It could never be enough: Excerpt from "The Vultures"

Hello, this is an excerpt from my second book, "The Vultures". I've been working on it for about five years. Its a coming-of-age story about a band that goes on tour after graduating high school, centering on two protagonists who struggle with their love for one another despite their differing values.

Its about growing up when you try your hardest not to:

ADAM

        What will become of us?
        She leaves these messages on my voicemail: she says, Hey, it’s Me. Like I don’t know it’s Envy, calling me from Scotty’s phone because she lost her Blackberry when she was drunk. I can’t stop her from over here. I can’t slow her down when she slurs an apology onto a damp Starbucks napkin, I can’t taste her on the envelope she sent my letter in.
        We didn’t stop speaking, but we lost touch. I retrace my steps; I walk backwards through my simple life before Envy like a ghost. Into the hotel lobby where I first held her, trusting her. Outside Hawk’s House where I helped her carry her drum equipment and she invited me into her life.

        What will become of her? Will she become one of those girls she hates, or is she already? One hundred miles, a seven-dollar train ride, but it’s too much for her. We tried, we really tried to spend the rest of our lives together, and we only made it six months.
        What Envy and I shared could not exist outside of the van. It could thrive on the open road, but it could not stand still. Nothing is ever lost, she used to say, it is only somewhere else. We were somewhere else, together, somewhere with seductive palm trees, somewhere with seagulls singing above a marina, somewhere where we didn’t make promises, only cultivated hope. We didn’t tie each other down, we set each other free like a flurry of kites soaring into the sky.

        What will become of me? If I can’t run away with her, then where will I run to? One day I’ll quit the motel for good, and find another job that I don’t hate yet. One day I’ll meet another girl, and maybe she will tell me all her secrets before someone else does. She won’t talk about quitting smoking, she will just quit. But I know whoever she is, she won’t be good enough for a very long time.
        And until then I’ll sit with my back turned to the parking lot outside the snow-frosted window of the truck stop. I’ll listen to Carter’s miserable stories and Miranda’s self-loathing complaints until my ears bleed. I’ll put my guitar up for sale on craigslist but I’ll keep asking too much for it so that if someone is ever going to take it from me, it better be worth letting go.
        One day she will stop sending me letters. Or, one day I will send one of hers back, unopened. Or maybe I will actually respond to one of them. I have so much to say, but it never comes out right, so I bite my tongue and hope that by the time I’m ready to talk, she won’t want to listen anymore.

THE DRY SPELL: Prologue

ELENA

           I know he is here.

My senses are heightened with the silence of the desert, my ears pricking up like a fawn stalked in the forest. I can hear his labored breathing, heavy from decades of Cuban cigar smoke. I can smell his repulsive cologne, hanging so thick in the air it chokes me and makes me want to cough, but I must remain as still as an elf owl. 

The hunter is here, in my home. My husband is here. 

I have managed to lock myself in a suffocating compartment beneath my house, and as I hear his Italian leather shoes crushing the gravel above me, I recall the childhood story of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf has come to blow my house down, and he has come wearing his usual disguise. 

The analogy of the wolf does not quite fit, however. He is not a lone wolf, but more like a leader of a pack of hyenas. One would think someone as quiet as a mouse and delicate as a bluebird would pose no threat to him, but still he has come. He has come to take my life. I have nowhere to run in a landscape of mica and dust, so I must hide, shutting my eyes so tightly so that maybe I can disappear. 

            He crashes through the house like a hurricane, destroying everything in his path. My garden is demolished. My handmade clothes are torn to shreds. My kitchen where I prepare thousands of raw, vegan meals to malnourished children and the impoverished inhabitants of Skid Row, my living room where I have gathered meetings of friends and supporters of The No Impact movement, my bedroom where I have prayed for enlightenment, guidance, and (most importantly) safety and freedom from my husband, the CEO of the most powerful computer company in the world; all of these sacred places in my home are devoured by the Man with the Insatiable Hunger. 

            In the darkness of my hiding place I am smiling. He cannot take away from me what I have acquired because the wealth cannot be measured by any physical currency. I am smiling with the knowledge that the world is ending, and therefore none of the things we used to own/He owns/I had/He destroyed will remain when it is over. 

I am smiling because, though he may be the richest man in the world, I am the most powerful woman. He knows this, though the declaration has never passed through my lips. I am smiling because the man who has always preferred sleeping with other women is now jealous of me. 

I am smiling because he will never catch me.