in on Hannah. Hannah snored softly. Vanna went to Delta’s room and removed the picture covering the safe. She checked the combination against the one scrawled on the back, opened the safe with it, and took all the cash. The jewelry she left. She had no contacts for getting rid of it.
Vanna went to the kitchen. She had just picked up a pen and a notepad from Hannah’s desk when she heard shuffling footsteps. Quickly she sat at the table with her head in her hands. Hannah shuffled in.
“Something wrong with the church shindig?” Hannah asked.
“No,” Vanna said. “I just didn’t feel very well. I fainted, so I came home.”
“You should lie down.”
“I don’t really want to.” Vanna sneaked a glance at the kitchen clock. The Irons brothers should be arriving at the mall parking lot in a few minutes, and Vanna still had to leave a note for Delta before she went.
“Go lie down,” Hannah ordered. “I’ll wake you in time to fix the evening meal. They’ll be so full of cake they won’t want much, anyway.”
Vanna considered. “You don’t feel well yourself,” she said. “You should probably lie down again, too.”
“I will. Don’t worry about me, woman. Just do as you’re told.” Vanna got up and pretended to leave the room. Through a crack in the door she watched Hannah. Just as she suspected, Hannah waited long enough for Vanna to get to her room, then opened a cupboard door and took out the cooking wine. She poured a large glass, and gulped it down. Then she started for the door. Vanna quickly slipped away into her room.
She gave Hannah a half hour, and then checked on the woman. She was snoring loudly, one leg flung toward the floor. Vanna wondered again about reaching under Hannah’s dress and slipping the key from her waist, but decided escape with what she had was more important than the pittance in the kitchen fund and the blow to Hannah’s pride.
In the kitchen Vanna took a notepad and a pen. She wrote a short note to Delta, saying she was being abducted by two young men she caught ransacking the house. She implied the two young men had assaulted or drugged Hannah, and were stealing all the cash they could find. She was hostage to these hooligans. If she could make her escape, she would, and return to Delta. Then she slipped out of the house with her ill-gotten gain stuffed in her old purse.
The brothers were waiting for her in the parking lot of the mall. She greeted them, and got in back with the laundry. The ride north was unpleasant, since the garments were on their way in to the washing machines. After they were on the highway, Vanna surreptitiously opened the door of the van to shove the most offensive garments out. Under-drawers and stained sheets fluttered in the wind. Yellowed sheets wrapped around windshields. A browned nightshirt obscured the windows of a Mercedes, which crashed into a Ford pickup swathed in stained hospital gowns. Hard on its tail came an eighteen-wheeler. Tablecloths from a rib joint spread their greasy selves over its windshield. It crashed into the Mercedes and the Ford and jackknifed. Delicate lingerie danced with sweat-stained work shirts across the windows of multiple cars. At the final count fifty-two cars, variously adorned with dirty clothing and other laundry, steamed and smoked in a massive pileup. Vanna closed the truck doors and breathed deeply of the cleaner air.
About an hour out of Dry Bone City Vanna knocked on the rear window of the truck’s cab. This was her signal to the boys to stop, let her out, and into the cab. They obeyed with alacrity. It had occurred to them that the cab was narrow enough that Vanna would have to sit very close to them both. They had spent most of their hour driving north talking about various strategies for exciting Vanna by rubbing her knees with their knees, exploring her inner thighs with a straying finger when shifting gears, and the like.
Vanna was unwilling to facilitate their games. “Keep your body parts to yourselves,” she told them soon after they were underway again. “Remember, I look like your mother, and I’m certainly old enough to be your mother.” The chastened boys damped their exuberance. Clapton drove on. Brandon dozed on the passenger’s side. Vanna breathed in their hyper-excited teenagers exudates, and thought nostalgically of the dirty laundry she had left.
All-night restaurants were frequent. Vanna suggested they stop at one. She knew young males needed frequent re-fueling. Brandon and Clapton alit from the truck with alacrity. They were half-way to the diner’s door when Vanna commanded them back to the truck.
“You’d better give me the money you brought with you,” she said. “I don’t want you to lose it. I’ll keep it for you.” Brandon and Clapton nodded at each other.
“She even sounds like Mama,” Brandon said. He dug the wad of bills and coins he had liberated from the receipts box out of his jeans pocket. He dumped the lump of cash in Vanna’s hands. She put it in her purse.
“I’ll sort this out,” she said, “when we’ve eaten. It’s smart to keep your money neat. That way you don’t give somebody a ten and think it’s a five.” Brandon and Clapton solemnly bobbed their heads to demonstrate they understood her lesson. She clapped them on the shoulders. “Let’s eat now,” she said. “Then it’s on to El Embudo and a motel.” The boys grinned. Brandon flipped the straggling tendrils of hair from his eyes with what he thought was a debonair hand gesture. He and Clapton turned, each taking Vanna by an arm, and went toward the diner.
Vanna requested a booth. The gum-chewing waitress, a buxom young blonde woman with a low-rise neckline and a high-rise skirt, twisted her swollen lips in disgruntlement and led them to a corner booth. Vanna ordered pancakes and coffee for all three of them, and sent the Irons brothers to the bathroom to wash their hands. She wanted to be rid of them while she counted the receipt money they had stolen from their uncle. It proved to be over two hundred dollars. Vanna smiled. She had collected close to seven hundred from the ladies’ caches, and nearly double that from the convent fund for aging prostitutes. She began to plan her escape from the Irons brothers’ clutches.
The brothers returned, their moldy natural smell overlaid with the pungent cleanliness of cheap soap. Vanna hoped El Embudo was near. She’d forgotten to watch for mileage signs. She urged the young men to hurry their breakfasts as she wolfed down her own. They were on the road again in short order. Soon after they entered the freeway a mileage sign declared El Embudo was less than fifty miles away. Vanna began to look for a motel.
Near daybreak they approached the capitol city’s outskirts. The traffic had begun to pick up, and Clapton expressed frustration with driving among so many other vehicles.
“Time we found a place to stay,” Vanna told him. “Pull off at the next exit. It says it has some motels.” Clapton exited the freeway with relief. The frontage road was far less traveled. He drove the truck to a budget motel Vanna picked out from the cluster of motels and restaurants at the interchange.
“I’ll go in and register us,” Vanna said. “I’ll tell them you’re my boys, and we can get a room with two double beds.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Who gets to sleep with you?”
“We’ll figure that out after we’re in,” Vanna said.
“I’m oldest. I should go first,” Clapton commented. Brandon got out of his side of the truck and stood by the open door until Vanna got out.
“Maybe we could draw straws,” he said.
“Maybe,” Vanna said. She went into the motel and got a room for them. She paid cash for one night’s lodging, using some of the delivery receipts she had taken from the Irons brothers. The clerk handed her a key, never glancing at the name she had printed on the registration form. She had used Delta’s name.
Vanna directed them to a room on the backside of the motel, away from the traffic noise. The three of them went in. “Hit the shower, boys,” she said. “Shower together. It saves on water.” Clapton and Brandon stared at her.
“We never done anything like that,” Clapton said. “It sounds kind of queer.”
“Nothing queer about it,” Vanna sa
id. “It’s not like home here. Water’s short in this area, so everybody has to conserve. Go ahead now; get in there, both of you.” Reluctantly they unbuttoned their shirts, drew off their tee shirts, took off their shoes and socks, and dropped their trousers. The musk of tired excitement washed off their bodies into the stale motel disinfectant in the room. The young men headed for the bathroom. They looked at each other and giggled nervously.
When Vanna heard the shower water start, she quickly searched their clothes for spare change. She found little. She took their wallets and emptied the identification cards into a pile. The identification she burned in the wastebasket. She heard the water shut off. She quickly walked to the bathroom door and listened.
The brothers’ muffled conversation told her each was accusing the other of wasting water. Then one brother, she thought it was Clapton, suggested they should each soap the other before turning on the water to rinse off. The other brother, probably Brandon, resisted, but only for a short time. Clapton’s ministrations became too arousing for Brandon to resist. Vanna left them to their fraternal pleasures.
She gathered their clothes and shoes in a rough bundle, picked up the truck keys, took her purse, and left the room. In the parking lot she unlocked the van’s rear
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