“Pulled us over to the side of the road,” Jerry said.
“Siren blaring, like we’d just held up a bank,” Michael said.
“Checked out the driver’s license and the registration, then asked us to get out of the car.”
“Went over it top to bottom, looking for grass.”
“Didn’t find any, of course, we’re not that fucking dumb.”
“But they kept us at least an hour, pulled the seats out, looked through the trunk, the glove compartment, the pockets...”
“Even looked under the car, figuring we had a hundred pounds of heroin taped under...”
She’d never heard her father sound the way he had tonight. Never. You’d think she was selling herself on the street, for Christ’s sake! Well, she should have told them about Judd long before this, she guessed, but judging from tonight’s performance maybe she’d been right in delaying a confrontation. At least this had been on the phone, and it had been bad enough. Awful, in fact. She could just imagine what a face-to-face in the Rutledge living room would have been like. You’re living with a what? A boy? A boy you’re sleeping with? And then the heart attack, whammo, flat on the living room Bokhara, her mother standing by weeping.
“... even serve us in Utah,” Judd was saying. “We went into this greasy spoon, cowboys on the front porch, you know...”
“Yeah, cowboys,” Michael said.
“Judd, I’m sleepy,” Lissie said.
“Bull Durham in their shirt pockets, that little tag hanging, you know...”
“Yeah, cowboys,” Michael said again.
“Looked Lissie over head to toe, raped her with their eyes.”
“No, they didn’t,” Lissie said.
“You didn’t see them.”
“Well,” she said, and shrugged.
“We went inside to the counter,” Judd said, “and this big beefy bastard ambles over and says, ‘We don’t serve hippies.’ ”
“What’d you do?” Jerry asked.
“I told him that was against the law. He said I should first go get a haircut, and then we could discuss legalities. I told him what I was going to get was a goddamn lawyer.”
“Did you?”
“In Brindleshit, Utah? We just kept driving till we got to Nevada. In Nevada, they served us.”
“That’s ’cause the Mafia runs Nevada,” Michael said.
“Barbara, do you think I could take a bath?” Lissie said.
“Sure, honey,” Barbara said, “provided you’ve got your own towel. I sold all mine except the one in the bathroom.”
“I’ve got one,” Lissie said.
She went to her duffel, took a towel and a bottle of shampoo from it, and followed Barbara into the bathroom, across the hall from the largest bedroom. The tub was an old-fashioned monster that reminded her of the one in the Commonwealth Avenue apartment.
“How long will you be in Frisco?” Barbara asked, turning on both water taps.
“I have to be back before Easter,” Lissie said, and yawned. “Forgive me, I’m really exhausted.”
“Well, it was a long trip,” Barbara said, nodding. “So you’ll be leaving when?”
“I don’t know the exact date, you’ll have to ask Judd.”
“When are you due back at school?”
“Not till the thirtieth.”
“Nice long break.”
“Yes, but I have to be home the day before. For Easter.”
“That doesn’t give you much time here. Easter’s only a week away.”
“We figure we can make it back in four days.”
“That’d be pushing it.”
“Judd’s a fast driver. Anyway, I promised my father.”
“He sounded apoplectic on the phone.”
“Yeah, I guess he was a little excited.”
“A little, huh? I’d hate to hear him in a rage.”
“He’s all right, though. Usually.”
“Mm,” Barbara said. “How old are you, Liss?”
“Eighteen. You?”
“I was nineteen last month. Where’d you say you were going to school?”
“Brenner. How about you?”
“I dropped out of William and Mary a year ago, in my first semester. Came west on the back seat of a motorcycle with a twerp named Percy. You should never ride a motorcycle with anyone named Percy. You should never, in fact, do anything with anyone named Percy. The Percys of the world are superior only to the Bruces of the world. Avoid both, my child, and may God bless you.” She made the sign of the cross in the air, much as the Pope might have.
“Are you Catholic?” Lissie asked.
“Used to be.”
“When did you stop being?”
“Rode to church on my bicycle — must have been eight years ago — the day before Easter, full of holy emanations. Got in the confessional, crossed myself, said ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned, this is one year since my last confession.’ I was eleven years old, the biggest sin I had to confess was having seen myself naked in the mirror, horrors! Silence in the booth. Blackness. The priest finally said, ‘And you pick the busiest time of the year to come?’ I left the confessional, left the church, got on my bike and rode home. How about you?”
“Presbyterian.”
“Religious?”
“Hardly.”
“We’d make a fine pair,” Barbara said and smiled.
After breakfast on Monday morning, they took a bus across the Mission to Castro Street. Barbara was wearing the same brightly colored caftan she’d been wearing the night before, her hair loose now, falling in a black cascade to the middle of her back. The fog had burned off, but the day was gray and chilly.
“The reason I’m going to Europe is I’m fed up with all the bullshit in this country,” she said. “You know, like your father giving you all that stuff on the phone last night.”
“That was unusual,” Lissie said.
“But representative of an attitude. In this country, it’s a crime to be young right now. It pisses them off, our being young. The great contradiction, of course, is that they spend half their time trying to look young, dieting or sunbathing or exercising or having their faces lifted or whatever. But they resent us because we are young, that’s what we really are, and that’s what they can’t ever be again. Every time I come face to face with one of them, in the street, on a cable car, wherever, every time one of them approaches me from the opposite direction, I see it in their eyes. How dare you dress this way, how dare you smile your fucking flower-child smile, how dare you run around without a bra, how dare you wear your hair so long, how dare you be so young? A constant challenge. I remember once when I was in L.A., I went to meet this guy in MacArthur Park, he had an ounce of good pot I wanted to buy. And this pregnant lady was walking toward me in the park, giving me that same look, you know, and I remember thinking, ‘Excuse me for being alive, lady, but this is the way I am. Young. So go fuck yourself.’ Don’t you ever feel that way? You must feel that way.”