Chapter Text
With each beep of the scanner, Jimmy McGill rung up another pound of alien jerky. Jesus, this guy was buying twenty-three pounds.
“You from out of town?” Jimmy asked, though the question was moot. There were no other buildings around for about thirty miles, and the Alien Pitstop was exactly that—a quick stopping point on a stretch of flat highway. There was a Dairy Queen five miles due east. When Jimmy got tired of jerky and water he’d go there sometimes, order a Blizzard and fries and kick back in one of the plastic booths while the sun went down along the flat horizon.
“California,” the guy said. He probably had a vanload of Cheeto-crumb kids waiting in the parking lot.
If the word didn’t fill him with such utter derision, Jimmy might’ve asked the guy where he was headed. As it was, he just asked for two hundred and twenty-eight dollars in cash. Credit cards not accepted, sorry for the inconvenience.
Jimmy was in an especially foul mood not because he pined after palm trees and celebrity-strewn beaches, but because he had to lead a night hike in about seven hours. Once a month he was tasked with taking a bunch of flash photography happy UFO nuts out in the middle of the night in hopes of seeing extraterrestrials beam themselves in from the distant reaches of outer space. The bullshit tour lasted about an hour, and Jimmy’s boss would direct a high-power laser beam into the sky near the end to give folks their money’s worth. Otherwise, it was thirty-five dollars a head just to listen to Jimmy spout a few note cards worth of bogus evidence and even a personal testimony that the shop owner had drafted up for him. It didn’t matter. Jimmy thought he was pretty good at selling the whole show. He didn’t let himself consider just how desperate for proof the flocks of fanatics were. Hell, they’d probably cram him into a test tube and cart him off if he told them he was an alien.
Once the sun went down, he had some time to pick up dinner at DQ and chat with his favorite cashier, Alfredo. As he rumbled past Joshua trees, the sky lit up with the final dregs of daylight. Maybe it could seem pretty, if you were able to see past the hollowed-out crackhouses and trash dumps littering the cracked earth. Even then, you’d probably still recognize yourself as being trapped in hell.
Jimmy wasn’t unused to this feeling. He needed a vacation. But as he thought it, he cast a glace around his half-gutted car—the fraying seats, pilled commercial carpet covering the dash—and had to let out a mirthless chuckle. He needed a new car, a new job, a new life. A vacation was low on the old priority list.
“There’s The Man!”
God, what a relief. All day he was a nobody with a shit job and a secret past, but at DQ he was The Man. He saw that Alfredo was already typing his usual order into the register and he grinned.
“And don’t try to tell me it’s on the house. I’ve got a busload of alien nuts coming in about an hour, and they’re all gonna pay me to tell them that their otherworldly obsessions aren’t a load of crap.”
“Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter.”
Jimmy liked it. He added that right up there next to The Man and handed over a ten.
“Keep the change. I’ll be at my table.”
The restaurant was nearly empty. Jimmy took a seat at one of the booths, his elbow sticking a little to the table. There were napkins, but he didn’t bother wiping it down. His order only took about two minutes, and added to the three minutes it took him to eat it, he’d be back on the road in five.
“Number 23!”
Jimmy glanced around the restaurant as he approached the counter. “Seeing as no one else is jumping up, I guess I’ll take it.”
“Added a few extra fries, as usual.”
“And as usual, I don’t need extra.” He gestured to his frame, unchanged after so many years, and took the tray from Alfredo. “But I’ll eat them anyway. What’s a few extra pounds? I hear women like their men chunkier these days.”
Alfredo just shook his head, chuckling. Jimmy sat down and dug in systematically. Burger first, then fries. Use ketchup and mustard that dripped off burger onto fries. Wash it all down with Coke, then refill Coke and take that to go. He’d need the caffeine—Christ, he’d need a couple Vicodin to slog through another scripted evening. What’s that, ma’am? Oh no, not a star. See how it’s moving? Oh, you can’t see it moving? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have left your fucking glasses on the goddamned bus. Of course it’s a UFO, isn’t that what you paid thirty-five dollars to see?
He sat in the darkening parking lot with a flashlight. It cast a sickly green beam through a piece of tinted film, and he was supposed to wave it at passing cars in case any of them were looking for the tour. He didn’t wave it anymore. It hung limp at his side until a bus swung into the parking lot, taking up all the spots. He switched the flashlight off and hung his head a little, allowing himself an extra moment before he went to greet them with a big, “Are you ready to see something out of this world!” He heard the doors hiss open.
“It’s showtime,” he whispered.
This was one of the larger groups he’d taken out. In from San Francisco and en route to Vegas, he noticed the mingling of accents and languages as soon as people started off the bus.
“I’m ready to catch an alien and take him to Vegas with us!” a man said.
“Oh, he’d be a whiz at blackjack I’m sure!”
Jimmy just wanted to go home. Once it seemed like everyone was off the bus, he began in a monotone much unlike his usual voice:
“Tonight, you’ve all come to explore the final frontier right here on planet earth. But don’t take it from me—we have sightings here almost every week, so trust your vision. Learn to believe what you see. Any questions before we start?”
A few hands went up. Geez.
“Let’s just start, yo! Ask the questions after the tour starts—if I’m gonna have enough money to blow in Vegas, I need to get a UFO picture, like, now.”
Jimmy tightened his hand around the flashlight. For a moment he thought he knew that voice, but he dismissed it as mere longing. Leave a man out in the desert with no one for company but a bunch of aliens and he’d start hearing things. It was basic psychology.
The hands went down, though, so Jimmy was grateful. The guy who’d spoken was somewhere toward the back of the group, but it seemed like everyone on the bus was used to him. They glanced at each other and giggled a little, so Jimmy shone his flashlight toward the trail.
“Let the trek begin!”
***
They walked for about twenty minutes before the first question: “Have you seen any aliens out here?”
Jimmy mostly stuck to fabled stories about other people. It seemed fine to tell fictions about John Doe seeing a triangular-shaped UFO just last week, but pretending that he’d seen the same felt shakier. Not quite immoral—the whole evening was a big sham—but still wrong.
“Yep! I have pictures back in the shop if you want to take a look.” Stock images, all of them. Framed copies available for only $25 plus tax. “Really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something you never forget.”
Was he being convincing? Sure, these fools wanted to believe. They were like a court full of jurors already set on a conviction.
“Our most famous sighting took place in 2005.” Long before he started at the Alien Pitstop. “Woman by the name of Alice Shuster claims that aliens abducted and performed tests on her, but not before she was able to take some pictures of their crafts. We have a copy back at the shop if anyone is interested. Alice later disappeared—hard to say if she went into hiding or if they came back for her. My money’s on the latter.”
A murmur rippled through the group, spreading out like he’d dropped a stone in the middle of a puddle. That’s right. He allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction at the crowd’s response, then clicked on his green light and stood to one side of the trail, shining it on a rock.
“Watch your step over this, folks. Just keep following the path. I see some of you brought your own lights, good. I’ll bring up the rear. Just keep it up, we’re gonna make it to the top of that hill before turning around. Great vantage, up there. On a clear night you can see the lights of Sin City!”
He kept talking as they continued to stream by, trying to give them their thirty-five dollars worth of uninterrupted commentary. Not that they seemed to care. He could probably start reciting his grocery list—white bread, a six-pack, some fish food for Scout, his betta—and they’d just keep hiking. He noticed headphones stuck into the ears of someone who passed and trailed off, realizing his words were meaningless.
“Saul?”
Almost without meaning to, Jimmy swung the ghoulish beam of his flashlight up and shined it in the direction his name had come from. The startled face of Jesse Pinkman squinted in the sudden glow, and he threw a hand up over his eyes. Jimmy closed his own eyes, opened them. He saw the tattoo curling through the soft hairs of Jesse’s wrist and coming to several points on the back of his hand.
“Yo, can you put that thing down?”
Jimmy did, slowly, afraid that Jesse’s face would vanish into the darkness when he did.
“You trying to burn my retinas out, man?”
“I—uh, sorry. They say you’re supposed to train your light on an alien’s face so they don’t abduct you. Something about it being disorienting.”
“So you thought I was an alien?” Jimmy could tell that Jesse was trying to sound mad, but the effect was ruined by a wide grin that had spread across his features. It was luminous in the dark, glowing pearl in the watery green from Jimmy’s flashlight. He found himself smiling back, and resisted the urge to trail his fingers across the unfamiliar formation of his lips. How long had it been since he smiled and truly meant it?
“Don’t you have a, like, tour or something?” Jesse gestured ahead. The group hadn’t stopped hiking, forging ahead toward the crest of the hill.
“Oh, them? They don’t need me.” He said it jokingly, though he felt the truth of it resonate within him. “If I let them get lost, it’ll probably improve their chances finding grays.” He started after them, though, and Jesse followed. “Watch the rocks,” Jimmy warned, turning his light behind him so that Jesse would see the flaws in the trail before tripping headfirst.
“Thanks, I got it,” Jesse mumbled, intent on watching where he was stepping. Jimmy let the light linger a moment longer than necessary, watching the way Jesse’s forehead creased when he was particularly intent on avoiding a plant.
“You can step on the plants,” he said. “They won’t trip you.”
“I’m not gonna step on the plants. They were here first.”
Jimmy swung the light back around, but not soon enough. He felt his foot catch on the edge of a rock he’d avoided countless times on the same tour. Now he fell forward, flashlight smashing against the ground and flickering out. He caught himself with his hands before his face collided with hard-packed dirt, but his knees hit hard and he could feel syrupy blood begin to pool against his jeans.
“Saul!” Jesse was beside him. Jimmy could feel concern in the palms of Jesse’s hands pressed against his shoulders. How embarrassing.
“I’m fine,” Jimmy muttered, the words slipping between the cracks in his clenched teeth. “Occupational hazard. We don’t want to lose the group.”
“Fuck the group.” Jesse stood up, and for a wild moment Jimmy thought he might continue on without him. Then he heard, “Yo, yeah, all of you! Our guide got hurt helping me with something and I’m taking him back to the parking lot, so you just keep going!” He ducked down. “How far should they go before turning around?”
“Just to the top of the hill, then back down.”
“Turn around at the top of the hill and come back!”
“What should we be looking for?” a man’s voice shouted back, sounding a little panicked.
“Aliens, bitch!”
“But what if we don’t know what they look like? We need our guide!”
“Tell them to look for lights,” Jimmy said.
“Look for lights!”
Jimmy could hear some dissention amongst the alien hunters, but they were lost on his ears because Jesse had crouched down and was whispering, “Do you think you can stand?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m just lying here for show—it really doesn’t hurt that bad.”
“I’ll still help you, old man. I don’t see one of those ‘help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ bracelets on your wrist, so I’m thinking you need me.”
Jimmy wanted to argue, but the younger man was tugging at him and it took all of his energy to stand without groaning aloud.
“At least we didn’t walk far,” Jimmy muttered sarcastically. The curtained windows of the Alien Pitstop glowed dully, the distance greater than he wanted to think about. God, what if he walked with a limp? No, he could walk normally. One foot forward and, shit, that hurt.
“Here, just lean on me.” Jesse’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
Jimmy reluctantly shifted his weight so that Jesse bore the brunt of his injury. The younger man didn’t complain as they made their halting way back to the parking lot. Jimmy reflected on the quiet that settled over them, how immediately comfortable it was. Surely Jesse didn’t feel the same. On his way to Vegas, the kid was probably getting ready to let loose. How pathetic was it, Jimmy thought, to be reveling in these moments shared between them when Jesse was probably envisioning the women he’d meet in the city. A part of him hoped that Jesse was thinking about the people waiting for him in Vegas—he didn’t think he’d have the stomach to handle knowing that Jesse had ever experienced a loneliness as consuming as his.
“You really seen aliens out here?”
“What do you think, kid?”
“You’re a good liar, but it was bullshit. All that ‘something you never forget’ crap? Didn’t sound like what Saul Goodman would say if he’d really seen something.”
“I’m really that transparent to you, huh? I’ll have you know people around these parts call me ‘Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter.’”
“Like that means anything. Nevada has, like, no population. More cactuses than people.”
“That something you learned on the Discovery Channel?”
“It’s real, yo. This state is nothing but Vegas.”
Jimmy wanted to counter, but with what? Even Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter couldn’t call the Dairy Queen fine cuisine or the crumbling drug houses quaint.
“So are you living in San Francisco now?”
“No—why?”
“Thought the tour bus was direct from SFO.”
“Flew there from Seattle this morning. I could’ve flown to Vegas direct, but the tour was cheap and then you, like, see the sights and stuff.”
“Ah, of course, so many sights to see between there and here. This stretch of highway is a real yellow brick road.”
“It’s mostly an alien tour, so, yeah, there’s lots of stops.”
“If I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t take you for the type to think ‘the truth is out there.’”
“And I didn’t take you for the type to be a judgmental dick. Why are you even here if you don’t believe all this stuff?”
“I’ve been a few places, but I thought it seemed safest out here.” He expected Jesse to laugh, say there was no reason for Jimmy to still be watching his back.
“I get it. Even up in Oregon I’m always checking over my shoulder. Last week, I thought some guy was following me to a bookstore and I ducked into a restaurant to avoid him. He went into an ice cream shop a couple blocks down and met his kid for cones.”
“You were going to a bookstore?”
“Dude, not cool. I just shared my paranoia with you.”
Jimmy felt bad for joking with the kid—it mostly felt like a knee-jerk reaction, something he did because he worried that without his bravado, he wasn’t enough.
“The side door is always unlocked,” Jimmy said as they reached the Alien Pitstop. “Perks of being in the middle of nowhere.”
They hobbled inside and Jimmy lowered himself onto a couch.
“Lights are to the left of the door,” he said, exhaling through the pain.
Jesse hit them and Jimmy’s small office was flooded with light. There was no desk, just a few boxes of surplus from the shop and the tweed couch.
“Wait, do you, like, live here?”
Jimmy looked down, as if he hadn’t realized the couch was made up like a bed, a square of red fleece blanket tucked in at one end and a flat white pillow at the other.
“No, I’ve got an apartment in town. Sometimes I don’t feel like going home at the end of the day, so I keep the couch made in case. Besides, here I’ve got company.” He gestured to the clear fishbowl stacked on top of a sturdy wooden crate. His situation was definitely as sad as it looked, and he lowered his head a little to avoid the kid’s no-doubt pitying gaze.
“Cool. Bettas are dope, yo.”
Jimmy looked up. “Ever had one?”
“No.” Jesse rubbed at the back of his neck for a moment before dropping his hand. He crouched so that his eyes were level with the fish. “Parents never thought I was responsible enough—thought I’d kill it, or some shit like that.”
“Want to feed him?”
“Dude, yeah! What’s his name?”
“Scout.” Jimmy reached for the fish food from his spot on the couch. “Here, just take a pinch and drop it in the water. He’s a greedy son of a bitch, so no more than a pinch or he might get on that bus and follow you to Vegas.”
Vegas. Jimmy felt a cloud wring itself out over him as he thought about Jesse leaving. Just watching the kid tentatively reach into the bottle and drop a few flakes into the water made him wish that the visit would last much longer than a few more minutes.
“He’s coming up to the surface!” Jesse reported, his excitement palpable.
“He does that.” Jimmy could help laughing as Jesse watched Scout eat the flakes. The younger man was mesmerized, like he was watching a Shark Week special instead of Jimmy’s lethargic betta fish scoop a few morsels into its mouth. His smile faded when he heard the quiet hum of a bus engine through the closed door and the sounds of people milling outside.
“Sounds like your chariot awaits. Tell all the ladies you meet that Saul Goodman sends his regards, will you? They’ll remember me for many reasons, I’m sure.”
“Gross, man.” Jesse capped the fish food and stood up. Without another word to Jimmy, he opened the side door and stepped outside. As it closed behind him, Jimmy felt the “Don’t leave!” fully formed in his throat, but his mouth couldn’t open. He’d never see the kid again, and something about the finality of this felt impossible for him to bear.
He shoved the pillow onto the ground and curled against the side of the couch, hugging his bloodied knees. His back arched, the pressure that had built up between his vertebrae popping as he let his face bury into the itchy tweed of the couch. He deserved to be miserable, to be punished for all that he’d done. The universe only supplied his encounter with Jesse to remind him that no one—not even someone from his old life—wanted to know him. He was, would always be, alone.
He was pinching tears away with hard blinks when the side door reopened.
“You okay, Saul?”
Jesse—no, he was hallucinating now. There was no voice, the room was empty beside him and Scout. But there were footsteps, the sound of a bag being tossed carelessly to the ground, weight compressing the springs of the couch, a hand on his shoulder. He choked, and the tears threatened again, but this time for a different reason. He looked up at Jesse’s worried face and half-smiled.
“I’m okay.”
***
The waffle iron was stamped with an ovular alien face, but other than that it was perfectly normal. Jimmy had taken it off one of the shelves in the store, telling himself he’d clean it off and replace it right after he made Jesse some out of this world waffles. Come on, the kid had passed up a week of partying in Vegas just to spend a few days with his old lawyer. If Jimmy had to pay the owner for the waffle iron, he’d do it. Jesse deserved some green-hued waffles after spending a night on the commercial carpet of his office floor.
Jimmy tore open a bag of mix, marveling at the noxious color of the powder. It was a top seller, along with the dyed-green chocolate bars. He mixed in some water and poured it onto the waffle iron once it heated up.
The shop began to smell like an off-ramp diner, one of those little places you eat at right off the highway with questionable menu items. Jimmy was glad the store didn’t open until ten. If it opened any earlier, he’d have probably just neglected to unlock the front doors until he was done making Jesse’s breakfast. He didn’t even think about his own wanting stomach as he plated the waffle on a paper towel and poured a little green syrup over the top.
“Rise and shine, Master Pinkman.” He reentered the office and saw that Jesse was already awake. Hunched against the crate, the kid was watching Scout sleep. The betta hung in the water, the kaleidoscopic tendrils of his fins fanning out as he drifted. How could Jesse look at the fish with such wonder? Jimmy thought Scout was cool—he’d specifically picked the red and blue one at the store—but he was just a fish.
“What’s that?”
“Waffle. I, uh, thought you might be jonesing for something substantial after a night on my floor. Not that my floor doesn’t compare to the Four Seasons—that sheet I gave you has a high thread count.”
“Hell yeah, man. I eat waffles, like, daily.”
“Good. Well, this one’s green. Another occupational hazard, I guess.” He handed the waffle to Jesse, a little shy because the toasty brown edges looked a little unappetizing set against pale green. Jesse began eating it without hesitation.
“So what’re we doing today?” Jesse asked through a mouthful.
“Shop’s open from ten till five, so I’m here all day. You can go explore, find some UFOs, try not to get abducted. That should keep you busy.”
“Can you give me, I dunno, like a map or something? Show me where the good spots are?”
“I can try, kid. I can’t say I don’t appreciate your adventurous spirit, but you know how jaded I am about this whole enterprise. Been here two years and I’ve never seen anything I’d classify as ‘unidentifiable.’ Well, unless I’m looking down in the toilet after I’ve eaten a few too many of our neon-green candy bars.”
“You could hold the testimonials until after I’ve eaten.” Even as Jesse said this, he continued eating. Jimmy went to clean up his cooking area while the younger man finished breakfast. He almost boxed up the waffle iron and replaced it on the shelf, but something stopped him. Maybe he’d need it again someday.
He stuffed the box behind the counter and found a couple maps to loan to Jesse. He pulled one clean off the wall, unpinning it from its usual spot next to the front door. It was the best map in the entire store, with highlighted paths and circled landmarks that would guarantee Jesse not getting lost.
“Here, this should make a pretty good starter kit. Apparently these are some local hotspots—guy I know at Dairy Queen swears by Devil’s Rock to the west.”
“Can I take these with me?”
“Course. You’ll need a water bottle too—we have some cold ones up front. And some granola bars.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Jesse flashed a grin up at him and scratched his head a little as he looked down at the maps.
“Hey, if you want to go out there unprepared, be my guest. You’ll drop like a fly—it’s like the goddamn Sahara out there.”
“Better send out a search party if I don’t come back.”
“You don’t come back and every alien fanatic west of Vegas is gonna be citing it as the most recent abduction case.”
Jimmy decided he didn’t like even considering the possibility of Jesse being beamed up to some distant planet. He didn’t need to believe in aliens to worry about Jesse deciding he’d had enough of Jimmy’s sad life. Even though their arrangement was only for a few days, Jimmy wanted to imagine it was longer than that. Forget the shop, Jimmy would follow Jesse anywhere if it’d mean the company of the only person who truly understood him—flaws and all. Anything to not be alone anymore.
After Jesse left, pockets full of enough granola bars to keep a small army alive for days at Jimmy’s insistence, he pulled on his Alien Pitstop t-shirt and changed into clean jeans. His knees had clotted over, silver dollar-sized patches of crusted blood reminding him of the events of last night. He hardly remembered hurting after Jesse came back and dropped his duffel on the floor.
When Jesse returned that evening, his pockets were empty and he reported seeing nothing but a couple scorpions.
“Nevada sucks, yo.”
“Says the kid who paid for a plane ticket and bus tour just to get here.” Jimmy grinned.
Jesse slumped down on the couch and his eyes drifted sleepily shut. Jimmy was about to pronounce the kid sound asleep when he heard, “Hey, so I was, uh, wondering about something.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jimmy kept his voice casual.
“Would you want to come back to Seattle with me? Like, just for a couple weeks or whatever. I could show you around and stuff.”
Jimmy shrugged like he had to think about the invitation. “I’d have to get someone to watch Scout and check with the boss if he can give me that kind of time of right now. It’s tourist season, you know.”
They were Seattle-bound the next day.