“Thank you for picking me up,” Jake said when they were underway.
“Stop it, Jake! Of course I'm going to pick you up. Now, tell me what's going on.”
Jake recounted the tale of what had happened to him and Brandee. Given the presence of Jason in the back seat, he didn't go into graphic detail about what he had seen at The Northwoods Inn, but he told Rebecca enough to give her a good idea. She was appalled.
“Who in the world is this Janelle creature anyway?”
“It's someone that we met in Colorado. She's a big fan.”
“I still don't understand. I'm sure that Brandee has fans everywhere you guys go! You don't take them with you, do you?”
Jake shook his head. “No. Janelle is different, though. She has Brandee all messed up in some kind of religious hokum. Something about spirits and meditating.”
“To the point that Brandee had sex with her?”
Jake couldn't speak for a moment. He swallowed the sob that rose in his throat, before managing a strangled “Yes.”
Rebecca shook her head in wonderment at what had become of the world. “I'll be.”
Jake suddenly realized that something was wrong with his vision. It was the dead of night, but even at that, things seemed darker than they should have been. The lights of the city weren't registering in his peripheral vision. He was staring in front of him, with darkness on both sides. It took a moment for him to realize that Rebecca was talking again.
“...Jesus is your friend, even now.”
Jake said, “I love you, Becks. Please don't give me that Jesus stuff right now. I believe in heaven, but I don't think Jesus gives a damn what happens to me here on earth. Brandee and I were supposed to be soul mates! Soul mates! What a crock of shit that is!”
“I know you feel like that right now Jake. Let things play out. Maybe something good will come out of this.”
Rebecca decided to go with her gut and not to tell Jake that Brandee and the group were on their way to Tacoma at that very moment. He needs to get some rest, she thought. He'll be better able to talk to her if he's rested.
Jake was quiet the rest of the ride to the Flurringer home. He loved his sister completely, but she had already tried to “Jesus” him about Brandee. How could she understand the darkness that was inside of him? He knew that she couldn't. He knew that no one could. He was alone.
Rebecca pulled into the stylish Flurringer home on Alaska Drive in Tacoma's south end. Jake got out of the car and followed his sister to the front door. After Rebecca opened the door and hung her keys on the hook beside the door, she turned to her brother.
“I know that Tad is going to want to talk to you first thing in the morning. Why don't you get some sleep? I've made up the guest bedroom.”
“Thank you. Becks. Thanks for everything.”
Rebecca kissed him on the cheek. “Everything's going to be okay, Jacob. God loves you. So do I.”
Rebecca went into the master bathroom, not wanting to wake her sleeping husband. She pulled out her phone and dialed the last number from which she had received a call.
“Hello?”
“This is Rebecca Flurringer. Is this Brandee?”
“Yes it is, Rebecca.”
“Jake's here at my house. I just sent him into the guest bedroom. He's safe, and he doesn't know you are coming. I'm afraid he would leave again if he knew. Where are you?”
“We just passed Albany, Oregon. We're driving like the wind, trying to get there.”
“Call me when you get to Centralia, Washington. You'll be less than an hour away.”
“I will... and Rebecca?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for everything.”
“You're welcome. You two have some things to work out, but God will guide you if only you will let Him. Take care.”
“Bye,” Brandee said, and quietly clicked her phone closed as she focused on the road ahead of the Sprinter.
***
“Can't this crate go any faster?” Suzi complained to Diane in the Nissan.
“Suzi, I'm doing 85! What more do you want from me?”
“I want faster! I have a really bad feeling and we need to get up there!”
“Well, it won't do us any good to go faster and get stopped by a cop. Sit back and relax.”
“I'm not going to relax! If you're going 85 and a cop stops you, you get a ticket. If you go 95 and a cop stops you, you get a ticket. What's the difference?
“The difference is, I'm going as fast as this thing will go! If it would do 95, I would be going 95! I'm as anxious to see Jake as you are, so sit back and let me drive!”
Suzi sat back and watched the darkness rush by. The bad feeling was only getting worse.
***
Janelle had decided that the best thing to do would be to let Brandee take the conversational lead. In her perfect world, Brandee would have seen already that she and Jake shouldn't be together. The singer would go public that Janelle was her new lover, and everything would be great forever. That wasn't the way it was working out, though, and Janelle saw that things could get messy.
She didn't know what it meant that Jake left. Maybe it meant that he was giving up. That would be good. Maybe it was just a temporary thing, and he would be sniffing around her Brandee when they got to Tacoma. That would be bad. Maybe Brandee wanted to tell him in person that they were finished. That would be good. There were too many maybes for her to try to figure them all out.
In spite of her earlier decision to let Brandee initiate conversation, after almost an hour on the road, the maybes in her mind and the silence in the car were too much for her. She touched Brandee's arm.
“You can talk to me, baby.”
Brandee looked at Janelle. There was something in the back of her mind that she had meant to talk to Janelle about anyway. Maybe this was the time.
“When you first said the words of meditation to me, you called me Brandee Alexander. Why did you use my maiden name?”
“I believe that we choose our name from before we're born. We choose them in the celestial firmament. That's our name for all time. A woman gives up a part of herself if she takes her husband's name. It's like her slave name. Your name should always be Brandee Reneé Alexander.”
Brandee nodded her understanding, if not her assent. “I've never felt like a slave to Jake. We've been a good team through all of this with the group. He's helped me a lot.”
Janelle knew that she shouldn't rise to the bait, but she couldn't help it. This wasn't going her way.
“Maybe so, but now he wants to take it all away from you so you can have his little brat! So he can be the big father man!”
“He isn't like that, Janelle!” Brandee shouted, more forcefully than she had planned. She felt more protective of Jake than she had realized.
“The hell he isn't!” He wants to possess you!” Janelle blazed back.
“He wants to have a family with me! That's what he wants!”
Janelle knew that she was only making things worse for herself. She couldn't stand to watch the person that she was in love with throw herself away, though.
“Fine, let him take everything that you could be away from you! Let him make you fat and ugly! Who's going to want to come to your concerts when you look like a blimp, blowing around under that wind machine?
Brandee looked across the darkened Sprinter and saw a petulant little girl having a tantrum. She saw more than that, though. Brandee felt like she was seeing the real Janelle for the first time.
Under Janelle's hero worship (which had stroked Brandee's ego every minute of every day), Janelle was a selfish person. Brandee turned her attention back to the freeway and the Nissan, which was almost airborne in front of her.
“None of us know what's going to happen with Jake,” she said, under control again. “But why can't you have a little compassion for the man? What has he ever done to you?”
Janelle had always had anger management issues. Now, when she could have brou
ght the conversation back to at least a neutral position with some self-control, her lack of that valuable trait showed itself.
“Because he doesn't deserve to have you! Because he's nothing but a no-talent horse's ass who just wants to ride on your coattails! Because you're too blind and stupid to tell him to just get the fuck out of your life!”
While Janelle was shouting, the Sprinter sailed by a sign on the side of the freeway, which read, “Salem 8. Portland 53.” Brandee did some calculating in her mind. When she spoke, it was in a firm voice.
“We're going to have to stop and get gas before we get to Portland. When we do, I'll tell the others that we need to make a fast stop in Portland.”
Janelle looked at Brandee with eyes that were still angry.
“Why are we stopping in Portland? I thought you wanted to get to Tacoma so you could see precious Jake.”
Brandee's mouth grew thin as she fought to hold her temper in check. She knew that Janelle was angry, and part of her recognized that some of that anger was her own fault.
“I'm going to drop you off at the Portland Greyhound Station. You can catch a bus from there. You can go back to Wyoming or down to see your parents; I don't care which. I need you to go, though. I'll give you the money for the ticket.”
Janelle knew that she had badly overplayed her hand this night. She kicked herself for pushing the point.
“No, baby. Please don't send me away! I'm sorry! I'll be good!”
She reached for Brandee's arm, but Brandee pulled it away. The singer went on.
“I don't think that I knew what I had with Jake. He wants to have a family, and I don't. Okay, we can work through that. I don't know how, but we will. He and I have had some big-time arguments before this one, and we've always been able to fix it, eventually.”
Janelle pleaded her case. “Don't make me go, Brandee! Please don't make me go! I love you! I want to meditate with you!”
“Janelle!” Brandee interrupted. “Stop! It's the way it has to be. I'm sorry. I'm glad that I met you, and I'll always be grateful that you helped me learn to meditate and find peace that way. I'll write to you and keep you posted on what I'm doing if you want, but we have to end this. Tonight.”
Just then, Brandee saw the turn indicator on the Nissan flash its signal. Diane was stopping for gas on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon. She signaled a right exit also, checking her blind spot as she moved from the right lane to the exit ramp.
The two vehicles stopped at a Union 76 station that was open all night. Oregon is one of only two states that don't allow drivers to pump their own gas, but Diane didn't know this. The attendant rushed outside to take the pump from the drummer's hand before she committed a Class C misdemeanor.
“I'll do that for you ma'am. State law, you know.”
Bruce knew about Oregon's unique stance where self-service gasoline is concerned, but he decided that it would be good sport to let Diane learn the hard way. When the chastened drummer got back into the car she turned and said, “You knew that, didn't you, Bruce?”
“Maybe,” Bruce answered.
“You're always jumping out and pumping gas for us, but tonight you just sat there.”
“I think I was asleep.”
Diane shook her head. “Nobody is going to get any sleep until we get this all figured out. Why, oh why, did all of this have to happen now?”
Just then, Brandee walked up to the Nissan and spoke through the open door.
“We need to make a quick side trip into Portland,” she said.
“Why?” Suzi asked.
“Janelle's going to catch a bus from there. It won't take long, I promise.”
With that, Brandee turned around and went back to the Sprinter.
The musicians were dumbstruck. They looked at each other, each wondering if one of the others had any insight about this latest development. Finally, Suzi spoke for them all.
“Well! Okay, then!”
Brandee led the caravan out of the 76 station and headed northbound on the freeway. As they approached Portland, the traffic volume increased, even at this time of night. Brandee was reduced to driving about 75 as she entered the city limits, and Janelle knew that her time to make this all good was running out.
“I'm going to go to Florence, where my family is,” she said. “I'll wait for you there.”
Brandee looked at her passenger. She felt bad about so many things, and Janelle was near the top of that list. Brandee spoke in a voice that was soft and gentle.
“I'm not going to come see you. It would be nice if you and I could be friends. I'll keep you posted on where I am and what I'm doing, but I'm not going to come see you.”
Janelle turned to the passenger side window and stared into the night. The cloudless sky yielded millions of pinpricks of light, but Janelle didn't see any of them. She and Brandee were silent all the way to the Greyhound Station.
***
Brandee went inside the bus station while Janelle got her bag out of the back of the Sprinter. By the time Janelle got inside, Brandee had purchased a one-way ticket from Portland to Florence, Oregon, departure time 5:00 AM . Janelle showed her picture ID to the ticket agent and took the ticket. Brandee took Janelle to the side to say goodbye.
“I'm sorry about how things were at the end. I'm just upset about Jake. I'm not really mad at you.”
Janelle took one last heroic time at bat to try to change the way things were turning out for her. She tried to kiss Brandee with an open mouth, but got a face full of Brandee's cheek instead.
“Good bye, Janelle. Take care of yourself,” Brandee said as she stepped away.
Brandee turned and went through the swinging door that led to the parking lot. She didn't turn around for a last look at her young lover.
Diane, Suzi, and Bruce had gotten out to stretch their legs in the parking lot of the bus station. As Brandee came out, they were getting back into the Nissan for the run up through western Washington to Tacoma.
“Let's move!” Brandee said.
***
Jake had lain in the bed at his sister's house for over an hour, but his mind wouldn't let him fall asleep. He replayed again and again the scene that had confronted him at the Northwoods Inn. He saw the back of his beautiful wife's head as it bobbed up and down. The sight haunted him, and drove him to a place darker than he had ever been before.
“I'm alone,” he said aloud to himself. “My life is over.”
He got out of bed and wandered around his sister's house, looking at the pictures on the walls. He saw a family that looked to be so very happy. So very together, it seemed. He compared it to his own situation.
“I'm alone,” he said.
Jake went back into the bedroom, but he didn't get back into bed. He sat on the side of the bed for a minute or two before deciding what to do next. He pulled his polo shirt back over his head and left the room. He quietly walked to the front door, opened it, and went outside.
Jake walked up the street for a couple of blocks. He hadn't noticed the Walgreen's Drug Store when Becks had driven past it earlier, but now he did. He went inside.
***
“What do you suppose happened with them?” Bruce wondered aloud in the Nissan after it crossed the Jantzen Beach Bridge that separated Portland from Washington State.
“I don't know, but I'm glad it did! Wow!” Suzi said.
“I think that Brandee may be doing some prioritizing,” Diane said. “And when she did, I think Janelle came in last.”
“What do you think that means for Jake and Brandee?” Suzi asked.
“I hope it means that damn fool girl is going to straighten up!” Diane said, hitting the steering wheel with the bottom of her hand. “She's so talented, but she's such a brat!”
“Jake always doted on her,” Bruce said. “Maybe if he hadn't done that, she might have not been so headstrong.”
Diane thought about that for a few seconds before answering. “I'm not sure he could have done that. Jake's a great guy,
but I don't know if he really knows just how great of a guy he is. He's always treated Brandee like she's a goddess. A relationship works best if both people believe that not only that they're lucky, but that the other person is lucky too. I think Jake thought he was the lucky one.”
Suzi chimed in. “I think Brandee thought he was the lucky one, too. Maybe that's the problem.”
“It could be,” Bruce said. “It could be that Brandee demands that of a man, though.”
“Maybe of a woman too,” Diane said.
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