“Thank you,” he said gravely.
The waitress blinked, then grinned. “You’re welcome! You’re a good boy.”
“He is,” Louise agreed. It was true, no matter how much he’d complicated her life. Her own smile faded when she looked at the prices. She hadn’t been here for a while—not since she lost her job at the ramen works. It’s just Carrows, for crying out loud, not Wolfgang Puck, she thought. But when groceries were hideously expensive and energy even further through the roof, what could you expect?
Even if it brought back those bad memories, the BLT was one of the cheaper things she could get. Pork hadn’t gone up as much as beef and lamb. Plenty, but not as much. On the kids’ menu, chicken nuggets were also less outrageous than the cheeseburger. Outrageous, yeah, but less so.
Now—where had Vanessa got to? Louise hadn’t seen her since she got back to Southern California. Vanessa had a habit of running late. Louise had had that habit, too, but Colin cured her of it. A cop had to stay on time, and he made her do the same thing. She hadn’t slipped too badly since leaving him.
“Are you ready to order, ma’am?” the waitress asked.
“Not for me, not yet, but could you get him the nuggets and fries, and apple juice to go with ’em?”
“I’ll do that.” The waitress hurried away.
Louise wondered why. The place wasn’t crowded. Were there any crowded restaurants left in the whole country? If what Carrows had to charge was any indication, there wouldn’t be. Louise also wondered if she would even recognize Vanessa. She hadn’t seen her daughter since before the eruption. She hadn’t seen Rob in even longer, but neither had Colin, so that didn’t count the same way.
The waitress delivered the nuggets and fries and juice. James Henry started slaughtering them. He wasn’t neat—what little kid is?—but he wasn’t fussy, either. All of Louise’s other kids had been. Maybe this straightforward voracity came from Teo. It would be nice if something good did.
Here was Vanessa, across the grassy strip in front of the restaurant. She’d cut her hair short. It didn’t fall past her shoulders, the way she’d always worn it before. Maybe that was what made her look harder, tougher, than Louise remembered.
When Vanessa walked into the Carrows, Louise waved. Her daughter waved back and came over to the table. Louise decided the haircut wasn’t what made her look tougher after all. It was something in the line of her jaw and, even more, something in her eyes.
No matter what it was, Louise got up and hugged her. “Good to see you!” she said.
“Good to be seen,” Vanessa answered. That was such a Colin thing to come out with, it cooled half of Louise’s pleasure at the meeting. But then Vanessa added, “Hi, Mom,” and you couldn’t go very far wrong with that. She eyed James Henry. “So, this is the new kid, huh?”
“This is James Henry,” Louise agreed. As Vanessa sat down, Louise went on, “James Henry, do you know who this is?”
“A lady,” her son said, a fry twitching at the corner of his mouth the way a cigarette would have in Gabe Sanchez’s.
“She’s not just any lady. She’s Vanessa, your big, big sister, the way Marshall is your big, big brother.”
“Oh.” James Henry digested that—and more of the french fry. “Is she gonna babysit me, too?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see,” Louise answered.
“This is all too bizarre,” Vanessa said. “I come back to SoCal and I’ve got a little brother and a tiny sister. I mean, bizarre.”
“That’s right. Kelly had her baby,” Louise said. “How is she?”
“Kelly’s okay,” Vanessa answered. “The baby is noisy. Like a yowling cat, only more annoying.”
So were you, dear. Before Louise could even think about saying it, the waitress came back. Louise did order the BLT, in memory of lost time. That was the name of a book, a book she hadn’t read. She didn’t suppose she was likely to start it now, either. Vanessa, unburdened by memories of sitting at this table before, chose the fried chicken.
In the end, Louise did ask, “And how are you getting along with Colin’s new wife?”
“Okay, I guess.” By the way Vanessa’s mouth narrowed, it wasn’t all that okay. She went on, “She’s pretty boring, if you want to know what I think. I mean, unless you’re talking about geology or something. And geology doesn’t get my rocks off—not even close.”
Louise needed a second to realize that was a pun. She sent Vanessa a reproachful look. The kids got that kind of bad joke from their father, too. Did that mean James Henry wouldn’t do such horrible things when he got bigger? She could hope so, anyhow.
When the food came, she discovered that the BLT wasn’t just like the one she’d had on that bad day with her ex. That one had been on wheat, before wheat got very scarce indeed. This one came on rye, and not the kind of rye they’d had before the eruption. It was more like chewy flatbread than slices off a proper loaf. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely different.
“How’s yours?” she asked Vanessa—the batter coating on the fried chicken wasn’t the color it would have been in the good old days, either.
But her daughter answered, “Hey, it’s fresh food. I’m not gonna complain. After all the MREs I’ve eaten, I bet I’ve got more preservatives in me than the stuffed animals at the museum.”
“Isn’t that something?” Louise said, to cover her own surprise. In her experience, Vanessa could always complain about something or somebody. Maybe the time she’d spent in Camp Constitution had done her some good after all.
Louise knew better than to say anything like that. Vanessa would only indignantly deny it. Vanessa was always sure she was fine the way she was, thankyouverymuch.
So Louise tried, “Had any luck finding a job?” She confidently expected to hear a no; she sure hadn’t had any luck herself. Then they could commiserate, and piss and moan about the miserable state of the world.
But Vanessa answered, “I think so. Looks as though Nick Gorczany wants me back at his widget works.” She added something else, too low for Louise to catch.
“I’m sorry. What was that?” Louise cupped a hand behind her ear. Sure as hell, her hearing was starting to go. She hated that. It was one more sign she was getting old, and off God’s warranty.
Vanessa’s eyes flicked to James Henry. He’d scarfed down his lunch and was busy coloring some more. He couldn’t have cared less. Vanessa repeated herself, a little louder this time: “I said, I didn’t even have to screw him to get him to offer me the job.”
“Oh.” Vanessa sounded uncomfortable, and she was. Said one way, that would have been the kind of sour joke women made when they talked about the pains of living in a world with men in it. But Vanessa hadn’t said it that way, or Louise didn’t think she had. Hesitantly, Louise asked, “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“Christ, I wish I were!” her daughter said. Vanessa stabbed at the chicken thigh on her plate as if she were imagining a bigger, sharper knife piercing a different flesh. She chewed savagely and gulped ice water. Just when Louise decided she didn’t intend to go on, she did: “You do what you’ve gotta do, that’s all. We didn’t know how good we had it before the supervolcano erupted, and you can sing that in church, Mom. Life sucks now. Yeah, life sucks, and sometimes we’ve got to do the same goddamn thing.” She looked away, her eyes full of rage.
“Do you . . . want to talk about it? To get in touch with your feelings?” Louise had always believed getting in touch with your feelings was the best thing you could possibly do. She sure hadn’t been in touch with hers through most of her marriage to Colin. Once she was, she got away. She got free. She found brand-new love, brand-new delight.
She also found single parenthood in middle age. There sat James Henry, happily coloring away. Well, anything you did in this old world was liable to have cons
equences. And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth!
Vanessa shook her head, sharply enough to make Louise sure that gesture, like the way her daughter cut the chicken, was full of suppressed violence. “No, I don’t want to talk about it,” Vanessa answered. “And even if I did, you wouldn’t want to hear about it. Trust me on that one. What I want is to forget it ever happened. But you can’t always get what you want, can you?”
Louise thought of the Stones song. It was an oldie to her. To Vanessa, it would be from as deep in the past as “Stardust” or “Camptown Races.” From before she was born. What could be deeper in the past than that?
“Well, what do you want to talk about?” Louise asked.
Her daughter’s features softened a little. “I’ve got a new boyfriend,” Vanessa said. “This may be the real deal.”
“Tell me about him,” Louise urged. Vanessa had been sure Hagop was the real deal, sure enough to go to Colorado to be with him. Before that, she’d been just as sure about Bryce (since Bryce and Colin had stayed friends, Louise was anything but sure about him). And before Bryce, she’d gone on and on about how she was going to have her high school boyfriend’s babies. What was his handle? Peter, that was it. Louise hadn’t thought about him in years. Colin hadn’t been able to stand him, which made Louise recall him more kindly now.
“His name is Bronislav—Bron, if you have trouble with it. He’s been in the States for close to twenty years. He still has an accent, but his English is really good. He’s got amazing eyes. Eyes like a saint’s in a painting, all big and brown,” Vanessa said.
“What does he do?” Louise asked. St. Bronislav? she wondered, but only to herself. Vanessa had never talked about any of the other men in her life in those terms—for sure she hadn’t.
“He’s a long-haul trucker here, but back in Yugoslavia he was a freedom fighter,” her daughter said.
A freedom fighter is a terrorist we like. Louise could hear Colin’s voice inside her head. He’d probably been talking back to some politician or other jerk on the TV when he said that. She didn’t quote him to Vanessa. For one thing, she would rather have passed a kidney stone. For another, even if she had wanted to do any such thing, her daughter wouldn’t have listened. She didn’t need to be Henry Kissinger to understand that much about diplomacy.
“He really was,” Vanessa said, as if Louise had spoken up. “The Croats over there, they were a bunch of filthy Fascist thugs. And the Bosnians were just like the Taliban.”
Louise knew little about the woes of the ex-Yugoslavia, and cared less. She did wonder what the Whozits and the Waddayacallems would have said about Bronislav’s cause—but not enough to antagonize Vanessa by inquiring. Some questions were more trouble than the answers were worth.
“And you know what else?” Vanessa added.
“No. What?” Louise said.
Had Vanessa announced that her new squeeze had a necklace of human ears he’d brought from the old country, she wouldn’t have been surprised. When Vanessa said, “He’s a terrific cook, that’s what,” she was—surprised enough to burst into laughter.
Vanessa looked irate. “I’m sorry,” Louise said. She meant it; good manners mattered to her. “But I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Well, he is,” Vanessa insisted, as if Louise had tried to deny it. “He makes better stuff than the chefs at the Serb places down in San Pedro.”
“If you say so.” Louise hadn’t known there were Serb places down there. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to Speedro. To shop at Ports of Call Village before the eruption, probably. Except for Ports of Call, what reason would she have had to go there? It wasn’t one of L.A.’s better neighborhoods, which was putting things mildly.
“I do.” Vanessa knew what she knew. What she knew wasn’t always so, but she knew it anyway.
“Dear, I hope you’re happy. I hope everything works out just the way you want it to.” Louise did hope so. She’d hoped so every single time. Vanessa threw herself headlong into life, the way she threw herself headlong into all kinds of things. And she threw herself out of love as abruptly as she dove in. She wasn’t made for halfway measures.
When the waitress brought the check, Vanessa grabbed it. Louise squawked. Her heart wasn’t in it, but not even the committee that handed out best-actress Oscar nominations would have realized as much. Vanessa didn’t listen to her. That wasn’t rare, but the effect this time came out nicer than usual.
“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” she said. “I’ve got work lined up for myself, and you’re still looking. When you find something, you can take me out to celebrate.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Louise said. Vanessa’d even let her down without costing her face. What was the world coming to?
“Thank you very much,” James Henry agreed, looking up from his abstract expressionist masterpiece. Louise and Vanessa both laughed. Louise ruffled her little son’s black hair. Even Vanessa’s meeting with him had gone off better than she’d expected. A good day, all the way around.
* * *
Marshall Ferguson and his friends kept getting together to play Diplomacy. They all had a better idea of what they were doing now than they had when Lucas’ father first brought the box out of the closet. Today, Austria-Hungary and Russia were ganging up on Turkey—if the Ottomans got loose, they had a way of metastasizing through the Mediterranean. Germany and France were trying to do the same number on England, which could be even more dangerous. But Marshall, who was playing perfidious Albion, talked Italy into stabbing France in the kidneys.
So he was doing all right for himself. Tim had Turkey this game. He found a way to save the sultan’s bacon that wasn’t in the rules. Just when things looked blackest, he pulled out a fat baggie of what looked like killer dope. Experiments immediately followed. It not only looked like killer dope, it was killer dope.
It was such killer dope, in fact, that everybody stopped caring about who wound up top dog in Europe. Marshall stopped caring about almost everything. Almost, but not quite. “Dude,” he said languidly, “where’d you score such righteous shit?”
Tim giggled. Giggling was a hazard with what they’d just smoked, but Marshall wanted to know. It wasn’t urgent—nothing was urgent, or would be for a while—but he did want to. When he asked again, Tim giggled some more.
“C’mon, man,” Marshall said. “Dope like this is hard to come by these days.” The supervolcano had done the same number on weed as it had on so many other cash crops. Climates that had been just right were suddenly too cold, and production in areas that went from too hot to just right hadn’t ramped up yet. So good dope was indeed hard to come by.
But that turned out not to be why Tim was giggling—or not the only reason, anyhow. He also wasn’t giggling just because he was stoned out of his tree, although he was. “You sure you want to know? You really, truly sure? Really-o, truly-o sure?”
“Talk, already.” Marshall would have got mad if it didn’t seem like too much trouble. “I don’t want the trailer. I want the fuckin’ movie.”
He set everybody laughing, Tim included. “Okay, okay,” Tim said. “Just remember, you asked for it. You wanna know where I got the shit? I got it from Darren Shitcabbage, man. How funny is that?”
Most of the erstwhile would-be masters of early twentieth-century Europe thought it was the funniest thing they’d heard in their entire lives, or at least since they got baked. Lucas damn near wet his pants, he thought it was so hysterical. “The chief’s kid, dealing dope?” he said. “Oh, wow! That is too much, I mean way too much.” He nudged Marshall. “How come you don’t do that?”
Marshall smoked dope. Marshall bought dope. It wasn’t as if he didn’t support his local dealers. But he’d never had the slightest urge to move into the supply end of the business. You started getting into heavy shit when you did that, and dealing with some
highly unpleasant people. From what he knew about Chief Pitcavage’s son, Darren had himself a head start on that.
His old man wished he would have drawn his line closer to truth, justice, and the Drugs Are Wicked American Way. Marshall didn’t draw it there, no matter what his father wished. But he did draw a line. Darren Pitcavage didn’t seem to.
Marshall fired himself another fatty. If he got wasted enough, maybe he wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. If he didn’t remember it, he wouldn’t have to figure out what to do about it, or whether to do anything at all about it.
He did remember. He’d known he would, no matter how much he smoked. You lost things for a while with weed—sometimes, anyway. But they mostly came back. He’d never been into drugs that bit chunks out of your life and swallowed them for good.
If he’d liked Darren Pitcavage better . . . If his father had liked Chief Pitcavage better . . . He still needed a couple more days to work up his nerve to go, “Dad?”
“What?” His father sounded distracted, and was—he was changing Deborah’s diaper.
“Um—you know I went to Lucas’ place over the weekend to play Diplomacy, right?”
“Yeah. How’d it go?” Dad had learned the game. He and Marshall sometimes played a cutthroat two-man version with a much newer copy of the game than the one Lucas’ dad had resurrected. Each of them controlled three countries, with weak sister Italy vacant. No real diplomacy in that variant, but it was great for testing board maneuvers.
“We, mm, kind of got sidetracked after a while. Tim—” Marshall had to stop while Dad snorted and snickered. Dad never had been able to take Tim seriously, not even for a minute. Licking his lips, Marshall made himself go on, “Tim brought out some weed, some fine weed, and—”
“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” his father broke in. “Your clothes smelled like a hemp farm outside of Veracruz.”
How Dad knew what a hemp farm outside of Veracruz smelled like . . . was a question for another day. And he hadn’t even squeaked about the way Marshall’s clothes smelled till Marshall raised the subject. Discretion, from my old man? Marshall wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. But there it was.
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