Let's Get Lost. Adi Alsaid

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      AFTER HE WAS done fixing Leila’s car, Hudson went to the back of the shop to change out of his work clothes while Leila settled the bill with his dad. When he came out, he saw her sitting in the front passenger seat of her idling car.

      “I’m driving?” he asked as he opened the driver-side door.

      “You’re the tour guide,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm as if to indicate that the world beyond the windshield was vast and unexplored. “Guide me.”

      She smiled at him, and he thought to himself that she was exceptionally good at smiling. He shifted the car into drive and pulled out onto the street, wondering where to take her, how to get her to smile more often. The obvious treasure was the oxbow, but it was too far away. Everything that was nearby held fond memories—the Coca-Cola museum he’d gone to on every birthday until he was twelve, the ice cream shop that invited its customers to suggest new, strange flavors and had once taken up Hudson’s request for Bacon Chocolate—but the only way to transplant memories onto places and make them feel like treasures to her was to talk. He usually didn’t have trouble talking to girls, even beautiful ones, but while he didn’t quite feel tongue-tied around her, he didn’t know how to begin. “It’s very red in here,” he said at last.

      “I know. It’s pretty much why I bought it. It was love at first sight.”

      “So I’m going to go out on a limb and assume red is your favorite color.”

      “I like red—don’t get me wrong. But I have a deep appreciation for anything that is willing to be totally and utterly itself. If you’re going to be red, well, then, be red, goddamnit. From your steering wheel to your hubcaps, be red.”

      Hudson could only nod to himself. He’d never met anyone who talked this way, the way he thought. The brakes chirped loudly as he slowed for a stop sign, and he assured Leila that they worked fine. They just liked to sing. He turned left on Maryland so that the sun wouldn’t blind him while he thought of something to show Leila. “What about you?” he asked after completing the turn. “What are you?”

      “Me?” she said, feigning innocence. She kicked off her flip-flops and put her feet up on the dashboard. Hudson imagined what it would be like to be her boyfriend, which was the first time he’d ever had such a thought without immediately dismissing it. To go on long drives with her as she sang along shyly to music, to lie on the grass somewhere and confess things to each other, find ways to cuddle around movie-theater cup-holders. “I am a treasure-tourist. And my tour guide has yet to show me a single treasure. Where are we going?”

      Hudson took her toward downtown. They passed a couple of motel chains off the highway, a spattering of restaurant and fast-food places, everything flat and that shade of beige that felt duller than gray. Nothing felt like enough of a treasure to show Leila.

      Afraid that she’d grow bored, though, Hudson turned the car into the parking lot of the bowling alley as soon as he saw it. Through the large windowpane he could see that the place was full, fluorescent balls rolling down the eighteen lanes in varying speeds, ending in silent white explosions of pins.

      “When I was a kid, I came to a slumber party here,” he said, looking out at the squat, sky-blue building. He was flooded by warm memories of the night and wished there was a way to share them with Leila, to show her just how special it had actually been. “We bowled until two in the morning and then set up our sleeping bags on the lanes. Any time I drive by here, I wonder how many other kids have had the chance to sleep in a bowling alley before.”

      Hudson stared out the windshield, admiring how the bowling alley’s façade matched the cloudless sky, the tacky and faded window art that had been there since his childhood. He noticed Leila glancing around and realized he’d been quiet for a while. “C’mon, I’ll show you around.”

      * * *

      The place was loud with the usual sounds: balls rolling down the lanes, crashing into pins. A little boy tried to prevent a gutter ball by shrieking at it, and groups cheered a strike. The interior was painted the same baby blue as the outside. A “wall of fame” was on display by the shoe counter. The tiny snack bar practically dripped with pizza grease.

      “This turns into a salsa club on Tuesday nights,” Hudson said. “The lanes make for a great dance floor.”

      Leila smiled and gave him a light shove, letting him know that she wasn’t falling for it. But she looked around the room as if searching for clues that it might be true. As she swiveled her head, Hudson caught a glimpse of a scar poking out from her hairline behind СКАЧАТЬ