Okay, so here's the deal -- I've got a male character in the current book I'm working on who is primarily attracted to dudes. I'm 40k words in and I've never mentioned this before because it just hasn't been relevant in the story so far.
Only now I'm laying the groundwork for a relationship with another guy that will be central to the story, and now that I'm getting there, it's starting to seem a bit weird and carpet-pulling that I've never alluded to the principal's homosexuality before.
In this day and age, is this something I can get away with, just not bringing up the character's sexual orientation until it's really relevant? Or have I still got to hint or allude to it early on so that my readers don't go, "What?! Gay?! Interrobangs?!" and then throw my book across the room, possibly shattering their e-readers?
Is gay like science fiction or fantasy, that you have to warn your readers early on that it's going to be one of Those Kinds of Stories?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Character, Unity of Emotion, & the Villain
Inside Qaddafi's compound, many items have been found that give us a unique look inside the private life of a murderous dictator. Much has been made of the album of photos and writings about Condoleezza Rice. And more recently, they found another photo album with pictures of family and outings: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/a-qaddafi-family-photo-album/
One particular photo stands out to me. Qaddafi is holding a baby, looking to the right at someone who has called his attention off-camera. On his face is an expression of honest, untroubled delight. He is not weighted down with the burdens of rule or the guilt of his monstrosity. He has, for a moment at least, forgotten to look officious and serious. He is grinning like an idiot.
I think as writers, we have a tendency to try to write characters with a kind of unity of emotion. Characters become a kind of avatar of whatever emotion is their driving force in the story. Brooding heroes are never allowed to laugh at their own farts, and the lovelorn romantic lead never suffers from allergies that make her cranky. The dutiful soldier never has a nervous breakdown in his car because he can't find a parking space at a department store. Or at least, if he does, it's because of PTSD.
Books have trained us, as readers, to take every character action as significant, so if the serious law student laughs at something that no one else finds particularly funny, we want to know why, and what that says about him. As writers, we have to be aware of that, so we include only relevant details, and airbrush all the others away, until what we have is not a human being, but a representative of one, a little fictional packet that contains one or two real emotions that respond accordingly to the world we toss them into. We do little things here and there to humanize them.
But we humanize our villains the least. It's unacceptable to us to have a villainous character who is having a completely non-evil, light-hearted chuckle. You can't be a murderer without being removed from humanity. That doesn't fit into our personal narrative. We need to alienate monsters. We need to pretend that they are not like us. You can't be human and be a villain. What does Darth Vader do when he's not Force-choking dudes? He goes and sits in a creepy giant Pokeball. He doesn't have a photo album. Colonel Kurtz doesn't miss having coffee with his mom. Martin Chatwin doesn't suddenly remember that embarrassing moment he had at a science fair. And when movies or books do these things, then it's played up for comedy.
There's an old phrase called "the banality of evil." I hear most people use it incorrectly these days. They use it either to refer to the evil of banality, as a kind of commentary on how the ordinary, routine, humdrum life is miserable and soul-crushing, or they talk about how evil itself is ordinary and boring. But the phrase comes from a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem, written by Hannah Arendt about the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The point of the book was that Eichmann was not inhuman. He was not a monster. He was an ordinary person who had done some terrible, monstrous things. The things that he did did not negate his humanity; they were part of it. He still had friends and close relationships. He still wanted to belong.
I think if fiction is going to serve as any kind of guidepost for human behavior, if we're going to look into fiction to find out who we are, our villains need to be more human than everyone else, not less. We need to see ourselves in them. We need to see what we can become.
One particular photo stands out to me. Qaddafi is holding a baby, looking to the right at someone who has called his attention off-camera. On his face is an expression of honest, untroubled delight. He is not weighted down with the burdens of rule or the guilt of his monstrosity. He has, for a moment at least, forgotten to look officious and serious. He is grinning like an idiot.
I think as writers, we have a tendency to try to write characters with a kind of unity of emotion. Characters become a kind of avatar of whatever emotion is their driving force in the story. Brooding heroes are never allowed to laugh at their own farts, and the lovelorn romantic lead never suffers from allergies that make her cranky. The dutiful soldier never has a nervous breakdown in his car because he can't find a parking space at a department store. Or at least, if he does, it's because of PTSD.
Books have trained us, as readers, to take every character action as significant, so if the serious law student laughs at something that no one else finds particularly funny, we want to know why, and what that says about him. As writers, we have to be aware of that, so we include only relevant details, and airbrush all the others away, until what we have is not a human being, but a representative of one, a little fictional packet that contains one or two real emotions that respond accordingly to the world we toss them into. We do little things here and there to humanize them.
But we humanize our villains the least. It's unacceptable to us to have a villainous character who is having a completely non-evil, light-hearted chuckle. You can't be a murderer without being removed from humanity. That doesn't fit into our personal narrative. We need to alienate monsters. We need to pretend that they are not like us. You can't be human and be a villain. What does Darth Vader do when he's not Force-choking dudes? He goes and sits in a creepy giant Pokeball. He doesn't have a photo album. Colonel Kurtz doesn't miss having coffee with his mom. Martin Chatwin doesn't suddenly remember that embarrassing moment he had at a science fair. And when movies or books do these things, then it's played up for comedy.
There's an old phrase called "the banality of evil." I hear most people use it incorrectly these days. They use it either to refer to the evil of banality, as a kind of commentary on how the ordinary, routine, humdrum life is miserable and soul-crushing, or they talk about how evil itself is ordinary and boring. But the phrase comes from a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem, written by Hannah Arendt about the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The point of the book was that Eichmann was not inhuman. He was not a monster. He was an ordinary person who had done some terrible, monstrous things. The things that he did did not negate his humanity; they were part of it. He still had friends and close relationships. He still wanted to belong.
I think if fiction is going to serve as any kind of guidepost for human behavior, if we're going to look into fiction to find out who we are, our villains need to be more human than everyone else, not less. We need to see ourselves in them. We need to see what we can become.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Story: Can't Beat the Heat
The VW bug scrobbles to an eventual stop along the shoulder, a cloud of yellow dust rising behind it. Chris has his windows down to keep the car cool, but the Arizona air is pretty hot, and the back of his shirt is soaked with sweat. The car's AC has been busted since he bought it. He leans to his right to call out the window, "Need a ride?"
"Thanks, man." The guy unslings a weighty-looking backpack from one shoulder, opens the door. "Mind if I toss this in the back?" He doesn't wait for an answer, pushing the bag between the seats and sliding into the passenger seat. The door chunks shut.
"No problem," Chris says. "Where you headed?" He wants to get moving again. A few seconds of standing still and the vehicle starts to feel like an oven. And the engine isn't what it used to be, so the chemical stink of gas starts to cloud the car when he idles for too long.
His passenger looks about college age, wearing faded jeans, a tee, and a Sun Devils cap, the brim pulled down low to shade his face from the sun. His features are broad and lean, his skin awfully pale for a guy strolling around the Sonoran desert. "Straight ahead," he says. "Man, thanks again for picking me up."
Chris pulls back onto the road, glad to feel the wind on his face, tugging the streams of sweat back. "Sure, no problem," he says again. "So what happened? Car break down?"
"Nope," his passenger says. "Just got tired of walkin'."
"You just up and decided to walk across the desert? Isn't that dangerous?"
"Well," the passenger says, "it wasn't desert when I started."
"Oh. Where did you start?"
The passenger looks out the window. "Way back, man. Way back." he says.
Weird. The guy's weird. But then, you expect weird when you pick up a hitchhiker these days. Normally Chris wouldn't do that. But you can't leave a guy standing by the road in the desert. "I'm Chris."
"You can call me Dil, man." He's still looking out the window. "For short."
There's something wrong about him, Chris thinks, looking him over. Something's missing. "Good to meet you, Dil. You feelin' all right?"
"Oh yeah, good to be in the shade for a bit."
Chris nods. "Yeah, can't beat the heat out here. Just your luck you had to get picked up by the car without any AC, huh?" He grins over at Dil good-naturedly, and then he sees what's wrong. The guy isn't sweating. Not a drop. His skin looks dry, almost cracked. He must be dehydrated as hell. "Hey, you probably want some water, huh? There's some bottles behind the seat."
Dil looks up when Chris says this, blinking his eyes a few times. They're a weird color, Chris notices. Like hazel, only lighter. Almost yellow. He didn't see it before because of the baseball cap. "Thanks. Man, I could really use a drink."
Chris checks his cell phone while Dil is rummaging behind the seat for the bottled water. Still no bars. Isn't this how half the horror movies start? Someone picks up a hitchhiker and then there's no cell phone service? It's not like Dil's going to be a serial killer or anything, for god's sake, but what in the hell was he doing just wandering around the desert? He just walked here?
Dil sits back up in his seat and twists the cap off the water bottle. Then he drinks it all weird. He tilts back his head and lifts up the water bottle and just kind of drains it into his mouth, licking at the pouring water. The hell. His teeth are not right, either. They're too narrow, he thinks. It makes them look pointed. He finishes the water all in one long drink, then crumples the water bottle in one hand and tosses it out the window.
"Hey," Chris says. "No littering, huh?"
Dil shrugs and says nothing.
The yellow stripes go by to the left of the car, and Chris focuses on them. He's not thinking straight. He just got a little creeped out because everyone knows you don't pick up hitchers anymore. Thinking about that is just making everything seem weirder than it is. Just be cool. "So, how far am I taking you?"
"I'm pretty sick of this desert. Just let me out when we get to someplace green, man. That will suit me just fine."
Chris nods at the baseball cap. "You go to Arizona State?"
"Got family there," Dil says.
"Siblings?"
"Maybe. Hard to say."
Chris looks over at him again. He's still not sweating. His skin looks so dry, like it got baked too long in the sun, only it's not sunburned or tanned or anything. Just pale and sort of shiny. "You hungry?"
"Naw," Dil says. "Had a coyote earlier."
Chris's fingers dig into the steering wheel. The stuff it's made of is crumbling, eroded by age and sweat, and little bits break off between his fingers. He can feel his heart trying to keep pace with the car. Sweat runs down his chest and belly. The guy sitting in the passenger seat next to him just said he ate a coyote. He's a nut. Chris wonders how he can get rid of him now. Can he just pull over and ask the guy to get out? That might just piss him off. He looks down the road. He could ask someone for help, maybe. But he hasn't seen another car in a long time. Despite the heat, his sweat on his back now feels icy cold.
"Man, you mind if I put my feet up?" Dil asks in an amiable tone. "They're just killing me."
Don't piss him off. Don't let him know you're scared. "Sure, go ahead."
Dil leans over and pulls out the laces on his shoes. He strips his socks off. Chris nearly swerves off the road. Sticking out of the cuffs of Dil's jeans are two scaley, yellowish reptile feet, each with three splayed toes and thick talons. "Ahhhh," the hitcher says, stretching out those toes and wiggling them. "That feels better." He leans back, rests them against the dashboard.
Chris tries to take a deep breath, but he can't seem to fill his lungs all the way, so he takes a few quick, short ones instead. "Where did you say you were from, again?" The question is irrelevant, inane, but it's all he can think of. He stares down the road. No cars. He tries to remember the last time he saw one.
"From?" Dil blinks at him, pushing back his cap a little bit. His blink is strange, a sort of film sliding away from his eyes after they open. His pupils are curved, slitted. "Just around, I guess. It's hard to say. This place doesn't look like it used to." He stares out the windshield again. "All this used to be green, you know."
The VW bug coughs and starts. Oh god, Chris thinks. Don't die on me here in the middle of nowhere with this ... this thing. "Who are you?" he rasps. He's trying to keep the tone of desperation out of his voice and failing.
"I told you, man," his passenger says in an unworried tone, "You can call me Dil for short."
"Short? Short for what?"
"Dilophosaurus."
Chris stares determinedly out the windshield at the road, trying to will his peripheral vision away. It's no good. Whatever is in his passenger seat is large and ugly. He turns to look at it. Crammed awkwardly into the car next to him is a huge, toothy reptile. Its scaled hide is a dusty yellow, darkening to a greenish color down its legs and short arms. Atop its head is not a red sun devils baseball cap, but a crimson, bony, ridged crest. Its mouth is full of many pointed teeth. Its massive tail curls around behind it, between the two front seats, to nearly fill the back seat.
Chris hears himself emit a rapid, high-pitched giggle. "You're a dinosaur."
The dinosaur, somehow, frowns at him. "We don't really like being called that, man," it says. "It's a little offensive."
Of course it is. "What ... what do you like being called?"
The dinosaur gives him a look of apparent concern, though how he can read concern into its scaled and predatory features, he isn't sure. "I told you twice already. Dil."
"Right." Heat stroke. That's what is happening right now. He is sitting in an overbaked car by the side of the road somewhere, hallucinating. He speeds up, making the VW's little engine struggle. Maybe a little extra wind will cool him down enough to wake him up. But that's crazy.
"But dinosaurs ... I mean, dilophosauruses ... usi ... are extinct."
"Extinct?"
"You all died out. There are none of you left."
Dil shrugs his narrow shoulders. It looks ridiculous on a dinosaur. "I guess there's at least one left. But maybe you're right. I haven't seen any others in ages."
Chris giggles again at that. "Are you planning to eat me?"
The dinosaur reaches up one stubby arm to scratch at its chin. "Naw, I already had coyote, like I said, man." It looks closely at him. "Are you feeling all right, Chris? You don't look well. Maybe you need some water, too." It turns and reaches behind the seat, its bulk pressing firmly into Chris. It has to lean over quite far to reach the bottles in the floorboard, but it eventually comes up with one and proffers it to Chris. He blinks at the water bottle for a moment, imagining his mother lecturing him, If a dinosaur offers you water, you take it! He unscrews it and pours it shakily into his mouth, keeping one hand on the wheel. Cool water splashes down his chin and onto his chest. It feels good, refreshing. He hands the bottle back to Dil.
Dil pokes at the clear plastic. "What is this made of, anyway? It looks like hard water."
"It's plastic," Chris says. He looks at the bottle, then back at Dil. "Uh, it's synthetic."
"Synthetic," Dil repeats with a thoughtful expression. He then crumples it and tosses it out the window like the previous bottle.
For some reason it seems worse than before. "Hey!" Chris hears himself say. "I told you, don't throw that out there. It's littering."
Dil looks over his shoulder at the road behind them. "This all used to be green," he says.
"So what, you've just been walking around the desert since then?"
"Guess so, man. Dilophosauruses live a long time. But you say there's none of us left?"
Chris shakes his head. He feels fully settled, now, into the absurdity of the situation. This is just a bad dream -- he can accept that. "Not that I know of. Something killed you all off. A meteor, I think."
"So we're all dead?" Dil sounds unbothered by this fact, his tone light.
Chris turns to look at him. "How could you not know you're extinct? Didn't it bother you that you haven't seen any other d ... dilophosauruses around? That the place where you live turned to desert?"
"I guess it did seem a little weird." Dil curls his toes, and the thick talons carve gouges in the dashboard. "So. You say you're edible?" He licks his rows of dagger teeth. Saliva drips from them.
"I ... no, I'm not edible!" This may all be some horrible, stupid dream, but Chris feels himself shaking. He tries holding tighter to the steering wheel to stop vibrating, and makes the car lurch to the right, sliding across the gravel on the shoulder. "It's not very polite to ask someone giving you a ride that."
"You brought it up first, man." Dil looks around the car, his crest scraping the roof. "What is this thing, anyway?"
"You mean the car? It's a VW bug. It's kind of old, I guess."
"A bug? What makes it go?"
Chris stares at him. A quiet, uncomfortable moment passes. "Gas."
"Gas," the dinosaur repeats, his tone thoughtful. "Weird. Well, thanks for giving me a ride, but maybe you should just let me out here."
Chris looks out the window at the empty, bone-dry desert. "Here?" What are you saying? his brain screams at him. Of course here! Of course anywhere! Get the dinosaur out of your car!
"Yeah," Dil answers slowly. "We've come a long way, and I'm not feeling optimistic. And I just found out all my relatives are dead. I think I'm just going to get out here. Besides, I think I saw some horses back there." He licks his teeth again.
Chris fails to stop another shudder, but can't argue with a chance to let his passenger go. He pulls to the side of the road near a faded speed limit sign. It's so old and worn he can't tell what it used to say.
Somewhat awkwardly, Dil fumbles for the door handle and climbs out, his large tail slithering out of the back seat. The car creaks in complaint as he exits. Outside, he closes the door and leans down to the window. "Thanks for the ride again, man," he says, poking his fang-filled snout into the car.
"Don't mention it," Chris manages.
Dil taps the window with one clawed hand. "You got enough ... gas in this thing?"
Chris looks down at the gauge. A little less than a quarter of a tank left. Hell, where did it all go? Exactly how long has he been driving? He tries to remember when he first entered the desert. "I don't know," he says.
"What if you run out?"
"Guess I'll think of something."
Dil nods. "Okay. Good luck, man. Maybe I'll see you again sometime."
Chris gives another nervous giggle at the thought of it. "Sure, maybe."
Dil leans up from the window, and Chris pulls back onto the freeway, a little faster than he needs to, spraying gravel behind him.
He looks in his rear view mirror, but there's just a cloud of dust behind him. If Dil is still there, and not just the flicker of some heatstroke hallucination, he can't tell.
He keeps driving, repeating to himself -- just a dream, just a dream. The daylight is bearing down on him, heating the car. Again he checks his cell phone. No bars. The desert road unrolls before him.
He remembers, out of nowhere, that old ghost story about the person who picks up a girl by the side of the road and drops her at her destination, only to find out later that she has been dead for years. He will have to mention all this to his sister. Soon they will both be laughing about the strange hallucination he had on the road.
The sun burns down on his car, on the road, and makes it shimmer like a dream, still just as bright and unrelenting as it was at noon. Sweat soaks his pants, his back. There are no other cars on the road. He can see for miles and miles.
"Thanks, man." The guy unslings a weighty-looking backpack from one shoulder, opens the door. "Mind if I toss this in the back?" He doesn't wait for an answer, pushing the bag between the seats and sliding into the passenger seat. The door chunks shut.
"No problem," Chris says. "Where you headed?" He wants to get moving again. A few seconds of standing still and the vehicle starts to feel like an oven. And the engine isn't what it used to be, so the chemical stink of gas starts to cloud the car when he idles for too long.
His passenger looks about college age, wearing faded jeans, a tee, and a Sun Devils cap, the brim pulled down low to shade his face from the sun. His features are broad and lean, his skin awfully pale for a guy strolling around the Sonoran desert. "Straight ahead," he says. "Man, thanks again for picking me up."
Chris pulls back onto the road, glad to feel the wind on his face, tugging the streams of sweat back. "Sure, no problem," he says again. "So what happened? Car break down?"
"Nope," his passenger says. "Just got tired of walkin'."
"You just up and decided to walk across the desert? Isn't that dangerous?"
"Well," the passenger says, "it wasn't desert when I started."
"Oh. Where did you start?"
The passenger looks out the window. "Way back, man. Way back." he says.
Weird. The guy's weird. But then, you expect weird when you pick up a hitchhiker these days. Normally Chris wouldn't do that. But you can't leave a guy standing by the road in the desert. "I'm Chris."
"You can call me Dil, man." He's still looking out the window. "For short."
There's something wrong about him, Chris thinks, looking him over. Something's missing. "Good to meet you, Dil. You feelin' all right?"
"Oh yeah, good to be in the shade for a bit."
Chris nods. "Yeah, can't beat the heat out here. Just your luck you had to get picked up by the car without any AC, huh?" He grins over at Dil good-naturedly, and then he sees what's wrong. The guy isn't sweating. Not a drop. His skin looks dry, almost cracked. He must be dehydrated as hell. "Hey, you probably want some water, huh? There's some bottles behind the seat."
Dil looks up when Chris says this, blinking his eyes a few times. They're a weird color, Chris notices. Like hazel, only lighter. Almost yellow. He didn't see it before because of the baseball cap. "Thanks. Man, I could really use a drink."
Chris checks his cell phone while Dil is rummaging behind the seat for the bottled water. Still no bars. Isn't this how half the horror movies start? Someone picks up a hitchhiker and then there's no cell phone service? It's not like Dil's going to be a serial killer or anything, for god's sake, but what in the hell was he doing just wandering around the desert? He just walked here?
Dil sits back up in his seat and twists the cap off the water bottle. Then he drinks it all weird. He tilts back his head and lifts up the water bottle and just kind of drains it into his mouth, licking at the pouring water. The hell. His teeth are not right, either. They're too narrow, he thinks. It makes them look pointed. He finishes the water all in one long drink, then crumples the water bottle in one hand and tosses it out the window.
"Hey," Chris says. "No littering, huh?"
Dil shrugs and says nothing.
The yellow stripes go by to the left of the car, and Chris focuses on them. He's not thinking straight. He just got a little creeped out because everyone knows you don't pick up hitchers anymore. Thinking about that is just making everything seem weirder than it is. Just be cool. "So, how far am I taking you?"
"I'm pretty sick of this desert. Just let me out when we get to someplace green, man. That will suit me just fine."
Chris nods at the baseball cap. "You go to Arizona State?"
"Got family there," Dil says.
"Siblings?"
"Maybe. Hard to say."
Chris looks over at him again. He's still not sweating. His skin looks so dry, like it got baked too long in the sun, only it's not sunburned or tanned or anything. Just pale and sort of shiny. "You hungry?"
"Naw," Dil says. "Had a coyote earlier."
Chris's fingers dig into the steering wheel. The stuff it's made of is crumbling, eroded by age and sweat, and little bits break off between his fingers. He can feel his heart trying to keep pace with the car. Sweat runs down his chest and belly. The guy sitting in the passenger seat next to him just said he ate a coyote. He's a nut. Chris wonders how he can get rid of him now. Can he just pull over and ask the guy to get out? That might just piss him off. He looks down the road. He could ask someone for help, maybe. But he hasn't seen another car in a long time. Despite the heat, his sweat on his back now feels icy cold.
"Man, you mind if I put my feet up?" Dil asks in an amiable tone. "They're just killing me."
Don't piss him off. Don't let him know you're scared. "Sure, go ahead."
Dil leans over and pulls out the laces on his shoes. He strips his socks off. Chris nearly swerves off the road. Sticking out of the cuffs of Dil's jeans are two scaley, yellowish reptile feet, each with three splayed toes and thick talons. "Ahhhh," the hitcher says, stretching out those toes and wiggling them. "That feels better." He leans back, rests them against the dashboard.
Chris tries to take a deep breath, but he can't seem to fill his lungs all the way, so he takes a few quick, short ones instead. "Where did you say you were from, again?" The question is irrelevant, inane, but it's all he can think of. He stares down the road. No cars. He tries to remember the last time he saw one.
"From?" Dil blinks at him, pushing back his cap a little bit. His blink is strange, a sort of film sliding away from his eyes after they open. His pupils are curved, slitted. "Just around, I guess. It's hard to say. This place doesn't look like it used to." He stares out the windshield again. "All this used to be green, you know."
The VW bug coughs and starts. Oh god, Chris thinks. Don't die on me here in the middle of nowhere with this ... this thing. "Who are you?" he rasps. He's trying to keep the tone of desperation out of his voice and failing.
"I told you, man," his passenger says in an unworried tone, "You can call me Dil for short."
"Short? Short for what?"
"Dilophosaurus."
Chris stares determinedly out the windshield at the road, trying to will his peripheral vision away. It's no good. Whatever is in his passenger seat is large and ugly. He turns to look at it. Crammed awkwardly into the car next to him is a huge, toothy reptile. Its scaled hide is a dusty yellow, darkening to a greenish color down its legs and short arms. Atop its head is not a red sun devils baseball cap, but a crimson, bony, ridged crest. Its mouth is full of many pointed teeth. Its massive tail curls around behind it, between the two front seats, to nearly fill the back seat.
Chris hears himself emit a rapid, high-pitched giggle. "You're a dinosaur."
The dinosaur, somehow, frowns at him. "We don't really like being called that, man," it says. "It's a little offensive."
Of course it is. "What ... what do you like being called?"
The dinosaur gives him a look of apparent concern, though how he can read concern into its scaled and predatory features, he isn't sure. "I told you twice already. Dil."
"Right." Heat stroke. That's what is happening right now. He is sitting in an overbaked car by the side of the road somewhere, hallucinating. He speeds up, making the VW's little engine struggle. Maybe a little extra wind will cool him down enough to wake him up. But that's crazy.
"But dinosaurs ... I mean, dilophosauruses ... usi ... are extinct."
"Extinct?"
"You all died out. There are none of you left."
Dil shrugs his narrow shoulders. It looks ridiculous on a dinosaur. "I guess there's at least one left. But maybe you're right. I haven't seen any others in ages."
Chris giggles again at that. "Are you planning to eat me?"
The dinosaur reaches up one stubby arm to scratch at its chin. "Naw, I already had coyote, like I said, man." It looks closely at him. "Are you feeling all right, Chris? You don't look well. Maybe you need some water, too." It turns and reaches behind the seat, its bulk pressing firmly into Chris. It has to lean over quite far to reach the bottles in the floorboard, but it eventually comes up with one and proffers it to Chris. He blinks at the water bottle for a moment, imagining his mother lecturing him, If a dinosaur offers you water, you take it! He unscrews it and pours it shakily into his mouth, keeping one hand on the wheel. Cool water splashes down his chin and onto his chest. It feels good, refreshing. He hands the bottle back to Dil.
Dil pokes at the clear plastic. "What is this made of, anyway? It looks like hard water."
"It's plastic," Chris says. He looks at the bottle, then back at Dil. "Uh, it's synthetic."
"Synthetic," Dil repeats with a thoughtful expression. He then crumples it and tosses it out the window like the previous bottle.
For some reason it seems worse than before. "Hey!" Chris hears himself say. "I told you, don't throw that out there. It's littering."
Dil looks over his shoulder at the road behind them. "This all used to be green," he says.
"So what, you've just been walking around the desert since then?"
"Guess so, man. Dilophosauruses live a long time. But you say there's none of us left?"
Chris shakes his head. He feels fully settled, now, into the absurdity of the situation. This is just a bad dream -- he can accept that. "Not that I know of. Something killed you all off. A meteor, I think."
"So we're all dead?" Dil sounds unbothered by this fact, his tone light.
Chris turns to look at him. "How could you not know you're extinct? Didn't it bother you that you haven't seen any other d ... dilophosauruses around? That the place where you live turned to desert?"
"I guess it did seem a little weird." Dil curls his toes, and the thick talons carve gouges in the dashboard. "So. You say you're edible?" He licks his rows of dagger teeth. Saliva drips from them.
"I ... no, I'm not edible!" This may all be some horrible, stupid dream, but Chris feels himself shaking. He tries holding tighter to the steering wheel to stop vibrating, and makes the car lurch to the right, sliding across the gravel on the shoulder. "It's not very polite to ask someone giving you a ride that."
"You brought it up first, man." Dil looks around the car, his crest scraping the roof. "What is this thing, anyway?"
"You mean the car? It's a VW bug. It's kind of old, I guess."
"A bug? What makes it go?"
Chris stares at him. A quiet, uncomfortable moment passes. "Gas."
"Gas," the dinosaur repeats, his tone thoughtful. "Weird. Well, thanks for giving me a ride, but maybe you should just let me out here."
Chris looks out the window at the empty, bone-dry desert. "Here?" What are you saying? his brain screams at him. Of course here! Of course anywhere! Get the dinosaur out of your car!
"Yeah," Dil answers slowly. "We've come a long way, and I'm not feeling optimistic. And I just found out all my relatives are dead. I think I'm just going to get out here. Besides, I think I saw some horses back there." He licks his teeth again.
Chris fails to stop another shudder, but can't argue with a chance to let his passenger go. He pulls to the side of the road near a faded speed limit sign. It's so old and worn he can't tell what it used to say.
Somewhat awkwardly, Dil fumbles for the door handle and climbs out, his large tail slithering out of the back seat. The car creaks in complaint as he exits. Outside, he closes the door and leans down to the window. "Thanks for the ride again, man," he says, poking his fang-filled snout into the car.
"Don't mention it," Chris manages.
Dil taps the window with one clawed hand. "You got enough ... gas in this thing?"
Chris looks down at the gauge. A little less than a quarter of a tank left. Hell, where did it all go? Exactly how long has he been driving? He tries to remember when he first entered the desert. "I don't know," he says.
"What if you run out?"
"Guess I'll think of something."
Dil nods. "Okay. Good luck, man. Maybe I'll see you again sometime."
Chris gives another nervous giggle at the thought of it. "Sure, maybe."
Dil leans up from the window, and Chris pulls back onto the freeway, a little faster than he needs to, spraying gravel behind him.
He looks in his rear view mirror, but there's just a cloud of dust behind him. If Dil is still there, and not just the flicker of some heatstroke hallucination, he can't tell.
He keeps driving, repeating to himself -- just a dream, just a dream. The daylight is bearing down on him, heating the car. Again he checks his cell phone. No bars. The desert road unrolls before him.
He remembers, out of nowhere, that old ghost story about the person who picks up a girl by the side of the road and drops her at her destination, only to find out later that she has been dead for years. He will have to mention all this to his sister. Soon they will both be laughing about the strange hallucination he had on the road.
The sun burns down on his car, on the road, and makes it shimmer like a dream, still just as bright and unrelenting as it was at noon. Sweat soaks his pants, his back. There are no other cars on the road. He can see for miles and miles.
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