Road to Paradise

  “Just get in the car,” I said. “We have to get the hell out of here, that’s what happened.”

  Candy was already in. But Gina was still reluctant, standing for a moment, looking at the house, so peaceful in the dark rural fields, just the windows bright with light, shadows walking back and forth, throwing up fretful hands, following one another.

  It was three in the morning, the pitch black, rural road unlit, and I drove in a hurry, taking the turns too fast. Where were we headed? Toward a crash, that’s where. The downhill lane was winding, and I was having trouble navigating with my shaking hands. There was depthless silence in the car. Candy sat in the back, pressed tightly against the window. Maybe she was hoping I’d forget she was there. Gina didn’t forget, though.

  “Would someone please tell me what happened?”

  “Candy?” I said. “You want to take that one?”

  “No, not really.”

  What was I going to do? It was the middle of the night, and I had to either drive or fight; I couldn’t do both on De Soto’s hilly roads, I’d go right into a ditch. Slowing down, I steadied my foot on the gas. I meandered, my brights on. “I want to find the highway,” I said. “I just want to find somewhere we can stop. I can’t keep doing this.”

  We found a small shopping area, all locked up, and I pulled into the parking lot, idling the car. I couldn’t wait another second. I ran to the bushes with the driver door still open, and Gina calling out.

  “Sloane, what are you doing, for God’s sake? Come back! We can’t stop here. We’ll get mugged. Or worse.”

  “Everyone’s sleeping,” I snapped when I returned, turning on the overhead and opening the atlas. “Where are we?” Wasn’t that the eternal question? I couldn’t see the map, couldn’t fix my eyes on it. I whirled around to Candy. “What’s wrong with you? Tell me, do you want to get us all killed?”

  She said nothing, just pursed her lips—contritely?

  “Would someone please, please tell me what’s going on?” Gina was almost beside herself.

  I rolled down my window. “Don’t shout,” I said. The night was warm and still. What if someone heard, came into the lot? I did not feel safe, and longed for the sun to come up.

  At last Candy put Gina out of her misery and related the whole sorry tale. Stunned Gina laughed, then kept repeating Oh my God until I told her to shut up. Candy said nothing, Gina and I stared hard at each other in the dark.

  “Girls, why are you hyperventilating? He gave me money.” She produced a fifty-dollar bill and waved it around. “Next breakfast and motel on me.”

  We turned to her aghast. “He gave you money?”

  “Yes. He knew I didn’t have any.”

  “Help me out with this,” said Gina, “because I’m having trouble here. Did he give it to you before or after?”

  “Before. There was no after. His wife walked in. Shelby’s little stumbling woke her up.”

  “Oh, now it’s my fault!”

  “No, I’m just saying.”

  “Candy, the wife could’ve killed us!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. Why would she kill us? For giving her husband a little head? Someone had to. She wasn’t.”

  “He told you?”

  “Nope. Man passes by his wife in a narrow corridor without touching her, don’t take much to figure he ain’t getting any.”

  “Oh, okay, Dr. Dropout Psychologist,” Gina snapped. “Few things more I love than hearing your theories on marriage at four in the morning.”

  My neck was aching and I rested my disgusted head on the wheel. “Gina, stop speaking to her. She’s not getting it.”

  “I get it,” Candy said. “You don’t get it. I didn’t approach him. He approached me. I’m not the guardian of his marriage; he is. For a moment we had a free exchange between two consenting adults. I gave him something he desperately wanted. And now I have fifty bucks. You girls have been making me feel bad about being broke and all. Now I can make a contribution. So quit griping.”

  “And this is how you contribute? By nearly getting us killed?” Gina’s voice boomed through the open windows into the quiet parking lot.

  “And there I was,” I said, “worried about letting you off on the big, mean interstate, when obviously you know quite well how to take care of yourself.”

  Her saying nothing, her not promising not to do it again, was noted by me, even at this late hour.

  It was still so long till sunrise. We sat in the car, I put my head back, closed my eyes. Sleep was impossible. What was Gina thinking about? What was Candy thinking about? Come to that, what was I thinking about?

  “I’m not meant to be perfect, girls,” Candy said at last. Was that a semblance of an apology? And why did I need an apology? She didn’t go down on me. I wasn’t the one married to Ken. Who was I to be so righteous?

  “Not perfect is about right, isn’t it?” Gina said, holier-than-thou.

  I found this to be ironic, considering what she and I had been doing not forty-eight hours earlier with men as unknown to us as Ken Kirkeby was to Candy. We did more with them for free than she did for fifty bucks, and all we got for our trouble was them passing us by on the street. I bet this man would remember Candy.

  I didn’t know what to do. I felt unprepared, out of control. I thought I had been meant to stop for this girl, to help her. But what if . . . what if I was meant to keep going, and didn’t? What if this was a life lesson of an entirely different kind?

  3

  The Least of Candy

  We stayed in the car till dawn. I never did get a second of sleep. When I knew McDonald’s was open for breakfast, we got going. It took us a long while to make our way back to I-55. With eyes turned away from the St. Louis Arch, we crossed the mighty muddy Mississippi and began driving north again, to get back to the interstate that might eventually, maybe not soon, but eventually lead us to the end of our journey. I wanted so much to be done with this part.

  My eyes felt full of sand, and I know my judgment was impaired like a drunk’s is impaired, but why did it seem like ditching Candy was the only way out? Just let her off at the next rest stop and never think about her again. I was sensing a heap of trouble. As soon as we were back on 1-55 we stopped for breakfast and gas. Gina asked to speak to me a sec and dragged me to a tight corner between the bathrooms and the newspapers. I thought she would hiss that we had to leave Candy here, which is what I had been feeling, but Gina first pummeled me for five minutes with “I told you so,” leaving me thoroughly chastised but obstinate, and then she hissed at me that we had to leave her here. I hissed back that I knew! I knew. We looked over. Ten feet away Candy stood in her little denim skirt, smiling ruefully at us.

  “You have to tell her,” Gina said.

  “I know what I have to do,” I snapped back.

  After Gina vanished to the restroom, I walked to Candy.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m going to have to let you catch another ride. Terribly sorry. Too bad it didn’t work out. Just one of those things. Wish you all the best. Good luck with it.”

  All she said was, “Come on.”

  “Come on?” I said. “Come on, what? Come on, don’t be silly? Or come on, I won’t do it again, or come on, I’m no trouble, or come on, I’ll pay my way?”

  Silence.

  “Candy, I’m going to college next month. I’ve got to get all the way to California, possibly drop Gina in Bakersfield, find my mother in Mendocino, get all the way back, get ready, and leave—I can’t be . . .” Can’t be what? “You know.”

  She said nothing, just stood with her head bent.

  “Gina and I agreed not to pick up any hitchhikers. We made a deal. I broke that deal. I feel guilty. It wasn’t right.” I was appealing to righteousness. I made a promise. I didn’t keep it. That was wrong. Very good, Shelby.

  I waited. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  Her pink head was bent. She took a breath. “I am the least of human beings,” she
said quietly. “You owe me nothing. And you’ve been plenty kind already. I’m not upset. I wish you would continue to help me, but I know you’re afraid. Maybe you can just let me stay with you till I-80? It’s another six, seven hours from here. That way I’m on the road I need to be on, like you.”

  What could I do? She was appealing to righteousness, too, and I didn’t have a good response, other than my own, “Come on.” And that’s all I had except a sigh, and hunger, and sandpaper eyes from not sleeping last night. Outside the day was beautiful and sunny. I wished I were swimming. By two, I’d drop her off; we’d be done. Maybe Gina and I could find a motel with a pool, dunk our bodies in the evening-blue water.

  Brusquely, mustering coldness, hiding my anxiety, I agreed I would take her as far as I-80, but that was it, non-negotiable; did she understand? “Please don’t make it harder than it needs to be,” I said, and she promised she wouldn’t make it harder than it needed to be.

  Gina, however, saw it differently. When she heard of my plan, she crossed her arms and stood like a pillar by the mixed nuts, refusing coffee or food. She refused to speak even while we were in line at McDonald’s. A group of truckers came in. They were morning loud, meaning, they weren’t profane but slightly rowdy in their jokes and demeanor. One of them asked, “Hey, whose yellow ’Stang is parked outside?”

  I was about to raise my hand, like I was in class, but Candy, standing in front of me, pulled my arm down. She pressed her back into my front, and shook her head. “Shh. Please,” she whispered, her hips flush with mine. I could smell lemon cream on her skin, I could smell her moussed-up hair. Gina and I glanced at each other in confusion.

  Moving away from me, Candy slunk out, blending in with a family of six carrying McMuffin meals.

  “She’s getting weirder,” I said, getting our own hash browns, McMuffins, and coffee.

  “You think?” Gina snapped her fingers in disgust. “I really don’t want to talk about her anymore.”

  “Hey, maybe she left us and hitched a ride with that nice family.” I tried to be conciliatory.

  “Only if there’s a God.”

  When we got to the car, there she was, waiting for us.

  “What’d I tell you?” said Gina.

  I myself couldn’t talk to Gina about this, not about this, and not when she was pointedly glaring at me, or rather, pointedly not glaring at me. I didn’t even check the map, unnerved by the new tensions. We had come down south on I-55 from I-80, so I went back up north on I-55 to I-80. It seemed so logical. The constant of my ridiculous morning—taking not one second to be self-aware, because self-awareness did not come without a price. The price was denial. As in, it’s okay. It will be okay. It’s 300 miles. What could possibly go wrong? I shook my head, shook Gina off, and, with the music eardrum-bursting loud, pretended not to think.

  Now that the dog cage was gone, Candy was down on the seat, far down. She didn’t speak. Things weren’t adding up, but I was never very good at math. I didn’t even know how to formulate my idiotic arithmetic question. The logic of it escaped me. Was she like me and afraid of the truckers’ advances? She didn’t seem to be, so why was she hiding from the truckers? And why would she not want me to say it was my Mustang? Truckers had been whistling to me for a thousand miles because of my car. Suddenly I had to hide my pride.

  We drove on in silence. Trouble is, when three human bodies are sitting in a forty-cubic-foot capsule, there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide. I did my best to study the road. Gripping the wheel, I pretended to concentrate on the interstate—flat and straight for the next 200 Illinois miles, with dried up fields and sparse trees all around. Such a ruse. But what could I do? It was pointless to talk about it. Thank God for the radio.

  He wanted to kiss me all over and loved me like crazy and only wanted to be with me and asked me to be his baby when he needed me and was torn between two lovers the night Chicago died. Everybody had a hungry heart when they went down to the river. I didn’t want to stop until we were on I-80. This wasn’t the way I wanted to travel, with heavy hearts and mute mouths. I had nothing but the barely clad girl with doe eyes on which to focus my restless heart, and hearts, oh hearts could be that way . . .

  We got all the way to Springfield, the capital of Illinois, before Gina checked the map and said that I-55 was veering off course, bringing us east and north to Chicago where we didn’t want to be, instead of west and north to Des Moines, Iowa. Disbelieving and cursing, I looked for a rest area to stop. Candy said, no, no, don’t stop, keep going. Bring me to I-80, then let me go. But don’t stop. Please.

  I turned around and stared at her on the backseat a second too long. The wheels scraped the ribbed teeth of the shoulder-warning track. We pulled into a rest stop past Springfield, and I snatched the atlas from Gina. Sure enough, this one time in her life, Gina was right about directions. We were headed back east. Another day, why, and we’d be back in New York! And now, to get to I-80 and head west, we had to get off the interstate completely and travel on slow local highways. Throwing up my proverbial arms, I said I needed to use the restroom (way too much coffee, but how else was I going to stay even half-awake?). No, don’t, said Candy. Please. Let’s just get going. Gina said she was hungry, wanted Roy Rogers chicken. Candy said we should buy it quick and eat in the car. Suddenly she was in a hurry? No one was eating fried chicken in my car—it’d be all over the floor and the smell would linger till Mendocino. Candy said she would wait right here.

  I stared at her. “You’re not coming in?”

  “I’ll wait here. But hurry.”

  Gina and I bought chicken, biscuits, and Cokes, and sat in a booth. After spending ten minutes mostly silently eating and only briefly wondering what was wrong with Candy now, Gina ran to the restroom to wash her hands and apply a fresh coat of lipstick (“Who are you trying to impress? It’s only us in the car”) while I finished eating. I was about to get up and throw out the trash when a man sat down—in my booth.

  I thought at first he’d made a mistake, with such purpose did he slide into the seat across from me. I even smiled, ready to accept his abashed apology. Oh, sorry, thought you were my sister, something like that.

  But he didn’t apologize, and didn’t leave. He was wearing black and brown clothes, a studded leather belt, and gold chains. His shirt buttons were opened one too many, his chest hair grizzly. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, and his long, matted blond hair, cultivated to look unkempt, drooped to his shoulders. His eyebrows and eyelashes were bleached-out red; his cheeks and chin fuzzed with week-old stubble. He had two fresh cuts on his forehead. His unblinking blue eyes stared at me intensely from across the table. “Do you know who I am?” His voice was low and slow, with some kind of twang. Not New York.

  “No.”

  “She didn’t tell you about me?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t pretend with me, darlin’,” he said. “Do I look in the mood for games?”

  “What?”

  “Your little hitchhiker.”

  Because I’ve always had trouble putting two and two together, I said like a dunce, “What hitchhiker?”

  “Let me tell you how it goes,” he drawled, slower and more menacing, leaning across and banging the table with a stiff index finger. “She ran away, and I’ve been looking for her for two weeks. Her mother’s frantic with fear.”

  “Who?” I stammered. What I meant was, “Who are you?” but was just too turgid to get the rest out. It did occur to me in a flicker that at any second Gina would come back, Gina, who was quicker on her feet and who felt nothing for Candy’s predicament, and who would not hesitate to say, oh, Candy, she’s in the ’Stang. The blood left my brain. What little remained in my empty skull, however, told me loud and clear that I did not want to point this man in the direction of the girl who had pressed herself into me at our last rest stop to hide, who spent her time traveling with her head as low as the Chihuahuas, and who was now in the backseat of our car, waiting. I
didn’t know if he was telling me the truth, and I didn’t want to get into an argument with him about my deep skepticism. Stunned and confused I said nothing that would point a finger to the parking lot and my car. Desperately trying not to gasp, I said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Look, missy, don’t play fucking dumb with me. I talked to the driver of the black truck, the one who kicked her out in Maryland. He’s a friend of mine. He told me about you and your little yellow Shelby.”

  “The who? The what?”

  “We’ve had trucks trailing you through four states.”

  “Trailing me?” Or did I mean, trailing me?

  “Tracking you! You’d disappear, reappear.” He wiped spit from his mouth. “They’ve been on the lookout for my kid. First in Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then off the map, then in Illinois, then off the map again, and this morning, back on the road here. I been following you since Staunton myself. Now—where is she?”

  “Mister,” I said, “I promise you, I didn’t pick up no one who got kicked out of a black truck in Maryland. We didn’t stop for nobody. I can promise you that.” Suddenly talking like a girl whose lifetime ambition was to become night manager at Dairy Barn.

  “Is that so?” he said, biting off his filthy nails and spitting them on the floor.

  Cringing, I nodded. Please, Gina, please, apply one extra coat of lipstick.

  “My name is Erv Bruggeman,” he said, through his tight cold mouth. “My daughter ran away. She ain’t eighteen yet and she needs to come home. She’s breaking her mother’s heart.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  He looked over the cups on the table. There were two cups of Coke, two half-empty baskets of chicken. There was no third basket.

  “Where’s your yellow ’Stang?”

  “Well, I do have a yellow Mustang,” I said, ruing the day. “But there are only two of us in the car.” My fingers were shaking.

  “Why your hands all nervous?”

  “My mother told me never to talk to strangers,” I said quietly, not looking at him, breathing out the words in a whispered lie.