Oh! Zone

By Anne I. Page

What if you lost your identity? Would you reveal that fact to strangers? What if all you ever meet are strangers?

We first see Zoenelle, a twenty-something woman, hitchhiking in the western United States in the mid '80s. As she rides with various people who snatch her from the side of the road for their own specific reasons, it is apparent that Zoenelle has no idea where she is going, in fact she has no idea who she is. She is not existentially searching for her identity; she has literally lost the memory of her personal past. Although at first glance she appears to be someone who has always lived on the fringes of society, as a free spirit with no connections, it is clear when she thinks and speaks that she is intelligent and highly educated, and that her memory of stored and retrieved knowledge is unaffected by her dissociative amnesia.

Solving the mystery of who she is and where she comes from is Zoenelle's objective. She is a mystery to herself and to the reader. Zoenelle begins to recover parts of her past and through these flashbacks of memory, clues about who she is are revealed to the reader. The other characters that she meets during her hitchhiking journey serve as catalysts to unlocking her identity.

The main character, Zoenelle, is a unique, creative, flawed, and complicated character who is bridging, bending, and breaking social norms. There is a conflicting tension between Zoenelle's logical reasoning of how the natural world works and the gender-biased, emotional mythmaking, societal world which she has difficulty understanding. Many viewers will relate to her journey and the message that individual human happiness is not determined by, and may be in direct conflict with, socio-cultural and socio-religious factors. Zoenelle is a scientist and inventor of a DNA replicating technique, so there is a brief peek into the world of scientific discovery and the individual inventor suppressed by corporate interests, as well as the introduction of a possible motive for Zoenelle's current amnesiac condition.

The flashback puzzle pieces of her past form a parallel narrative thread from her childhood with a single mother, younger brother, and grandmother to the traumatic moment that initiates her disconnect from the world. During graduate school at Cornell University, an unplanned pregnancy propels Zoenelle into a marriage of expediency. When her husband's sister comes to stay with them to help take care of the baby, all their lives change unexpectedly. Zoenelle faces court proceedings, dismissal from the graduate program and a devastating loss.

Mystery, romance, social issues, science, and philosophy—what it's like to be cut off from the familiar connections that support you, to be on your own, relying on strangers, creating a new identity for each new situation—it will be a fascinating trip!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne I. Page
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458040794

Anne I. Page

Anne I. Page is a graduate of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. Page has a BS in Microbiology and has worked in government health and pharmaceutical microbiology laboratories. Page has an MA in Literature and is currently an English professor. Anne I. Page is a late bloomer who is living happily ever after with her partner, another late bloomer. Oh! Zone is her first novel.

Book preview

Oh! Zone

by Anne I. Page

Copyright 2011 Anne I. Page

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter One

Zoenelle stood by the side of the road with her pack, a circus-striped sleeping bag rolled around a jacket and socks, tethered by a braided leather strap. She wore a vest of visible yellow and white threads knit together, the whiteness of skin adding its hue and tinges of pink emerging where the woven material would eventually yield. Fatigue trousers, Vietnam combat era with thigh-length pockets, draped from her hips to the knotted ties at her ankles. Chunks of polyester belted tire were strapped to her feet with leather thongs, a custom size that fit poorly and fell apart frequently. She had never outgrown the collar-tugging, seam-straining and toe wiggling of clothing; the nakedness of lying in bed kept her there longer than sleep required.

She watched the intermittent cars pass, her thumb tucked into her fist, she did not want a ride too soon. The early morning, damp coolness and the radiating heat of the rising sun touched her simultaneously, creating a dark and light side-of-moon temperature gradient. She spun on her axis, reversing the dark cool, light warm, and struck the peculiar pose: arm radiating at ten minutes to her twelve o’clock face, thumb fully extended. More than transportation, she needed sustenance; it was always time to eat or drink when a driver picked her up, her presence reminding them of the social and biological need for food and human contact.

A four door sedan, silver, pulled over, braking suddenly in the dirt shoulder. She grabbed her pack strap and slung it on her shoulder, head ducked, watching the clumsy churning of her feet; she always ran to cars, eager to appear eager at the offer of a ride. Reaching the rear fender, she added the license plate to the stack in her mind; a game she played to amuse herself, while she waited for rides, to remember as many of them as possible; she sometimes reached a hundred or more before they would all disappear. The scissored cut-out of green mounds with triangular tips pasted on a white background with white lettered YD-7557 and COLORADO, a red sticker in the corner with the barely legible black numbers 83. She observed two men in the front seat observing her and scrambled into the back seat.

Hi, thanks for stopping, she said loudly to the brothers, although they were not her brothers.

Let’s go talk to the cows! Boisterous cries emitted from the men as they exited with simultaneous car door slamming.

Was this some euphemism? she wondered, before their beckoning invitation to fence-side of a scattered herd of Herefords and the raucous human MMAAOOH initiated a one-way conversation to the white faces that swung up with curiosity from the scrub grass. Zoenelle followed. She walked slowly among the Aspen, their leaves twitching frenziedly in the slightest breeze. She was in western Colorado now, where the mountains, amazingly high, needed her presence to be real, defying vampire-wise their reflection in lenses. She couldn’t see the mountainous mass she stood on; it seemed a slight rise, claiming seven thousand feet elevation, the altimetry of her bone marrow busily kicked out enucleated red blood cells to compensate her brain’s dizzying demand for oxygen which her lungs could not draw in deeply enough.

Hey, don’t we know you? Two young women, in a four-door subcompact, the license plate a skier beside the 84 sticker commanding her to ‘Ski Utah!’ 419 DDR ‘Greatest Snow on Earth’, re-crammed belongings to make a space for her.

There, can you squeeze in now?

Yeah, thanks for stopping, Zoenelle greeted them. She pulled the car door closed, jamming the arm-rest into the crest of her right pelvic bone.

They nodded and smiled at the arrangement, especially Zoenelle, who constantly signaled to strangers, smiling deferentially with every word and gesture using an inverse ventriloquist’s trick locution. It wasn’t a straining three-hour beauty pageant smile, or an old man’s sympathetic smile or a smug laughing-in-the-face-of-the-world smile. It was a smile that anticipated the punch line of a dirty joke.

What’s your name?

Zoenelle, Zoenelle slurred it into one syllable so it sounded like the German word for immediacy.

Like, what is it?

Zoe-nelle, she said. It means life and girl.

They were about to cross into Utah; the mountainscape evanescing into the horizon, high desert blood rock seeping into view.

I’m not going to Utah, Zoenelle announced.

Oh? The driver asked in a concerned tone, I’m sorry, I thought you were going with us to …. Where are you going?

Texas. I’m meeting someone. In Texas, Zoenelle said decidedly.

Isn’t it, like, dangerous to hitch rides with strangers? The passenger asked.

Statistically it’s more dangerous to pick up hitchhikers, Zoenelle informed the girlfriends. Although they weren’t her girlfriends. They had only pretended to know her.

Chapter Two

She ended up in Utah anyway; consultation with a map revealed Arizona square below, with only one fat red line connecting, route 191, through and into Moab, where she sat drinking watered beer in a bar that closes at sundown. A restless Moab resident, trying to drive off his Saturday afternoon blues, had diverted her.

This place is a moon colony. He spoke sotto voce; they were the only patrons in the sparsely-tabled barroom. The bar itself was a small partitioned area without the usual paraphernalia of lighted mirrors, ceramic figurines, and monogrammed steins; no stools invited regulars to belly up to it.

Why don’t you leave? Zoenelle asked, staring at her beer bottle, the brown glass grinding to powdered white around its long neck.

I’m waiting for my spaceship to return. He grinned, to assure her he was, of course, kidding. I mean, this place is unreal. I’m from New Jersey, did I tell you that? This place is the pits, man, no booze, no rock and roll, no women for chrissakes, they’re all Mormans and you don’t want to be messing with no moor mons, you know what I mean? He paused for the laugh track; she acquiesced. Me and a buddy come out together; he stayed two weeks; I been here almost a year. Hell, the money’s not bad, working construction, could you tell by my tan line? He swept his forelock aside, revealing a clean white band shaped like the strap of a hard hat. The grunt stuff is all right for now, but what I’m going to do is get into computers; that’s the way to go these days. I’ll buy me one of those home computers, you know, maybe take a night course, then I’ll be in business. You know anything about computers?

They’re always down when it’s your turn in line, Zoenelle quipped.

Yeah, right. What do you do, when you’re not hitchhiking? Where you from?

You mean originally?

Whatever.

This man did not know her. He was not her husband. He was not her father. Originally, I’m from England, that’s where I was born, in London, during the Blitz. But, recently I’ve been living in Florida, working as a Weechi Wachi mermaid. Summers are off season, so we’re in dry dock.

How old are you?

Thirty-two.

The hell you are. You look maybe twenty-two, I’m twenty-six.

Zoenelle produced a frayed card within a filmy plastic sleeve from her button-flapped back pocket and slid it across the table to him. He bent his head over the card, examining it on the table.

That’s a New York driver’s license. You said you were from Florida. And the Blitz happened way before you were born, he stated matter-of-factly.

Brilliant, Holmes. You’ve cracked the case.

Never mind, he said, just making conversation.

That’s what I was doing, Zoenelle insisted.

Whatever blows your dress up. He offered a handshake across the table; my name is Pete Ryder, and you are, he glanced at the card again, Zunuhl...?

Zoenelle, Zoenelle assisted him, Zoenelle Flynn, you know, like Errol. Flynn.

The bartender appeared and dragged their empties across the table, clinking them together with one fist.

Couple more, Joe, Pete told him.

You’ve had enough, the bartender spoke sharply.

What, two beers? Is there a bag limit on beer in this state? Zoenelle said. She had felt the man’s animosity single out and strike her when she had entered the place and his glare had seldom strayed from their private party.

Get her out of here, before I call the cops, the bartender directed the threat to Pete.

Okay, okay, Pete placatingly ushered Zoenelle toward the exit.

I’ll call the cops, I’ll call the cops, Zoenelle sing-songed as she waltzed with Pete toward the door.

Nothing but trouble, I seen your kind before, lady! the bartender cast a final curse.

Well I’ll see ya, thanks for the ride and the beer, Zoenelle clutched the strap of her pack, which she had parked on the doorstep, and jammed her fists to the bottom of her front pants pockets; the two knobs protruding at mid thigh tightened the material across her buttocks. She walked slightly hunched over, stiff-legged, the union of arm and leg moving on one side and then the other.

Hey, wait a minute, Pete called after her retreat into the late afternoon light.

Zoenelle stopped, looked back over her shoulder, yeah? she asked.

He approached her quickly, then stopped abruptly at more than two arm lengths distance. What’s your hurry? he asked defensively, then warmed to a friendlier tone as he closed their separation to an arm’s length. I’d like to show you some great rock formations, would you be into that?

Yeah sure, she agreed. There would be signs carved into the rock; she could see far above the city, discover where they had gone.

They clambered into his pickup truck, a blue Chevy half-ton, the license plate hue only slighter darker than the truck. Yellow NEW JERSEY between the stickered 12 and 85, a blob of yellow, the state’s topographical shape acting as a dash between CAC and 67G above the yellow GARDEN STATE. As they drove out of the quiet, industrious city of Moab, Pete pointed out various places to her, matching them with local and quasi- historical accounts. He turned off onto a gulley road. The truck’s layered leaf springs flexed sinusoidaly, crashing against the truck body and rebounding the occupants in their seats. Pete brought the truck to a jarring halt a few feet from a cliff face; peering up at it, angling chins close to the windshield, they couldn’t see the interface of rock and sky.

Whatta ya think? Wanna climb it? Pete asked.

Hey, no way. Where’s the elevator? Zoenelle continued to gaze through the glass. Outside the truck, she formed a perpendicular of her jaw line with the giant’s play dough mixture of reds, whites and blacks, to glimpse the top. The sun was burning the western edge of the world. They stood in the cool night shadow of the butte. Zoenelle’s sun-fried skin tingled with the tautness of puckered follicles; the dried mud mask of her face caused her head to hurt and she drew her eyebrows up and down vainly to release it.

We don’t have to go straight up; I know another way, Pete spoke enthusiastically. But, first, a little inspirational gift from the natives. He was unwrapping a crinkly piece of cellophane which contained dark green flattened spheres with a raised concentric edge.

D’ja ever eat peyote? Here, two oughta do ya. He handed her two of the buttons, selected two for himself, rewrapped the package and put it in his jacket pocket. He tore the tough spongy cactus into approximate quarters and rapid-fired each piece to the far edge of his soft palate, swallowing sequentially.

Zoenelle initiated the ripping process and tentatively placed a piece in her mouth. The dank cellar aroma reached her nose milliseconds before the acrid bitterness wrung her mouth inside out.

Yecch! Zoenelle spit out all the saliva she could suck up.

You have to get it past your tongue, right down the throat, Pete advised encouragingly.

Zoenelle tried again, tossing and swallowing immediately. She brought her fist up suddenly, pressing lips to teeth against the reverse peristalsis of a strychnine sensitized stomach reaction. Each eye sympathized with a rapidly blinked tear. She managed to bodily deposit the rest of the first button, then put the remaining one in her pocket.

I’ll save it for later, she said. She untied her jacket from her pack; it was a light tan suede with knitted elastic brown material at the cuffs, collar, and lower edge; well-used, but not torn or frayed. She zipped it on, the second skin painfully pressed the inner skin.

You got burnt, dinja? Pete indicated the gingerness of her movements.

Yeah, I guess, a little, she answered. But her agony would remain subdued until subsequent days, when, in the night, damaged epithelial cells rallied their blistering forces. And somewhere oncogenes lay waiting to awaken.

She was scrambling, gorilla fashion, to keep up with the longer-leggedness of her guide, when they came to a crevasse. He leaped, Baryshnikov-like, across the broad gap, clearing it.

C’mon, you can make it! he called back.

She looked across at him, then down, then across again and down; the dim light descended into blinding blackness.

There’s a lot of gravity in that hole. Probably suck me down, she said, balking.

She had once clung, beyond her arm’s endurance, to the edge of a bone-breaking, skull-smashing depth while on a date with a friend of a friend in the White Mountains. They had climbed together to a low plateau to view the range of mountain shapes: the forbidden love Indian couple; the faithful dog by his god master’s graveside, forever ensconced in granite. They lay together, he rubbing her vigorously, sucking her mouth, and yanking her thermal wear shirt, with Mr. Natural trucking across it, up to her chin. She had wriggled out of his passionate embrace when the sounds of Sunday afternoon, sightseeing, parking lot-jamming, families with kids running everywhere, targeted her.

Look! Look! I wanna go up there! "What is she doing up there? She had known immediately that they indicated her, exclaiming the feature which denied her the ability to blend into a crowd. That girl with the red hair." It wasn’t actually red, of course, it was orange, bright orange, like no other word in the English language that rhymes with it, orange, like the plastic sphere in the fake fruit bowl orange, like Halloween crepe paper orange, and like no human should grow hair the color of, orange, but she did. She couldn’t go further up and she couldn’t go back down; she slid into the nearest hole. Her date misinterpreted her abrupt action and tried to coax her out, but eventually he had to pull her up by the wrists, scraping the skin of her chest, thighs and knees.

Hey, you comin’? Pete demanded.

No, just breathing hard, she answered.

She easily tossed her pack underhand across the gap; it bounced and landed near Pete’s feet. She backed a few steps, cavorting and pawing the ground, threw her head back several times with her best representation of a whinny, then running and scissoring her legs, burst into space. The toe end of her leading right sandal struck the ridge on the other side of the vertical drop; her toes stood at attention as she slid down the cavity’s side. But, her left leg spontaneously threw out the lifeline to her sinking body. Hip shifting linear to angular momentum, she grappled a hold with a hugging knee. She dug her fingertips in and hauled herself over the top.

That was a neat trick. I thought you was a goner, Pete said shakily. He grasped her arm above the elbow to anchor her; his gulped breath stalled midway in his throat, bubbled up and down like a drunk carpenter’s level.

Zoenelle shrugged, stared at the red-lined horizon, then glanced at Pete, creating accidental green sunsets across his face. An impetus swiveled the periscope of her vision to absorb every detail of her surroundings; she saw the symbiotic relationship of the adhesion and water-cohesion functioning fungus with the photosynthetic bacteria in their commune called lichen; she studied the paths of ancient, melting, moving glaciers shoving mountains aside to reach the sea. And she watched the playful antics of wild sea monkeys splashing in ephemeral pools. She started to give the tiny creatures names: Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, Martha Mitchell. It was dark, between the sun falling and the moon rising.

Hey what happened when the fungus and the cyanobacteria met? Zoenelle asked. She waited. She looked at Pete again, still clutching her arm, his eyes appeared swollen and bathed in a translucent gel.

They took a lichen to each other, she answered and laughed. Then she laughed again, louder, as if it was the first time she had heard the joke.

You’re really beautiful, he whispered.

I know, she managed to say confidently, though a trembling of sudden chill vibrated her cheekbones. She clamped her mouth and teeth against a release of chattering. He was folding into a reclining position, slowly reeling her in by the arm until they lay facing each other. Blackness lay between them and she couldn’t see him bumping her face with his in search of her lips. His touches were rudimentary, placing the parts of her body: neck and collarbone here, right and left breast here. He slid his palm easily between the waist of her pants and her soft underbelly, then plunged wrist deep until he cupped the springy fibrous covering of her labia. She felt the shafts of hair stiffen and crinkle against the pressure of his hand. His longest finger traced the exposed flesh of her parting.

Feels nice, he murmured. Moving away from her mouth, he wedged his head between her ear and shoulder blade, and raising up slightly on his toes, he unzipped and tugged down his jeans.

Mmm, Zoenelle assented, through her nose, the shuddering in her thighs rattled her whole skull.

Are you cold? he asked as he watched her shed her jacket and vest and kick off one leg of her pants.

Nnno, not cold.

Scared? he asked, covering her trembling body with the bulk of his own, swiveling his hips to position the bobbing end of his penis at her opening, finally assisting the navigation with the more skillful appendage of his hand.

Nnno, not scared, she answered, then turned her head to the side as he plunged full length into her. They rocked their coital cradle to three-quarter time, a steady rhythmic cadence culminating in sighs on both sides.

He rolled off, stood up, and turned his back to her to make splashing noises against a canyon wall.

I’m going now, he said, rezipping. Hey, you. I said I gotta go now.

He paused a minute before hitting the departure trail, leaving her half undressed, exposed to the rising desert moon. Zoenelle stared intently at the cinematic effect of the moonbeamed area, the play of light and shadow unreeled a continuous depth focus of the panorama as each frame slowly clicked into view. The foreground stirred slightly off-center of her gaze with an accompanying audio signal. The abbreviated static sound of a radio dial being spun at the outer reaches of reception continued without visible proof of origin until its emergence from a small cluster of rocks bordering Zoenelle’s feet. They viewed each other’s presence simultaneously and both drew back in defensive postures. It displayed third dimensional shapes of symmetrically arranged triangles within triangles; a head shaped triangle embossed with triangular supraorbitals connected near its base to the apex of a wide flat body sloping gradually to an upright cone of stacked solid rings, where its duplicated image in miniature waved flagpole-style, creating the kindergarten band sandpaper blocks concerto.

Striking pose, Zoenelle complimented it, you look like a souvenir ashtray. The architecturally drawn creature rearranged itself as a branding iron for the Flying W Ranch, resting its orchestration except for a last tah-tah as the top two buttons of the seven-segment rattle flopped over.

Excuse me, Zoenelle squirmed into a sitting position, crossed her legs around and under each other, connected elbow to knee and palm to chin, what kind of rattlesnake are you? The ophidian turned a non-existent ear to the air-vibrating question; perhaps lips pressed to the ground would have evoked a response, but too late, musculature rippling shoved fifty feet of packed earth between them. The Crotalus subspecies gave no geographical determination. She unfolded the bunched-up yellow and white cloth beside her, and pulled the vest over her naked torso. She stood and stepped into the empty leg of the pants she was half-wearing. Exploring the pockets, she felt the slimy softness of something slipping from a plastic cover. She retrieved and examined the mushroom-like object quizzically before tossing it aside. What’s the story of that morel? she asked.

Where am I now? In the high desert. How did I get here?

Pointless to ponder, she spoke aloud, dissipating distant memories which would not connect with the here and now. She could not remember the last thing she remembered; she drew a Community Chest card and it read: Advance to Go - and she started again. It was obvious which way to go from this beginning point: down.

Chapter Three

Somebody had wiped her memory board clean again, the thick wet sponge left no chalky glimmer of today’s assignment. And she was not alone. She would have to account for a convergence of reality-making, along with her own present and recent past. She searched for clues to sort. Landscape and highway through a large windshield. She and a man sitting side by side, a caterpillar cantering bouncing them in separate seats; if she could only clasp the bucking creature in her thighs’ vise-grip to subdue the