“Call me from Looie’s.”
“I’m gonna need some cash when I …”
But Pierce had hung up.
“Who was that?”
“One of the foremost herb brokers in Manhattan. You’re going to like him a lot.”
Replete with chicken-fried steak, home fries, and wedges of chocolate chiffon pie, they were back on the track an hour later, Tildy relegated once more to map reading and gazing out the window at passing greenery.
“Whatsa matter? You don’t trust me to drive?”
“Not at all. But suppose some cracker lawman were to shake this car down? Then I saw you by the side of the road with your thumb in the air and you don’t know a thing about me or what I’m hauling.”
“Wish I could believe you were that kindhearted. I really do.”
They had arrived at some uncertain, intermediate stage, with not a single thing to say. Tildy counted the corpses of animals who had misjudged a sprint across the road; they were all over the place, losers to speed beyond their understanding. Back home, at the tourist information booths where they gave out free orange juice, there were little warnings posted about alligators who liked to sun themselves on the highway.
Christo chainsucked peppermints, steered with his elbows or his teeth, sang bits of advertising jingles and enjoyed a bout of good old nerve-rattling, mind-prodding paranoia. Every passing motorist wearing a tie was an FBI agent. Every speedwagon with growling tailpipes and wide tires contained some overwound DEA zealot who would just as soon blast you and take the dope. Every dark blotch on the horizon was a roadblock bristling with shotguns. What a nice unadorned target he made out here among the onion fields.
Finally, as dusk approached, they stopped at Nick & Nora’s Swim-O-Links for a dip in the pool in rented suits. Tildy’s white one-piecer with reinforced bra cups was at least one size too large; it bagged out in back and the shoulder straps kept slipping down. Christo challenged her to a five-lap race and lost, Tildy finishing with a sloshing burst, the suit peeled down around her middle by the rush of water. He paid for the chili dogs as promised, but fared no better at miniature golf. Tildy scored two holes-in-one, the first a shot that just missed the descending blade of a motor-driven Olde Dutch Windmill, the second a miracle putt that wobbled into the mouth of a cement polar bear, dropped through a pipe onto all-weather green carpet and rolled through a clot of dead leaves that altered the path of the ball almost ninety degrees, enabling it to reach the lip of the cup, teeter, fall in.
“I’d say you were a natural born athlete,” Christo muttered, tearing the scorecard to shreds.
GET US OUT OF THE UNITED NATIONS
WANAWEETA MERCHANTS ASS’N
In northern Virginia they came upon an outgrowth of the Indochinese diaspora. The Ban Dinh Family Restaurant was just across the street from a gas station where Tildy flirted with the attendant while Christo swiped a quart of 30-weight and wiper blades that turned out to be the wrong size.
“How about a late supper with the boat people?”
“I’m not really in the mood for exotic food,” Tildy said.
“We’ll see. Maybe they’ve got a steak and lobster combo.”
It was warm inside the restaurant, steamy. Thai Airlines posters were tacked over sloppily pasted red wallpaper, blinking Christmas tree lights outlined the rec-room-sized bar, and on each Weldwood table was a cruet holding plastic roses. Except for a golden age couple dressed for a sales award banquet, puttering uncomfortably with the remnants of their meal, Christo and Tildy were the only customers in the place. A slender boy escorted them to a table with great ceremony and a wrinkly, don’t-shoot-me smile, laid out menus, withdrew pad and pencil from his designer jeans.
“You choose by number, write down here.” The smile was ferocious now, a rictus.
A chunky old woman, probably the kid’s grandmother, materialized at Christo’s elbow. Her stylized movements and buoyant manner suggested a veteran of service familiar with the ways of white people: Those were grand days in ’56 and ’57 at the Club Charenton near Saigon. We knew where we stood.
When she spoke, light did strange things on the metal bridge-work at the front of her mouth. “Good evening. You would like perhaps a cocktail?”
“A martini for me.”
“There are no more olives. So sorry.”
“That’s okay. Something for you?”
“Just tea,” Tildy said.
As they were studying the menus, Tildy murmuring that she’d be happiest with a bowl of plain rice, the other couple passed by on their way to the cash register. The missus loitered near their table, assuming the instant comradeship of compatriots stuck in some dreadful foreign backwater.
“Whatever you do, don’t order anything with pork. It tasted flat rancid to me.”
Christo nodded thoughtfully, twirled the pencil like a baton.
“No shit. Let me tell you something, lady. These people know what rat meat tastes like. They know that if you stand near a column of napalm smoke it’ll suck the air right out of your lungs. So do I. I’ve seen it happen. In your position I’d be damn grateful there wasn’t any strychnine in the food.”
She giggled, touched her lips, then felt the icicles of Christo’s glare upon her and beat it out to the car.
“You were really over there?” Tildy said, and a nasal voice from the middle recesses of her brain yelled: Sucker!
“Sure, sure. I was a real mudeater. Last of the doomsday grunts. I’d go days without sleep, get myself all smacked up and volunteer for night patrol, go for the big thrills. Maybe a little hand-to-hand combat, unzip some gook and lick the blood off my bayonet.”
“Sshhh.”
“Don’t be dense then. You know induction day was it for me. Ran around the halls dropping my shorts and spreading for anything in a uniform. Man, I had my 1-Y all signed, sealed and delivered inside two hours. It was a lot easier in those early days. Another year or two and they’d seen all kinds of dodges. You had to be a little more creative. Little brother of a guy I used to do street vending with went down with his pet St. Bernard, Rollo. Rollo used to drool all over himself after they spiked his Gravy Train with LSD. But the kid’s all smiles, very enthused, ready to ship out to the zone as soon as possible so he can start blowing Commies away. We’ve got to stop them before they reach Santa Barbara, all that. Just one thing, though. He’s got to take his dog along. ‘Can’t go anywhere without my dog, sir.’ Plants a kiss on those slimy chops. ‘Me and Rollo, we’re closer than brothers. Maybe you could teach him to sniff out landmines?’”
“Did they go for it?”
“Oh, yeah. The shrink was real impressed. Too bad it didn’t end there.”
“What happened?”
“It started to come down on him that summer. In buckets. His father died in a hotel fire. His girlfriend went out for ice cream one night and never came back. The band he was with threw him over for another bass player right before they signed a record contract. And somebody ran over his dog. So what the fuck, he went and enlisted in the marine corps. Got both his legs blown off in Cambodia.”
LANE ENDS 1000 FEET
This segment of the north-south artery was a memorial to our most recently murdered Chief of State. The rest area in which Christo and Tildy were parked had been named after the Hon. Elihu S. Robbinet, evidently a worthy Maryland jurisprude of days gone by. Such was immortality in the age of the disposable raincoat and the celebrity golf tournament; in a nation that communicated increasingly via T-shirt and bumper strip.
Christo dozed sporadically, a watch cap pulled down over his eyes, while Tildy chattered on inside the clammy, hermetic little isolation box the Fiat had become.