It was Shawna with another young woman.
“Hola, Mary Ann.”
“Omigod. What are you doing here?”
Shawna rolled her eyes just the way she had when she was six—toward someone else. “She’s been saying that to me my whole life.”
Mary Ann smiled and extended her soiled candy-striped arms. “You know what I mean. Come in. Give me a fucking hug.”
They embraced with an audible double sigh, much to Mary Ann’s relief.
“Mary Ann—Juliette. Juliette—Mary Ann.”
“I’m the friend formerly known as mother,” said Mary Ann, shaking Juliette’s hand. “I adopted her at birth, but I left her with her dad when she was little.”
“Wait till she gets through the door, Mary Ann.”
“Oh—sorry.”
“She overshares,” Shawna told Juliette.
“Like you don’t,” said Mary Ann, grinning. “Seriously—how did you know I was here?”
“Jake and Amos.”
“Of course. I gave them ice at Arctica.” She closed the door and led them into the lounge, which, with its rounded corners and buried purple lights, reminded her vaguely of Virgin First Class. “Okay, no cracks about bourgeois decadence.”
“Not a peep out of me,” said Shawna.
“By the way,” said Mary Ann, gesturing for them to sit down. “I don’t think Amos likes me very much.”
Shawna shrugged. “Nobody does at first.”
Juliette gaped at Shawna. “Dude.”
“It’s all right,” said Mary Ann. “We understand each other.”
“I like you already,” said Juliette.
Shawna, Mary Ann noted, seemed unduly pleased to hear that.
They gabbed and laughed and drank prosecco, and Mary Ann broke out the prosciutto-wrapped melon the nice Western Gentry staff member had left in her fridge that morning. Shawna’s pretty friend seemed to be a fairly recent one, maybe even a hookup, but Juliette was bright as a button and obviously smitten with Shawna. Who could blame her? Shawna had always been a charmer, and now, of course, she was sort of a celebrity. Certainly much more of a celebrity than Mary Ann had ever been during her run on Mary Ann in the Morning. Shawna had already been on Letterman several times; Mary Ann’s fame had never crossed the Central Valley.
Mary Ann knew she had no right to be proud of Shawna, but she was. She was proud of the spunky seven-year-old she could still see in this woman. She was proud of the woman who had survived abandonment so many years ago. Better yet, she liked this woman who had faced her trials and written about them so bravely, who picked her lovers as adventurously as she picked her clothes.
She knew that Shawna liked her as well. That had happened precisely because they had both scrapped any effort at reconciliation. There had been nothing to reconcile after all these years, only a new foundation to be built. It helped that they loved people in common: Michael, Ben, Jake, Brian (yes, Brian), and, of course, Anna.
Still, she was puzzled as to why Shawna had pulled this surprise visit today, especially in the company of someone Mary Ann had never met. It could have been merely a matter of air-conditioning and comfortable seating—Mary Ann would not have blamed her for that—but there was something else afoot that eluded her.
Shawna and Juliette left after a two-hour visit. Shawna lagged behind for a few extra words.
“Thanks for this.”
“Hey,” said Mary Ann. “It was fun. She’s a nice girl.”
“It may not be anything,” said Shawna. “But I wanted you to meet them.”
“Them?”
Shawna blushed—a rare occurrence. “Her, I mean, of course.” She looked away, flustered. “Come join us down at Dusty Dames tonight, if you feel like it.”
This was Mary Ann’s first invitation to the funkier world beyond Western Gentry. She was profoundly touched that it had come from Shawna.
“Oh, thanks,” she said. “That would be wonderful, but I’ve got night duty over at the medical tent.”
Chapter 29
THE MARVELOUS PRESENT
For Brian, Black Rock City was the same, only different. The same bursts of color and whimsy, but noticeably bigger and slicker, like the leap between the old Vegas and the new Vegas. Wren and Anna, on the other hand, found everything fresh and captivating. They kept their faces pressed to the windows like toddlers at a Macy’s Christmas display. Brian was relieved to see Anna looking more cheerful; something had been clouding her spirit on the hard road from Winnemucca.
He might have been more cheerful himself if he hadn’t been absorbed by his search for Trans Bay, the camp where Jake and Amos were staying, where there was supposedly a parking spot waiting for them. If he could find the fucking camp. As usual, the signs were hard to read out here, and some of the camps blurred into each other like stalls at a crowded flea market. You would think, he told himself, that a camp run by transgender activists from San Francisco would announce itself with a little more aplomb, but maybe he was just stereotyping under duress.
“I’m sorry,” he told the ladies in back. “It’s around here somewhere. I know you’re ready for a decent night’s sleep.”
“We’re fine,” said Wren. “This is just mind-boggling.”
“Oh my goodness, look at that!” Anna was pointing to an art car crossing an intersection ahead of them. It was an enormous pedal-driven tricycle, a butterfly with orange-and-black wings that flapped as it moved. The wings were lighted in such a way that they glowed like amber glass. Brian laughed with joy.
“It’s a monarch,” said Anna. “Do you know about monarchs?”
“Just what they look like,” said Brian.
“I’m clueless,” said Wren.
“They migrate like birds,” Anna explained. “They’re the only butterflies that do. But the distance of their migration is so enormous—thousands of miles—that they can’t make the journey on their own. They only live for two months.”
“So—how do they do it?”
“They don’t. Their children do it. Their grandchildren. Somehow they know exactly where to go and specifically where to land. Somehow—it’s in them. The new generation winters in the same tree every year without ever having seen the tree.” Anna paused as the butterfly tricycle rounded the corner and disappeared into the swirl of traffic. “They don’t need their elders at all. It’s a miraculous thing.”
Brian knew she was talking to him, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack.
“They’re poisonous,” Anna added, “so they’re tough little bastards. Nobody would dare eat them. They’re flying caution signs—look at them, orange and black, pure Halloween. But they survive, and their pattern is so familiar it’s imprinted on our brains like something generic—like plaid. Am I making any sense?”
Wren murmured her understanding.
“They have two months,” said Anna. “That’s it. But some part of them must know that they’re part of this endless continuum, this . . . community after death. And even if they don’t know, we know, and that itself takes your breath away.”
“It does,” said Wren, a little too fervently. “I believe in that.”
“It’s not a metaphor for heaven,” said Anna.
“Well, why not?”
“Because I’m too old for that shit.”
“Oh, now—”
“Tell her, Brian.”
“She’s too old for that shit.”
Wren laughed. “You two!”
“I’m not too old for this.” Anna gestured to the carnival sparkling outside the window. “Thank you, Brian, for the marvelous present.”
He wasn’t sure if she meant present as in gift—this side trip into Black Rock City—or present as in now, this moment, the marvelous present.
Either way, he was glad to be thanked.
/>
He found Trans Bay a few minutes later. Someone named Lisa directed him curtly to a space at the back of the camp, where she barked orders as he angled the Winnie into its assigned spot. She was friendlier, though, when he was finally in place. She clamped her hands on the door and congratulated him on his expertise.
“I’ve been moving this barge around for a while,” he told her.
“Amos said you might be coming,” said Lisa. “We were beginning to think he was bullshitting us.”
Brian smiled at her. “We had a few other errands to run.”
Lisa seemed to hesitate. “Look—do you mind if I ask—” She cut herself off.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You’re entitled, whatever it is. We’re grateful for the hospitality.”
Lisa placed her wide, sturdy hand on her heart, as if to keep it from escaping, then lowered her voice. “Is Anna Madrigal in there?”
Brian smiled at her. “The one and only.”
“Oh my Jesus fucking God.” The words were uttered reverently, like a prayer of adoration. “She saved my life in Eye Rack.”
Brian’s first thought was about Lisa’s grotesque pronunciation, one of his major irritants these days. We invade a country, bomb the shit out of it, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and we still don’t have the decency to say its name right.
“You must be thinking of someone else,” he said. “Anna’s never been to—”
“No, man, she was right there on my iPad in Eye Rack.”
My iPad in Eye Rack.
“There was an article about her on this transgender blog, and—she made me see how I could be old and happy. She made me want to live and come home to Sunnyvale and . . . be myself. Oh shit!”
The “Oh shit!” had come in response to the tears plopping down Lisa’s coarse, pockmarked cheeks. Brian yanked a couple of Kleenexes from the box Wren had installed on the dashboard and handed them to Lisa. “Here ya go, soldier.”
“Sergeant,” said Lisa, mopping up before blowing her nose noisily. “Don’t let her see me like this. I need to pretty up first.”
“Roger Wilco,” said Brian. (He wasn’t sure if that was the proper army lingo, but Lisa didn’t correct him.) “In the meantime, can you help us find Jake and Amos?”
“Oh, sure. They’re right over—oh shit, they left on the art car.”
“Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Well . . . you know how that is. Or do you?”
“Yep. I do. I’m an old Burner.”
Lisa left, and Brian joined the ladies in back. It felt good to kick back, to enjoy the sensation of having landed somewhere after sixty miles of rutted moonscape. The terrain here was virtually the same as Jungo Road, but there was life at least, and its throbbing expectant rhythms could be heard just outside. He sank into the armchair and pried the cap off an Anchor Steam. “Jake is away for a while,” he said.
“Ah,” said Anna, looking disappointed.
Wren tried to be helpful. “Does he have his cell on him?”
“Nobody has a cell,” Brian told her. “There’s very little reception, and the dust would destroy them.”
Wren smirked as she gazed out the window at a knot of revelers heading into the night. “And even if you had one, there’d be damn few places to stick it.”
Brian smiled at her, feeling an enormous surge of love. Home, for better or worse, would always be next to this woman. “Want a beer, honey?”
Wren puckered her lips at him—her technique for silently conveying love. “I’m fine, pumpkin.” She glanced over at Anna with tender, nanny-eyed sympathy. “This one, though, could probably use a good night’s sleep.”
Anna shook her head decisively. “No . . . not yet.”
“Don’t make me get bossy,” said Brian. “Jake and Amos will get back eventually, but there’s nothing we can do until then but get lost out there.” He had already tried, and failed, to remember the name of Shawna’s camp, if he had ever known it in the first place. It was just common sense to stay put. If your car broke down in Death Valley, you stayed with the car and waited for someone to find you. Without exception. Especially if your car had a frail old lady inside.
“You don’t understand,” said Anna. “He’s alone.”
“Who?” asked Brian.
“Michael.”
“Our Michael?”
“Yes.” There was both urgency and impatience in her tone, as if Brian were deliberately misunderstanding her.
“Are you being spooky?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Listen to me, dear. He’s leaving, and he needs someone with him.”
Chapter 30
THOSE FOUR MINUTES
This particular someone had pigtails of plaited silver that evoked both Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Baby Jane Hudson. They erupted from the side of her head with childlike gaiety, though her face was etched with her years when she smiled down at him. The smile placed her. It moved him past the nonsensical name tag and the pink-and-white-striped uniform into the realm of someone he loved.
“Mary Ann?”
“Call me Candystriper,” she said.
“Where’s Ben?”
“With the doctor. He’s here. Don’t worry.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
“Am I dead?”
“Oh, gee, thanks.”
“I just mean . . . this is surreal. You aren’t medically trained.”
“Go ahead. Rub it in.” She paused. “All I have to do is draw a little blood.”
“No fucking way.”
She smiled. “I’m just here to cheer you up.” Her cool, elegant hand swept across his forehead. “How am I doing, babycakes?”
“Not bad, so far.”
“You scared the shit out of Ben, you know. You were out for four minutes. White as a sheet and limp. He thought you were dead.”
This still made no sense to him. He remembered talking to Ben about lyres and lutes, he remembered Ben asking if something was the matter, he remembered Ben telling him the paramedics were on the way, he remembered telling Ben that it was an overreaction, that he had merely passed out pleasantly for a moment or two. He had not been there at all for the peeing and shaking and the going limp. He had not even believed it until one of the paramedics asked him to stand up and he felt the soggy cotton sticking to his leg. Then he had grown sheepish in the presence of these proficient strangers. “Your point is well taken,” he had told them with a smile.
He remembered, too, the flickering film of his trip to the medical tent: the bouncy humiliation of the stretcher ride, the way the lights of the ambulance stole the thunder of the EL-wired bicycles that parted to let them pass. He remembered how the paramedic in the ambulance had slapped his wrists and complained jovially about his absence of veins, finally settling on a fierce jab to the back of his hand. He remembered watching the IV bag as the fluid—whatever it was—dripped into him. He remembered thinking: This could be serious. This could take me out right now.
“What do they think it was?” he asked Mary Ann.
“Apparently you had a little seizure.”
“Brought on by what?”
“It happens sometimes when people pass out sitting up. Your organs get all squished up or something, so the body shuts down.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Sofa Daddy had been the perfect playa name for him.
“I’m not supposed to talk about these things,” Mary Ann whispered, “so act surprised when they tell you.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “I’ll do my best.”
That was so like her, he realized. It stirred pleasant echoes of the old days at 28 Barbary Lane. Mrs. Madrigal is throwing a party for your birthday, so don’t go out cruising tonight, and be sure to act surprise
d when it happens.
She had to be the first to tell you. It was her favorite form of intimacy.
When Ben returned, Mary Ann was gone. Ben kissed him on the cheek, then pulled a chair next to the bed.
“Did that freak you out?” he asked. “Seeing Mary Ann?”
“It did feel mildly hallucinatory. All of this does.”
Ben nodded. “Do you wanna leave?”
“I might . . .” He didn’t want to disappoint Ben, but he was craving clean sheets and hot showers. “Did the doctor say I should leave?”
“No. She just said to take it easy. No more drugs for a while, and keep hydrating. She suggested an MRI when we get home.”
“For what?”
“Just to make sure it was nothing . . . out of the ordinary.”
Michael felt drained and disoriented. At the moment, it was not hard to believe that something might be out of the ordinary. “I’m a little scared, sweetheart.”
Ben smiled. “You are?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“I dunno. For scaring you. For thinking you overreacted.”
“Well . . . that you can be sorry for.”
“It must have been awful, those four minutes.”
Ben hesitated. “I said good-bye to you. I told you I loved you, and I said good-bye. Just in case you could hear me.”
Awful, indeed, but immeasurably beautiful to the living Michael.
“Take me home,” he said.
Chapter 31
NO TIDYING UP
Word of Anna’s arrival in Black Rock City had spread as if by smoke signals even before Jake and Amos returned to Trans Bay. As near as Brian could figure, Sergeant Lisa had a lot to do with it, since perfect strangers had been inscribing love letters to their icon in the thick dust of the Winnebago. Jake himself was misty-eyed at the sight of his roommate. “Shit,” he said. “I’d totally given up hope.”
“Oh, you must never do that,” she said.
“How did you even find us?”
“Your friend,” said Anna, casting her eyes toward Amos.