myself but it’s true. A good guy, a guy like Steve for example, would have chosen to do it somewhere that didn’t have cameras. I could have done that. I should have done that. Maybe that old grudge was never as distant as I’d thought.
There haven’t been any other hikers in sight for the last half hour. I’m probably several miles from the rim of the canyon but that’s okay. The woods have a special brand of peace all their own. The colors here are faintly pastel, punctuated with thick greenery. I hear a rustling in the leaves to my right and for a split second I’m looking straight into a pair of startled brown eyebrows before the creature – no antlers, a female – bounds off elsewhere.
A few steps later I hear the rolling sound of nearby water and turn towards it. The brook is narrow but moves along at a good clip. The deer had probably paused here for a drink before I scared her off.
Now that Ren is back in my head I can’t get her to leave. What’s more, I keep flashing back to that sex show in the back of my truck. If the idea of using her that way was to get my fill and move on then it doesn’t seem to have worked. At least for me. Maybe it did for her.
All it takes is a quick memory jump, featuring her perky rosebud nipples and her sleek body opening underneath me, and I’m hard as fuck once more, wondering when it’s going to stop. Is this how it’s going to be forever? Is it what’s going to happen next time I’m getting it on with some other girl? Instead of being all pumped up about what’s in front of me I’ll just be comparing her to Ren Savage.
I’ve got to get past this. I’ve got to replace her with something else, anything else.
Yup, I’ll get right on that as soon as I finish kneeling here on the creek bank and punching the clown with my hand while I fantasize about fucking her.
I had her down. I had her conquered. I had her begging for sweet release and willing to get busy in seventeen filthy ways. And even as it stings the edges of my heart a little I can’t stop thinking about it.
When I’m done, I rinse off in the creek and zip my pants up, feeling guilty as a fourteen year old kid who’s dicking around with himself in the bathroom while his mother screeches from down the hall that dinner is ready. For a while I just sit on a wide rock, listening to the water and trying to remember details about one single other girl that I’ve dated or fucked or just had a cup of goddamn coffee with.
And that’s the problem with trying to replace Ren. That’s always been the problem.
In spite of everything, I don’t want to replace her. I can’t.
When I get back to the campground it sounds like a street festival and smells like burnt hot dogs. Sleep may not be on the table tonight. I figure I’ll just make do with the granola I’d picked up at the store and keep to myself. If the spirit of masochism takes over I can check my phone and see what kind of damage I missed over the last few days. I haven’t touched base with Brock in over a week. It might not be a bad idea to let someone know where the hell I am. It’s a pretty safe bet I have about sixty-eight voicemails from Gary and friends reminding me of contracts and other failures. Sooner or later I’ll call him back. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll tell him I’m done answering questions and that I’m not going to interfere with whatever they decide to do with the footage.