Miss Wyoming

She lost more than half a day there. She arrived in Cheyenne at sunup, ragged and starving. She showed up at Marilyn's old house, rang the doorbell, ready for war, and the new tenants answered, a pleasant young couple, the Elliots, getting ready for work.

«Your mother moved out a year ago,» said Mrs. Elliot, Loreena. «We get people knocking here maybe once a week still, looking for either her or you. We certainly never thought we'd see …you here.» Loreena didn't mean any disrespect. Susan could only imagine how bad it looked, arriving in the morning not even knowing where her mother lived.

They offered Susan breakfast, and she ate in the kitchen, which was eerily the same as it had been the morning of the reunion. Loreena offered a bath, but Susan declined, far too frazzled to lather and rinse her hair. Loreena offered her a clean outfit, which Susan did accept. While changing in the upstairs bathroom, she could hear a muffled conversation downstairs. Susan was paranoid about the police being brought into the matter. When she returned to the kitchen, she confessed that she and her mother had stopped speaking, but now she needed to connect with her. The husband, Norm, said the situation reminded him of his sister and his mother, and Loreena nodded.

Susan and Loreena combed the phone books for all possible variations of Marilyn's surnames, maiden names, middle names and pet names, but their work yielded nothing. Susan then methodically scoured every street in the city — it was just small enough to do so — looking for a maroon BMW. After the sun had set, she conceded defeat.

She phoned Randy, who was clomping about the Valley house packing things up, anticipating Susan's request for him to drive to Wyoming with Dreama.

Susan assembled a degree of composure and thanked the Elliots, then spent the next twenty-odd hours in her car driving around Cheyenne. She phoned Randy's cell and told him she'd drive to Laramie, to the west, and meet them there.

When they showed up, Susan collapsed into their arms in tears. She ditched her car in a gas station, and they drove in Randy's minivan back to Cheyenne. Randy and Dreama tried to calmly assess the situation and tried to decide what to do next.

What confused Susan amid this was news of John Johnson's appearance at both Randy's house and then at Dreama's. This stopped her thinking dead, as if she'd been slapped.

«He's not a creep,» Susan said. «He just …isn't. »

«I never said he was, Susan,» Dreama said. «But he is a four-digit prime.»

«Not numerology. Not now, Dreama.» Randy was cranky from the drive.

«He was looking for me ?» Susan said. «He doesn't even know about Eugene Junior.» Susan mulled this over: John was looking for her. Once again her mind hit a wall. But now she had what felt like a new battery placed inside of her. Someone was looking for her — someone she herself had tried to locate. She looked out the window at the prairies. Suddenly they didn't feel quite so large and terrifying. Suddenly they didn't seem like a place in which she could be hopelessly lost.

On the outskirts of Cheyenne, Susan took her turn at the steering wheel of the minivan.

Chapter Thirty-six

Susan was holding Eugene Junior on the concrete ledge beside the propane tank. Her body felt deboned with relief, but the child showed no signs of anything other than simple pleasure.

Randy had gone to calm the Exxon duty manager's nerves, worried that this sudden burst of people might constitute a situation of some sort. Ivan's cell phone rang; he answered it, began speaking Japanese, and withdrew inside the rental car. Dreama hovered by Susan, while John, Ryan and Vanessa crept up to the opened rest room door and stared in at the harshly lit, unkempt sprawl that was Marilyn, slouched on the toilet lid. Her eyes were wide and red.

«Marilyn?» John said into the echoey tiled room. Marilyn didn't respond. «Are you okay?»

The back of Marilyn's head rested against the wall. She turned toward John at the door.

«Can I get you anything — Tylenol? Food? A blanket?»

«No,» Marilyn said. «It's okay. There's nothing I want. Really. Truly.Nothing. » She looked at John and saw a resemblance to Susan's child, which was, in a way, a resemblance to Eugene Lindsay. «You're the father?»

«No, ma'am.»

«He's a beautiful child,» she said.

«Sure is.»

«Susan was more beautiful, though. She was. She was like a Franklin Mint souvenir figurine. People would gasp. » Marilyn then glared at Vanessa. «You. How'd you catch me? I knew the jig was up when you talked about the curtains. You don't look like the curtains type.»

Vanessa gaped, unable for once to come up with a reply. Marilyn cut her thinking short. «To hell with it. I don't want to know. It'd probably scare the shit out of me anyway. I knew I shouldn't have stopped at Calumet for my bonus check.» She lit a cigarette. John thought she looked like a drag queen. «So what's the deal — are you guys cops or something?»

«No. We're friends of Susan,» John said.

Randy had just come back and told everyone that no police or state troopers would be forthcoming.

«I ought to be in jail,» said Marilyn. She turned her head to look at the graffiti-free wall.

«There's not going to be any charges, Marilyn,» John said.

The Interstate traffic punctuated the sky with its dull Doppler-shifted roars. John remembered back to less than a week before — when he was the schedule-obsessed robot watching the CNN six o'clock news — and he remembered Doris's yelling at him to cough up the goods on his solo road trip. John put his arms out to Marilyn.

Marilyn was disdainful. «Give me one good reason I should even come near you.»

John thought a second and remembered Vanessa's telling him about Marilyn's polyandry. What was his name? He remembered and blurted out, «Duran Deschennes would have wanted you to be close to Susan.»

Marilyn let out a thimbleful of air, and her face lost all harshness, briefly becoming young, and John could see the beauty she had obviously once been. She tottered over to him, as though walking on a wobbling dock. They went outside, where she and John sat down beside a transformer box and some scrub pines. «You know, I've been broke before, Marilyn,» he said. Marilyn nodded. «And I've been jobless before, too.» She nodded again. «But mostly I've had nobody to join for dinner at six-thirty every night,» he said. «That was the worst of it for me — sunset — six-thirtyP .M. and nobody for dinner.»

Susan, Randy and Dreama were by the van, their breathing harsh and quivering. Ivan was still in the car speaking Japanese. Ryan and Vanessa were discreetly turned away from John and Marilyn, but still trying to take in each word, and John shooed them off like children past their bedtime.

«Ryan, would you get Marilyn a cup of coffee. Vanessa, can you grab my coat from the car.»

As they went off, Ryan whispered to Vanessa, «Oscar clip,» and Vanessa giggled. A minute later they were back. «Drink some coffee,» said Ryan. «It'll be good for you.» He handed Marilyn a paper cup filled with hot coffee.

John walked over to Susan, who was holding her child upside down by the ankles. A cold breeze shot by and he buttoned up his jacket.

Susan looked up and smiled and said, «Seems like a hundred years ago since our little walk together, eh?»

«A thousand.»

Randy and Dreama, fifth wheels, made quick hellos, and walked away with the two dogs.

«So how'd you do it? Find my mother, I mean. I've been here in Wyoming going crazy for days now. I haven't slept in, like, forty-eight hours. How'd you even know I was looking for