T Rex

Thanksgiving. Tia chooses a seat in the rear of the plane, beside the window. Sometimes, being hemmed in is just the thing.

The last time she traveled was in August. Albuquerque. She’d joined her oldest friend, Myeong and Myeong’s pre-teen daughter, Jae. The two were on a road trip through the American Southwest. In merciless heat, they had hiked to petroglyphs and ridden a gondola up the pink Sandia Mountains. At a flamenco show, a local dancer dashed her frothy skirt, and Tia’s breath had caught. The server asked, “Are you enjoying yourselves?” an awkward moment, since Jae had refused to sit with or speak to them. Myeong was embarrassed about it. But why? Myeong was still on a wonderful road trip with her kid. There was bound to be turbulence.

A fitness mom with her hair in a tight ponytail chooses the seat beside Tia. She situates her toddler next to her. Across the aisle is the husband. He buckles himself in and closes his eyes, smiling serenely. “Asshole,” mutters the mom, stowing bags and snacks and toys, then buckling herself and her daughter in. This is a capable woman who doesn’t pretend not to be. Tia herself was what she thinks of as a Columbo Wife. Handling everything while taking great pains to appear as if she wasn’t.

In Albuquerque last summer, Tia and her friends visited the Museum of the Weird, in Old Town. It was Jae’s idea. They entered through Mad Lizard Curios n Swag. Ran a gamut of shrunken heads, the FeeJee Mermaid, The Minnesota Iceman, and three different taxidermized two-headed cows. On the second level and across a tiny outdoor courtyard, there was a tiny, black-walled theater where the guide swore Johnny Depp lived for a time.

The performer was named Ronald T Rex. He looked and sounded a little like a young John Lennon but with tiny non-functional arms, hence his name. Ronald T Rex had a great personality. Upbeat and wry. He explained that he was a rare type of person who did not feel the effects of electrical current. He grabbed an exposed end of a thick electrical cord, turned on the power and made a light bulb glow when a volunteer by touching it to his skin. He’d explained to his small audience that people like him don’t have the ability to sweat. That they needed cool places, always.

Tia had observed the man closely. Here was a person who performed in a black box. Lived behind it, for all she knew. Tiny arms and this electricity thing. And imagine needing a cool environment—in the desert. It was his spirit that inspired. She was so compelled by the Ronald T Rex that she understood for a moment the kind of feeling that called her ex-husband to start up with the receptionist at his dentist. Leave behind all he knew to stride through a portal into the unknown.

The flight attendant is demonstrating the things everyone should do in case of an emergency. The mother beside Tia tells her toddler daughter not to be mad if she dons her own mask first. She does not make eye contact with Tia, yet she is making the joke for Tia’s benefit.

“Save yourself,” Tia wants to warn her. “Before your husband flies the coop and your kid texts that you need to stop being a rescuer and that you’ve got to wean yourself from him.”

A little later, the flight attendant stops at their aisle. Tia orders a Heineken. Her neighbor smiles, says Bloody Mary.

Tia smiles back, remembering the Albuquerque showman’s spirit. It was the electricity she remembered most. At the end of his show, Ronald invited Tia to touch him. Face ablaze, she’d declined. Jae, her aloofness forgotten, bought a signed poster and announced that after high school she would move to Albuquerque and be best friends with Ronald T Rex.

Tia remembers bristling then. What could a child know about it? In her late teens, Tia herself had been the shifty type who would inspire shopkeepers to station themselves between her and the door. She was an inveterate shoplifter. Lipsticks and jewelry and nail polish. After she had a kid, she enjoyed a halcyon period where she could get away with just about anything. But the stakes were higher. It would be terrible to get caught. She’d imagine pleading with a security guard to let her go; that she had a small son with no one else to care for him. She remembers bracing for a voice, the humiliation of her husband being called. But she was never singled out, never stopped. Not the way Ronald T Rex had invited her to touch him.

The airplane starts to rumble, then shake. The cabin lights flicker. Alarm pricks the air. Tia’s pulse clangs. There is a plastic-y, chemical odor. The captain announces they will make an emergency landing in Tucson.

Her seatmate’s husband is asleep. He must have taken something. But the young mom doesn’t miss a beat. She throws one arm around her daughter and the other around Tia. From the safety of the mom’s compact chest, the toddler and Tia stare ahead, nascent shrieks trapped in their throats as the overhead bins doors burst and the contents spill and fly. The cabin swells with the sounds and rising temperature of fear. Plastic masks drop before them.

Tia’s son was building a good life for himself. Setting up a future that was indivisible. Prime. As opposed to Tia’s present in the screaming sky. And poor, buzzing Ronald T Rex in Old Town Albuquerque. She’s regretted for months not having touched Ronald’s skin. She would choke up, picturing his struggle to turn on a fan. Imagining the truncated arms dropping wet oatmeal on the floor.

So she wrote to him. First emails, and then letters. Then she began calling. But the person who answered the phone always said Ronald was busy.

The young mother is trying to affix Tia’s mask. She’s telling Tia to stay the fuck still.

Face tilted upward, Tia’s mind races. From Tucson she can rent a car. She can still reach Albuquerque in a handful of hours.

Her last frenzied hope is that someone has kept Ronald T Rex safe in his small theater until she, Tia, tell him she is ready to touch him. Ready for the black cool of his room.

PATRICIA QUINTANA BIDAR is a western writer and Port of Los Angeles area native with ancestral roots across the American Southwest. Her work has been widely anthologized including in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024, and Best Microfiction 2023 and has appeared in Waxwing, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, The Pinch, Atticus Review, and Moon City Review. Patricia is the author of Wild Plums (ELJ Press) and Pardon Me For Moonwalking (Unsolicited Press). She lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, CA. Visit patriciaqbidar.com

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