“You were right not to,” I said. “But, Cand, is Erv really the kind of guy who’s just going to give up, having followed you for thirty-five hundred miles?”
Candy said nothing. She stopped drinking. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said. “Did you take me to a fifty-dollar restaurant to tell me this? So what if you’re right? I still have to get her.”
“But what if he’s there waiting for you, waiting for you to take her? What if he hurts you both?”
She shook her head. “He won’t hurt her.”
I had seen his eyes, his ragged-out rage. “Candy, please.”
“What are you worried about?” she said, mock-dismissively. “She’ll be safe.”
“You’re not safe,” I said. “How can she be safe with you?”
An agreeable and unperturbed Gina nodded. “Let’s sleep on it another night. Let’s think on it. Perhaps,” she said, with a flushed smile, “we should go back to Circus, Circus. To get our minds off things. For just an hour. No use dwelling on unpleasant things.”
I shook my head.
“For an hour.”
“There is no such thing. We either go and stay or we don’t go.”
“So?” So affable. “We have nowhere to be. Let’s go.”
I tried not to show my disapproval. I wasn’t thinking clearly myself. “Gina, we have to figure out about Candy first. We just have to.”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” said Candy.
“There is,” I said. “Gina and I were thinking that you should stay here and we’ll go and get Tara for you.”
A cloud passed over Gina’s face. Her long, straight hair shook in refusal. “Shelby, are you crazy?”
“Don’t you remember? This is what we talked about.”
“We never did!”
“We did.”
She didn’t remember, and now she thought it was a terrible idea. But I couldn’t quite tell why: was it because of the dangerous foolishness of it, or because of Circus, Circus?
“Shelby,” Gina said, vehemently shaking her head. “I really have to get to Eddie.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Gina’s got a wedding to prepare for. And I’ve got Harvard to get to. I’m nearly out of time. I can’t lounge about in Reno. This thing’s not going to fix itself. And Candy has to get her baby. We all have big plans.” I liked plans so much. “One thing is certain—we can’t be sitting by the side of the road, looking forward to Circus, Circus.”
“I agree,” said Candy. “Take me to Paradise.”
“Okay,” I said instantly.
“Interesting,” said Gina from across the table, pouring herself another glass of Cabernet. “So how come she gets a ride to Paradise, but I get a bus to Bakersfield? How come I don’t rate door-to-door service?”
“And Shelby, what about your mother?” said Candy. “Where’s she in the mix?”
Yes, what about me? What had happened to my plans, my dreams? I was going to make my way to the Pacific and find her in Mendocino, sit with her for a few days, maybe in an outdoor café, if they had such a thing in her small town. I was going to invite her to come back east with me. I was going to—
“Clearly, I’m out of time for myself,” I said, my sober words sobering me up. “Paradise, Bakersfield.” I sighed. “You’re right. I should drive you, Gina. Tomorrow morning we’ll all go to Paradise, we’ll get Tara, I’ll take Gina to Bakersfield, then I head on to Mendocino.”
Candy stared at me blankly, as if I were shooting down all her dreams single-handedly. I couldn’t meet her eyes. Reaching out, she took my hand. I tried not to jump, not to pull away. “Sloane,” she said softly. “Look at me.”
My flushed eyes darted this way, that, finally resting on her face, softening, too.
“I know you’re trying to help,” she said. She didn’t let go of me. “You’re always thinking up big ideas. I love that about you. But you’re forgetting one important detail. If I can’t go to Paradise, you certainly can’t go to Paradise. If Erv is there, what else would he be looking for but your yellow Mustang? However you’re going to help me, you can’t help me in your car. I’ve said all along, the car is a menace. It’s your worst quality. It’s more true now than ever.”
“Don’t be ridi—”
“What do you think, we’ll waltz into Paradise in your little yellow canary and snap up my kid?”
We studied the remains of the wine.
“Shelby, Candy’s right,” Gina said. “You may be able to change your hair, and your makeup, and wear different clothes, but the yellow Mustang parked next to the swings, you don’t think that’ll tip Erv off?” She looked pleased with herself—as if thwarting us was beneficial to her!
“Gina, you’ll say anything,” I said, “because you don’t want to go, you don’t want to help me.”
“I want to get to Bakersfield!”
Another half-hour passed. Another sixty half-hours could have passed, because it was I who had become blind to the truth of what Candy and Gina were saying. In my car, we could not go to Paradise. And yet without my car, I was headed nowhere. Nowhere.
We sat and eyed each other grimly through wine-drenched eyes.
“I’ll take a bus,” suggested Candy.
“Yes, you take a bus,” Gina agreed.
“You’re going to take a bus to Paradise?” I said. “And once you get there, then what? Is it a small town? Will you get around on foot? Is it Larchmont with sidewalks everywhere?”
“I don’t know. It’s a town. Clearly it will have some sidewalks. Huntington did. Rapid City did. Salt Lake did.”
“I’ll go instead,” I said. “I will take a bus to Paradise.”
After a gasp of incredulity, Candy laughed. “You want to take my five-year-old baby and say, come on, honey, we’ll go and see your mama, but first you gotta come on the bus with me?”
“Why not? Bus or car, Candy. What, you think she’ll more likely get into a yellow car with me? I guarantee you the rule applies to getting inside all kinds of transportation with strangers.”
Candy placed her hands flat on the table. “Exactly,” she said. “Just think about what you’re proposing.”
I was slow and on wine drip. I wasn’t used to thinking, wasn’t used to drinking. I wasn’t used to living. Candy was used to a certain kind of living, but this? Figuring out the smart thing, the responsible thing? This is the girl who was going to take her child on a plane to a place ten thousand miles away without a passport.
“My child will never go with you anywhere. You think a five-year-old is just going to hop on a bus, into a Mustang, on a bike with you? Never. She knows me. She’s my kid. How in the world do you think she’s going to come with you?”
“What do you want me to do?” I said, downing (or drowning in) my glass of wine. “I want to help you. But I don’t know how to.”
“I told you this all along, Shelby,” said Gina.
“Yes, you told me and told me!”
“I don’t need your help, guys,” said Candy, skeptical about the threat to her life. I felt overwrought. Gina had checked out. She had ordered a cheesecake and was relishing it. I wasn’t looking at Candy or at Gina. I just stared at my two hands.
All three of us sat in that restaurant, trying to work out the stirrings of our souls, trying to meander through the fog. For a moment Gina looked pensive, thoughtful, as if close to an idea. Then she said, like a lightbulb had gone on, “Let’s go to Circus, Circus and think about it. They have free drinks there. Yesterday’s dealer, Raul, told me to come by tonight, said he’d be working the ten to six shift. Let’s just go and think about it.” She smiled as if we hadn’t a care in the world, as if her fiancé had not refused to drive four hundred miles to help his future wife.
“Let her go,” Candy said to me.
“No. Let her go and then what? We’ll be pulling her out of there at dawn. Then she sleeps all day, and it all starts again. How long am I going to be sitting in Reno figuring out your
life, Candy?”
“Not just my life, Shelby,” she said.
“Please. Both of you. Stop.” I got up. “I need to do something to clear my head,” I said. “But all we’re doing is driving, and getting robbed, and gambling. I can’t think straight about anything. I can’t remember a single thing I’ve learned. I’ve lost control of myself, of my life, of this trip, and of everything I wanted to do. I don’t know how to help you, Candy. I don’t know how to help you, Gina. Tomorrow morning, I need to get in my car and drive back home. I can’t go to Mendocino anymore, do you understand? I can’t go! You tell me what you want me to do. Otherwise, Gina, you make your own way to Eddie. And you, Candy, make your way to Tara.”
“I can take a bus,” said Candy. “That was my plan. Then she and I will head out.”
“Head out where?”
“I still don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t got that part figured out yet.”
“He’s waiting for you,” I said. “Don’t you understand? He’s there, and he is waiting for you to show up. He knows you’re coming.” I was standing. I may have been talking too loud. “You can’t show your face in Paradise, and the girl won’t come with me. How do you want me to help you with this? I don’t know what to do to help you.” I was wrung dry of answers, of solutions, of ideas. Miserably, I started to cry. It was the wine crying.
Gina came to me. “I told you this, Sloane,” she said, putting her arms around my neck. “All along I told you. Let her go. There is nothing you can do. You cannot help her. It’s not your problem.”
“Well, it’s my problem now, isn’t it?” I said, through my wet hands, stepping away from her.
“No, honey,” said Gina. “It isn’t. It’s hers.”
Candy got up. “Let’s go back,” she said. “We’re all exhausted.”
“How can we be?” I exclaimed. “We slept till five in the evening!”
“I’m not exhausted,” said Gina, shaking her hips with a gurgle. “I’m ready to rumble.”
We paid the bill, split it two ways between me and Candy. Gina had very little money. “You go rumble,” Candy said. “Take a taxi to Circus, Circus. Have fun.” To me, she said, “It’s okay. Let her have a few hours. You know when she meets up with Eddie and they get married, she won’t be able to sit at the blackjack table until 7 A.M. Let her do it now while she still can.”
“Bye, guys. Raul is waiting,” said Gina, hurrying out the door.
“Yes, Gina. Raul is waiting.” Candy waved.
The cab took Gina to Circus, Circus and us back to Motel motel. We told Gina to call the room if she needed rescue, but she didn’t listen, was far too intent on getting out of the cab. By the way she hurried toward those gilded, casino doors twinkling invitingly open, I didn’t think we’d be getting an emergency call from her any time soon. On the way back to our room, I told Candy about my conversation with Eddie. “Why did you call him?” was the first thing she asked, as if preemptively suspicious of my motives.
I suggested to her that if we used some of the money we had made the night before to pay for Eddie’s insurance and gas, he could come to Reno, and the three of us, sans Candy, could go to Paradise together to retrieve Tara. We’d have Eddie for protection, we’d be in a different car, we’d be hidden, and we would help out Gina by reuniting her with the love of her life.
Candy listened like she always listened—intently. “It’s interesting what you say, Sloane. There are a couple of minor flaws with your plan. Though I can see why you’d think it was a good one.” She had her skeptical face on again. “For one,” she continued, “you have to get it out of your head that my child would set foot into a car with a man and two chicks, none of whom she knows. It cannot happen, and it won’t happen.”
“Maybe you can call her, prepare her,” I said.
“Call her. Last time I talked to Tara was a few weeks before Mike died. After that, I called the house, but that bitch hung up on me, then her repulsive husband hung up on me. I called back, and said, ‘I’m the baby’s mother,’ and she screamed something into the phone to the effect that if the baby knew what kind of mother she had, she’d be ruined for life. So—no. Hard for me to call Tara and let her know what’s happening. I told you, Mike knew this gal called Nancy, who had a bookshop, but Nancy is not a family friend. She can’t herself call Mike’s mother, ask to leave a message for a five-year-old.”
I tried not to sigh like I couldn’t breathe.
“And the second thing,” Candy said quietly, “and this is something you obviously have not understood in all the years you’ve spent with Gina, and all the hours you’ve spent with her in your car.” The lights outside were rushing by. There was traffic. People crossing the street in front of us, laughing, well dressed. “Gina is not going to Bakersfield. I’m not sure she ever intended to.”
“What?”
“Shelby, Gina didn’t come with you on your journey because of Eddie. She came with you because of you. She came to escape her life. Think how many times she didn’t mind staying longer, lingering a few days here, a few days there. She got in the car with you, into the covered wagon to go west, because she too was looking for the summer, all the while hoping it was not with Eddie. Despite what you think, when that thing happened with you and him, it showed her what kind of boy Eddie was, what kind of husband he’d make. Her faith in him was gone. He was just an excuse to leave. As it was, you told me her mother barely let her go, even with you. How many times has Gina called her mother?” Candy paused. “Once, by my count, to ask for money. And she wasn’t even there.” She shook her head. “The worst thing that can happen to Gina is if we pay Eddie to come to Reno to help us. Unless,” the girl said—and this is where her skepticism kicked in again—“unless you already suspect all this, and the idea was always for you and Eddie to go to Paradise together—and alone.” She raised her eyebrows, in the darkened cab.
Rolling my eyes, I told her how silly she was, and turned away to the window, my heart aching with longing, briefly but viscerally imagining the sunny days in California, just me and Eddie in his beat-up truck with bare rims, no AC, just the hot wind from the orange groves, us together, me and him, going to find Tara, to save Tara’s mother.
In the room, Candy drew the shades. I had a shower to rinse the wine from my pores. It didn’t help. We got into bed, turned off the lights. I lay facing the window, thinking about Gina, while she lay facing the wall, her back to me. She said, “Shelby, I’m sorry. Gina is not going to help you help me. She is not going to leave here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have a choice, Shelby. You can help me get my baby. Or you can leave tomorrow morning and drive to Mendocino. You have a thousand dollars. That’s what you’re up against. Or you can forget your mother for the time being; there will be another time to find her. Go back home, and pack for Harvard. I hear it’s a good school. You don’t have much time. Summer is soon over.”
“I’m not leaving here without Gina,” I said firmly. “Her mother will kill me. She only let her go because she thought her baby girl would be safe with me.”
“She was safe with you. But she’s not a child. She’s not my Tara. She was safe until she found her life. Now she’s got to work to put it all together. And you have to work to put your things together.”
“I don’t have my things,” I said into the pillow. “I have your things. I have Gina’s things. That’s what I got.”
“Shelby Sloane,” Candy whispered, “I have been abandoned by all the people I thought were my friends. I have surrounded myself with those who hate me, who want to hurt me, who have betrayed me. My father is my rock, but unless I become a man and a monk, he cannot help me with my life. You are the only one who has not abandoned me. Please. Don’t leave me now. All I want is my girl,” she said in a bare tingle of a voice. “She’s all I got. Her and you.”
“God, Candy, don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“How can I help you?” I sa
id. “Look what we just went through. You have a black eye; the guy who gave you money took it away, and then beat you up.”
“I know. It’s not always easy, living.”
“I wish it were sometimes easy. Just once. Because I’m out of tricks.”
She turned to me, sidled up behind me. Her hand caressed my shoulder, her breath was in my neck. She kissed the back of my damp head. “Shelby . . . please. Help me.”
I closed my eyes. “What do you want me to do?” I said.
“Go get my baby.”
“We talked about this . . .”
“Not you and Eddie. Just you.”
“Without Gina?” Why did I say it so shocked?
“Sloane, Gina is not leaving Reno. Get it through your head. It took her a whole country, and a hundred towns, but she’s found her life. Reno is calling to her. She’s not leaving.”
“You want me to go to Paradise alone?” I gasped, seeing nothing but Erv’s wild eyes across the Roy Rogers table, telling me I will not stop until I find her. You get what I’m saying to you?
“I’ll wait for you two right here,” she said.
“Candy, no.”
“I’ll give you a picture of me and a letter to give to her.”
“Does a five-year-old read?”
Her arm went around me. “Mike said she learned to read when she was four. She’s very smart, Tara. Much smarter than me or Mike. Show her my picture. Give her my letter. Tell her I’m waiting for her. Tell her we’re going to start a new life together. I’ve been telling her that I would come for her. Tell her I’ve come, the time is now.”
“And I’m supposed to get there how?”
“We’ll rent you a car.”
First I laughed. Then I cried. She was so earnest, so serious. She had lived much, was old before her time, yet she didn’t know the first thing about the practical world, about how it worked. She was like me, asking Emma if the motels gave you towels and shampoo. Her hand still caressed me. “Candy,” I said. “I’m eighteen years old. Eighteen. No one rents cars to eighteen-year-olds. I don’t have a credit card. No one rents cars to eighteen-year-olds without a credit card. You’re just . . . I can’t speak about this. I’m telling you, this is doomed.”