In a Sense, You're Alone Here

Today we have the first chapter in a new sequence of stories—what I’m calling ‘story paths’—within my current work-in-progress novel, Teresa’s Backbone. The novel herself is part of a much bigger tangle of stories called The Secret of Secrets. I sometimes refer to it as a book series, other times a ‘meganovel.’ Often I refer to the setting as a whole as the Secretsverse.

If this is your first trip down the Backbone, you may want to have a look at a letter I wrote to new readers back in January. Here it is:

You may also wish to bookmark or otherwise easily locate the novel’s table of contents/index, which is called “The Backbone.” That is right here for you:

And, lastly, for this particular chapter-story we have today, you may wish to see the last one I wrote, which serves as a kind of prelude to today’s chapter. Here she is:

You can, of course, eschew all of that and just dive right in. That suits me just fine. Hope you enjoy it! Xoxo, T

We must have met up at the First Somatic Church. There’s not really any other logical starting point. I mean, I suppose it could have been the Heap. But it wasn’t so that leaves the church.

Nor can I tell you the specifics of how it came to be that Lori and I were alone together in her car. She was driving, which always suits me. I don’t hate driving, but I love riding and talking with the driver.

It’s the thirty-second century, I suppose, so all cars have autopilot. But some people love driving. Lori was one of those people.

She had long blonde hair—like me—but hers was blonder. She was cute. I was cute, too, but she was cuter. And hotter. Much better looking than I was, and this was something I never lost sight of during our time together.

I learned a lot about Lori, so you will, too. But I knew next to nothing about her as we traveled together through the Jungle byways. I knew what I saw, what I smelled, and what I heard.

“So you’re Nina’s kid, huh?” That’s Lori.

“Yeah, Nina is my mom.” That’s me, Teresa.

“You prolly don’t smoke then,” she said.

“No, I smoke. Like, a lot.”

Lori grins. “Classic preacher’s kid. Smokes are in the dash.”

I hated that preacher’s kid bullshit. But I knew that hating it was also a preacher’s kid stereotype, so I left it alone, got the cigs out of the dash.

“Can you stick it in my mouth?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

I pulled one out. They were long, like your one hundred millimeter cigarettes. I put it between her parted lips, where it immediately fell limp. There it dangled until she puckered and it stood straight out from her mouth.

Lori turned her head toward me and said from the sides of her mouth. “Light me up.”

So I did. Of course I did. That’s what anyone would do. It’s what smokers do, and it’s what people who are alone with Lori do. I didn’t know that for a fact then. I knew it, though. It was plain to see.

I lit one for myself, and she kicked on the vents so we wouldn’t choke to death on our own smoke.

“What kind of music do you like?” she asked.

“Metal,” I said.

“Is that it?” Lori asked.

“No, I mean. I like a lot of things.” Which was true and is true still.

“I’m obsessed with this song lately. Mind if we listen to it?” Lori asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, you’re driving.”

“That’s true, I am,” she said, then touched the dash and the song played.

I didn’t know it then, but I of course know it very well now, as will you if you don’t already.

Lori immediately sang along—and loud, too. Not blaring or anything, but it was striking. Most people I knew then either didn’t sing around other people in the car or sang in a quiet way, almost as if to themselves. Her voice untrained and in any technical sense very unremarkable. Not off-key or even all that pitch-y, but not especially distinct. Yet the sheer confidence with which she sang was in itself mesmerizing. To me, anyway. You know this one, don’t you? You’ve heard it before, if not from me then from someone else. But if you’ve been with me even a minute, you know this one. But indulge me nonetheless, kindly.

“Oh, god, could it be the weath-ther …” Lori sang.

I watched her, captivated and fascinated.

I looked down her long, tanned legs to her bare feet. She was driving barefoot. This was a thing that annoyed me back then. It was also something Mickie used to do—at least the one time, until shit went bad—so it reminded me of her. I could see some Mickie going on here. And some Wendy, too. Queen bee energy, the kids might say. But I wasn’t lingering on any one thought. They blew through my mind as we sped past the thousands of trees and bushes and animals.

The smoke added to the smell of the car which was something like a banana. It wasn’t banana exactly. That would have been sickly sweet and made me ill. No, it was milder than that. And there was smoke atop it, coating and covering it in the usual mysteries.

“And it’s not the weather,” Lori sang, then sang-whispered the last part along with the song: “hand me my leather.” She looked right at me when she did it.

We held each other’s eyes for a moment, then she laughed.

“What a weird fucking song. I love it,” Lori said.

It started over, the song. And after that, again.

Then I realized we were not simply listening to this song, rather we were only listening to this song. Like, the whole way there. And that was what happened.

Somewhere amid the listening and singing over and over again, I asked her, “What do you think it’s about?”

“What, the song?” Lori asked between drags.

“Yeah.”

“I dunno. Some dominatrix shit, I guess.”

That was as deep an analysis as we would get. From the car ride, anyway. There was more to come. There always was back then.