She hopped off at a minimall adjoining the Maumee River, and as her feet touched the ground, she did some arithmetic and figured that if Flight 802 hadn't crashed, at that moment as she stood there in the minimall, she would have been driving to her herbalist after finishing her aerobics class in Santa Monica, then maybe heading home to see what the mail had brought, while checking her answering machine.
Over by the Blockbuster she saw a phone booth, and once there, she saw that the video store was having a 99-cent Susan Colgate tribute. She dialed her answering system's code numbers, figuring that the odds of anybody analyzing her phone account were minute. A series of bleeps revealed that she had five calls:
«Susan, this is Dreama. I did your numbers for you and boy, is Thursday going to be a heckuva lucky day for you. As your numerologist, I advise, no, I
* «Meese
* A satellite beep followed by the sounds of hanging up.
* Another satellite beep followed by sounds of hanging up.
* Another satellite beep followed by,
Susan looked out onto the river, caramel and yellow under the dissolving yellow sundown. In the near distance she heard trucks and air brakes. Music blared from cars at the lot's other end — smoking, groping teens. She took her sports bag, hopped over a small pine shrub and walked down over cracked boulders and rusty industrial fossils to the river's edge. She tested the water with her fingers — cold, the temperature of a cheapskate's swimming pool. She then stripped off all her clothes and Karen Galvin's wig — wigs usually made her scalp itchy and sweaty in any role she played — and she gently walked into the Maumee River, her toes touching mud and rock, her inner legs electrified by the chill, her armpits flinching with shock, and then finally an otter's plunge into the brown broth, emerging far out in the middle, her head periscoping the view of Toledo. A short while later she washed her hair with Randy Montarelli's shampoo, then shook it dry. She dressed and rewigged herself.
Susan walked up the bank and over to a commercial strip of fast food, car dealerships and complex traffic lights. It was now almost dark, and she was hungry, and tired of the chocolate energy bars. She strolled the sidewalk-free neighborhood as if seeing her country for the first time — the signs and cars and lights and shop fronts bigger and brighter and more powerful than they needed to be. She caught whiffs of fried chicken and diesel fumes, but having spent her only quarters, she couldn't buy food. She was starving. She walked for hours. She passed eighty Wendy's, a hundred Taco Bells, seven hundred Exxons, and then she came up on her nine hundredth McDonald's, where she decided to use the bathroom.
On the way into the restaurant she noticed a crew chief walking out a side utility door and over to a dumpster where he tossed away a large tray of fully wrapped, unsold, time-expired burgers. Susan saw her chance. She walked to the dumpster and with an agile climb reminiscent of the aerobics class she might well that moment be attending in a parallel universe, she hopped inside and crammed the sports bag with warm, wrapped cheeseburgers.
«… gonna go over to Heather's after I lock up.»
«She still sore at you?»
«No way, man.» The second speaker threw two green waste bags into the bin, which rolled down onto Susan's feet. «I bought her a tattoo, and now she's real nice to me, like …»
The left lid crashed down. Susan heard a muffled conversation about women, plus the unmistakable sound of a key locking the door above her.
Chapter Ten
«Think of how gorgeous we're going to be when you wake up.»
«Mom, it's
«Susan Colgate, I shucked a helluva lot of bunnies to correct that jaw of yours, and now is
Susan held on to Marilyn's finger and retro-counted: «A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven …» and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was to find herself inside a cool, dimly lit gray room. Marilyn was in the corner smoking exactly half a Salem, extinguishing the remains and then lighting another («Butts are coarse, dear»), all the while avoiding the more intimate questions contained in a magazine quiz about the reader's interior life. She looked up and caught Susan's now open eyes: «Oh sweetie! We look
Susan touched her face, which felt disconnected to her, like a rubber Halloween mask. She found her nose was set in a splint. «My 'ose! Wha' 'appened?»
«Happy birthday! I had the doctor throw in a new nose at the same time. We're gonna look sen
«You let 'em mangle my
«Mangle? Hardly. You now have the nose of JenniLu Wheeler, Mrs. Arkansas America.»
«Id's …
«Don't get so exercised, sweetie.»
Susan tried to move her body, which seemed to weigh as much as a house. She'd never felt gravity's pull so strongly. Marilyn said, «We have to stay here in the recuperation room for six more hours. How do you feel?»
«Woozy. 'Eavy.»
«It's the painkillers. I had them give you a double prescription with
«Don seems to be able to lift his SeaDoo and his bowling balls from the bed of his pickup 'enever he needs to.»
«Susan! We're selling the SeaDoo to move to Wyoming, or are you conveniently choosing to forget this?»
«I don't
Marilyn smiled. «Oh! The treachery!»
«Mom, I'm too 'ired to fight. Go get me a mirror.» Marilyn paused upon hearing this. Susan said, «I look 'at bad, huh?»
«It's not a matter of good or bad, dear. I speak from experience. You're covered in bandages. You'll look like hell no matter what.»
«Mom, just show me the stupid mirror.»
