Salt

James didn't tell Liz they were going to a funeral. He didn't know, but he suspected she had a thing about death. She had a thing about everything.
Two days before, his mother had called, her voice hitching and nasal. From her cell phone, her words broke up into tiny fragments, distant stars of shock:
Father. Hospital. Dead. Come home.
James made arrangements because the very thought of not going was an enormous burning void in the corners of his mind that he knew would suck everything vital from him. He wired money home and packed a suit. Then he had to call someone. Anyone. Liz wasn't a girlfriend, not even a friend. She was a woman from the gym he slept with.
"We're going on a road trip," he said. He was cool, even cold, and she didn't take his somber tone as anything different than what she normally got from him. He knew she was so thrilled she wouldn't bother to ask. He added, barely thinking: "Pack something black."

"The first place we see that's open James. You stop." Her voice worn, the roughness of the road had scraped away her sweetness. She was better this way, he thought. They had been driving this day since the early morning. Following the long white lines on the highways leading from north to south. Liz turned the air conditioning on, and then off, and then on again, basking in her own indecision.
"We could have eaten at a five star restaurant three hours ago. Now all there are are diners and convenience stores. Why didn't you say something?"
Liz grimaced and pouted.
"Because I don't like five star. Or four star. Just real food. "
The streetlights pulsed as they passed and lit up the sweat on her neck: gleaming specks of light. He could have kissed her there, licked and savored her taste. He could have pulled the car over and tried to find an explanation for her strangeness in her sweating curves as he had for the last six or seven months.
There were no answers of course; not even a name for the pale color of her hair. And sex was out of the question. Any manner of libido James could summon up would immediately be undone by the grating image of his father coming to ruin his enjoyment a final time. Best to wait until the old man was in the ground.
They had been driving for days and he felt raw and exhausted. For days, itching and dirty. Her body and death on his mind, and asphalt rolling under his skin.
"Stop! Stop here! God, I'm so hungry. Aren't you hungry?"

"Sit anywhere you like, sugar." Their waitress was young but haggard. Her hair was dyed brown to cover up a previous and obvious dyeing disaster. It was obvious, too, that she called everyone who came in (bikers, old women, tired hungry travelers) sugar.
They had to wait ten minutes before their menus came. The diner was empty and the waitress didn't even pretend to look busy as she sat at the corner of the counter and smoked a cigarette. Liz squeezed his arm with consummate approval and amusement.
He was watching the waitress trapped in her own private moment. He watched her shake her head slow from side to side, tightening up her mouth.

Liz ordered soup that was a barren, mars red. She crushed up crackers in her palm and the way she let them fall was more aesthetic than practical. Off-white specks tumbled onto cracked china. A moment later, she was ladling soup into her mouth.
The chicken he ordered was dry and cold. It left the insides of his mouth feeling dense. Was it right to eat when others were dying, when your father was dead? Was it right to sustain, while others were obliterated? Life should be arrested by death. He drank water and forgot that he had. By the time he drank again, he wasn't hungry anymore.
"You done? How was it?" The waitress had been talking on the phone while they ate, and now she seemed as if all of her was knotted up somewhere behind her breasts. James saw her inspect the plate. They didn't answer, but Liz reached out with her legs and they grazed his. He could feel the faint scratching of tiny yellow hairs just beginning to grow again .
Liz ordered a coffee and a slice of pie. The waitress brought the coffee over and began to wash the tables, sticking her fingers into the napkin dispensers to refill them. Liz drank slowly, pensively, looking vacant.
He thought about the funeral. He knew when they got there, Liz would be upset. An infuriated pillar. But she would stay.
He watched the waitress begin to cry, as she filled up shaker after shaker.