“Uh-huh,” I said, stalled on the word pussy.
She smiled. “The other part was Because He Liked to Look At It. That’s where this woman describes how she’d thought her vagina was ugly and she was embarrassed about that. But then she changed her mind ’cause this guy, Bob, liked it so much he would stare at it for hours. Which is just what the title says.”
“Uh-huh,” I said again. “Hours. Right.”
“Okay, now you’re totally embarrassed.”
“Actually, I’m trying to catch up with the monologues part of this conversation. But, embarrassed by the words you’re using? No—if only you weren’t seventeen. But we could talk baseball. Who’re you rooting for? Giants, Dodgers?”
“Can you actually say ‘vagina’? Let’s hear it.”
“Vagina.”
She grinned. “Okay, good. Anyway, you’ve never heard of the Vagina Monologues?”
“Nope.”
“Well, that’s a first.”
“Talking vaginas? I would think so.”
“No, silly. Women talking about their vaginas. Openly. Using words like cunt and pussy—not swearing, just using the words to talk about female anatomy more openly. It’s an episodic play by a woman named Eve Ensler. It really is a legitimate play. Thousands of people have seen it. Hundreds of thousands. You oughta go see it, expand your horizons.”
“See a vagina? I’ve done that.”
“The play, dope.” She smiled at me. “Of course, if it turns out you’ve got a hankering, I could—”
“Stop,” I said, setting the volume at ten. “Do you have proof that you’re at least eighteen?”
“Proof ?”
“Yep.”
“You don’t think I am?”
“I don’t know what you are. That fake ID doesn’t cut it. I’m not going to talk about . . . about . . .”
“Pussies?”
“Yeah, that—with a seventeen-year-old juvenile delinquent high school kid running away from home. And if you can’t prove you’re older than seventeen, or God help me only sixteen, you’re getting off at the next place that sells gas.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Do you have a cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, pull over.”
The car swerved again. “Why?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna take a selfie or flash you. Not right now, anyway. But driving and talking on a cell phone is dangerous, and I’m all about safety, so pull over.”
I got us off the highway and stopped on a wide verge. I didn’t expect cell coverage out here, but I was wrong. Guess Verizon was working the US 95 corridor.
Lucy took the phone from me. “What I’m going to do is call my mom, tell her it’s me, then hand you the phone, okay?”
“Terrific.”
She dialed a number, waited, then: “Hey, Mom, it’s me. Yeah, I’m with this really nice guy and . . . yeah, you’d like him . . . no, it’s totally cool . . . uh-huh, he wants to know how old I am so tell him, okay?”
She handed me the phone. I took it and said, “Hi.”
“Yes, hi.”
“Is this Lucy’s mother?”
“It is, yes.” Nice voice, refined, touch of humor there, too.
“What’s your last name, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It’s Landry.”
Good enough. “And how old is this precocious child of yours, Mrs. Landry?”
She laughed musically. “I’m not sure ‘precocious’ still applies since Lucy is thirty-one, Mr., um . . .”
“Angel.”
“Angel. That’s a very interesting name. And I understand your disorientation regarding Lucy’s age, but precocious or not, whatever she is, she gets it from me, not from her father.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I thanked her and gave the phone back to Lucy. “I’m back,” she said, then listened for a moment. “Las Vegas.” She glanced at me. “Yes. He is.” Pause, another look at me. “Yeah, he’s that, too. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” She ended the call, handed me the phone.
“He is what?” I asked. “And what else, too?”
“Nice,” she said. “And way out of his depth.”
CHAPTER NINE
SHE WAS A whirlwind. I’d never met anyone like her before. But she wasn’t eighteen, nineteen, or even twenty-one. which made me feel somewhat better. A lot better, in fact. I could deal with thirty-one. Thought so, anyway. If only she had a wrinkle somewhere, just one single gray strand . . .
“Out of my depth?” I said, pulling back onto the highway.
“Totally.”
“Don’t know where you get that, kiddo.”
“Just your basic observation. Anyway, Mort, you can relax, I’m not jailbait. It’s a family trait, looking young. You should see my mom. She’s going on fifty-four, doesn’t look thirty-five. My grandmother is seventy-six and passes for midfifties.”
She settled herself sideways in the seat and faced me. “Okay, like I said, the Vagina Monologues is a legitimate play. It won an Obie Award. Eve Ensler wrote it in 1996. Lots of women have gone to see it. Men, too. It’s like a total breakthrough. Like being able to acknowledge and accept and talk about female anatomy without getting embarrassed, use words that used to freak people out, and just . . . get over it. I did that for three months in a little theater on Geary Street in San Francisco, sort of an off-Broadway kind of thing. One time there were eighty-five women in the audience and seven men, I counted them, and all the men but two were looking down at their hands and their faces would glow kinda red whenever I or the other actors onstage said ‘pussy’ or ‘cunt,’ words like that, especially at first. Just like you did when I said them a few minutes ago. Girl like me says pussy and you’re all over the place. So, yeah, you’re pretty much out of your depth here.”
Felt like it, too.
“But I’m pretty sure we can get you caught up,” she said.
“Caught up? We?”
“Expand your vocabulary. Expand your mind. Get you past all the hang-ups.”
“I don’t have any hang-ups.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay . . . what if I treasure my hang-ups?”
She twisted her lips. “What if you treasure arthritis?”
“Huh?”
“Anyway, we’ll work on it. Not all at once, but over time. Vocabulary, concepts. So now we’re going to investigate this Jo-X thing, right? That would be cool. He’s been all over television lately, especially since you found him, when was it? Day before yesterday? I’ve never done anything like that. I got this degree in art
