Road to Paradise (21 page)

They strolled in around eight, as refreshed and alive as if they’d had a full night’s sleep. They were joking, talking about their winnings, bumping into each other; they jumped on the bed, sat cross-legged and counted out their money. Gina did respectably—she got seventy-five dollars for her full night of trouble. But Candy laid out three hundred dollars.

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks toward painting your car,” she offered.

“I simply don’t understand how this is possible,” I said.

Candy threw back her head and laughed. “I’m so hungry. Let’s go have breakfast.”

“Candycane, I’m famished too,” said Gina, “but when are we going to sleep?”

“We’ll eat, then crash. We’ll stay another night. It’s on me, girls.”

“We’re staying here
another
night?”

“Why not? Don’t you have to check out Earl something or other? Look, you,” Candy said when she saw my sour face. “Yesterday, you went sixty-nine miles in six hours, dragging your ass through Missouri dirt roads. When we go again, you’re going to have to drive properly. Or you’ll make us all insane.”

Gina agreed, head nodding, arms flailing. She seemed to have
forgotten that we were all set to leave Candy here in Bettendorf.

Downstairs at the breakfast buffet, the corn beef hash tasted suspiciously like yesterday’s pot roast. “Aren’t you tired?” I asked. They didn’t even answer, they were too busy chatting about poker strategies, blackjack theories, patterns of winning. They were talking about the luck of the draw the way I talked about budgeting time and money for a two-week trip. Candy had even introduced Gina to the roulette table. “She’s so reckless,” Gina kept saying, but in the tone of someone who was saying,
she’s a genius
. “She’s trouble.”
She is amazing
. “She makes me take ungodly risks.”
She is my hero
.

“Not ungodly,” said Candy.

“Does God approve of gambling?” I asked sourly. Jeez, I was turning into the mother I never had. Just great. Dandy. Emma was never like this.

“No,” Candy said happily. “Certainly not. The Five Flower Aztec god approves. But you know what our Lord approves of, fully and completely? Joy! And Gina, we had us some joy last night, didn’t we?”

“We sure did, applecakes,” said Gina. “We sure did.”

They ate, drank coffee, and then, with the caffeine still hot in their veins, crashed upstairs on the same bed, clothes off, just in their bras and panties, covers off, while I clucked around, walked gingerly like a chicken, ten o’clock, eleven, planned, wrote things down, fretted, then lay down and fell asleep myself.

When I woke up, it was three or four in the afternoon, and the girls were still asleep, their bodies barely having shifted. It was quiet in the room, only the occasional footsteps in the corridor told me we were not alone. I took off my makeup, had a shower, put my makeup back on. I made much noise, which did not bestir them, so finally left for the lobby to find a Yellow Pages and call Earl Scheib about the Mustang.

The news from Earl wasn’t good. The shop couldn’t do it; the
unfriendly voice on the phone told me I had to contact a Ford-authorized Mustang paint shop, of which Scheib wasn’t one. “Can you recommend somebody?” I asked.

“What am I, the Yellow Pages?” the guy growled. “Try Peter’s Paint and Body in Moline.”

Peter’s in Moline also didn’t do it, but Friendly Auto Painting (which was not Friendly) in Davenport, did. Shelbys were made in only seven colors in 1966. I wanted black with white stripes? They would have to order the two sets of paint from Ford in Detroit, it would take three to four weeks to arrive, they’d need the car for three days minimum, and it would cost $1500.

I nearly passed out.

Paint was expensive, Ford surcharges exorbitant, car needed a primer, two coats and a lacquer, the stripes were difficult, work labor-intensive. “You want it or not?” Friendly snapped.

“Not,” I snapped back, but when I hung up, I was sad. Fifteen hundred dollars! Were they kidding me?

I called Earl Scheib again. “I won’t do it,” the guy said. “Not even for two thousand. I’ll paint any car for two hundred bucks—except that one. My guys won’t deface a Shelby Mustang with a generic paint job. It’s pure vandalism. We can’t guarantee it, I can’t use my primer on it, the car will have to be stripped of its original color first. You want me to give you the labor charges on that? The car will be worth nothing after I’m done. Is that what you want? Why do you even bother having a Mustang if that’s how you’re going to treat it? Just get yourself a Maverick and be done with it.” He hung up before I could think of a witty reply.

I trudged upstairs where the girls were stirring. When I told them of the paint charges and the wait times, they both snorted and sneered. “I told you,” said Gina. They filed into the shower, and by the time they were dried and made up, it was dinner time again. I couldn’t believe a whole day had gone by like this, a morning and an afternoon, of nothing, just sleeping in an unfamiliar room after pulling a metal lever the whole night and yelling into the phone at rude men.

“You don’t find us despicable?” I asked them as they were putting on their shoes.

“I find us kind of cute.” Gina smiled. “Come on, Sloane. Think about how depressed we were in that car. This is better, no?”

We
were
depressed in that car. So what’s changed?

“Should we just stay here?” I asked. “Maybe I can call for my mother to come and meet me in a casino in Iowa.”

“So you know where your mother is, then?” asked Candy. I said shut up, and Gina laughed.

“Sloane, it’s very clear to me and Candy that we can’t come with you,” she said, twinkling. “You’re too dangerous. Why don’t you just head out by yourself. We’ll take a train.”

“You’re joking, right?”

Gina tickled my ribs. “Scared you for a minute, didn’t I? Come on, let’s go. I’m starved.”

We went to the buffet again. Candy, feeling generous, paid for us all, even bought us a beer, though Gina told her not to do that, since the drinks were free at the casino, and I said, “So what? We’re not going back to the casino, are we?”

“Sloane,” Gina said, “we’ve been sleeping all day. What the hell are we going to do? Lie in bed and stare at the ceiling? We’re not leaving till tomorrow morning. We’ll go play for a little while.”

“Famous last words.” I was sounding more and more like fifty-year-old Emma.

Famous last words indeed. We went, and my true colors showed again, but one thing was different tonight. Candy showed me how to bet on roulette. I played five times, and on the fifth, my silly number nineteen came in, and I won 210 dollars on my five bucks. I got so excited that even I forgot about time for a while under the fluorescents. The older couples were still there, and the shuffling old men, and the sullen bikers, but there were some college students, too, and we hooked up with them during the latter portion of the night; Candy disappeared somewhere, Gina was still on the slot machines, and I was being wooed by a cut young man with glazed eyes. “Are you drunk?” I asked him.

“You bet, baby,” he said, and laughed. “But even if I wuzn’t, you’d still look pretty to me.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” I said, pushing him off my shoulder, but gently, because he looked like he might topple over any minute, and also because he was so adorable, with his stubbly face, slick short hair and gleaming eyes. “But riddle me this,” I asked, remembering what Candy had said the night before. “Are you broke?”

“I’m a sophomore at Iowa State. All college students are broke. Aren’t you broke?”

I wasn’t a student this summer and actually, I was a hundred bucks flush. I said nothing. Deciding I didn’t mind his drunkenness and brokenness, I went outside with him and we made out under the poplars for a while. It was late, yet still warm and humid, the crickets were out, like we were out, and he was insistent and drunk, but we were in such a public place, on a bench just off from the valet parking, the cars still coming and going. He smelled good, he was sweet. I didn’t know what to do with him. He asked if I had a room here. I said both my friends were there sleeping, and asked if he had a room. He said, no, he still lived at home, but he had his “carrrrrr.”

“You’re going to drive in your condition?”

“Who said I’m going to drive, baby?” he drawled, grinning widely.

I had nothing better to do. So I went to his car. It was his parents’ car, I could tell, because it was cavernous, like a Caddy or a Pontiac. The backseat was as big as my bed upstairs. We fumbled and sweated up all the windows, breathed hot and heavy, and got partially disrobed, me almost entirely disrobed, but unfortunately Shakespeare was right about my friend. Though the
will
was certainly there.

In the end, after fumbling and failing, he fell asleep on me. I sat with him for a while, too long a while, I think, and then shook him awake. He barely stirred, just enough to let me move away. I got dressed. “Bye, Todd,” I said, and he mumbled, “I’m not Todd, I’m Jason.”

“I know,” I said. “Just checking if you’re paying attention. Careful going home.”

But he was unconscious, slumped over the backseat. I left him there, and locked him in, in case someone decided to steal him. In the three hours we’d been together, he did not ask for my name.

Upstairs, Candy and Gina were on the bed counting their money. “Good morning,” said Gina.

“Shut up.”

“That boy, I know he was drunk,” said Candy, not looking up from her stash, “but tell me, was he broke, too?”

“Shut up.”

Candy and Gina shook their heads and laughed. “It’s okay,” said Candy. “You’ll learn.”

“Learn what?” I took off my shoes, dropped the contents of my purse on the bed.

“That it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich boy as it is with a poor boy.”

“Who said anything about love?” I said, pulling out my chips and cursing. In the midst of my little rendezvous I forgot to cash in.

“I’m just saying,” said Candy. “There. Another 170 dollars. We’re flush, girls.”

“I can’t believe the money you made,” said Gina. “I don’t know how you do it. I thought I did okay, and I made eighty.”

“You did great. Eighty is great. What about you, Shel?”

“I have eighteen five-dollar chips,” I said, letting them fall on the bed from my hands.

Candy nodded. “Ninety bucks. Not bad.”

“Ah, so you can count some things, Candycane?”

She smiled at me. “Some things, yes. And don’t worry. You must be lucky in love.”

“Not very lucky,” I said, thinking of my one failed love affair, the only one I ever had, the various Todds and Jasons and Tony Bergaminos notwithstanding. “But you must be
un
lucky.”

“So unlucky,” agreed Candy. “But lucky in other ways.” She threw her money up into the air, and it floated down, landing on the bed with her.

“We’re checking out tomorrow,” I said. “No matter what time it is, we’re going.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” said Gina. “What’s the rush?”

“Let me put it another way.
I’m
checking out tomorrow. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

They groaned and teased but ignoring them, I got out my maps and planned my course from the Quad Cities, down I-80, across the entire state of Iowa, to Omaha, Nebraska, right on the border. I calculated the distance to be about 300 miles. Even with getting out late, and stopping six times to pee and get a drink, we could do 300 miles in one day, couldn’t we? Then the next day we’d be in Wyoming, the next in Utah, the next in Nevada, and then California. Just a few days, and this would all be over.

My reverie was ended by Candy pulling the map from the bed and throwing it on the floor. Grabbing my spiral notebook from me, she dodged and weaved around the room, squealing, “Let me read, let me read, come on, I want to know how far you went with that drunk boy.” She raised her voice to mimic me. “Dear Diary, I think I’m in loooove. His name is Sal, and he’s sooo cute, dear Diary, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight, thinking of him as I do, oooooh.”

“Candy, give it here!”

Raising her arm away from me, she opened my notebook. She was quiet a moment as her eyes scanned the page. “What is this?”

Gina was rolling on the bed, laughing. “This is her diary, Candy,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “Dear Diary, today, I want to do some planning. Here are my charts, schedules, flows, summaries, and miles for the next forty years of my life. I think I finally figured out a way to plan, monitor, and control—everything. I hope you’re pleased with me. Tomorrow we will be on our way. We will sleep exactly seven hours and forty-two minutes, and then after fifty-one minutes of getting ready and packing, we will go eat breakfast for thirty-seven minutes. After that we will take Road 10 five miles and Road 5 ten miles. Then we’ll switch for exactly thirty minutes.”

Candy was holding her stomach. “Stop, Gina, stop. I can’t take any more.”

Snatching my journal from her, I closed it up and put the pen away. “Are you two happy now? You’re enjoying yourselves?”

“Shelby, why are you so funny?” asked Candy. “Aside from the subject matter of your so-called journal…”