The Disappearance

The Disappearance

ONE

 The desert stretched out before them, a tan plain dotted with occasional brown brush and bordered at the far edges by small mountains painted purple by the rising sun. Aside from Reyn, who was driving, Gary was the only one in the car still awake, and he shifted slightly in the middle of the back seat both to relieve some of the pressure that Joan’s elbow was putting on his midsection and to move away from Brian’s leg, which was pressing uncomfortably close. From the passenger seat in front, Stacy stirred, letting out a muffled sound that was half snore, half snort.  
 “That’s why I love her,” Reyn whispered back.
 Gary smiled.
 They’d been driving since midnight, when Brian had gotten off work at Del Taco, and were now out of California and well into Nevada. If Brian had been awake, he’d have wanted to stop off in Vegas, if only for an hour or so, but luckily for the rest of them he had been out like a light since San Bernardino, and they’d turned onto a state highway at Baker, bypassing Las Vegas entirely.
They were on their way to Burning Man, the tribal gathering held each summer in the Black Rock Desert. Gary knew next to nothing about the festival, only that it had something to do with a big effigy that got set on fire each year like the straw figure in The Wicker Man. Stacy had been before, and it was she who’d initially suggested they make this trek. They’d had fun at Coachella together, she said. This would be even better.
Indeed, they had all gone to Coachella together—all of them except Joan—and while that had been fun and there’d been no problems, it had also been only a two-hour drive from UCLA, with Palm Springs, Indio and a host of sprawling newly developed desert cities in the immediate surrounding area.
 This was something totally different.
 For one thing, Burning Man was ten hours away, out in the middle of nowhere and lasted a week. For another, it was not a well-planned commercial endeavor but a hippie-ish “event,” where participants were supposed to create a temporary community dedicated to “art, self-expression and self-reliance.”
 Two days at Coachella had been fine, but Gary wasn’t sure the five of them could spend a week together without ending up at each others’ throats, and he was glad that their respective work schedules had precluded them from attending all save these climactic three days. Unfortunately, it was also Labor Day weekend, which meant that they were going to be stuck in endless lines of traffic when they tried to return to Southern California.
 Joan stirred awake, opening her eyes and smiling at him. She kissed his cheek and wrapped an arm around his midsection. Even here, in the car, hair tangled and face groggy, she looked absolutely beautiful, and as always he was astounded by the fact that she was going out with him.

Copyright © Bentley Little, 2010