What Can You Not Buy With Money?

Not wanting Walker to carry out his promise of forcibly bathing me, I obliged and got ready to leave the house. But there was no way in hell I was going to treat it like a date. Especially not when it was only a day after being dumped in a traumatic way.

Walker pressed his face in my hair as he hugged me tightly, smelling sharply my freshly washed locks. “Ah, see? You smell so much better now.”

“You’re creepy,” I muttered, my skin crawling at his touch. I wasn’t repulsed by Walker though… I just didn’t want any physical contact. And the way he kept hugging me and looking at me made me feel nauseous. I felt cheap, like I was cheating on Burgess.

But how could I? We were over.

Walker got my vibe, his eyes going off like a radar. “So why don’t I take you somewhere Italian? I know how much you love your pasta.”

We were in a parking garage, in the back lot of the apartment complex. I never went there before, but it was crowded that afternoon. The light smell of gasoline and wet concrete brought a darker gray haze in my brain. Feeling like life was a conspiracy against me, I took a deep breath and sighed as we climbed the stairs.

“I heard it’s going to rain a little tonight.” Walker was blindly grappling for any scapegoat of conversation, his smile forced as he led me to an enormous white Savana Cargo Van, parked next to an empty lot that had a motorcycle tarp on the floor. I figured it must have been Lucy’s spot. He held the passenger door for me, his face careful and protective as he waited for me to take a seat. “Sorry for the mess.”

His car had papers, receipts, crumpled notes scattered all over the interior of the large vehicle. It looked as though he hadn’t cleaned it out since he first bought the thing. I was careful not to smell too deeply in the van’s air, but I was surprised to find it was odorless. Walker was disorganized but he wasn’t a slob. There wasn’t a single food wrapper or sticky soda residue to be found.

I numbly pushed aside all of the papers from the passenger seat and sat nimbly. Walker went to the driver’s side and started the engine. I turned to him slowly, a dark sense of humor rummaging through my brain. I had to ask. “Walker, why do you have a rapist van?”

“Hey!” My friend protested as he backed up the large car and slowly drove out of the parking garage. “I resent that name for my ride!” Walker rubbed the dashboard of his car as he turned down the street. “This baby has been with Lucy and I through adventures of all kinds. It triumphed the road trip of ’05, I’ll have you know. And besides, rapist vans don’t have windows. My Savana Cargo does.”

“Right.” I quickly diverted my attention and looked out the window. Feeling warm I pressed on the automatic switch to roll down the glass. Thinking of what Walker and Lucy would be doing on a road trip was something that my dirty little mind didn't want to contemplate about. As I looked around at the familiar surroundings of the neighborhood I had begun to adapt and call home I felt a quiver in my throat as my eyes watered. Everything reminded me of him. Damn that bastard, Burgess. He broke me.

And all I could do was be depressed. Thinking carefully about it, I realized that I was being so pathetic in wallowing in my misery—I was sick of myself. What’s done is done, right? So why were my insides on fire and my heart feeling like it was going to keep breaking until it became dust? I had to get away.

“I want to leave,” I muttered aloud, my mind and my reality meshing together.

“What do you mean?” Walker prodded, turning his view from the road as his eyes grew with worry.

“I just want to get away from the city for a while. I feel like I need to do some soul searching and figure things out. Like a vacation,” I turned to him and hoped he’d support my wish. “Or a road trip.”

Walker’s eyes lit up. “Want to go on one? Lucy and I go on one every year. Last year was only for a weekend because we were planning to save our vacation time for this year…” Walker babbled excitedly and I noticed his knuckles were clinging to the steering wheel so tightly they had gone white. He was eager and excited. “Hey! I’ll call Lucy and ask if we can head out tomorrow. Lawrence owes me big for that whole stealing everyone’s recipes incident so I’m sure we can head out—” Walker was dialing on his cell and quickly put it on speakerphone.

After a long wait of rings, the phone answered and Lucy breathed, “Yeah? How’s Mary?”

“Better,” Walker quickly added, “She wants to go on a trip. I’m thinking cross country. Can you take some weeks off starting tomorrow?”

“You guys are too damn impulsive,” Lucy sighed but there was a chuckle in her breath that confirmed that she was glad at the news. “Yeah, my boss has been meaning to get me to take some time off so the union will get off of his ass.” There was a sudden scuffle and after a few pants and a heavy grunt from Lucy, she quickly added, “I’ll get Vern to come along to. It’ll be more fun now that we’ve got more people.” She sounded almost as though she was running and then a sudden roar of a motorcycle engine drowned into the speakers. “I’ll call you back,” she yelled out. “I’ve got the pictures, but it’ll take me a few hours until it’s safe to get back home.”

“How did you get them?” My voice was full of alarm as I leaned forward and grabbed the phone. “You didn’t hurt Burgess, did you?”

Lucy had ended the call before I could get an answer, and I trembled and surrendered the phone back to Walker.

“Hey, don’t cry… Mary…” Walker put his arm over my shoulder and I quickly wiped my tears from my cheek. “After everything he’s put you through, you should save your tears for yourself. Use them to heal you—not worry about him. I’m sure she didn’t kill him—just roughed him up a bit. I’m sure she did it with you at heart.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I snapped but then rubbed my temples and gritted my teeth. “Could we just go back and get ready to pack?”

“All right. Oh, but you’ll need to help me clean the car out. And we need to… negotiate about who’s paying for what.” Walker playfully punched my shoulder. “Sorry, love, but you’ll need to do your share for this month.” He smiled warmly, and added, “Who knows, maybe the change in scenery will do you good.”

“Yeah,” I smiled quietly back. “And your rapist van could really use a vacuuming.”

“It’s not a rapist van!” Walker joined in the joke by feigning hurt. “I’ll have you know there was no rape taking place in the van… well at least not by me. Lucy on the other hand…”

“Too much information!” I covered my ears and playfully pulled my legs up and kicked his thigh. “Bad image!” I shut my eyes and closed them tightly, but my stomach hurt as I let out giggles, all the stress seeming to just melt out of my body.

>

“How did you convince Vern to come along?” Walker was struggling to hoist up a cooler into the back of his van, his face red from the heavy weight. There were two coolers: A green one and blue one. The blue one was in Walker’s hands, full of your typical necessities: bottled water, sodas, Starbucks frappucinos, Monsters, food, and a lot of ice. That was what Walker had packed. Lucy had packed the green one. She carried it patiently behind Walker as though it was weighed with helium. But I could see, since the cap of the cooler was cracked due to the overflowing ice, that there was enough beer and other alcoholic beverages to run an Irish pub.

“Oh, you know… typical bullshit, like ‘I need you so much’ and ‘It’ll be Sodom and Gomorrah minus fire from the sky—if you catch my drift’…” Lucy bobbed an eyebrow up and down as she quickly turned and yelled, “Vern! Come on, we’re driving off in fifteen minutes!” Lucy, when she had returned the night before to the condo, had scrapes all over her arms and legs. Her neck had a thin cut on it and she had a fresh set of bruises on her face. At first, I thought it had been her brother, but the proud and angry fire in her eyes told me differently.

”I took care of him, Mary. You can bet he’s going to think twice before fucking with you again.” Trying to figure out what she had done to him, I had struggled to sleep that night. But now, I was awaiting to escape San Diego, at least for a month. I decided I wasn't going to run to the nearest computer and google the news about Burgess. I wasn't going to care.

“But what about Burgess?” Walker was on his tiptoes as he carefully pushed luggage here and there. The van was very spacious though, and there was plenty of room for people to just sit on the floor and lie down to sleep in. He had taken out many of the bench seats to make enough room. “Last time I checked, Vern wouldn’t do anything to risk pissing off the bastard.”

“Like I said, typical bullshit.” Lucy shrugged but finally gave him a bone. “Vern quit right after Burgess had… snapped.” She looked at me as she carefully worded the incident. “He had been hounded by Bohr Technologies for a while now. I’m not going into the personal details… but let’s just say salary increase, better benefits, more lenient vacation time, etc.”

My face had frowned in the saddest face of horror you could imagine. “Bohr Technologies?”

“Chill,” Lucy held a hand, her eyes calm but her voice stern “Vern’s a big boy, and Bohr has no idea you two even know each other that well. Yes, Mary,” she nodded at my shocked and confused expression, “I’ve got the jist of the whole Burgess vs. Bohr fiasco. You’d have to be blind or retarded not to notice it. But you’re not working for that pig anymore, you’re free. Remember that. Bohr’s going to leave you alone now since he’s won.”

My mind was buzzing but I shook my head and told myself to just forget it. It wasn’t my business anymore, but I’d be sure to warn Vern. I attempted to relieve the cooler from Lucy’s grasp, but she shook her head. “No offense, Mary, but you’re not exactly the strongest stick in the pile. It’s cool, I got it. Oh,” Her face went cool and dark. “And in the front pocket of my backpack are the pictures—but the bastard said he never got negatives.”

I quickly went and unzipped her backpack, digging out the copious amounts of hideous pictures out. Their taunting and traumatizing images were my reward, and as I quickly looked at all of them my stomach twisted painfully.

As Lucy was packing away the rest of the bags while Walker jogged up to me. “Are they that bad?” He asked as he shyly looked over my shoulder. Suddenly his jaw dropped and he quickly took the pictures I had already reviewed from me. “How the… what the hell?!” He was quiet but his throat was deep as he kept appalling over the images. “How the hell did they catch me naked? And who? Why?” But he froze and shot his head to me. His face turning redder than tomatoes, he quickly tried to save himself. “They—don’t look that real… Hell, it’s obviously just a good Photoshop job.”

I shrugged, taking the pictures from him. “Doctored or not, Burgess didn’t believe me. But I know the truth, and so do you. All the people who truly care for me and trust me know that it never happened. This fake album just showed me all the fake people in my life. Lucy,” I turned to her, her face hidden. I knew she must have seen the pictures, and from her weathered and scraped appearance I’d say Burgess hadn’t restrained from defending himself. But there was nothing in the news that morning about an assault on the famous CEO, or a burglary. Not that I really looked--I just had the local news on for an hour.

“What do you need, Mary?” Lucy turned to me, her face never escaping my eyes for a moment.

“Do you have a lighter?”

“Yeah,” Lucy took out of her pocket a green Zippo, tossing it to me.

I flicked open the lighter. At first, I struggled to turn the fire on, my face grimacing as everyone waited for the intense moment.

“Need some help?” Lucy leaned over my shoulder and flicked it with one finger, my thumb on the release.

Instantly, a long blue and red flame exploded from the lighter. “To the road trip,” I held the lighter up as a dramatic ‘toast’ and holding the thick wad of photos in my hand I carefully placed the fire under the laminated paper. After a few moments, a brown burn grew from the flames and it all caught on fire. It was like watching a baptism or an exorcism. The purge was done, and I decided that I wasn’t going to let Burgess hurt me. Not by a long shot.

Burning those pictures was like burning that bridge of my life, spending those months with Benjamin Burgess. And I'd be damned if I was going to let him ruin my life. I was moving on, as fast as I could.

As the papers fluttered to the ground and burned to ash, I stepped on them, and I stepped back. Lucy did the honors and spit on the remnants of paper, her saliva hissing as it touched the ground.

“All right, I’m back,” Vern came back with the remaining luggage in hand, his eyes innocent to the small ceremony that had just taken place. I handed back Lucy’s lighter, smiling at her as she nodded at me.

“Saddle up, we’re off!” Walker announced, “Vegas, here we come!”