The First Chapter Of My Novel

for you to read.

I’ve been working on this novel for three years. I still haven’t decided on the title. I’m feeling kind of zany today, so I decided to post the first chapter on substack for you to read. Lemme know what you think in the comments! And if you really like it feel free to share it however.

(You can also listen to an excerpt from the middle of the novel here)

Chapter 1

Bets

My battery is low and it’s getting dark. I pull my phone from my pocket, thinking I’ll check the map one last time before it dies. The screen lights up and then goes black, leaving me without direction in an unfamiliar part of the city. The asphalt is cracked here, clumps of dry yellow grass grow up in spots. On the right are what once were storefronts, now shuttered, decades of graffiti layered on top of itself, illegible. There’s a doorway that’s missing a door, a pile of trash in the shadows just inside. I don’t usually come to this area. While you could say that this whole city is dangerous, there are neighborhoods I’ve spent my whole life coming to know. When I’m in those neighborhoods I’m not afraid- I’m just home. This is not one of those neighborhoods. I tap at the button on my phone again. Nothing. Georgia was supposed to text tonight. I haven’t heard from her in a week. I risked this outing tonight for her- Georgia and I opened up another abandoned apartment building recently, and if I can store up some cash we can move a whole group in to occupy it, and it will become impossible for the city to evict. I’ve got to get out of the backyard where I’ve been living in a tent. That situation has been stable enough- paying the tenants in the run-down adobe house there, squatters themselves, $2400 a month for the privacy and security of camping behind their tall metal fence- but a few days ago we received a notice from the city, a sheet of paper taped to the front door, to the fence, and to all the other crumbling houses nearby- these sheets of paper fluttering in the wind, falling onto the broken sidewalk- what a waste of paper! That the city means to demolish the entire block in order to build another workhouse for the prison. 

If I can get a group of people together to move into this abandoned apartment building, not only will it give me a place to live- behind walls, even! But I know that Georgia will move in with me too. For years I’ve dreamt of a place for both of us, and this is the first spark of hope I’ve had that it might actually be possible.

Still I wish that Georgia would text, to settle my nerves. Her absence aches, a pain I feel in my bones. How many times has she disappeared like this? The pain never lessens, the panic that wakes me at night, sends my mind cartwheeling. If we had a place together, maybe she wouldn’t want to leave so much. If we had a place together, maybe she would stay.

I tap the phone again and then give up, slip it back into my pocket and peer ahead at the darkening street. It’s quiet but I know that somewhere, in these buildings, are people- a family here and there that’s managed to make a small, protected world- a labyrinth of flaking hallways and a series of locked doors that lead to a spray of bougainvillea in a walled garden, a grandmother hanging laundry to dry, an old man frying cricket gruel patties, maybe even a child. 

There’s a soft thump as an orange cat drops from a windowsill and saunters past. I think about the client I’m about to see- I’ve met with him before, and the vibe wasn’t great. Normally I don’t see anyone a second time if the vibe isn’t perfect. My situation right now is much more urgent than I would like it to be. At the intersection I squint, trying to make out the name of the street in the gloaming. There aren’t any streetlights- streetlights break over time and things don’t really get repaired anymore so the city has been in a long, slow slide towards darkness. I think this is the right street though? I hang a right and a few houses up there’s the green door, right where he said it would be. This isn’t where I met this client last time- I wonder if this is where he lives, or if he just rented the apartment to meet up. 

I contemplate the green door for a time. Has Georgia ever told me that she loves me? No. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t be so anxious if she did. But really, for me to not be anxious, Georgia would have to become an entirely different person. And if Georgia was a different person I probably wouldn’t love her so much.

I touch the door, think about knocking. I try to pull Georgia out of my head but she’s everywhere, like when you cut through a brush-filled alley in the morning and get covered in cobwebs. It’s just… it’s the way she makes me feel. Or rather, it’s the way I feel normally- empty, lonely no matter how many people I’m around. And the way that when I’m with her, that feeling goes away, and I’m whole.

Shut up! I hiss to myself. Focus! 

The door opens a crack and I startle. A man peers out. 

“You’re not the girl I remember,” he says. He’s dressed like anyone you might see on the street, hustling to one of the workhouses before the sun comes up- faded shirt, the buttons at the neck undone, wrinkled pants stretched at the knees, a patchy beard. But you can tell that he’s rich- the skin of his face is smooth and his posture is straight, as though he’s spent his whole life looking up.

“It’s me,” I say, tugging down the hood of my jacket and pulling my long hair loose. He looks me up and down, swings the door wide. There’s a lamp without a shade that throws a harsh light on one side of the room, the rest is cast in shadow. A mattress on a metal frame sits in the middle of the room, made up with worn sheets and a couple of fleece blankets, a few lumpy pillows. Chunks of plaster are missing near the ceiling, exposing cinderblocks. On the scratched dresser top is a small stack of a bills, which I palm and fold into my pocket.

The man is staring at me, wordless. I prefer them more talkative, rambling even, but I can handle this. I unbutton my long jacket and let it fall onto the bed. I’m wearing lingerie, one of two sets I own, this set blue. I feel powerful in this, I like the way the many straps make geometry of the planes of my body, the way my skin glows in the lamplight. The man says nothing, just continues to stare. That’s ok. I refuse to be unnerved by him. I cross the room, hold his gaze while I trace my fingers along the leg of his work slacks. He smells like cigarettes and laundry soap. The button on his pants comes undone easily, the zipper too, I tug them down and drop to my knees.

“No. The bed,” he says, motioning.

“Ok.” I shimmy out of my thong. I’m bored already, I want this to be over. Sex work is one sure way to make an hour feel like eternity. While he fucks me I’ll think about the apartment that Georgia and I will share one day. The little garden we’ll plant in an abandoned lot nearby. The basil and small tomatoes, still warm from the sun, that I’ll gather for our meals. I’m hungry. I should’ve eaten dinner before this. In a few minutes he’ll be done, and I’ll have to find a way to make the rest of the hour pass. Usually they’re chatterboxes, thrilled to talk while I listen, and all I have to do is smile and nod. What to do with a guy who doesn’t speak?

Suddenly his hands are around my throat and he’s on top of me, pressing me into the bed with his entire weight. He’s not fucking me, his clothes aren’t even off. He’s staring at me with an empty, fixed gaze as he tightens his grip. For a moment I forget where I am. How did I get here? I try to push him off, I hit him with my closed fists but he doesn’t budge, doesn’t even blink or break eye contact. Sounds in the room begin to move farther away, spots appear at the corners of my vision. Good god, this is not the way I want to die. I grope the blankets of the bed, find my jacket. I fumble with it, find the knife in the inside pocket, work it free from its sheath with my one hand and drive it into his neck, all the way to the hilt.

His hands move off my neck, and onto his own. Warm blood sprays me in the face. The look in his eyes shifts- from vacancy to terror. He rolls off me, making terrible shapes with his mouth, and I scramble out of the bed, try to stand up and fall onto the floor. I wait for the sound to come back, for the spots in my vision to retreat. When the world returns it’s still, there’s no movement in the room. I close my eyes and see the sunrise on the rooftop where Georgia and I sleep sometimes, long yellow light slipping over the city. Georgia beside me, dusty quilt wrapped around her body, one leg kicked out in spite of the mosquitoes. I open my eyes, see the sticky red handprints on the floor. Oh.

I’ve got to think. The man’s body is a jumble between the bed and the wall. Fuck. 

Find his money. It’s not my everyday mind talking, the one that heats corn gruel for Georgia’s breakfast, seasons it with figs dried in the sun, folds our blankets and stashes them neatly in the stairwell. It’s not the me who makes bouquets from the flowers that grow wild in the empty lots and knows all the dusty street cats. It’s a different mind. My survival mind. That clever, agile part that developed in me when I was a child, living in the sedan with mother, sleeping on the cracked pleather of the backseat while the rain drummed on the metal roof and then later, on my own, wrenching parts in the junkyard to earn my keep. Find his money. He doesn’t need it now. And you do. 

Where would the money be, though? The room is empty, save for a suit jacket on a single hanger in the shallow closet. I pull open the dresser drawers- empty, empty, empty and then bingo- a black backpack in the bottom drawer. Inside are manilla file folders, stuffed with papers. Maybe his wallet is in his pants pocket? I don’t want to touch the body, though. I would pay money not to have to touch the body. I rifle through the papers. The adrenaline is wearing off and a shadowy presence seems to lurk in the corners of the room. I should get going soon. There’s a document with a photo on it. It’s a photo of the man, taken from the front. He’s standing against a wall, unsmiling. It’s some sort of identification document. For his work maybe? Feldspar Corporation, says the text at the top of the document. So this man works in the offices of the corporation that owns all of the prisons. He’s one of many cogs in a huge, lumbering machine. Or rather, he was. 

“Sorry dude,” I say, under my breath. “You shouldn’t have tried to kill me.” The document says that his name is Proteus Feldspar. I laugh. What a weird coincidence. There’s another Proteus Feldspar- the black sheep of the Feldspar family. One of four Feldspar brothers, heirs to the family empire. But he’s the brother who’s never seen at public events, rarely included in family photos. It’s said he disappointed his father when he was younger and so he lives a life apart, on his own. Some people don’t believe that he exists at all. 

I study the document more closely. There’s an address. It’s on Zircon Road. I know that area- the whole place is gated. It’s where some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the city live. Could this be the real Proteus Feldspar? If so, why would he come to a much sketchier part of town and meet up with me, when he could have some high-class sex worker in his own part of town?

But then, I know why. If you want to murder sex workers, you go after the ones that no one will miss.

Anger rises in me like acid. I crumple the paper, throw it across the room. If the man wasn’t already dead, I would kill him a second time. 

So he’s possibly the real Proteus Feldspar, then. Stupid evil motherfucker. Wanted to murder sex workers and so I had to kill him, and now I’m in trouble. 

The shadows in the corners swirl. They’re growing impatient. The shadows have known this whole time. The shadows knew when I woke this morning, when I made the decision to meet with this man. The shadows knew my next move before I did. They always do.

Since I haven’t yet died in a shower of gunfire, it seems that our dearly departed Proteus came out here alone, without any kind of security. So how much time do I have? If he rented this place, his body will be discovered when the housekeeper comes to tidy the room- I imagine a shriek, towels and cleaning products clattering to the floor. Soon after, his father will know. And there will be a manhunt. His fingernails are full of my DNA. His family owns the prisons, but I doubt I’ll end up there. I’ll just be dead. Deader than dead. No more sunsets with Georgia on the roof, sharing a loaf of stale bread and hearing the crickets come on. Just dead.

The panic is dancing around me in a circle now, holding hands with itself.

Find the money. I take a deep breath, send it down into the center of the earth. I do not feel, I do not have thoughts. It takes all my strength to turn the body over. What is this man made of, cement? I pat down his front, pull the square shape from his pants pocket. Remove the cash. Something glints in the overhead light- it’s his wristwatch. Without thinking I unfasten the clasp and pull it free. It’s the old style of wristwatch, entirely mechanical- these have been making a comeback among the elite lately, as power grids become less stable and the components that make up more modern tech become harder to find. I turn the watch over. It’s beautiful. The metal is heavy and cool as I slip it onto my own wrist and fasten the clasp. In the bathroom I rinse the blood from my hands, face, neck and chest. I stare at my face in the mirror, my eyes as empty as his were earlier. I knot the belt of my long jacket and step out into the street, closing the door quietly behind me. 

I’m almost to my neighborhood when I see the twirling lights of a cop car and get spooked. I duck into an alleyway, grab the ladder of a fire escape and haul myself up. The metal is cool in my hands. The stairs ring out under my sneakers as I climb. The rooftop is painted white and there’s a pool. The edge of the pool is strung in small, twinkling lights. It feels like a scene from an alternate world. I’d like to curl up on one of these lounge chairs and wait until dawn. But through the glowing window of the rooftop apartment I can see a young couple preparing dinner. I can’t hide here. 

The fire escape on the other side of the building drops me back down into the street, where I move quickly through the darkness again. I run the last mile and a half to my block. The money I make as a sex worker is the only reason I can afford my spot at all. A few days a week I put on false eyelashes and listen as terrible men boast about the fortunes they’ve amassed extracting labor from the working class and then investing this money in ways that further destroy the earth. These are often ancient men, close to their own deaths, and they are content to take the future with them when they go. They are shallow, lacking in insight, almost unbelievably dim. They consider themselves brilliant because they found a finite thing that had not yet been depleted and they depleted it. They were first at the finishing line in the race to the end of the world.

I tell these men I work cutting hair. They think that I’m respectable. A good girl. They do not know hairdressers make so little these days that they live in the camps in the abandoned lots with everybody else. The camps are free, I often wonder if I should live in the camps too, and save my money. $2,400 buys me security though. Here in this backyard, it’s unlikely my shit will get stolen. It’s unlikely that I’ll be robbed in my sleep. For $2,400 a month I am free from that. 

I stop running and stand on the dark sidewalk, my breathing labored. I can’t go home right now. I need to talk to someone about this. But who?

Of course where I’d most like to go is to wherever Georgia is. I’d like to run into her arms, let myself sink into her as if into a warm bath. Feel her fingers in my hair, press my face into her dress that smells of rosewater and the warm living animal of her body. The sound of her voice like flowing water, washing my troubles away.

I can’t go to Georgia. There’s only one other person I want to talk to right now. I enter a vast empty lot that has been repurposed as a guerilla garden- rows of corn, tomatoes, wild overgrown flowerbeds. There are trellises and shadecloth everywhere. I crouch low and make my way among the rows. Now and then the white wash of headlights move over me. The light makes a shadow puppet play of tomatoes, their shapes dancing over my jacket and then away. Then darkness again.

The rows grow more ragged and wild as I near the east end of the garden. Beyond this garden is the rubble of a burnt tenement building, scooped into mounds on a stretch of broken concrete sprinkled with glass that glitters in the dark. People have set up tents here, among the ruins, towed busted trailers onto this lot. 

My phone makes a notification noise. I pull it from my pocket- I thought the battery was dead? The screen lights up for just a moment- no text- and then dies again. I have a paranoid thought. Is my phone tracking me? I’m not sure it’s paranoia, though. This phone is supposed to be safe- I paid a good deal of money to a tech guy on the black market to remove any tracking software from this phone. the city is always coming up with new tracking software, though. You have to keep on top of it, which is expensive. Since I’ve been trying to save money, it’s been a few months since I’ve had my phone checked out. If there is tracking software on this phone, I’m fucked. Now my phone feels warm, as though it’s alive. It bleets again. I feel suddenly very visible, as though there’s a glowing target on my head. Fuck.

In the soft darkness at the end of the rubble is a tall chain link fence, beyond which lies a junkyard. I twist the knob on a combination lock on the fence, pop it open and pull it from the large chain that holds the gate closed. I enter the shadowy world of busted cars, their rusted bodies hulking in the tall grass. I move slow until I find the worn path, its shape familiar under my feet, and I follow it as it wends through the junked vehicles. There’s no movement in the lot but I can feel eyes watching me, can almost make out the whispers. At the end of the junkyard is a wooden shack, its singular window glowing with yellow light. A bit of plywood on cinderblocks serves as a step up to the wooden deck, which creaks under my weight. From within the shack comes music- fiddle tunes.

I rap on the door.

“It’s me, Bets,” I call out.

“Bets!” says the big man who flings the door wide, a grin splitting his face in two. I let him hug me- he smells of engine grease and butterscotch candies. “I haven’t seen you in years!” He holds me at arms length. “Is it really you?”  His words turn into a cough which rattles him, rattles the entire shack, and he releases me. 

“Beryl!” I say. “Are you sick?” 

He shakes his head, waves his arm for me to enter the shack, continues to cough. In the shack is a dirty couch, its cushions smashed in, a colorful, merry quilt thrown over it. A small table cluttered with papers, yellow receipt books, dog-eared manuals, the stubs of pencils, a calculator. A wood cookstove with a kettle on top and a cast iron dutch oven crusted with the remnants of black beans. A mattress on wooden pallets. The mattress is grey, no sheets, a pile of twisted blankets at the foot like an animal’s nest, two pillows that look like they’ve been beaten half to death. There’s a bookshelf stuffed with more manuals and on one of the shelves a tape player- the source of the music- and a shoebox of tapes. I settle into the couch. The couch is so familiar to me and I feel my body relaxing, as though I could disappear here, curl up under this merry, filthy quilt and actually sleep.

“I only have unflavored tea to offer you, I’m afraid,” says Beryl once he can breathe again. He ladles water from a bucket into the kettle and assembles kindling in the cookstove. 

“Hot water is fine,” I say, smiling. “You know I’ve never actually had tea, except the herbal kind my mother gathered.”

“That’s right,” says Beryl. “There’s so many things you kids don’t miss, because you never had them in the first place. I suppose it’s better that way.”

“Beryl,” I say. He pauses at stuffing wood into the stove and looks at me. “I killed someone.”

“You did not,” he says, turning back to the stove.

“I did. He was strangling me so I shoved my knife into his neck.” My consciousness is trying to float out of my body but I grab it like the string of a helium balloon and pull it down, back into me. 

“My god,” says Beryl. He sits back on his heels and stares into the stove as small flames lick at the wood shavings he’s placed atop the kindling. “These things do happen. I just hoped that they would never happen to you.”

“It’s worse than that,” I say. “He was Proteus Feldspar. One of the Feldspar brothers. You know, the black sheep one?”

“How in the hell were you hanging out with one of the Feldspar brothers?” says Beryl, and then he shakes his head. “You know, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“I didn’t know it was him. And I wouldn’t have stabbed him, except to save my life. But now I’m fucked. I can’t go home. And you were the only person I could think to come to.”

Beryl sighs. He closes the metal door of the cookstove and sits, staring at it for a time. The kettle begins to rock and then whines as it comes to a boil. There’s a clean mug overturned on a dishtowel and Beryl plucks it up, pours it full of boiling water.

“Thank you,” I say, as Beryl sets the mug on the stained coffee table in front of the couch. Beryl lowers himself onto the couch next to me and I feel the cushions sink under his weight. He folds his swollen, eczema-reddened hands across the big belly of his overalls. The tea is too hot to drink but I hold it close anyway, savoring the warmth.

“If this is true…then you’ve got to leave the city,” says Beryl, finally.

“What?” I say. “To where? Where will I go?” 

Beryl shakes his head. “West. As far west as you can get.”

I close my eyes, focusing on the feeling of the steam on my face. I’m on the rooftop with Georgia and this heat is the rising sun. It’s midsummer, and in an hour it’ll be too hot to be up here. I’m folding our blankets away as Georgia runs her fingers through her hair, plaits it into a long braid.

“I’ve never been out of the city,” I say. “It’s all I know. And besides, I can’t leave Georgia. I don’t know where she is right now, I’d have no way to tell her I’m going.”

“Yes,” says Beryl, sighing. “And if you stay they’ll kill you.”

I turn the mug of hot water around in my hands. There’s a Christmas tree on it. “But the checkpoints,” I say. “And I don’t even have a map. And what’s out there? Burnt-out suburbs? A thousand miles of desert? And what about the militias?”

Beryl is staring at me, his eyes wet and rimmed in red. The skin of his face is pocked and scarred, and he looks about a thousand years old. Has he always been this old?

“You know I always heard,” says Beryl. “The farther you get from the city, the less militias and feds there are. The state doesn't have much resources left. Very little gasoline, ammunition, grid power. It uses what it has in the cities, to police us. The countryside has been totally abandoned. And the militias can't stand to be without their trucks and their guns. You won't have access to much manufactured goods or electricity out there but if you can find a way to scrape out a life, you can be free. I've always heard that there are people out there, doing just that.” 

“That’s insane,” I say. “I don’t know the first thing about that. I’d definitely die.”

“If you stay here you’ll die,” says Beryl. He pauses for a long moment. “And you know, it’s not just me who thinks you should go west.” He pushes himself up from the couch slowly. “It’s your mother too.”

“My mother?” I say. Beryl shuffles past the bed, ducks behind a curtain into a closet, reappears a few minutes later.

“I’ve been saving this for you,” he says. He hands me an envelope, soft at the corners and covered in dirty smudges. Inside is a sheet of notebook paper folded into thirds. 

Dear Bets,

Once you’re grown, come to Nevada where the wild burros are. We can make a life here.

“How long have you had this?” I say, stunned.

“Years. Your mother said not to give it to you until you were grown. I suppose you’re grown now. You’re what, twenty?”

“But I told you that she disappeared when I was a kid, and you know I’ve always wondered where she went,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me about this letter? All these years without a word from her.” My eyes are filling with tears.

“It’s dangerous beyond the city,” says Beryl. “Like you said. Your mother wanted me to wait to give you this note. I imagine she thought if I gave it to you when you were still just a kid you would try and find her, and you wouldn’t make it out there. You’re older now, you’re more likely to survive.”

“How did she get this note to you?”

Beryl shrugs. “The same way everything gets past the checkpoints. I imagine it was smuggled. The guy I get carburetors from, one day he just had it for me.”

I cannot speak. Again, I grab the balloon string of my consciousness and yank it down, back into my body.

“I wondered where she was for all these years,” I say, so quiet that I’m not sure I’ve even spoken aloud.

Beryl is silent. Then, a fire in my chest, like an engine finally turning over.

“Why didn’t she come back for me, then? Why didn’t she come back?”

“I imagine it was too dangerous for her to return. What good is she to you if she dies trying to get to you? Better for her to wait in Nevada until you’re old enough to make the journey to join her.”

“No seriously, if she’s been out there waiting for me this whole time, fuck her. Why should I go all the way to Nevada, through the deserts and god knows what, just to find her. Can’t you help me Beryl? Please? You must know some other place I can go. Somewhere not as far. You must have connections. I don’t want to leave this place that I know. And I can’t leave Georgia. She’s all I have. She’s my whole world.”

“I'm sorry peanut. All my connections are junkyard people. And I’ve never gone outside the city myself. You’re tough. I don’t know what’s out there but it’s got to be better than this, and if you can survive this then you can survive that too.”

“Do you know where Nevada is, at least? I don't even have a map.” 

Beryl shakes his head. “What about your buddy Malachite who gets things on the black market, used to find me parts when you lived at the junkyard?”

“If it's so great out beyond the cities, why don't you go there, Beryl?” I’m crying now. “Why have you stayed?”

“I was born in this junkyard, and I mean to die here, Bets.”

“You're not gonna die.”

“Well. Maybe I don't want to live.”

(You can also listen to an excerpt from the middle of the novel here)