“Good for you.”
The road was two-lane. A big eighteen-wheeler was headed in our direction. Lucy waved as it approached and the trucker blasted his horn merrily as he went by.
“Getting that new experience you were lookin’ for?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. This is great. Thanks for letting me do this.” Her words were yanked back in the wind.
She gave it another two miles like that, then got back down in her seat. I took it up to seventy-five again. “Got some of those knots undone?” she asked.
“Who said I had knots?”
“It’s your aura. Actually, it’s sort of sweet. Doesn’t match your scars or that little mist of gray in your hair.”
“O’Roarke and I talk about my sweet aura all the time. Patrick O’Roarke. He’s a bartender in Reno.”
“I’m sure. So—want me to put my top back on?”
“Let your conscience be your guide, lady.”
“Lady. That’s almost an improvement. For the record, I like it when you call me ‘kiddo,’ too. Makes me feel young again. And, hey, good for you, you aren’t totally freaked by this.”
“Not visibly. But you’d better be at least eighteen.”
She smiled, then closed her eyes.
Another mile passed in companionable silence while I tried to insert Lucy into my worldview. Holiday would be okay with this since that’s how she was. But, man, the guys I worked with at the IRS would be so pissed if they could—
Lucy looked up at me. “You’re really okay with this? It feels super, this heat and wind, but I don’t want to push it.”
“Better than okay. Got all my square knots untied.”
She smiled and closed her eyes again. “Square knots. That’s good.”
“I haven’t seen perky like that in a long time.”
“Perky. That’s good, too.”
Three more miles passed by without conversation. The day was hot as hell, but the heat felt good. It reminded me of my time in Borroloola, Australia, when I put up nearly a mile of fence for a widow named Kate Hardy in the toughest ground God put on this earth. I let my mind go blank and allowed this experience to wash over me without trying to analyze it. Sometimes it’s good to shut off the flow of words and just breathe.
But words eventually sneak back in. Holiday, aka Sarah, was going to graduate with a civil engineering degree and ease out of my life as quietly and with as little fanfare as she’d eased in, back when she was pretending to be a hooker. She was going to give me a peck on the cheek and go off to engineer something somewhere. I wondered about this road trip with Lucy. I didn’t know what it was. I had the feeling I was in a wilderness, being marched through fog. Lucy was a free spirit, rather like Kayla, the beautiful girl I’d found in my bed last summer—Mayor Sjorgen’s daughter, who had started this surfeit of gorgeous girls, this absolute deluge of women in my life. Kayla and I had driven through the desert in her VW bug, but she wasn’t topless. This was a first for me. Lucy’s eyes were closed and she sat there like a slender meditating Buddha with a faint smile on her face, head back against the headrest, not a worry in the world, taking life one second at a time. She wasn’t posing, wasn’t flaunting herself, she was just . . . there. Carefree, relaxed, happy.
I felt loose. Maybe she was untying knots I didn’t know I had. Maybe we have more knots than we’re aware of, tucked into dimly lit corners of our minds.
Vagina Monologues.
Hot damn.
Then my phone rang. I slowed to sixty-five and swiped the screen. It was Holiday. I told her to hold on a minute, that I was on a highway and had to find a place to pull off.
“What the hell was that?” Lucy said.
“What was what?”
“That ringtone.”
“‘Monster Mash.’ Pretty cool, huh?”
“Wow.”
Half a mile ahead I saw a dirt road off to the right. I slowed and pulled off the highway, went three hundred feet up a dusty track to cut down on traffic noise and because one of us wasn’t wearing her tight little pink cotton top.
I cut the engine. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to say hi, Mort. Turns out Ravi and his wife are here at Alice’s, their kids, too, so it’s a busy place.”
Ravi was her cousin, two months older than Holiday. He and Dylan had bathed or showered with Holiday from the time she was five years old until she turned eleven. She and Ravi probably had a lot to talk about, interesting memories to share. Not sure about Mrs. Ravi.
“Sounds like good times,” I said.
“It is. Right now it’s all about ice cream cones. So, you’re driving? Where to?”
“Las Vegas. And I’ve got a topless girl in the car with me. Her name is Lucy.” I had to do it. No telling how that would turn out, but I wouldn’t lie to Holiday, even by omission. We still had our Tuesday Time together. When I looked over at Lucy, she was staring at me, jaw agape, not looking much like a Buddha.
Two seconds of silence on the other end. Then: “Topless?”
“Very.”
“How is very topless different than ordinary topless?”
“Attitude?”
“How old is this girl, Mort? What was her name again?”
“Thirty-one, looks eighteen. Her name is Lucy.”
“I should talk to her. Put her on.”
Great idea. Oughta be good for a laugh. I handed the phone to Lucy. “Here, kiddo. Converse.”
She took it gingerly. “Uh, hi.”
I couldn’t hear what Holiday was saying. I got out of the car to stretch my legs, wondering which direction my life was about to go. Life is all about choices, forks in the road, some big, some small—tell Holiday about Lucy, or don’t. Mention the topless thing, or don’t. I’d made my decision. Maybe I’d wanted to know where Holiday and I were going, or if we were going anywhere. It didn’t seem likely. Once she got that civil engineering degree, I didn’t think she’d stay
