The Fifth Wall: A Novel by Nagelberg Rachel

Author:Nagelberg, Rachel [Nagelberg, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Black Sparrow Books
Published: 2017-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

There is no route out of the maze.

The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.

PHILIP K. DICK, Valis

The air is dry and dusty, with wind flapping violently through open windows, the sun baking the truck’s hot black metal and steel. The highway opens onto a wide expanse of desert sagebrush, barrel cacti, and dogweed. Joshua trees poke their thick, stubby fingers from the parched, reddish earth. Smoke from Adam’s cigarette mixes with the desert’s fresh, dead scent, the radio crackling as we zoom forward into the vastness of the deep Mojave under a clear blue sky.

Adam holds the wheel with a comfortable carelessness, his body gradually loosening as we penetrate deeper into the desert’s landscape. He grew up in this kind of terrain, he tells me, and often feels constricted by the vertical pollution of the city, how it offers much less room for the mind and body to move. I observe a slight drop in his shoulders, a giddiness to his temperament. He takes a swig from a flask and passes it to me. The sharp whiskey burns and soothes. We are driving to a remote location where a group of men will gather to launch objects into the upper atmosphere. Adam met them years ago right before their first launch at a bar in Lancaster, a small town bordering the California side of the Mojave, where he’d stopped during a drive home from his mother’s house in Joshua Tree. He’d followed them out to a large expanse and witnessed the initial trials of this bizarre activity. Since then they’d gained a larger following and had created a website with an email list announcing new launch dates and other special local events.

The truck zooms through the lingering breeze of mid morning, just a few hours before the inevitable sweltering heat. We woke up at dawn to get a move on, having spent all of Sunday hungover in bed, watching movies, eating Vietnamese takeout, and fucking in a blur. On the highway, driving itself feels like a practice of amnesia, the speed of the truck along the straight road warping the landscape around us. I take another swig and feel a welcoming haziness, the road seeming to stretch forever towards a fated central point. The service bars on my iPhone vanish as we thrust inside the scene.

We approach a massive stretch of bright crimson ground, as we penetrate acres of blooming poppies basking in the sunlight. A sign reads ANTELOPE VALLEY CALIFORNIA POPPY RESERVE. I reach my arms out of the window as if to touch them, my fingers rippling in the warm air above the red. Adam turns off the road just beyond the reserve—the one reference point in the directions we’ve been looking for. We drive down a long, bumpy road towards a fading backdrop of snowcapped Sierras.

The plateau is hard and wide, a dusty golden yellow. Slamming the truck door, I drop my sunglasses down from my forehead to shield the sun’s

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