And after Disneyland, what? Yolanda went out and got new disguises, and now they crowd into the bathroom to make themselves over quickly. Teko goes to settle the bill, and she and Yolanda exit through the rear. In a little while someone else’s family will shape itself to the rhythms of room 226. Maybe the one in that car with the license plate that says Je Me Souviens. They cross the broiling lot to where the Corvair sits neatly parked between painted lines. Yolanda wears a gray wig and hangs on to Tania, as if for support. They walk slowly.
The road swallows them, Monday morning’s lackadaisical rush pulls the Corvair forward in fits and starts. A shadow fills the car, and from her vantage — lying on the floor, in back — Tania sees the cab of an enormous truck that’s drawn abreast of them, a plump tanned forearm resting on the door frame. Yolanda turns to look down at her, speaks abnormally loudly in her old lady voice.
“Did you find it, dear?” Then she growls: “Get up! Damn it, get up!”
Tania sits up and pretends to hand something to her. There is no need any longer even to figure out these deceptions. Passing on the right, the truck cuts them off.
The bad news is that Cujo is dead and nothing matters.
Teko finds the Golden State Freeway, but it soon becomes apparent that they’re heading in the wrong direction, south.
“Orange County,” he says, grimly.
“Teko, Anaheim is Orange County,” says Yolanda.
“I mean, like, the real Orange County.” He sings, “Folk down there, really don’t care, really don’t care, don’t care, really don’t.”
Tania is impressed.
Over the hills, where the spirits fly, is Costa Mesa, which seems like a perfectly good reason to leave the freeway. They roll down a straight road with the green Pacific at its end and the Catalina Islands on horizon’s edge. Finding a motel is not a problem; there are plenty of them, their signs looming over the road, practically extending into the lanes, competing to offer amenities. Teko picks one that promises LO WKLY RATES and KCHTTES. Tania lies down on the floor of the Corvair under a Cosmic Age bath towel.
It’s thirty dollars a week for a single and another ten for each additional adult. As she sneaks her into the room, Yolanda tells Tania that her presence has to remain a secret because Teko thinks that a man and two women traveling together will arouse too much suspicion, but Tania knows it’s the ten dollars.
She has to hide in the closet for the duration of each of Teko and Yolanda’s frequent outings.
She has to hide in the closet when the clerk comes to explain the two-burner range.
She has to hide in the closet when the maid comes to clean up.
She has to hide in the closet when the manager drops by to ask a question.
She has to hide in the closet when there are footsteps on the walkway.
“You are a fucking ungrateful bitch. Think about what our comrades went through and you’re complaining about being crammed into, quote unquote, the closet. Don’t you think Cujo would give anything to be ‘crammed into’ a closet right now?”
“Yeah, you think Cujo would be complaining? Huh?”
This is enough to bring forth instant capitulation. Tania sighs heavily and turns toward the closet, or places her hand on the knob, or squats to insert herself, or whatever action’s most appropriate depending on her proximity to the fucking closet.
“The pigs killed Cujo like an animal.”
“An animal.”
“But I bet he didn’t complain.”
“He was a devoted soldier.”
“I recognized the sound of his rifle firing to the last.”
“I bet Cujo’d be real disappointed in you.”
She’s inside, closing herself into the muffled darkness.
She sits in the dark of the closet on the plywood floor, crying silently, the hems of Yolanda’s dresses draped over her shoulders, feeling the tears running down her cheeks, first the hot rolling droplets and then the cold tracks, to pool at her jawline and fall. It feels sometimes as if she’s spent her life crying without making a sound, has acquired a dubious expertise.
Teko returns one afternoon with a gallon jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy. He fills the ice bucket from the machine and, with two hands holding the jug, pours drinks over ice for all three of them. Three rounds later, it is apparent that this libation flagrantly violates the letter of the SLA Code of War that stipulates, “ONCE TRUE REVOLUTIONARIES HAVE SERIOUSLY UNDERTAKEN REVOLUTIONARY ARMS STRUGGLE, MARIJUANA AND ALCOHOL ARE NOT USED FOR RECREATIONAL PURPOSES OR TO DILUTE OR BLUR THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF REALITY, BUT VERY SMALL AMOUNTS FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES TO CALM NERVES UNDER TIMES OF TENSION, NOT TO DISTORT REALITY.”
A glass of iced burgundy on the bedside table. Tania watches the Watergate impeachment hearings. By Thursday she is pretty much ignoring her standing orders to conceal herself in the closet when she is alone. Sometimes when the others enter the room, they find her leaning in the closet door, eyes on the TV, a cigarette burning across the room in the ashtray near the bed — not even trying, really, to fool them.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching this.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean then?”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Watching this.”
“Is that what you’re supposed to be doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you supposed to be doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting where?”
She giggles.
“You think it’s funny, hah? Maybe you’ll think this is funny too.”
Teko crosses the room, rapidly closing the space between them. Tania is caught between panic and apathy. So she tosses her wine at him. He freezes. There is the sound of the ice cubes hitting the carpeted floor. The expression on his face indicates his attempt to scale new heights of rage. Without a word she disappears into the closet and closes the door behind her. She stays there for the remainder of the night.
It’s Nixon’s viscid gift that his presence haunts these hearings, clammily, despite his physical absence, his attempts to appear above the fray. Even Yolanda is made uneasy by the transcripts the White House has newly released in an effort “to put Watergate behind us,” the ones in which their profane, bigoted, scheming president vents his paranoia. Despite her generally inflationary use of terms like pig and fascist, the revelation of Nixon’s true character surprises her.
“You met him?” she asks Tania.
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?” asks Teko, fixing an iced burgundy in the kitchenette.
“I just don’t know.”
“Oh, I can believe it,” says Yolanda. They’re both on one of the beds, leaning up against the headboard, watching television. Yolanda reaches out with her leg and seizes Tania’s foot between two long prehensile toes, giving it a little shake of solidarity. “They’re all alike. How could you tell the difference?”
“Quit it.” Tania giggles.
“Screw this,” says Teko vaguely. He drops into a chair, placing the wine before him.
“But what was he like?” asks Yolanda.
“I don’t remember.”
“First you don’t know. Now you don’t remember.” Teko is pointing at her.
“I don’t,” says Tania. It dawns on her, too late, that she’s been drawn into a trap.
But tonight for once Yolanda doesn’t feel like joining Teko in batting her around. “I don’t see what difference it could possibly make,” she says to Teko as she hoists herself up and then weaves her way to the kitchenette to refill her glass.