Miss Wyoming Part 27

Susan was holding Eugene Junior on the concrete ledge besidethe propane tank. Her body felt deboned with relief, but thechild showed no signs of anything other than simple pleasure.

Randy had gone to calm the Exxon duty manager's nerves,worried that this sudden burst of people might const.i.tute asituation of some sort. Ivan's cell phone rang; he answered it, began speaking j.a.panese, and withdrew inside the rental car.Dreama hovered by Susan, while John, Ryan and Vanessa creptup to the opened rest room door and stared in at the harshly lit,unkempt sprawl that was Marilyn, slouched on the toilet lid.Her eyes were wide and red.

"Marilyn?" John said into the echoey tiled room. Marilyndidn't respond. "Are you okay?"

The back of Marilyn's head rested against the wall. She turnedtoward John at the door.

"Can I get you anything-Tylenol? Food? A blanket?"

"No," Marilyn said. "It's okay.There's nothing I want. Really.Truly. Nothing." She looked at John and saw a resemblance to Su- san's child, which was, in a way, a resemblance to Eugene Lind-say. "You're the father?"

"No, ma'am."

"He's a beautiful child," she said.

SOS"Sure is."

"Susan was more beautiful, though. She was. She was like aFranklin Mint souvenir figurine. People would gasp." Marilynthen glared at Vanessa. "You. How'd you catch me? I knew the jigwas up when you talked about the curtains. You don't look like the curtains type."

Vanessa gaped, unable for once to come up with a reply.Marilyn cut her thinking short. "To h.e.l.l with it. I don't wont toknow. It'd probably scare the s.h.i.+t out of me anyway. I knew Ishouldn't have stopped at Calumet for my bonus check." She lita cigarette. John thought she looked like a drag queen. "Sowhat's the deal-are you guys cops or something?"

"No. We're friends of Susan," John said.

Randy had just come back and told everyone that no policeor state troopers would be forthcoming.

"I ought to be in jail," said Marilyn. She turned her head tolook at the graffiti-free wall.

"There's not going to be any charges, Marilyn," John said.

The Interstate traffic punctuated the sky with its dull Doppler-s.h.i.+fted roars. John remembered back to less than a week before-when he was the schedule-obsessed robot watching the CNNsix o'clock news-and he remembered Doris's yelling at him tocough up the goods on his solo road trip. John put his arms outto Marilyn.

Marilyn was disdainful. "Give me one good reason I should even come near you."

John thought a second and remembered Vanessa's telling himabout Marilyn's polyandry. What was his name? He rememberedand blurted out, "Duran Deschennes would have wanted you to be close to Susan."

Marilyn let out a thimbleful of air, and her face lost all harsh-ness, briefly becoming young, and John could see the beauty 3O6.

she had obviously once been. She tottered over to him, asthough walking on a wobbling dock. They went outside, whereshe and John sat down beside a transformer box and somescrub pines. "You know, I've been broke before, Marilyn," hesaid. Marilyn nodded. "And I've been jobless before, too." She nodded again. "But mostly I've had n.o.body to join for dinner atsix-thirty every night," he said. "That was the worst of it forme-sunset-six-thirtyp.m. and n.o.body for dinner."

Susan, Randy and Dreama were by the van, their breathingharsh and quivering. Ivan was still in the car speaking j.a.panese.Ryan and Vanessa were discreetly turned away from John andMarilyn, but still trying to take in each word, and John shooedthem off like children past their bedtime.

"Ryan, would you get Marilyn a cup of coffee. Vanessa, canyou grab my coat from the car."

As they went off, Ryan whispered to Vanessa, "Oscar clip,"and Vanessa giggled. A minute later they were back. "Drinksome coffee," said Ryan. "It'll be good for you." He handedMarilyn a paper cup filled with hot coffee.

John walked over to Susan, who was holding her child up-side down by the ankles. A cold breeze shot by and he b.u.t.toned up his jacket.

Susan looked up and smiled and said, "Seems like a hundred years ago since our little walk together, eh?"

"A thousand."

Randy and Dreama, fifth wheels, made quick h.e.l.los, andwalked away with the two dogs.

"So how'd you do it? Find my mother, I mean. I've been here in Wyoming going crazy for days now. I haven't slept in, like,forty-eight hours. How'd you even know I was looking for her?"

"I didn't. I was looking for you." He sat down beside Susan."I had some luck and I followed a hunch or two. And the Hawaii 3O7Five-0 crime lab pitched in." He pointed to Ryan and Vanessa. "Don't ever cross those two.

They're so smart, even their s.h.i.+t has brains."

Susan brought Eugene Junior right side up and hugged himwhile smiling at John. "Never a dull moment when Mom'saround, that's for sure. Hey, know what? I know your homephone number."

"Really now?"

She told him.

"Aren't you the sphinx." John turned toward the child, who was fumbling with pebbles to his far left.

"How old is . . . ?"

"Eugene."

"Eugene?"

"He was two last week."

"You gonna go talk to your mother?"

"I suppose I have to." Susan grabbed him by the arm. "Youwant me, you better see this, too."

The two walked over to Marilyn, who had the lost look of a seabird covered in oil. Susan was going to speak, made afalse start and stopped. It turned out for once, Susan didn't haveto say anything. Marilyn whispered, "I'm sorry about thosepageants."

Susan made a noise, emptying her lungs of air and stress. Shesaid, "Mom, look. If I ever hear you so much as a hint that my kidneeds a haircut or has to go to the gym to develop brawnyshoulders or even that he needs a dab of Clearasil, then I'm go-ing to stop inviting you over for Christmas, okay?"

Marilyn sighed.

Susan and John went over to the minivan and sat down be-side it, Eugene on Susan's lap. Susan said, "I got your numberfrom a friend at the Director's Guild. I was about to call youwhen the s.h.i.+t hit the fan known as my mother." She gave a l.u.s.tyyawn. John picked up a piece of cardboard and played peekaboo with Eugene.

"I can't act," Susan said.

John snorted. "Oh G.o.d, where did that come from?"

Susan smiled. "Well, I don't want you getting it in your headyou can save me from myself by starring me in one of yourmovies. I'm a c.r.a.p actress. I really am."

"You can take lessons and-"

"Stop. I don't wont to be an actress. I never did. It just happened.I want my life to change, but not in that direction."

"So you still want to change, then?" John tried to ask thiscasually.

"Well, yeah. Don't you?"

"How about I'll stop if you stop."

"You think you can?"

John thought this over. The wind seemed to get stronger,blowing down from the Rockies onto the Plains. "Look atus," said John, "two clowns who went over Niagara Falls in abarrel."

Susan put her hands in her face and said, "Oh G.o.d, my mother is back in my life."

Ivan had finished his phone call and sidled over. He reachedJohn and Susan just as their hands touched.

"Mega Force blew them to bits in Nagasaki, John-O."

"Ivan, this is Susan. Susan, Ivan."

John's and Susan's hands were carelessly touching. "John-O, Itell you what-why don't I pile everybody into the rental carand take them back to Los Angeles?"

Susan's eyes were as wide and as open as the cobalt skyabove.

"Okay," John said.

Susan got behind the wheel of the minivan and John jumped 3O9in and rode shotgun with Eugene Junior on his lap. Susanstarted the van and drove off.

Looking back, John saw the mystified crowd, with Ivan pre-paring a plot synopsis for their next six hours.

Susan, exhausted or not, was a confident driver. The threesped across the dark flat continent, n.o.body in the minivanknowing where they might be heading, just that they wereheading away from where they had been before.

Eugene Junior fell asleep in John's lap. John turned his headand looked out the window. Outside, there was a barbed-wire fence, a road sign sayingomaha 480, and John also saw whathe thought were the eyes of an animal.

He looked at Susan's reflection in the black window gla.s.s.John remembered once yelling at a cameraman on a film,whom he was convinced was color-blind. During a break Johnwent off to props and brought back with him a piece of s.h.i.+nyblack plastic. He gave it to the cameraman, and the cameraman asked him, "What's this for?" and John said, "It's something theImpressionist painters used to do. Whenever they were unsureof the true color of something, they'd look at its reflection in apiece of black gla.s.s. They thought that the only way they couldever see the true nature of something was to reflect it ontosomething dark."

Police lights erupted behind them, but the police were afteranother car, not theirs. Susan looked over at John and arched hereyebrows in conspiracy. John watched the pale black road, andhe remembered a single moment during his time away in thewilderness. He wished he had told Doris about it-a single mo- ment in Needles, California, months and months ago, facing west in the late afternoon. There had been a heavy rainstormover just a small, localized patch of the desert, and from thepatch beside it, a dust storm blew in. The sun caught the dustand the moisture in a way John had never seen before, and eventhough he knew it was backward, it seemed to him the sun wasradiating black sunbeams down onto the Earth, onto Interstate40 and the silver river of endless pioneers that flowed from onepart of the continent to the other. John felt that he and every-body in the New World was a part of a mixed curse and blessing from G.o.d, that they were a race of strangers, perpetually castingthemselves into new fires, yearning to burn, yearning to risefrom the charcoal, always newer and more wonderful, always thirsty, always starving, always believing that whatever came tothem next would mercifully erase the creatures they'd already become as they crawled along the plastic radiant way.

end