Ryan

Ryan opens one eye and grabs me with bear paws from under massive pillows. We got lost trying to find some town on the west coast near Shuswap.

He has to start filming tomorrow and I'm tagging along for moral support until I'm ready to get back. New England is stuffy but here we're free.

I packed mostly black pants and his plaid shirts. Mama bought him some heavy sweaters for the British Columbia nights that chip and chew at us through fizzy stars, wolf howls, and coke with ice. Ice and coke.

We've craved the west coast for a while. Its siren call, its serious trees and mighty shadows, its glowing mountains and beautiful mirror lakes that reflect a sky that reflects the bottoms of the same lake in a smiling kaleidoscopic moment of perfect attention.

Ryan's nervous. He hasn't slept in days. Not properly. Amid his driving, my depressive episodes and manic filled summer nights, he has to prep to film this horror flick. He's finally getting some big bucks and I'm flying. He's hungry with artistic vision and I com or his attention.

He's become obsessive with the momentum.

The lead actress - a sinewy tall blonde with steel eyes and a perfectly sculpted mouth - is an ex girlfriend. Nina. She has that gaze which chills, those legs that can wrap around a monster - any monster really - and take it to town. She can smoke one and get decapitated within 5 seconds and make it look like a page out of Vogue. If I didn't know Ryan used to fuck her in between glamour shoots and root beer commercials (her rough start-up) I'd actually have been friends with her. I'd add her to my collection of 'Interesting People and Fascinating Pursuits by Jocey' and take her sailing or something. We'd make half moons by the shore with our coca cola caps and dip our sunburned feet into the shallow warm pools that attract shark nurseries.

I have my nightmares still. Angry sharks ripping each other to shreds. Red waters murky and warm. Pulsing.

We're in the swap now. Can't escape the foggy pines, the beautiful sighs of the cold mountains wrapping themselves up in the furs of their animals. Bears, wolves, fox. All luxuriously arranging themselves here and there. Glow glow. Their eyes. Glow glow. Their teeth. Flash flash. Their flesh. Flash flash. Their young.
I smoke a few and my eyes are burning. My nostrils on fire, this high lasts so long and when I come to, we're outside and Ryan is negotiating a price for a motel room. I just want to sleep. Long drives, big drags.
pillows. crash