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“I've heard that before,” Al says.

GL nods. “My big line in
Shadow Street.
Just because it's from a movie doesn't mean it isn't true.” She looks back to AmberLea. “You'll see tomorrow. A little secret between you and me.” She turns to me. “And we can't forget Spike's kiss for his Grandpa David, can we? Then”—she waves a hand like it weighs forty pounds—“Al can hightail it to Grand Portage or Fort Frances and duck into Minnesota if he wants.”

“What I want”—Al waves his phone—“is to find out if things have cooled off in Buffalo. I got a business to run.”

“And I'm sure it needs all those baking supplies in the trunk,” says GL. “Maybe you'd like to drive us back then. You can thank us for saving you when you say goodbye.”

“Yeah, how do we get back?” I say. “You told me to say we'd be home tomorrow.”

“I may have been a little hasty on that,” says GL. She nods to the rest of the room. “On the other hand, I'll bet not many of these fine young men would turn down a little old lady and her lovely granddaughter if they were hitchhiking. I've done it before.”

“
Really
?” says AmberLea. “Gramma! When?”

“When I was your age. If it wasn't the stupidest thing I've ever done, it was close to it.” GL pats me on the arm. “I'm sure they'd make room for our personal photographer on the bumper or the trailer hitch. Don't worry, Skeezix; just kidding. If Al doesn't want to go back, we can easily get a bus ticket. Or we could just get a cab.”

Before I can even begin to wonder if she's kidding, the waitress arrives with the food and GL digs out all her pills as the food is put down. When the waitress leaves, GL says, “Screen me.” She empties her water glass into the pot of plastic plants behind the booth; then out comes the gin bottle from her straw bag, under the table. She glugs some gin into the glass and whisks the bottle back into the bag as the waitress comes by with ketchup. “If you have to take pills,” says GL, “it might as well be fun.” She gets down to it.

She's a little wobbly on the way out to the car. Once she's in, she settles herself as if she's dozing again. But I'm driving, and from the side I can see behind her sunglasses. She's watching every inch of the way.

TWENTY-THREE

Not long before we get to Marathon, GL stirs herself. She roots around in her bag and gets busy fixing her makeup. Then she insists we pull over and put the top down on the car. “I want to make an entrance,” she says.

“To Marathon?” AmberLea says.

“Indulge me. I'm an old lady.”

There's no real reason why not; it's still a bright, sunny evening, even if it's cooling off. Down goes the top. GL settles her hat and gets a cigarette pose going. We roll into town in style: a ninety-year-old bombshell, a blond ankle-scratcher with a vanishing chin, Buffalo's King of Cannoli, a Chihuahua and a movie-geek chauffeur with bent glasses and a big need for a shower, all in a dented white Cadillac with stolen plates, a bullet hole, five big bags of something that might be icing sugar, and its own helium supply. It's not four gunslingers riding into town, but it might be the closest I'll get.

“Damn,” says GL, as we roll past two kids bending over a skateboard and a guy checking his tire pressure. “We should have had the car washed.”

“It rained while you were asleep,” Al reminds her. “We're good.”

“Oh. All right then.” She gives a queenly smile to a golden retriever in the back of a pickup truck. Mister Bones yaps.

We pick the Superior Motel because it's the first one we see and it looks okay. “You can always tell about motels,” Al advises. “You wanna lie low, pick one's gotta car with a flat parked at a unit.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Car with a flat says cash, cheap and close.”

“Close?”

“To your basics. You know, like a liquor store.”

“How do you know that?”

“If you hadda drive, you'd fix the flat.”

Al and I go into the motel office. There's a big, fleshy-faced old guy in saggy jeans and a black golf shirt behind the desk. The only thing even close to being as big as his gut is his huge upsweep of silver hair. It curves out over his forehead, then rolls and swoops straight to the back of his head, kind of like young Elvis, except old.

Over in the corner an even older guy is parked on a couch, dozing in front of a
TV
blaring CNN. He's all wrinkles and stray whiskers under his ball cap, and he's got the belt-and-suspenders combo happening over green work pants and a plaid shirt.

Al pulls out a credit card and books two rooms while I look around. I'm tired and this place isn't making me feel any livelier. There are fake flowers here too, and potted palm trees, a rack of postcards and some tour brochures.

On the wall behind the desk, on a wooden plaque, is a big stuffed fish with its mouth wide open and some framed photos—pictures of kids' soccer teams wearing
Superior Motel
jerseys, grad shots, a wedding, old people with a cake and party hats. That kind of stuff. Underneath hang plaques and certificates from the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. Jer once had to give a speech about “Front Porch Farmer” to a Rotary Club. I look closer at the inscription. The name on the plaque reads
Mike Karpuski
. Why does that sound familiar?

To one side are three black-and-white pictures. One is of a bunch of guys on a dock, in old-fashioned clothes, squinting into the sun and holding up a big fish; another is a line of people standing in front of a plain wooden building with a sign above their heads:
Superior Hotel.
Then I jolt out of my tiredness, because the third picture is different. First of all, it's been torn into pieces and carefully taped back together. Second, I've seen it before. It's a soft focus, head-and-shoulders glamour shot of a platinum blond, one dark eyebrow arched knowingly at the camera. At the bottom, on the right, perfect handwriting flows:
Best wishes always, Gloria Lorraine.

“Hey,” I say.

Al doesn't notice. He's busy stuffing whatever hot credit card he used back into a wallet. The guy behind the desk is handing over two keys on plastic tags. “One-twelve and one-fourteen there, Mr. Scrimger,” he rumbles over the din from the
TV
. “Halfway down the west side. You can park right in front. Enjoy your stay.”

Al scoops up the keys. “Sure we will. C'mon, Ed. Let's get Gramma settled.”

I follow him out. “Did you see that?” I ask him. “It was so weird.”

“See what? Was somethin' on the news?”

“No, on the wall!” We're at the car. “Guess what?” I say to GL as we get in. “You have fans here with the same name as your alias.”

“Not now, Spicer.” She's tilted onto the door's armrest. It looks as if her grand entrance has used up whatever energy she had left. Her left hand moves to turn off her hearing aid. I stop her. “No, listen, you'll like this. Remember how you had the cottage sign marked
Karpuski
for privacy? That must be the name of the people who run this place, because there's this award on the wall for a Mike Karpuski. And they have one of your old pictures up there too! How weird is that?”

Gloria Lorraine straightens up. Her eyes flare and water for a second as she stares through the damaged windshield. She takes a deep breath, reaches up, snaps down the sun visor and checks herself out in the mirror. Then she opens the car door. “Help me in,” she says.

TWENTY-FOUR

We all go. I hold the door while AmberLea helps GL totter inside. Al cradles Mister Bones. The
TV
is still blaring. When she gets through the door, GL shakes AmberLea off her arm and straightens up as best she can. Then, with just her cane, she almost sashays over to the desk.

“Can I help you?” The big guy with the big hair puts down some papers and takes off a pair of half-glasses.

GL doesn't answer for a long moment; she's checking out the wall display behind him. She stares at her taped-together photo, then steadies herself against the desk. She arches one eyebrow and does her best Gloria Lorraine: “I'm told there's a Mike… Karpuski here.”

“You're talking to him,” says the guy.

GL shakes her head. “You're too young.”

If he's young, I'm Santa Claus, I think, but the guy just chuckles and says, “Oh, you want Big Mike. That's my dad. I'm Little Mike. That's Big Mike over there.” He nods at the snoozer by the
TV
.

GL turns stiffly and looks at Big Mike. His jaw and his ball cap have both come adrift as he slumps on the couch. I notice his fly has wandered a little too, and under the
TV
noise he's snoring a little. GL's chin starts to tremble. Then she bunches her lips together in a thin red line and starts across the room, leaning on her cane. AmberLea trails her hesitantly. “Turn that…” GL waves at the
TV
, never taking her eyes off the old guy. AmberLea finds the button.

In the sudden silence, the guy at the desk says, “He had a stroke last year, ma'am. It can be hard talking to him. There's a lot he's not clear about.”

I can't tell if GL hears him or not. AmberLea helps her sit down beside Big Mike. Slowly, GL reaches out and touches the old man's arm. “Mikey,” she whispers. “Mikey.” Then she's talking in a foreign language; I don't know what it is. “Mikey,” she says again, gently shaking his arm, then more foreign language, then, “It's Wandi.”

The old man jerks a little and his eyes open. “Gone,” he says, or maybe it's “gun.” It's hard to tell. He looks blearily at GL.

She says, “I was gone, Mikey. Now I'm back.”

“Wandi?” croaks the old man. “You look bad. You been sick?”

She clutches his hand. “I'm old, Mikey. We're both old.”

He nods. “It's late, isn't it? You stay here. I'll get you something. Papa will be mad if he finds out, but he never finds out, does he? He was very mad, Wandi. But Mama will be happy. She cried and cried. She'll help in the morning and be happy.”

GL nods. “It's okay, Mikey. I can get it myself. You go back to sleep. I'll see you in the morning and we'll talk then.”

“Okay. I'm glad you're back, Wandi.”

“Me too.” She leans forward and gives him a kind of hug. His knobbly hand comes off his lap far enough to pat her back. Then she struggles to her feet, leaning hard on her cane and the sofa back. “Night night, Mikey,” she says. “Sleep tight.” She lifts a hand off the sofa back and pats his shoulder; then she lifts his cap and plants a kiss on his forehead. “See you in the morning.”

The old man's eyes close again. GL makes her way back to the desk. AmberLea moves in to help her. We're all staring. Little Mike is leaning forward, mouth open, both hands on the countertop. “Are—?” he starts to say, but GL cuts him off, stabbing with her cane at the damaged glossy on the wall.

“I'm Gloria Lorraine,” she says. “I'm also your Aunt Wanda, and this is your second cousin, AmberLea.”

TWENTY-FIVE

“Is that camera ready?” says GL. “It better be, because I've only got one take in me.”

She's propped up on a flowery couch. Her feet don't reach the ground, but that's okay; they won't be in the shot. We've moved a couple of lamps for extra light.

“My left side, don't forget. Get left profile and full face; no right side. Move the lamp more that way!”

I'm setting up the camera on its little collapsible tripod.

“Right beside you,” she says, “so I look at you, not the camera. More natural.”

We're all in the living room of Little Mike's house, up behind the parking lot. It feels empty. It turns out Mike has three kids, all grown and gone, and right now his wife is away visiting her own mom in a nursing home. Big Mike has been helped off to bed, and the night clerk is on at the motel. Little Mike has rustled up snacks for us and glasses of scotch for Al and GL. “This is wild,” he says, slowly shaking his head. “I think I knew Pop had a sister who went away a long time ago, but I'm not even sure how I knew. Whispers, I guess. The whole thing was out of bounds, especially around Grandpop and Baba.”

“I guess nobody mentioned the money I sent Mikey every month, as soon as I could afford it,” GL says drily.

“Well, I'll tell you,” says Little Mike, “money was tight when I was a kid, but somehow there was a nest egg waiting to send me to university. The day I left, Pop said, ‘Don't thank me, thank your aunt.' So I asked who my aunt was, and he laughed and said, ‘She's a movie star.' He had your picture on the wall with a few other celebrity types that had come to the old place for the hunting and fishing. I didn't take him seriously; I figured he was just being modest, sorta deflecting the praise from himself, you know? He's that kind of guy.”

“He was a sweet boy.” GL nods. “I'm glad the money helped.”

“I owe you one,” Little Mike says, raising his glass. “A late thanks.”

“Cheers.”

“Gramma,” AmberLea cuts in, from a chair beside Al. “You were born in Topeka, Kansas!” Her chin has had time to reappear, but she's scratching her ankle like mad. “And your family moved to—”

“I know, Washington State. Claptrap. Studio fairy tale.” GL waves her hand. “The PR department at Republic made that up to turn me into an all-American girl. Kansas was big that year. Thank
The Wizard of Oz.
They lied about my age too; made me four years younger.”

“But Mom—”

GL cuts her off. “Your mother doesn't know anything about this. Nobody does, because I've never told anyone before. I'm doing this for you, AmberLea, and for David McLean.”

Grandpa. I look up from plugging in the adaptor. “And for Spencer.” GL nods at me. “If it weren't for you, none of this would have happened. I have to tell you about David too, if you're going to understand.”