Good enough. “And how old is this precocious child of yours, Mrs. Landry?”
She laughed musically. “I’m not sure ‘precocious’ still applies since Lucy is thirty-one, Mr., um . . .”
“Angel.”
“Angel. That’s a very interesting name. And I understand your disorientation regarding Lucy’s age, but precocious or not, whatever she is, she gets it from me, not from her father.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I thanked her and gave the phone back to Lucy. “I’m back,” she said, then listened for a moment. “Las Vegas.” She glanced at me. “Yes. He is.” Pause, another look at me. “Yeah, he’s that, too. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” She ended the call, handed me the phone.
“He is what?” I asked. “And what else, too?”
“Nice,” she said. “And way out of his depth.”
CHAPTER NINE
SHE WAS A whirlwind. I’d never met anyone like her before. But she wasn’t eighteen, nineteen, or even twenty-one. which made me feel somewhat better. A lot better, in fact. I could deal with thirty-one. Thought so, anyway. If only she had a wrinkle somewhere, just one single gray strand . . .
“Out of my depth?” I said, pulling back onto the highway.
“Totally.”
“Don’t know where you get that, kiddo.”
“Just your basic observation. Anyway, Mort, you can relax, I’m not jailbait. It’s a family trait, looking young. You should see my mom. She’s going on fifty-four, doesn’t look thirty-five. My grandmother is seventy-six and passes for midfifties.”
She settled herself sideways in the seat and faced me. “Okay, like I said, the Vagina Monologues is a legitimate play. It won an Obie Award. Eve Ensler wrote it in 1996. Lots of women have gone to see it. Men, too. It’s like a total breakthrough. Like being able to acknowledge and accept and talk about female anatomy without getting embarrassed, use words that used to freak people out, and just . . . get over it. I did that for three months in a little theater on Geary Street in San Francisco, sort of an off-Broadway kind of thing. One time there were eighty-five women in the audience and seven men, I counted them, and all the men but two were looking down at their hands and their faces would glow kinda red whenever I or the other actors onstage said ‘pussy’ or ‘cunt,’ words like that, especially at first. Just like you did when I said them a few minutes ago. Girl like me says pussy and you’re all over the place. So, yeah, you’re pretty much out of your depth here.”
Felt like it, too.
“But I’m pretty sure we can get you caught up,” she said.
“Caught up? We?”
“Expand your vocabulary. Expand your mind. Get you past all the hang-ups.”
“I don’t have any hang-ups.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay . . . what if I treasure my hang-ups?”
She twisted her lips. “What if you treasure arthritis?”
“Huh?”
“Anyway, we’ll work on it. Not all at once, but over time. Vocabulary, concepts. So now we’re going to investigate this Jo-X thing, right? That would be cool. He’s been all over television lately, especially since you found him, when was it? Day before yesterday? I’ve never done anything like that. I got this degree in art history that’s beyond worthless and I ended up back home, but only for a month ’cause I was going totally schizo there. I mean, what on earth could I learn at home? Back at McGinty’s there’s Earl, the cook that owns the place?—and he’s gruff and hairy and sometimes kinda mean, but I wouldn’t get that at home. So, now I’ve met someone gruff and hairy and mean and that’s something, right? It’s experience. Which means it’s not all bad. Enough of that and maybe I could write plays or novels or something. So if I hang out with you, think of all the amazing things I could see and, you know, experience. I could even end up writing a play about you.”
Jesus. I should have stopped her as soon as she said we were going to investigate this Jo-X thing, but that would’ve been like trying to catch a bullet in my teeth.
“And all this”—she waved a hand at the world—“the sun, this terrific heat, all this emptiness. I’ve never done anything like this before—I mean, not in a car like this. This is a first.”
“Well . . . good.” It was nice. Seventy-five on a highway with few other cars on the road, slipstream of wind blasting over our heads, gorgeous girl beside me, conversation humming along and a trove of fun new words being tossed around.
A few miles went by.
“Thirty-one,” I said.
“Yep. Maybe I don’t look old because I don’t think old. Getting old sucks, if you look around at all the people who are so serious they don’t have fun anymore.”
“I rode in the WNBR.” Okay, that just popped out. I’ll have to get a handle on my mouth someday. Or a zipper.
“Well, there’s hope then,” Lucy said.
I looked over at her and smiled. “You don’t have any idea what the WNBR is, do you?”
“Of course I do. World Naked Bike Ride.”
Sonofabitch. How out of touch was I? “How did you know that?”
“I’ve done it four times. Three in San Fran, once up in Portland. Did you do it totally in the buff or wuss out?”
Proudly I said, “All I wore was a little red body paint.”
“So you kinda wussed out, but I still take back most of it.”
“Most of what?”
“That thing about being totally out of your depth. Maybe you’re only eighty percent out.”
She dug a bottle of Banana Boat sunscreen out of her suitcase, put a dollop in her hand, and started to rub it over her face. “You’re a nice guy, right?”
“Nice?”
“Honest, easygoing, pretty laid back?” Still putting on the sunblock, ears, throat.
“I hope so.”
“Sure seems like it. Anyway, you’re not mean?”
“Not intentionally, no. I can get gruff at times.”
“Still a little hung up, though, the WNBR notwithstanding.”
Okay, she was thirty-one. Seventeen-year-old girls do not use the word “notwithstanding.” Ever. I felt better.
I glanced at her. “We’re back to my hang-ups again?”
“Just sayin’. What you need is a little something to loosen you up, untie a few knots.”
I shivered slightly. “Why do I get the feeling you’re building up to something?”
“Because I am.” She closed the cap and put the sunscreen on the seat beside her.
“Are you gonna make me regret bringing you along?”
“Hope not. Anyway, I’ve never had a chance like this before and I don’t know when or if I ever will again, and I couldn’t possibly do it while I’m driving, so now’s the time to experience life. There’s no way I’m gonna let this opportunity go by, so how ’bout you take it down to like fifty miles an hour.”
“Why? You gonna jump out, experience contusions and road burn?”
She laughed. “Fifty, okay?”
I eased off on the gas. The roar of wind tapered off. Sixty-five. Sixty. Fifty-five.
“Okay, now don’t flip out,” Lucy said.
She pulled her feet under her, then sat up on the back of the seat, up in the wind, and pulled her top off over her head. “Don’t forget to steer,” she said, then lifted her face, eyes closed, and let the hot, dry wind buffet her body.
I looked up at her, nice flat stomach, great little chest pushed out into a stiff gale, temperature at a hundred three degrees, then looked back at the road, thinking that this PI thing was still right on track, wasn’t wearing down a bit. Exactly one year ago, the IRS and I parted ways. After my divorce from Dallas, I’d lived a relatively celibate life as an internal revenue goon for Uncle Sam. Maybe this was catch-up, cosmic style. Maybe I hadn’t caught up enough yet and the books were still being balanced. Or—maybe this was part of what it meant to be a gumshoe. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth fighting. Sometimes you go along and enjoy the ride.
Luc
y reached down, got the Banana Boat, squeezed some into a hand, and rubbed it over her chest and arms. When she was done, I treated myself to a two-second look.
Her nipples had hardened in the breeze. She caught my look and laughed. “Good. You’re not flipping out.”
“I’m gritting my teeth, though, trying to make the best of it.”
“Uh-huh.”
I kept my eyes on the road. That’s best if you don’t want to slam head-on into a semi. “You probably ought to know—the most impressive chest I’ve ever seen was on a guy at a beach up at Lake Tahoe a few years back.”
“A guy?” Her voice had a frown in it.
“Uh-huh. About thirty years old, long greasy hair. You know the type. He had two human ears tattooed on his chest. The ears were pierced and had rings in their lobes with a chain swinging between them as he walked.” I glanced up at her.
Lucy stared at me. “That’s brutal.”
“Memorable. You got any skin art?”
“Do you see any?”
“Can’t see all of you. Most, but not all, and I should point out that you didn’t answer the question.”
“Well, I don’t. No piercings, either, except for my ears. I’m not into that self-destructive stuff. You can change earrings or take them off, but you can’t do that with a tattoo.”
“Good for you.”
The road was two-lane. A big eighteen-wheeler was headed in our direction. Lucy waved as it approached and the trucker blasted his horn merrily as he went by.
“Getting that new experience you were lookin’ for?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. This is great. Thanks for letting me do this.” Her words were yanked back in the wind.
She gave it another two miles like that, then got back down in her seat. I took it up to seventy-five again. “Got some of those knots undone?” she asked.
“Who said I had knots?”
“It’s your aura. Actually, it’s sort of sweet. Doesn’t match your scars or that little mist of gray in your hair.”
“O’Roarke and I talk about my sweet aura all the time. Patrick O’Roarke. He’s a bartender in Reno.”
“I’m sure. So—want me to put my top back on?”
“Let your conscience be your guide, lady.”
“Lady. That’s almost an improvement. For the record, I like it when you call me ‘kiddo,’ too. Makes me feel young again. And, hey, good for you, you aren’t totally freaked by this.”
“Not visibly. But you’d better be at least eighteen.”
She smiled, then closed her eyes.
Another mile passed in companionable silence while I tried to insert Lucy into my worldview. Holiday would be okay with this since that’s how she was. But, man, the guys I worked with at the IRS would be so pissed if they could—
Lucy looked up at me. “You’re really okay with this? It feels super, this heat and wind, but I don’t want to push it.”
“Better than okay. Got all my square knots untied.”
She smiled and closed her eyes again. “Square knots. That’s good.”
“I haven’t seen perky like that in a long time.”
“Perky. That’s good, too.”
Three more miles passed by without conversation. The day was hot as hell, but the heat felt good. It reminded me of my time in Borroloola, Australia, when I put up nearly a mile of fence for a widow named Kate Hardy in the toughest ground God put on this earth. I let my mind go blank and allowed this experience to wash over me without trying to analyze it. Sometimes it’s good to shut off the flow of words and just breathe.
But words eventually sneak back in. Holiday, aka Sarah, was going to graduate with a civil engineering degree and ease out of my life as quietly and with as little fanfare as she’d eased in, back when she was pretending to be a hooker. She was going to give me a peck on the cheek and go off to engineer something somewhere. I wondered about this road trip with Lucy. I didn’t know what it was. I had the feeling I was in a wilderness, being marched through fog. Lucy was a free spirit, rather like Kayla, the beautiful girl I’d found in my bed last summer—Mayor Sjorgen’s daughter, who had started this surfeit of gorgeous girls, this absolute deluge of women in my life. Kayla and I had driven through the desert in her VW bug, but she wasn’t topless. This was a first for me. Lucy’s eyes were closed and she sat there like a slender meditating Buddha with a faint smile on her face, head back against the headrest, not a worry in the world, taking life one second at a time. She wasn’t posing, wasn’t flaunting herself, she was just . . . there. Carefree, relaxed, happy.
I felt loose. Maybe she was untying knots I didn’t know I had. Maybe we have more knots than we’re aware of, tucked into dimly lit corners of our minds.
Vagina Monologues.
Hot damn.
Then my phone rang. I slowed to sixty-five and swiped the screen. It was Holiday. I told her to hold on a minute, that I was on a highway and had to find a place to pull off.
“What the hell was that?” Lucy said.
“What was what?”
“That ringtone.”
“‘Monster Mash.’ Pretty cool, huh?”
“Wow.”
Half a mile ahead I saw a dirt road off to the right. I slowed and pulled off the highway, went three hundred feet up a dusty track to cut down on traffic noise and because one of us wasn’t wearing her tight little pink cotton top.
I cut the engine. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to say hi, Mort. Turns out Ravi and his wife are here at Alice’s, their kids, too, so it’s a busy place.”
Ravi was her cousin, two months older than Holiday. He and Dylan had bathed or showered with Holiday from the time she was five years old until she turned eleven. She and Ravi probably had a lot to talk about, interesting memories to share. Not sure about Mrs. Ravi.
“Sounds like good times,” I said.
“It is. Right now it’s all about ice cream cones. So, you’re driving? Where to?”
“Las Vegas. And I’ve got a topless girl in the car with me. Her name is Lucy.” I had to do it. No telling how that would turn out, but I wouldn’t lie to Holiday, even by omission. We still had our Tuesday Time together. When I looked over at Lucy, she was staring at me, jaw agape, not looking much like a Buddha.
Two seconds of silence on the other end. Then: “Topless?”
“Very.”
“How is very topless different than ordinary topless?”
“Attitude?”
“How old is this girl, Mort? What was her name again?”
“Thirty-one, looks eighteen. Her name is Lucy.”
“I should talk to her. Put her on.”
Great idea. Oughta be good for a laugh. I handed the phone to Lucy. “Here, kiddo. Converse.”
She took it gingerly. “Uh, hi.”
I couldn’t hear what Holiday was saying. I got out of the car to stretch my legs, wondering which direction my life was about to go. Life is all about choices, forks in the road, some big, some small—tell Holiday about Lucy, or don’t. Mention the topless thing, or don’t. I’d made my decision. Maybe I’d wanted to know where Holiday and I were going, or if we were going anywhere. It didn’t seem likely. Once she got that civil engineering degree, I didn’t think she’d stay in Reno, but Reno was home, my place in the world.
I looked back. Thirty feet away, Lucy was slumped in the seat, one bare foot up on the dash, phone to her ear. She waved an index finger at me and smiled.
Good enough. When women talk about me, this is the way it goes. I can’t figure it out.
Two minutes went by. Three. I watched a buzzard or vulture floating over a low brown hill half a mile away, hunting.
Lucy got out of the car. She came over in her filmy shorts and sandals. “She hung up. Said a kid dumped an ice cream cone down the front of her shirt. Anyway, that was sort of weird.”
“Ice cream down the front is like that.”
“Not the ice cream. I mean, she was so nice. You told her I was topless a
nd she didn’t mind. Not what I expected. Sarah’s that girl you were with when you found Senator Reinhart’s hand, right?”
“His right hand, right. And to keep the record straight, it pretty much found me.”
“What she did, before she hung up, she told me not to hurt you. Said if I did she’d break my legs, but she said it in a nice way.”
“A nice way?”
“Uh-huh. I didn’t think anyone could do that. She asked why I was topless and I described it, the sun and the heat, the wind on my skin. I told her it was just an experience—something I might never get a chance to do again, certainly not with someone like you, and she said she understood, especially about you. But the point is, I mean what I got is that she cares about you, but it was perfectly okay for you to . . . well, do this. Drive me to Vegas, whatever. Still feels kinda weird, she was so friendly . . . like not only was it okay, but she approved.”
“She didn’t say anything about gifting, did she?”
“Gifting? What’s that?”
“Tell you about it sometime.”
“Something to look forward to. I like that. Anyway, here’s your phone. Okay with you if I don’t put my top on right away?”
“Sure. Enjoy. What’s a little nudity among friends?”
She laughed, then looked toward the hills. “She was so, so nice about it.”
After five more miles, Lucy picked up her tank top, pulled it over her head, snugged it back down.
“Done with the showgirl act?” I asked.
“For now. Don’t want to overdo the sun even with sunblock. But it felt good, so thanks. I’ll probably do it again later. It’s almost like I was born in the wrong century. I could’ve been Sally Rand or Faith Bacon. Sally, mostly.”
“Sally Rand?”
“She did an ostrich-feather dance at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1933. Danced entirely naked, partly hidden by feathers. She mostly kept one part of herself concealed, but she showed ’em everything else. Gave the world a topless show that was really something at the time. I’ll bet she was pretty much turned on the whole time, too.”
I didn’t comment on that last, but it sounded a lot like Holiday. I wondered if Lucy had some of that, too.
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