We passed through the town of Nixon on the Paiute Indian Reservation, last sign of civilization that we would see for the next sixty miles, then on into some of the emptiest desert in the state.
Sarah was quiet, alone with her thoughts. I didn’t interrupt. I was still trying to catch up with all of this. I gave her attire a glance or two in the glow of the dash lights to stay awake. Worked, too.
Finally, I said, “Is Dellario your real name?”
“Why? Doesn’t it sound real?”
That wasn’t an answer. “I don’t know how your ‘real’ name would sound. How’d you come up with Holiday Breeze?”
She laughed softly. “I don’t know. I started out using the name Susan Smith, but that sounded boring. So ordinary it could hardly be real. Then I was Ginger, no last name. That lasted a week. But I never felt like a Ginger, so then one day I just thought ‘Holiday,’ and for some reason it felt right.”
“What about Breeze?”
“I don’t know where that came from. It’s like it fell out of the sky and landed on me.”
“And ‘Holiday Breeze’ sounded real?”
She laughed again. “No. But I liked it. It fit what I was doing, the way I felt when I dressed up and went out.”
“Free.”
“Uh-huh. And a little bit sexy.”
“Ever been married?”
She wrinkled her nose. “No.”
She stared at the headlights boring a tunnel through the night. The hills were black against black sky. She held the Audi at seventy, which would put us in Gerlach in a little under an hour. With Nixon behind us, civilization was a gazillion miles away and receding rapidly.
“I had a boyfriend once,” she said. “In my sophomore year. It lasted about two weeks.”
“Two whole weeks? And one whole boyfriend?”
“How many should I have had?”
“I don’t know. I have this image of a line going twice around the block.”
We drove without speaking for five minutes. She was more complex than I’d thought. Maybe during these pauses she was doing calculus problems in her head. Finally she said, “So what do you do in that bar all the time? You don’t look like a big drinker. I mean, you don’t act like it, and I’ve been around a ton of ’em lately.”
“I’ll have a few beers. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And lately I’ve acquired a taste for sarsaparilla. And the bartender gives me the remote for the television, the beer nuts are free, and the place is a ten-minute walk from home so there’s no chance of a DUI.”
“So, what? Going there is mostly a social thing?”
“Where else can I strike up conversations with hookers? Who, by the way, are fun if you don’t take them too seriously.”
She laughed. “All right. Touché.”
Another ten minutes of not-uncomfortable silence went by, then I said, “When we get there, you probably oughta stay in the car, let me go scout around.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“That top you’ve got on. They probably haven’t seen anything like that in Gerlach in years.”
“Actually, when we get there, I better find us a gas station.”
I leaned over. The needle was hovering a sixteenth of an inch above empty.
“This thing gonna make it another forty miles?” I asked.
“Hope so. I should’ve filled up before we left. Guess I was in too big a hurry after Allie phoned.”
“Uh-huh. If we run out, I’ll steer, you push.”
“Seriously? I had it figured the other way. You’d generate more horsepower.”
“Fuckin’ engineer.”
If the convertible top had been down, her laugh would have carried half a mile into the desert.
More silence. I had my thoughts, she had hers. I was wondering what Jeri would think about all this and when I should tell her. I didn’t want to distract her from the power-lifting competition, which wasn’t a self-serving rationalization. I was going to tell her—might not bother with a detailed description of what Sarah was wearing and how much of her it didn’t cover—but only when the time was right. Tomorrow in Atlantic City would be low key, elimination stuff, but knowing about Holiday-Sarah might throw Jeri off. It wouldn’t take much. If she lost the competition by three lousy pounds she would probably—
“Can I tell you something?” Sarah said.
I swam back to the present. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She hesitated. “It might be . . . I don’t know, sort of awful.”
“Awful is my forté, kiddo. If I told you all the things I’ve done with the IRS, all the mayhem I’ve caused . . .”
“When we find Allie, or . . . or what’s happening with her, I don’t think I’ll quit. At least not for a while.”
“Quit what?”
“You know, going to bars. Doing what I was doing, am doing.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, offering up that deep insight.
“I mean—it’s like I’ve got two lives now. I don’t know if I want to give this one up, the fake hooker one. At least not right away. The attention is . . . well, addictive. I know it’s a little out there, but I like not being me all the time, the Sarah me. I like dressing up and, you know, feeling sexy.”
“Yeah, well, pardon the trailer-park observation, but I don’t know how you wouldn’t feel sexy twenty-four seven, all year long.”
She made a face. “Calculating the moment of inertia of beams and their deflections under loads isn’t the least bit erotic.”
“Don’t I know it. Every time I calculate stuff like that it feels like I’m under a cold shower.”
She smiled. “Studying my ass off in a library is one thing, but when I go out and . . . and guys look at me like this, I get a shivery feeling.”
“Shivery, huh? You don’t get that with beam deflections?”
“Hardly. So here I am, trying to find my sister, but wearing things like this feels good anyway, like I’m in a play. For a while I get to be someone else, someone different.”
A sudden thought occurred to me, the kind of epiphany that hits me every other decade. “You’re shy.”
She stared at me for a moment. “Yes.” She looked back at the road, then back at me. “How . . . how . . . ?”
“Sarah is shy,
