Angela Sloan (15 page)

Eeyore was back on his feet now. He asked to be introduced to Ding.

Betty said something in Chinese. The hippie couple turned to me, waiting to hear my translation.

“She said she is surprised at how outgoing the Tennesseans are. We have met so many new friends today.”

Eeyore followed up with a series of questions. Why America? Did you come on a boat? What's for breakfast in Formosa? Are there freaks there like Renee and me? Do they have a gassy youth scene? Betty gave long answers which I pretended to translate. Then Renee did some cartwheels.

I put Betty back in the Scamp. Eeyore asked if we could give them a ride to campus. After establishing which way campus was, I told him we definitely couldn't. “We have to keep moving the other way,” I said.

“Where are you headed?”

“Nashville!”

He appeared confused. “Nashville's
this
way,” he said. Renee had him give us his mother's phone number. “We don't have a phone where we dwell,” she explained. There was another fuss as Eeyore searched his pants pockets for a scrap of paper. None could be found. The pockets were nearly empty, he explained, because the pants had just been washed.

Finally he wrote out the number longways on a cigarette, which Betty smoked as soon as we were moving again.

“Let's get the hell out of Tennessee,” I said.

N
othing is simple, however. The man at Sears and Roebuck would not patch the nail hole because there was also an abrasion on the sidewall. “Truthfully, you need a whole set,” he said.

That couldn't be right, I told him, because I'd had a new set put on mere days ago.

He took me around to look at the Armando Snacki tires. None of them matched, and the front right tire had fibers showing through the rubber. The new set would cost me one hundred forty-five dollars, and it would be an hour before he could put them on the Scamp because he had to replace the parking brake cable on a Ford pickup first.

Inside Sears I followed an interested Betty down aisles of house paint and waited while she stared at a long bin of record albums. We stood at a wall of televisions. The soap opera faces were a little pinker on one screen, a little greener on the next. When we came to the women's clothing Betty's mouth clicked open, and I saw her eyes go soft and vague. She stopped at a rack of dresses and stood there like a child in the cereal aisle.

“Nobody cares if you touch them,” I said.

She scraped one coat hanger along the chrome.

There was a pitiful tenderness in the little Maoist's gaze. At the shoe department, she lost all resemblance to her former self. She resembled a spilled Pepsi. I reminded her, “You have a hundred bucks tucked away somewhere on your body. Buy whatever you want.”

Betty put her finger on one shoe, then another. Then the lady measured her foot. Betty smiled bashfully when her ankle was touched. The first pair of shoes she tried on was a set of espadrilles with a very tall cork heel, and she fell over into a chair when she tried to walk on them. It was the first time I saw her laugh, and downright strange.

After ninety minutes of the dresses, shoes, sun hats, and shoulder
bags I was both bored and starving. A big breakfast will always make you hungry for a big lunch. We found a coffee shop in the mall and ordered some chili dogs. Betty speared the wiener on a fork and took small bites off it, ignoring the bun. Her new dress was pink gingham with a white spread collar.

“You are quite the clothes hound,” I said. “I didn't think you Communists went in for a lot of clothes-shopping.”

“Everybody like to have some new things,” she said. “Maybe now I will blend.”

“You will never blend while eating your chili dog with a fork,” I said. “Look here. See how I do it?” I picked my dog up in the bun and bit the end off.

“Messy way.”

“That's what this is for.” I fluttered a paper napkin.

On ways of eating, Betty wouldn't be steered. She took lots of very small bites and bent low over the plate, though I told her that looks coarse to the Western eye. “You eat like a pet from the dish,” I said.

“You eat like a squirrel,” she said. She straightened her spine against the chair back and twitched her head as though she were monitoring the whole room while chewing.

Earlier, while Betty was waiting to check out at Sears, I had left her and bought two hairbrushes, a light blue one and a green one. I presented the green one to her now. She was so surprised and pleased with it, it made me feel a little poor. They were cheap plastic hairbrushes, and the only reason I had bought two was so I wouldn't have to share the blue one.

B
ack in the Scamp, Betty got to work thrashing at her hair with the new brush. She used her whole arm very fast and vigorously, as though she meant not only to brush the hair but to teach it an important lesson. Then she made two long braids and tied each one with a piece of green yarn. I don't know where she got the yarn. When she was done with that she slid her new white tennis shoes off, folded her legs on the seat, and began to sing in English in a queer, quiet falsetto: “
Why, somebody? Why will people break up?
”

Soon she went to sleep in her easy way.

We got onto the new expressway, which was straight and monotonous. The sky was dull like smoked foil, the pavement flawlessly smooth. My eyes were sore.

My head became empty, and then I saw a fat old woman in a housedress run into the road with a platter of food. I swerved. Betty threw her arms out.

“Sleeping! Wake up!”

It was true. I was very tired, but I wanted to keep going until we made Virginia.

But first, the new expressway ran out. I got onto an old stop-and-start U.S. highway. I left Betty dozing in the Scamp while I stepped into a truck stop. At the counter a man in a denim shirt was tearing packets of sugar three at a time for his coffee. A shred of paper fell in. His hand trembled when he used the spoon to dip it out.

I asked him where I could get on the expressway again.

“Past Bristol,” he said. “I'm not headed that way.” He wanted to know where my parents were.

Too tired to make something up, I simply told him, “It's all right,” and got my coffee and left.

We had exited the parking lot when Betty said she needed to use
the bathroom. I asked her why she had not done that before we left, and she barked at me in Chinese.

I turned the Scamp around and told her not to speak to anyone.

While I waited in the Scamp, something changed in the look of the day. Shadows came out where there had not been any before, and a gray bush beside a gas meter was now a green holly plant. I got out to wake myself up and look at the sky. The haze had clotted, organizing itself into clouds. A lot of small birds were moving around.

A woman was looking at me from a phone booth across the lot. Her brown hair was draped in barrettes on both sides of her head. When our eyes met she turned her back to me like a figure on a cuckoo clock, smooth and mechanical.

I thought I must be hallucinating again, because I knew that woman's boots. I had seen them before, and her scarf as well, and that didn't seem possible. But I wasn't hallucinating. There by the phone booth was her white Chevy Caprice.

I
got into the Scamp to drive away, but something stopped me. If she was the person
GRISTLE
had sent to shoot me on the sidewalk, why had she changed my tire?

I blocked her car with the Scamp. I walked right up to the phone booth and straight-armed the door. “Tell me who you are,” I said.

“Back up and let me come out.”

“Are you with the FBI? If so, you are required by law to tell me.”

She laughed at me. “How old are you, kid?”

“Nineteen.”

“I'm twenty-nine. Now we're both liars.”

I let her get out of the booth and she gave me an odd, sultry “Thank you.” I noticed her unusual eyes. The blue irises had dark rings around them. It puzzled me that I hadn't noticed them before, until I remembered the sunglasses. She asked me why I was following her.

“Don't be cute,” I said. “
You're
following
me.
”

“It's been a while since anyone called me cute,” she said.

A dozen thoughts fell through my head. I couldn't read her face—there was too much going on there. The mouth had a smirk on it, but strawberry blotches had come out in front of both ears. She looked past me, then down at my hands. Her hand went slowly to her pocket.

I shoved her and ran. I had left the Scamp idling. She was smart, though. Instead of chasing me, she simply got into the Scamp on the passenger side. It was the same trick Betty had used.

“Are you going to shoot me?” I said.

“Shoot you? Why would I shoot you?”

“Get out or I will crash the car.”

“Easy, now,” she said. “Let's talk. Let's figure this out.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Well, I was following you. I wanted you not to see me.”

“Who told you to follow me?”

“I'm working with Ray,” she said. “I'm on Ray's side.”

Across the lot, Betty was standing on the curb with her chin in the air, looking for the Scamp. I felt as though I were watching her in a silent movie. She spotted me, and I saw her come a few steps. Then she saw that I wasn't alone, and she stopped.

I reversed the Scamp in an arc, backing onto a curb.

“Why don't you let me drive?” the woman said.

I didn't answer. I just drove, leaving Betty behind in the parking lot.

“All right. We'll do this if you want.”

The look of everything changed again. Shadows blurred, and it rained. I was stuck and felt childish, persisting in harmful behavior, but I didn't know what else to do. This was not the way in which Ray had promised to contact me.

The woman smelled like cigarettes and shampoo. She had to remind me where the switch was for the windshield wipers. She asked me where I was taking her.

“Is Ray sick?” I said.

I could see that she was considering.

“Don't consider, just tell me! How is he?”

“Ray's all right. He's worried about you.”

There was a fidget in my steering, the kind of thing that scared Betty awake.

“You cannot keep driving without sleep,” the woman said. “I've seen you drifting all over the road. You'll kill someone. Look at you, Angela. You're so tired, you look like a little old man.”

“Shut up about that,” I said. And yet something broke. I had to pull over.

“Go on and cry,” she said. “Nobody minds it.” She lit a cigarette and waited for me to get straight and clean up my face on my sleeve.

ME:
Tell me who you are.

WOMAN:
I'm with the Agency. We met once at the Farm, but you don't seem to remember.

ME:
No, I don't.

WOMAN:
I caught you hiding in the library.

ME:
Oh. That was you?

WOMAN:
My hair was different then.

ME:
I wasn't hiding, I was reading. What is your name?

WOMAN:
Marilyn.

ME:
Ray told me to stay clear of Agency people.

WOMAN:
I was keeping an eye on you, that's all.

ME:
How long have you been following me?

WOMAN:
Only today. We found you by luck.

ME:
How?

WOMAN:
I can't tell you everything!

ME:
When have you spoken to Ray?

WOMAN:
I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be tailing you, not briefing you. I suspect we've both been waiting on instructions. Isn't that right?

ME:
I don't think you've talked to Ray at all.

WOMAN:
I've spoken to someone who has spoken to Ray. No more on that, okay? Tell me about Ding.

ME:
Ding is just some crazy Oriental girl I picked up. She's harmless.

WOMAN:
What does she know about you?

ME:
I told her a cover story. Anyway, I've got her number. She's vulnerable.

WOMAN:
How's that?

ME:
Her immigration is not in order.

WOMAN:
You shouldn't be traveling with someone like that. You're not thinking.

ME:
Of course I'm thinking! Things come up and I deal with them. You must have put a transmitter on my car when you changed the tire. Is that what you did?

WOMAN:
You're funny.

ME:
What happens now?

WOMAN:
Now I get to call my boss and tell him I've been made by a fourteen-year-old girl. That'll be pleasant. I'll do it tomorrow.

ME:
Tomorrow, not tonight?

WOMAN:
You're not the Cuban Missile Crisis. It'll keep.

ME:
You ought to have changed vehicles after you helped me with the tire. That's how I made you, by that white Chevy.

WOMAN:
Why don't you take me back to that white Chevy now, okay? There happens to be a few thousand dollars' worth of taxpayer-owned equipment in the trunk.

ME:
And the keys are in the ignition.

WOMAN:
And the keys. Right.

T
he Chevy was there, but Betty was gone. I couldn't believe it. After all my work managing and looking after her, I had let her go in this stupid way. It made me furious that she couldn't have waited forty-five minutes. A waitress told us she'd left with a notoriously friendly truck driver named Skeet.

The rain stopped after dark. In case Betty was looking for me, I stood outside the truck stop under a white fluorescent bulb with beetles pinging off of it. A big, meaty moth kept knocking, too. The wet blacktop was streaked with yellow light from the truck stop sign. I don't remember the name of the place.