Jax is a problem in Taylor's life, though she would never say that aloud. She feels disloyal for thinking it, even. He's the first boyfriend she's ever had who is actually funnier than he thinks he is. He is nice to Turtle to the point that it's nearly embarrassing. Jax is so laid-back it took Taylor months to figure out what was going on here: that he's crazy in love with her. Possibly that's the problem. Jax's adoration is like the gift of a huge, scuffling white rabbit held up at arm's length for her to take. Or a European vacation. Something you can never give back.
She turns southwest at the little noncity of Kingman, back toward the Colorado River or what's left of it after all those dams, a tributary robbed blind and fighting hard to make the border. Mountains rise low and purple behind the river like doctor's-office art. She'll follow the river south through Lake Havasu City, where some rich person, she has heard, actually bought the London Bridge and shipped it over block by block to stand lonely in the desert. Eventually they'll reach Sand Dune, where Angie Buster awaits her son. Taylor can call Jax from there and tell him about the new twist on their vacation.
She's not keeping close track of the radio: now it's Otis Redding singing "Dock of the Bay." This one always chokes her up. You can picture poor Otis looking out over the water, the terrible sadness in his voice suggesting he already knows he's going to end up frozen in a Wisconsin lake while the fans wait and wait for his plane to come in, for the concert to begin.
You can't think too much about luck, good or bad. Taylor has decided this before, and at this moment renews her vow. Lucky Buster is lucky to be alive and unlucky to have been born with the small wits that led him to disaster in the first place. Or lucky, too, for small wits, that allow him so little inspection of the big picture. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he wanted to go to McDonald's.
Over the phone, Angie Buster confided that Lucky had run away many times before. She asked Taylor not to repeat this to the doctors, fearing that it might interfere somehow with Lucky's insurance. "He's not really running away," Angie explained, "he just don't have a real good understanding of where home ends and the rest of the world takes up."
Taylor agreed that was sometimes a tough call.
Sand Dune is not sandy so much as dusty. Everything Taylor can see in the Parker Strip is covered with dust: battle-scarred regiments of mobile-home parks, cellophane flags whipping from the boat docks, and out in the river the duckish, bobbing boats with yellow bathtub rings on their bellies. A fine silt clings even to the surface of the Colorado, proof that this river has had all the fight knocked out of it.
The town is a congregation of swayback tile roofs and front yards blighted with the kind of short, trashy palm trees that harbor worlds of sparrows. Portions of dilapidated stucco wall stand along the road like billboards, crowded with a square-lettered style of graffiti. There's no chance of losing her way here: the approach to Angie's Diner is festooned with yellow ribbons and a bedsheet banner stating: HAPPY EASTER LUCKY BUSTER. Taylor pulls in at the motor lodge Angie told her to look for, the Casa Suerte, next door to the diner.
"Wake up, kiddos," she says gently. She's afraid Lucky might bolt, but he doesn't. He and Turtle both rub their eyes, equally children. "We're here," she says, and helps Turtle out of the car. She's uncertain how to handle Lucky. He takes off in no particular hurry across the courtyard of the Casa Suerte toward the diner. At the building's front entry is a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is studded all over with yellow stick-on bows as if she's been visited with some kind of pox. On the other side of the door a colorless bulldog is ensconced on a padded chair, panting in the air-conditioning. He stands up and barks twice. A big woman in Lycra shorts and a tight yellow T-shirt appears, arms open, to envelop Lucky like a starfish.
"Get in here!" she shouts at Taylor, scooping a hefty arm through the air. Taylor has Turtle in hand and was hanging back to give them their reunion, but apparently this is routine. Some women have swarmed out to make a brief fuss over Lucky, while an old man stands picking the bows off the Virgin, putting them in a plastic sack to save for next time.
Angie's Diner is draped with paper streamers and banners welcoming Lucky home. "Get in here," Angie repeats, once they are inside. "This photographer here wants to take the little girl's picture that saved my son's life. Is this her?"
"This is Turtle," Taylor says. Turtle's grip on her fingers is jeopardizing the blood circulation.
"Oh, Lord," Angie says, swamping Taylor with a hug. "I about lost my mind this time. Once he got kidnapped down to the border by some mules, and that was bad but I think this was worst. Sit, let me get you some pie. Did you all eat lunch yet? Red, get over here!"
The counter is crowded with porcelain knickknacks, and Angie is so busty and energetic in her yellow T-shirt it seems likely she'll knock something over. A freckled man with a camera introduces himself as "Red from the paper." He hands Taylor a copy of the Sand Dune Mercury and attempts to remove Turtle from her other hand.
"It's okay, I'll be right here," Taylor promises Turtle's upturned eyes. She rubs the feeling back into her fingers and stares distractedly at the paper while Red poses Lucky and Turtle in front of the salad bar. She's stunned when the banner headline eventually registers:
LUCKY BUSTER SAVED BY PERVERSERING TUCSON PAIR.
She has to read it twice to get the intention of perversering. "Wow," she says.
"The papers picked it up all over the state," Angie informs her. "Would you sit down and let me get you something to eat? You kids must be starved."
Taylor follows Angie to a table near the dust-frosted window pane. Angie's hair is dyed such a dark black that she has a slightly purple scalp, like some of Jax's backup singers. She turns around suddenly and tells Taylor in a quieter voice, "I owe you for this. You just don't know, that boy means the whole world to me."
Taylor is startled by the tears in Angie's eyes and can only think to say, "Thank you." For no physical reason Taylor can work out, Angie reminds her of her own mother. It must be nothing more than the force of her love. Angie goes to retrieve Turtle and Lucky from the photographer and deliver them both to the table. Lucky looks ecstatic, and surprisingly so does Turtle.
"Everybody's real proud of you," Taylor tells her.
"I know. I saved my friend Buster." She swings her feet against the legs of her chair. Lucky reaches out and strokes Turtle's shoulder twice. Taylor thinks of the reporter's fortune-cookie prediction that Turtle's life has been changed forever.
Angie doesn't take any orders, she just brings food. Lucky leans so eagerly over his mashed potatoes that Taylor has to look away. This must be what people dislike about the retarded: they get straight down to the animal business of life, revealing it for what it is. Taylor admits to herself how hungry she is.
Angie brings over a customer named Collie Bluestone. "He's a real good rooster fighter," Angie says by way of introduction.
"No," he says modestly, sitting down. "I don't fight them. I sew them up afterward."
Taylor is intrigued by the man's mystifying profession and the scar on his neck. He's handsome in the same way Jax is, thin and knuckly. On men it works, it can be sexy. "I used to go to cockfights," she tells him. "Well, once I did. In somebody's barn, in Kentucky. On a blind date."
Collie makes an odd noise, a sort of a hiss, but he is smiling so it's apparently not a threat. "I hope your date turned out better than the chicken's."
"Not a whole lot better, but thanks. It's not too legal back there. Is it legal here? Or just kind of a hobby?"
"The fights aren't up here," he says. "They're down by the Crit reservation. That's where I live. I just come up here ever so often to check on Angie."
Taylor speculates on the relationship of Angie Buster and Collie Bluestone, and wonders briefly if Collie is Angie's chicken supplier, but decides not to ask. Turtle is eating as if she hadn't been fed since the change of seasons. Taylor is positive they had breakfast. "What kind of Indian is Crit?" she asks Collie. "I
never heard of them."
Collie makes the same noise again. "C-R-I-T, it stands for Colorado River Indian Tribes, which there aren't none. It's a fake tribe made out of whoever got left out when they carved up the territory. It's like if they called everybody in a prison 'the Leavenworth family.' "
"Oh. Sorry I asked."
"Well, everybody's got to live someplace, right? There's some Hopi, Navajo, Mojave."
"And everybody gets along okay?"
"We marry each other, but we don't get along."
Angie arrives again with more food and men. She introduces the men but Taylor doesn't catch their names, only their hands to shake as they sit down. One of them wears a dog-colored cowboy hat and keeps putting his arm around Angie's waist. "Did you see that London Bridge up at Lake Havasu?" he asks.
Lucky pipes up suddenly with his cover story. "Mom, I accidentally walked on the railroad tracks to Havasu."
Angie and all the men throw their mouths open and laugh. Lucky joins in, enjoying his own joke, since that's what it turned out to be. Angie wipes her eyes and it gets very quiet.
"We didn't stop this morning to look at the bridge," Taylor says. "I've heard about it, though. Some guy really did buy it and bring it over here?"
Lucky quietly sings, "London bridges falling down."
"Some fat cat," says the man in the cowboy hat. "And here's the thing. After he bought it, he decided he had to get it cleaned. He said it cost more to clean it than to buy it."
"I had a jacket like that one time," Taylor says, feeling a certain pressure to keep the conversation going.
"Set down," cowboy hat tells Angie. Ordering people around seems to be the m.o. of Angie's Diner. "Tell them about the time Lucky run off with the Hell's Angels."
"He didn't run off with them, either." Angie crosses her arms and doesn't sit.
"I want to hear about the mules that kidnapped him in Mexico." Taylor looks uneasily at Lucky, after she's said this, but he is beaming. This is his element. The window illuminates his face, raising the color of his eyes to a gas-flame blue.
"Oh, honey, that was unbelievable," Angie says. "They told him they was going to shoot him." Taylor tries to imagine stubborn four-legged animals with guns, until Angie explains that mules are men who have something to do with drug running. "If you're anywheres near Mexico and someone shoots you for no apparent reason," she says knowledgeably, "they're a mule."
Taylor is relieved to be home in one piece. She and Jax sit up in bed with his tape of They Might Be Giants turned down low, so they'll hear when Turtle has fallen asleep in the next room. Turtle talks herself to sleep nearly every night in a quiet language no one can understand. Over the years, Taylor and Alice have had many long-distance phone calls about motherhood. Alice told her not to worry when Turtle was three and still didn't talk, or later, when she did talk but would say only the names of vegetables in long, strange lists. Alice still says there's nothing to worry about, and she has always been right before. She says Turtle is talking over the day with her personal angels.
They hear Turtle sigh and begin to hum a low, tedious song. Then they hear the clunk of her comfort object, a flashlight she calls Mary, which she has slept with since the day she found it years ago in Taylor's employer's truck.
"I missed you," Taylor tells Jax. "Compared to what I've been through lately, you seem normal."
He kisses her hair, which smells like a thunderstorm, and her shoulder, which smells like beach rocks. He tells her, "Sex will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no sex."
"The thing I really missed was your jokes."
"I missed your cognitive skills," he says. "And your syntax. Honestly, that's all. Not your body. I despise your body." He drawls on purpose, sounding more southern than he needs to, though he can't match the hard-soft angular music of her Kentucky hills.
"Well, that's sure a load off my mind," she says, laughing, shuddering her dark hair off her shoulders without self-consciousness. She's the first woman he's ever known who doesn't give a damn how she looks, or is completely happy with the way she looks, which amounts to the same thing. Usually women are aware of complex formulas regarding how long the legs should be in relation to the waist in relation to the eyelashes--a mathematics indecipherable to men but strangely crucial to women. Taylor apparently never took the class. He wishes he could have been there when she was born, to watch the whole process of Taylor. He lies across the bed with his head in her lap, but when he realizes she's looking at his profile, turns his face away. Although he rarely sees it himself, he knows his profile is unusual and even startles people: there's no indentation at all between his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Taylor says he looks like an Egyptian Pharaoh, which is exactly what she would say, with no apologies for never having seen any actual Egyptian art. Taylor behaves as if what she believes, and what she is, should be enough for anyone.
She's not the first woman on earth to insist on his good looks; that's not why he is in love with her. Jax has broad shoulders and hands that apparently suggest possibilities. He's proud that he can reach an octave and a half on a piano like Franz Liszt; his one gift is largeness. When his band performs, women tend to give him articles of their clothing with telephone numbers inked on the elastic.
"You think she's asleep?"
Taylor shakes her head. "Not yet. She's having trouble relaxing. I learned a lot about her breathing on this trip."
"You're picking up certain character traits from your friend Lou Ann."
Lou Ann Ruiz, who is like a second mother to Turtle, tends toward an obsession with health and safety. But to her credit, Jax allows, Lou Ann is making bold changes in her life: she recently got a job at an exercise salon called Fat Chance and now wears Lycra outfits in color combinations that seem dangerous, like the poisonous frogs that inhabit the Amazon.
"Is now a good time to tell you about the phone calls?"
"What phone calls?" Taylor asks, through a heartfelt yawn.
"The approximately four thousand calls that have come in since you achieved national prominence on Monday."
"Oh, right."
"You think I'm kidding." Jax gets out of bed and rifles through the mess of music and lyrics on his desk. Sometimes, in his nightmares, everything on this desk sings at once. He comes back with a legal pad and his hornrimmed glasses, and reads.
"Lou Ann: wants to know if you took Dramamine for Turtle because she threw up that time in the car. Lou Ann again: to tell you never mind, it was her son that threw up in the car."
"Lou Ann often called me before I was famous." Taylor presses her mouth against her kneecap. Sometimes when she's concentrating on something else she seems to be kissing her own knees, or the backs of her hands. Jax has tried it out in private, to see how it feels to love oneself unconsciously.
"Okay," he says, "I'm skipping all the Lou Anns." He runs his finger down the page. "Charla Rand from the Phoenix Gazette. Marsh Levin from the Arizona Daily Star. Larry Rice, photographer from the Star. Helga Carter from the Fresno Bee."
"The what? I don't believe this. What do they want?"
"The story of the year. A suspense-movie plot with endearing characters, a famous tourist landmark and a happy ending."
"Shit. Is that all of them?"
"Almost. There are five more pages."
"Skip over the Queen Bee News exetera."
"Check. Skip the Queen Bee News and the Lou Anns." He turns a couple of pages and then flips back. "Oh, your mother. She called before I'd started writing everything down. She thought she saw you on the news."
"In Kentucky? That can't be."
"Well, basketball season's over."
"Lord, it must have scared the bejesus out of her."
"Don't worry, I'm very good in crisis situations. I told her she was hallucinating. Then after I heard, I called her back and told her you and Turtle pulled through without a scratch."
"It's not like we fell down any holes."
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"She won't completely believe that till she hears from you."
Taylor smiles. "I'll call her in the morning."
"She wants a new picture of Turtle. Her theory is that in the one you sent Santa Claus looks like Sirhan Sirhan."
"No, like Lee Harvey Oswald."
He looks at her, takes off his glasses and throws the notepad on the floor. "How did you know that?"
"I lived with her twenty years. I know what she'd say."
"You two ought to be in the National Enquirer. TELEPATHIC MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUO RECEIVE MESSAGES THROUGH FILLINGS."
"We're just close."
"Perversering mother-daughter duo."
"Would you please shut up? You're jealous of everything, even my mother."
"Did you and Turtle really persevere perversely?"
"I'm going to be sorry I let you keep a scrapbook."
"It's great material. Oh, and another news flash also: She's leaving her husband."
Taylor stares at Jax. "Who? My mother is leaving Harland? Where's she going? Is she coming here?"
"You didn't get the message through your fillings?"
"She's leaving him? Where's she going?"
"I don't know." He closes his eyes. "Not here. She sounded a little sad."
"I have to call her right now."
She shoves his head off her lap, but Jax catches her around the waist and pulls her back onto the bed. "It's two in the morning there, sweet thing. Let her sleep."
"Damn it. I hate time zones. Why can't they just make it the same time everywhere at once?"
"Because if they did, somewhere on earth some poor musicians would have to sleep at night and go to work in daylight."
Taylor relaxes a little against Jax, who puts his arms around her. He spreads his hands across the bony marimba of her ribs, wishing for the music they hold. "Are you in love with our garbage man?" he asks.
"Danny! Oh, pew, his truck smells like compost city."
"Uh huh. So you're saying you would be in love with him, if his truck smelled better."
"Jax, why do you do this?"
"I'm thinking you'll leave me, now that you're famous."
"A world-famous employee of a car-parts store."