Michel was beautiful, and by the time he arrived at the center, I’d been in there just long enough that I’d pissed out whatever remnant chemicals were making my situation bearable. The way he said it — California, dragging the vowels out of the N — was so sonorous and vast that I knew going there with him was the obvious solution to my problems. It felt as though the gray, Illinois January outside the window of the common room was the sole cause of the oppressive, light-annihilating doom in me. Maybe I was just sensitive to the world, I was a mirror reflecting my environment, and if I went there, to California, my insides would grow as sunny as L.A., as limitless as the Pacific, and as beautiful as the faces of Hollywood starlets. When he came to me with the plan — self-discharge, a rental car, maxing out credit cards until we got there and found jobs as waiters or Erewhon blender boys — I said of course, because when I looked at him in group, his face with its heavy lashes and blue eyes and alabaster skin, undamaged, somehow, despite a decade of intravenous use, I was sure that he was under divine guardianship, and that if I were loved by him, if I stayed close to him for enough time, my bad luck would be dispelled and I could find shade in the penumbra of protection veiling him. But if I remained at the center after he left, I would be damned for not following one of God’s chosen.

That word, California, coming out of lips so plump I could not help but picture them wrapped around my cock, was like a spell, conjuring up a population of Lotus Eaters, tanned and beautiful. I pictured myself sober their way, leaving behind the dirty thrills of powders and prescription pills and adopting a healthy narcotic regimen of joints and edibles, going into a store to buy them, using a card and not worrying about fent or speed. It would be so easy. Because I’d never been with a man before, I thought that loving Michel would be like flipping a switch. In group, when someone said something maudlin about their childhood or abused the word “trauma,” he’d catch my eye and wink. A clear, bright world within this one opened, a world both of us could live in once we left the center.

In my one-on-one sessions, the therapist told me that I had a lot of shame about my sexuality, and that shame was what drove me to use. I thought that if I could just accept that what I wanted was a man, accept that what I wanted was Michel, I wouldn’t have to get so fucked up like I used to. I wouldn’t have to take a couple of Xans and drink a flat of beer to erase three days off the ledger of time. I would be treating the sickness that my substance abuse was just a symptom of. His love would keep me away from the chemicals I was otherwise using for relief from the incessant drag that was my own company. Michel and I could live in the hills somewhere with a vaguely Spanish name, buy an old, shitty convertible and take sunset drives while we listened to reverb-soaked pop songs, and live out the rest of our long days in tranquil euphoria. California. It seemed so obvious that I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. 

Michel could have picked up one of the girls in there who didn’t have a real problem — maybe the one who was there after her rich daddy caught her a handful of times with nothing more than a dusting of coke. Or he could have chosen the slinky boy with long dirty hair who crossed his arms over his chest during group to hide his formication scratching. But Michel chose me. He chose me to play board games or cards with, to take his daily walk with, to confide in. He chose me to say California to, and when he said it to me, I felt born again. It was the first moment in my life in which I felt like I wanted to get old because I was a person chosen by an angel, an election which meant that I was not rotten, that I did not deserve to die, that my life was worth more than filth and shit and I didn’t have to punish myself by living in squalor. The very texture of futurity changed. 

And so we set out for California, saying little but understanding each other perfectly, him with his hand on my thigh. The West unfurled for us from the horizon like a scroll. We stayed at nice motels in small towns, ate and drank the latest innovations in corn syrup, food dye, and palm oil. The way people treated Michel: I’d never seen anything like it before. No one, regardless of gender or orientation, was immune to his beauty. Our motel rooms were always upgraded free of charge, and whenever we asked someone filling gas for directions, they always told us they were going the same way: we could just follow them. He seemed unaware that this kindness was for him and him alone, but it confirmed for me his divinity. 

When we spoke, we told each other about our pasts: our attempts to be normal and love women and stay sober, our parents and how they’d fucked us up. A series of stepdads with different vices — liquor the first, oxys the second, benzos the third — for me. His parents were absent and rich. Little supervision, a well-stocked medicine cabinet, a wine cellar, and free-floating petty cash. We taxonomized our tastes and preferences, and I used every overlap to validate my faith that we were meant to be together. When I confessed that, though I didn’t really listen to pop music, I adored Björk, he put his hand on my thigh and said, I knew you were gay. Something, whatever it was that was wrong with me, came loose and left me through my toes. 

He fucked me that night at the Big Yellow Inn in Cedar City, Utah. When he entered me, I felt myself rupture. It was the ecstasy of the void, and I was purified by him, as though there was a pustule attached to my psyche, the sole cause of all my misery, which his cock had lanced and drained. After I came, I curled up into a ball in his arms and cried while he twirled strands of my hair with his index finger. It’s okay, he said. You’re okay, everything is going to be okay. I felt a spiritual relief, one that could not be compared to the relief of hunger satisfied or thirst slaked. I had been born destined for the gallows but was granted, by some greater-than-human benevolence, a permanent stay of execution. 

That night, I woke up alone in the bed with the feeling of his semen leaking out of me, matting the hair on the back of my thigh. I went to the bathroom and knocked, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t hear the sound of the tap running or or of urine hitting the toilet. I didn’t think much of it. I was tired, so I lay back down and waited, hoping he would come out soon so I could clean myself up, but he didn’t. I fell back asleep, and when I woke again at first light, he was asleep next to me. I watched him, wanting with all my being to touch him, but I was too scared to disturb him. His heavy eyelashes fluttered. His breathing was shallow. His was the only face deserving of the word. Everyone else had a disharmonious, chaotic assemblage of features: eyes, ears, noses, and tongues barely worthy of performing their functions. After an hour, I was confident that I’d created a perfect copy of my angel’s face in my mind. I showered and went down to the lobby — a repulsive, cheap, maximalist reception crusted in kitsch and Americana — for some coffee. I picked up one of the newspapers and read that oil had spilled, wars had broken out, a new budget had been passed. I was surprised that the entire world had not stopped. Why hadn’t everyone got the message? That we were in love and going to California? History and strife ought to have ended when he fucked me, ushering in a five-hundred-thousand year reign of peace. I went to the nearest gas station, bought a pack of cigarettes, and smoked a few on the way back.

I went to the room and woke him up. If we take turns behind the wheel, I said, we can get there today. We went to a drive-through and ate some garbage in the parking lot, and then we were back on the interstate. We didn’t say anything to each other. I mistook his silence for concentration on the road — he was an uneasy driver. You smell like shit, he said finally, when we were just outside Las Vegas. But I showered this morning, I started, trying not to cry. You smell like a chimney. I hate smokers, if I knew you were one I wouldn’t have brought you along. He didn’t even look at me. I was paralyzed for a few minutes, then managed to mumble out an apology. But I’m not a smoker, not usually. And I wasn’t, but the sobriety was starting to get to me and I needed something to take the edge off. I’ll throw them out the next time we stop, I added. Throw them out now, he said through gritted teeth. Throw them out right now. I rolled down the window, the whoosh of the expressway invading the car, and threw the pack out. I’m really sorry, I mumbled. I didn’t know. Michel said nothing so I turned the radio on, closed my eyes, and put my head against the window, hoping he would not see me cry. The image of a dog being hit with a rolled-up newspaper flashed on my eyelids as I fell asleep.

The next thing I remember was the sound of the car on rumble strips. I opened my eyes and saw that we were drifting in and out of the lane. Are you alright? I asked. I’m fine, he said, just a little tired. I’ll pull off at the next exit and we can use the bathroom and get some snacks, and you can take over, if that’s okay. The old gentleness had returned to his voice and I was grateful for this mercy. Of course, I said. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he brushed his cheek against it. He smiled, and I felt the ball in my stomach release. At the gas station I was ebullient again: I got a pickle in a bag, a couple of energy drinks, Ho Hos, a large bag of jalapeño chips, sour-candy-flavored popcorn, and a hot dog. I went out to pump gas while he used the toilet. When he came back out to the car, I hushed the voice in my head that said he looked high. I told myself that he was just sleepy and going through withdrawal. He fell asleep as soon as we were back on the highway. 

Whenever a car-deserted stretch permitted me the pleasure, I’d take little glances at his face in profile like bumps of coke. He was sleeping fitfully, mumbling a bit to himself, moving his head from shoulder to window to palm. I didn’t dare turn the radio on. Instead I thought of California, of sun and sand and beach, bougainvillea, eucalyptus trees, boardwalk astrologers. I made a list of every movie I had seen that was set in California, and every song I had heard about it. I tried to catalog all the ways its syllables had been sliced up, the way Joni Mitchell stalled on the L, whereas Lana Del Rey rolled the R. The word could accommodate all these variations while preserving the state’s essential promise of sunlit frictionlessness and freaky freedom. The monotony of the road lent itself to my fantasies: Michel and me in a white-sheeted bed, waking up late on a weekend morning with daylight breaking through sheer curtains; sitting across from him eating bland, healthy food on the terrace of an oceanside cafe, some kind of grain bowl with avocado; walking down the boardwalk holding hands while roller skaters passed us by. I could actually feel the hot sand on my back teasing loose shoulder knots. For those four hours, I did not have a single thought of my family or of my past. I was cruising at a velocity high enough to escape the gravity of my history. There was only the present, the endless highway, and California. What I felt for those four hours was what I had always sought without knowing. Each breath I took seemed to restart the world, each second was the first there ever was, and, though I retained myself, nothing separated me from everything outside me. I had broken free from my prison. We entered via San Bernardino as the light was beginning to fall. I was hoping that we might catch our first California sunset by the beach. I nudged him awake. We’re here, I said. What do you mean, here? he asked. Los Angeles, I said. This isn’t Los Angeles, he said. It’s the Inland Empire. There was a cruelty in his voice, familiar to me from any opioid comedown: the part when the pointy-edged world returns, cutting through the fog of well-being, and every voice, every passing second, every task that is not getting high again or sleeping feels impossible. Well, we’re in California, I said, laughing a little. Maybe we can get some tacos and sit on the beach?

We can’t, he said. The ocean’s three hours from here. It will be fully dark by the time we get there. He kept readjusting himself in the seat, but he couldn’t seem to get comfortable. He would hold a position for five seconds before exhaling loudly through pursed lips and slamming himself into the window or armrest. I wish you hadn’t woken me up, he said. I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t know we were still far away. I’ve never been to California before. I knew that, eventually, I would say or do something that would make him realize how ugly I was, and he would understand he’d made a mistake bringing me with him. We had hit a nasty vein of standstill traffic, and Michel put his elbow on the center console and his head in his hand. Can we pull off? I need to use the bathroom again, he said. 

The off-ramp led up to a four-way intersection above the interstate. While crossing the lanes to get to it, I enumerated my flaws — neuroticism, perversion, gluttony, sloth — and tried to figure out how to exorcise them. I thought that I could postpone his leaving me if I could make myself into someone deserving of his love. I was silently vowing to take up meditation, talk therapy, pharmacological intervention, a strict diet and weight-training routine, when I rolled into a car stopped at the light.

It was only a small bump on a shitty Corolla, but the driver got out and started pounding on the hood of our rental and screaming. One of his vascular, sun-damaged arms was covered with blown-out, faded tattoos, and he had a neck like a tree stump. I froze. I could think of nothing to do except sit there with my hands on the steering wheel. I stared straight ahead, trying not to hear the words streaming from his mouth. The guy went back to his car and opened his glove compartment. He came back with a screwdriver and hit my window. It cracked. I watched the screwdriver butt come down again. A shard of glass caught my eyebrow, and a stream of acrid blood stung my eye. 

Oh shit, Michel said from the passenger seat. I heard his seatbelt unbuckle and the car unlock. I watched him sprint to the Corolla and get into the driver’s seat. The tattooed man took a second to realize what was happening. He stopped screaming at me and ran back to his car. He managed to grab the car door just as Michel was closing it. The tattooed man tried pulling my beloved out of the car by his shirt, but Michel held tightly to the steering wheel. I got out of the car and jumped on the tattooed man’s back, his neck in the crook of my elbow. He let go of Michel’s shirt to fight me off, and I watched the Corolla peel away, running the red. The man got me off him and squared up, his right fist still around the screwdriver. You fucking faggot, he said. I’m going to kill you. I remember hoping he meant it. The screwdriver butt arced toward my temple, and I could see the brake lights of all the cars, thousands of them, stretched out on the interstate below. They looked like the eyes of some horrible beast.

At the hospital, one police officer took my I.D. to run it through the system while another took my statement. I tried to spin a version of the story that omitted any mention of Michel stealing a car, though I’m not sure I was coherent. Though he had deserted me, I couldn’t bring myself to incriminate him. I had received his message, and though I would miss him, I didn’t want him to go to prison. The withdrawal, disappointment, and head trauma made me feel trapped inside myself, like there was no link between me and the outside world, and I could not gauge the officer’s reaction — if he believed what I was saying, if he found my narrative style charming or annoying. The second officer returned to my bed and handed me my driver’s license. You were reported missing by your family in Illinois, he said. I threw my head back and closed my eyes. When I’m discharged, I thought, I’ll return through will to the world inside of this one. Michel is not its sole door, just a messenger from it. I started to cry. I listened, through the ringing in my ears, to the breathing of oxygen machines and the beeping of heart rate monitors. 

Okay, I’ll give them a call, I said, wiping my eyes. We’ll let you know if we find the man who assaulted you, though it’s going to be hard without the license plate, the first cop said. Feel free to stop by the station if you think of anything else.

The nurse saw me crying. She came to the side of my bed with sympathy. Can I get you anything, dear? she asked. She adjusted the pillow and pressed a few buttons on the monitors. I think I’m all right for now, but thank you, I said. I’m really sorry all that happened to you, she said, and from the tone of her voice I could tell that she meant it. That’s really horrible. I knew that if she had the ability to, she would go back in time and undo it all, to spare me what she thought of as my suffering. I pitied her.