Naturally. I try not to sigh audibly.
“Rainey’s probably a little mad at me.”
Sarah is on me like Woogie on peanut butter.
“What did you say to her?” she yelps.
Too damn much, I think.
“Pretty much what I told you,” I lie. I can’t bring myself to admit that I accused Rainey of interfering with her faith.
“I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to be prepared for the worst.”
Sarah heads for the phone in the kitchen.
“Daddy, you’re just incredible,” she says coldly, dialing Rainey’s number.
I’ve been called worse.
“Let me talk to her after you’ve asked her.”
I eavesdrop as Sarah talks to my old girlfriend. Sarah’s voice changes tone, becomes happier as she rattles on about her new “family.” I sit at the table, pretending I am reading Daffy’s notes.
“It’s great,” Sarah says.
“One of the men about Dad’s age hasn’t missed a mission trip in six years. He had everybody in stitches.
I was afraid I’d be scared to talk, but they all made me feel so comfortable, I jumped right in.”
Woogie comes over to the table, and I reach down to pet him. I wonder if Sarah will ask me to let this guy adopt her. Doesn’t she remember I was in the Peace Corps? That was two solid years, and I didn’t have a “family” supporting me. But I guess it doesn’t count, because we didn’t run around screaming “Praise Jesus!”
at the top of our voices.
By the time Sarah hands me the phone, I am mad again, but I try to fake it. All either of them will do is patronize me.
“Is it okay if she stays?” I ask.
“I’ll be back Sunday.”
“Of course,” Rainey says.
“You know it is.”
Her voice sounds so smug and sugary I want to vomit.
“If anything happens to me, I’d appreciate it if you’d call my sister. Sarah has her number.”
Rainey laughs.
“You’re so dramatic. It’s safer to fly than to drive downtown.”
For an instant I am tempted to tell her this case stinks worse now than it did when I talked to her a couple of hours ago, but I don’t feel particularly credible at the moment.
“Thanks,” I tell her. There are worse things than hard-core Christians, I tell myself, and hang up.
7
“That’s YOUR FLIGHT!”
It is good to hear Sarah’s voice rising with an emotion other than anger. It seems as if ever since I have heard of Christian Life she and I have fought. My hands full, I nod with my chin at the gate. I still can’t believe Sarah is awake at this hour of the morning. Anything to get me away from her. A few people are still disappearing into United’s flight number 1639. Nuts. I’ve made it despite my best intentions. I hand my ticket to the woman behind the desk. My travel agent, Julia, neglected to obtain a boarding pass. The United representative, a stern, chubby-cheeked girl who appears to be only slightly older than Sarah, looks at me disapprovingly but hands me back the paper.
“It’s almost boarded!”
Sarah walks with me to the boarding line as if I were a child who needs to be reassured. I do.
“If we crash,” I say mournfully, “remember I’ve got two hundred thousand dollars in flight insurance. Get Dan to sue the hell out of them, anyway.”
Sarah giggles nervously.
“You’re not going to crash.”
Easy for her to say. She has only flown once. Her mother and I took her to Colombia to visit her grandmother when she was a kid.
“Maybe you can go live with your abuela in Barranquilla,” I tell her, rolling my r’s. When I spoke Spanish in the Peace Corps, I could see the campesinos literally wince at my eastern Arkansas accent.
“Marbel would love it.” A good Catholic, she’d put a stop to Christian Life in two seconds.
Sarah nudges me to give the flight attendant my pass.
“I’ll be fine.”
Since she is not eighteen, a guardian would be appointed for her if the plane vaporized. Dan won’t let her give the insurance money to Christian Life.
“I think you’re our last passenger,” the flight attendant says in an accusing tone.
What’s the big deal? Somebody has to be last. They would have been more than happy to overbook this turkey.
I hug Sarah hard and take a good look at her. Even in gray sweats, sleepy, and without makeup, she makes the flight attendant look like an undercooked bread stick.
“Be good!” I say needlessly. She’ll spend all her time at Christian Life.
Embarrassed, Sarah pushes me away.
“You said you might be back as early as tomorrow night.”
Aware how melodramatic I sound, I grin stupidly at the frowning flight attendant. If Shane Norman was a doting father, what am I?
In twenty minutes we are above the clouds, and I breathe easier. What I can’t see won’t hurt me. Sure. It’s been a while since I’ve flown, and I watch, fascinated, as my seatmate, a long-haired cowboy complete with black Stetson, boots, and a belt buckle almost the size of a Frisbee, inserts a credit card into the phone attached to the back of the seat in front of us.
“Wilma, don’t forget to walk Buttons for me,” he pleads. Damn.
How can people afford to fly, much less call long distance from the plane? This stuff used to be science fiction just a few years ago. I think he is trying to impress the young blonde on the aisle. It won’t take much. She is as white-knuckled as I am. Our flight attendant (“Don’t call them stewardesses,” my politically correct daughter reminded me as we were driving to the airport), a buxom black woman, with the nail on her pinkie finger painted gold, passes me nothing but a cup of coffee on this first hop to Tulsa. The rest of her fingernails are the color of old blood that proctologists warn signals colon cancer. This trip is going to be bizarre.
Reggie’s Bar in San Francisco isn’t exactly jumping (I count only two customers at a table in the corner), but then, it is only two in the afternoon. I have managed to check into a hotel near Chinatown and find the address on Columbus Avenue Chet has given me.
“I’m looking for a man named Harold Broadnax,” I say to the guy behind the bar. The bartender is above average height but is distinguished by the largest handlebar mustache I’ve ever seen. It makes the guy on the Today” show look as if he drew his on with a pencil. At a distance of a hundred yards this man must resemble a seagull.
Birdwing gives me a hard look as he wipes the bar in front of him and says, “I don’t know the guy.”
I am thirty minutes early, so I decide to walk around, since Birdwing gives me the creeps. Chet hasn’t given me a lot of information about our contact. Broadnax, an ex-sheriff’s deputy in Blackwell County, supposedly knows somebody who can help us. Instead of heading outside, I ascend the stairs to the second floor, the Vanna White Club. Though Blackwell County is not totally devoid of female impersonators, they are not on every street corner, and since I’ve never seen one except on TV, now is the time to complete my education.
The sign on the street is enticing, and a blow-up of seven performers in the hall leaves no doubt.
At the top of the stairs, I hear what sounds like the voice of a carnival barker. If I am so curious, why haven’t I done this before? Behind the counter an Asian guy lets me in for half price ($7.50) since the show is almost over. The club, dimly lit except for the stage, has few customers, so he leads me to a table in the second row where a waiter appears and takes my order for a beer. On stage, which is a narrow platform that leads down to a spacious dance floor, is a fat guy about my age in a platinum wig and pink evening gown telling jokes. He asks, “Are any of you old enough to remember the show “Queen for a Day’?” The sparse audience is composed of mostly couples, tourists like me, I guess. A few raise their hands. Our ME puts his hands on his hips and delivers his line: “Hell, I knew I was going to be a queen for life!”
This gets a few laughs, and even though I know the ME is a man dressed like a woman, it is already difficult to think of him that way. Though his voice is deep, his mannerisms are so feminine I find I am beginning to think of him as a woman.