They go into group homes, said Logan.
Or foster homes, I said. But only until they’re eighteen.
And then? asked Logan.
Well, I said, they go wherever. They do their thing. They’re adults then.
Hey, said Thebes. She punched Logan in the arm. Remember when you burst that blood vessel in your eye from vomiting so hard when you got drunk with your basketball team?
I still have it, he said. He opened his left eye wide and looked at Thebes.
Dude! she said. You should wear a patch. I’ll make you one.
They went on like that for a while. I was happy they were talking. Remembering. Reminiscing about their childhood, like it hadn’t all been one long march to the frozen Gulag.
But, said Logan, a fifteen-year-old could technically live on his own, right?
Okay, bad times are gonna roll, I thought. Logan is planning to run away before we find Cherkis.
No, a fifteen-year-old cannot live on his own, I said.
Pippi Longstocking wasn’t even fifteen, said Thebes, and she—
Yeah, but she was a character in a book, I said.
And she was Swedish, said Logan.
So there would have been a solid safety net of social programs to help keep her afloat, I said. It doesn’t work here.
Yeah, but the point of Pippi was that she didn’t need anybody or any social programs to help her, said Logan. She was that strong.
Yeah, I said, but unhumanly so. She could lift a horse. Can you?
Well, I don’t know, said Logan. A small one, maybe, but that’s not my point. There was more to her strength than that. It was—
You could so not lift a horse, said Thebes.
Yeah, I probably could, said Logan.
No, you couldn’t, she said. But I could probably flip a horse.
I could eat a horse, said Logan.
Oh, the things they could do to horses. They pingponged back and forth for a long time about horses and tough Swedish girls while I looked for a gas station and/or grocery store.
Min was married briefly to a grip a few years ago, long after Cherkis had hit the road. The grip’s name was Darius. They met on a movie set. Min was working as a driver, or maybe as a caterer. I wasn’t sure. When the shooting was finished, they drove down to Vegas to spend Min’s wages on blackjack. The plan was that if she and Darius made enough money from blackjack they would get married at the Elvis chapel, for the hell of it.
Logan didn’t care what they did. Min told me that he spent the entire time in Vegas in front of the cracked bathroom mirror of the hotel room perfecting his Robert De Niro impersonation and trying to get the family thrown out of as many casinos as he could.
Min and Darius chose package B, which included a limo to pick them up and drop them off, a medley of Elvis tunes by the impersonator, some flowers, a videotape of the wedding, and a guy named Juan to be the minister. Is it real or what? Darius asked Min. Of course it’s real, she told him. Not that she really cared. She didn’t care about being married to anyone, she just wanted to be loved. But she didn’t want to be taken care of. Or she did. She told me that Thebes had taken her hand and crammed it into Darius’s. She wore a dress that was red on the top and then gradually faded into light orange at the very bottom.
When they got home Darius lived with them for a while, but then decided that what he really needed for his personal growth was to get rid of his possessions and take a very long, indefinite trip to the North Pole. That’s great, Min said. She was tired of having all that self-esteem anyway. Blech. Feeling good was lousy for her art.
They said goodbye to Darius. He told Min she shouldn’t take it personally, that she had taught him so much about love, and he told Thebes he’d send her a Christmas present straight from Santa’s workshop. Right, right. He and Logan had nothing to say to each other.
Denver was coming up any minute but we decided to bypass it and veer off west on the I-70 towards the mountains, and the desirable land of Moab. Logan was reading a new Q magazine he’d bought at the last gas station. Thebes was reading over his shoulder.
Hattie, she said, your boyfriend, Ryan Adams, is two-timing you with Winona Ryder.
I just said I liked his music, sort of, I said.
She told me her last assignment in school, before she was sprung, had been to research the life of an important individual in musical history.
Who did you do? I asked her.
Beyoncé Knowles, she said, from Destiny’s Child.
What do you think the odds are of me ever achieving knighthood? said Logan.
Oh, I said, sixteen to one, around there.
What do you have to do to be knighted? asked Thebes.
I don’t know, said Logan, something great.
Okay, here we go, I said. I pulled into a gas station and up to the pump.
Thebes wanted to pump the gas. She jumped out of the van with a karate kick and almost smashed into the other guy pumping gas. He looked at her like he was about to be assaulted by Happy the dwarf.
I don’t know, said Logan, but I think Thebes is starting to smell bad. I told him it was very considerate of him not to have mentioned it when she was around. I asked him if it was my job to get her to shower or bathe and he said he had no idea. He thought yeah, probably, and that she would need aggressive encouragement because it wasn’t really her thing. He got out of the van and suddenly there were about six Japanese teenagers standing around him. They pointed at his headphones and smiled. He smiled back at them.
Rock ’n’ roll? one of them said.
Yeah, said Logan. Rock ’n’ roll.
Rock ’n’ roll! said the guy.
Yes! said Logan. Rock ’n’ roll.
They were all smiling and feeling groovy. I told Logan I wanted to use the pay phone to call Min and he said he wanted to talk to her too.
The hospital said Min wasn’t available. Oh, I said, what exactly does that mean? They asked if they could phone me back later in the day, after rounds. No, see, I said, the thing is I’m at a pay phone. Can I phone you later?
What are they saying? said Logan.
Well…not much, I whispered.
Ask to speak to Min, he said.
I did, I said. I can’t right now.
Can you just tell me in a nutshell how she’s doing? I asked the woman. Thebes was wandering around the parking lot looking at the ground and occasionally bending down and picking things up.
Well, said the woman, there have been a few incidents and she’s—
What kind of incidents? I asked. Logan looked at me. It’s okay, it’s okay, I whispered to him.
She’s not adapting to the program the way we would have liked her to, said the woman.
Oh yeah? I said. So, what does that mean? She’s fine, I whispered to Logan. Stupidly gave him two thumbs way up.
Well, she’s somewhat hostile towards the nurses, said the woman. And her roommate. And her doctor. She refuses to speak. She won’t eat. She won’t get out of bed. Not for any reason.
Oh, that’s not…that’s unfortunate, I said. The woman agreed.
She’s good, she’s good, I said to Logan. Is she okay? I asked the woman.
The woman said yes, she’d been sedated and was resting. She couldn’t say much more than that but if I could call back, after rounds, she was sure the doctor could tell me more.
All right, okay, I said. I lowered my voice and asked the woman if Min had indicated any interest at all in seeing me or her kids.
Not that she knew of, said the woman. In fact, she said, one nurse had told her that Min had said she’d never had children.
Okay, I said. Can you just tell me exactly at what time I’d be able to speak to her doctor?