Miss Wyoming

hooligans, third rails and strange men in raincoats, the better.

The year he spent in bed was certainly the longest of his life. When he was older and met other people who had accomplished great things during their stints on earth, he found that invariably, somewhere in their early youth, they had felt the experience of death or incapacity burned into them so deeply that ever afterward they gambled with all their chips, said fuck it, went for broke in the sound knowledge that wasting life is probably the biggest sin of all. John's illness made him value extremeness.

As John was on the mend from his sick year, Uncle Raitt tried to corner the U.S. silver market and bankrupted the family in a scandal that spanned forty-six states, most of Europe and parts of Asia and even, in some complex unprecedented way, Antarctica. Overnight, Doris and John were homeless. A week later Raitt hanged himself from a chandelier in Delaware. Doris felt mainly relief; she no longer had to play the family game.

Hours before the phone was disconnected, Doris made some calls. With her money stash she bought two Amtrak tickets to Los Angeles. A car picked them up at the station and drove them to Beverly Hills, where they were put up in the guesthouse of Angus McClintock, Ivan's father, a film producer who had come close to marrying Doris but didn't quite make the leap. Although there was no ring, they'd remained friendly and intimate through the years, and thus mother and son found refuge, far away from anything smacking of Delaware and lost angry families falling from the sky like a flock of burning birds.

Angus showed them around his guesthouse, a four-bedroom Spanish Mission lair, and as he handed Doris the keys, something strange happened. It was the end of the day and the sun was low on the hill. John's skin color turned a Kruggerrand gold not available in Manhattan, and the sight of him as a gilded young prince took Doris by surprise. Without thinking she said, «You know, John, I don't think you're going to be sick anymore. It's over now.»

«You think so?»

«That's right — all over. You're in the land of gold.»

«But it could come back at any moment.»

«No. It's all gone now.» Doris looked at John and then to Angus, then prayed to the effect of,Lord, stick by me on this one.

They entered their new home.

Chapter Nine

As Susan walked away from her temporary hideout in the Galvins' house — clad in Karen Galvin's wig and sports gear — she was without credit cards, cash, a driver's license or any other link to the national economy. She touched her clean dry face, the face her mother had berated for its blank slate quality: («Susan, without makeup your face looks like a sheet of typewriter paper. Next week we're getting that eyeliner tattooed, sweetie, and that's that»). Susan had once told her friends that being famous was like being Krazy Glued into a Bob Mackie gown, with an Emmy permanently grafted onto her right hand. But without makeup, she looked unconnected to that image. This fuzziness of identity might prove a small blessing in her new life, as it would allow her to roam freely.

Susan's first step was to revisit the crash site, where cranes were lugging the final shards of fuselage onto flatbed trucks. A chess board of police and National Guardsmen shooed away gawkers. Without bodies and popped luggage strewn about, the jet fragments resembled plaza sculptures at the feet of Manhattan bank towers.

Susan ate a chocolate energy bar and felt the warm Indian summer sun on her cheekbones. To her right she saw a burst of colors. She walked closer and found a series of impromptu shrines built of flowers, ribbons, flags, photos and teddy bears, placed by relatives and sympathizers.

All those poor souls, thought Susan,gone, and yet here I am, as raring to go as if I were backstage in a spaghetti-strapped evening gown waiting to play Fьr Elise for a clump of Ford dealers. Inside a Ziploc baggie she saw a Sears photo portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Engineer, the Millers, as it turned out. Beside this lay a photo of Kelly the flight attendant who'd told Susan that 802 was her last flight before a holiday in Cancъn. Someone had placed a stuffed rabbit wearing sunglasses and a bottle of Tia Maria beside it.

Susan jolted with surprise when she saw a shrine to herself — a color photocopy enlargement of an old magazine photo mounted onto brown cardboard. In the photo she was fifteen, with heavily gelled New Wavey hair, singing Devo's «Whip It» at the Clackamas Mall, Clackamas County, Oregon. In the upper-left corner was her friend Trish, playing a Casio keyboard. Susan looked at her own eyes in the picture, heavily mascaraed, and with an intensity and a naпvetй that made her smile. She remembered secretly applying it in the Orange Julius bathroom. She also remembered afterward, the battle royal with her mother, who thought Susan was to be performing a medley of songs from Grease. Susan smiled that this funny old picture, of all the Susan Colgate images in the world, would be singled out and stuck in the middle of a damaged Ohio sorghum field as her final tribute.

There was a letter duct-taped to the bottom of the photo. At a glance, it looked to be like the ones she received in sackloads during the peak years of Meet the Blooms, letters that had often been postmarked U.S. Federal Penitentiary, Lompoc, or some fellow correctional facility. The letters frequently began with poems that were always sincere but almost invariably dreadful. This letter read:

Susan, my name is Randy James Montarelli and I was born on the same day as you, September 4, 1970. You were kind of a yardstick in my life. There were a lot of people like me, I think, out in the boonies who followed your life's path as if you were a sister, or maybe because you managed to escape a junky life and go on to something better. Regardless, we were always out there cheering for you. Anyway, now you're in heaven and we're still down here and I think I'm too old to find another Susan Colgate, and so life is going to be just that much harder now. I live alone (I'm not the marrying type!) but I have two dogs, Willy and Camper, and an okay job. I guess I never thought you'd go first. Somehow that felt like part of the deal. This is so stupid and all, putting these words on a sheet of paper in Magic Marker letters, when nobody's ever going to read it, anyway. I don't live in Seneca. I live in Erie, that's in Pennsylvania. I drove down here last night (4 1/2 hours!) because if I didn't, I couldn't live with myself. I'm sorry your marriage to Chris didn't work out but you were too classy for him, anyway, and I know those party hound types, and they're all flaky in the end. No offense. I always knew you'd get into movies someday, too, and it was fun seeing you in Dynamite Bay just this past month. Well, I could go on here, but my throat feels all tight the way it did driving down here. My friend Casey (she works in the cubicle next to me at the plant) says I make it too easy for people to take advantage of me, but I don't agree. I know sometimes it looks as if I'm getting used, but I really do know what's going on. I'm running out of space here. Say hello to heaven for me, and Jon-Erik Hexum, too. Did you ever meet him? He was on an old nighttime TV soap and … well … that'sanother story. Cheers to you, honey.

Your loving and loyal fan always,

Randy

1402 Chattanauqua Street

Erie, Pennsylvania

PS: I found the Wyoming license plate for you at a yard sale the day your plane crashed. I think it was a sign of some sort.

Beneath Susan's photo was the Wyoming plate, a Charlie Brown Pez dispenser with a dozen candy refills, a bottle each of shampoo and conditioner from a Marriott hotel, and a copy of TV Guide with the cast of Meet the Blooms on the cover. Susan knelt, looked both ways to ensure nobody was watching, took the letter, folded it up, slipped it into her pants pocket, and then put the shampoo and conditioner in her nylon sports bag. She walked away from the crash site, attracting not the slightest hint of suspicion from bystanders, and headed down the four-lane road in the opposite direction from the Galvins'. A bus stopped to discharge passengers and Susan got on, paying for her ticket with four quarters from the sports bag's bottom. She took a transfer and, at the bus route's end, hopped onto another bus which drove her into Toledo.