Road to Paradise (35 page)

“So let me understand,” said Candy. “You gave your candy man, your balloon JD, from whom you get regular antifreeze, my money to hold so it would be safe from you?”

“You got it, baby.”

“And then you keep going to him asking for dirt and he gives it to you, saying it’s on the house account?”

“I thought he was saying it was
on
the house.”

“See, different meaning there.”

“Last time, he gave me gaffel, he gave me fake stuff.”

“You don’t look like you’re on flea powder now.”

“I had to go get me some from somewhere else, didn’t I? His dust was no good!”

Candy and I exchanged looks. I hope I didn’t look as helpless as I felt. Candy, I thought, still wasn’t getting it. I stood shoulder to shoulder with her. Gina flanked me.

“What money did you use to get dust, Floyd?”

“Don’t you worry about that. Not yours.”

“So what’s with the 1000 bucks I found under your bed? Whose money is that?”

“Candy!” He became so agitated. “I can’t
believe
you looked under my bed.”

“You keep a messy house. You need to take better care of your things,” Candy scolded.

“You have no right to look through my things.”

“Ha. Yes, and you have no right to take my money. Twenty thousand dollars. That’s robbery, larceny, embezzlement, all in the first degree, you name it. Right, Gina?”

“Right.”

“You either get me my money or I’m calling the police.”

“That 1000 bucks is mine. I saved that from working.”

“Really? That’s convenient. And how come Lori doesn’t know about it? Would it upset your little girlfriend if she found out that you’ve been keeping that hunk of change under your bed?”

“You left it there, right? Because it’s my money.”

“I tell you what,” Candy said pleasantly, “you get me my twenty grand, I’ll give you back your 1000. Deal? Where’s JD?”

Floyd ordered Lori to stay put, and we left the Fireside Brewing Co. and walked down Main Street. Floyd went into every joint, as if on a mission, looking for his zoomer. The absurdity of what we were doing seemed lost on Candy, but not on me—searching for a drug dealer to ask for the return of money he was holding on behalf of a heroin user who was hitting him up daily for dope.

We found JD, an unsmiling Indian with hair down to his elbows, in the back room of a seedy small-time bar, counting out some change. Floyd introduced him as JD Soderquist, but the first thing JD said to Floyd was, “Get the fuck away from me, man. I’m sick to death of seeing your face. I don’t got nothing for you, understand? And who the hell is this with you?”

Floyd used his soothing tone, he patted JD on the arm, made cooing noises. He introduced us as his close friends, tried to explain the situation. Floyd talked to JD like a son who wants to appease
the father before hitting him up for the keys to the Alfa Romeo. It took Floyd ten stilted struggling minutes and JD another incongruous five to understand what it was that Floyd needed from him.

“What money, Floyd? What the hell are you talking about? The money you gave me two weeks ago?”

“No, no, not two weeks, a long time ago. Months maybe.”

“Two weeks ago. And you didn’t give me twenty grand, you gave me five. And let me just say that since that day, you’ve come to me twice a day, asking for scag. You say, a little hit, a little stash, but Floyd—twice a day! Who do you think pays for that?”

“I only wanted a little tiny bit,” Floyd said beseechingly.

“Twice every fucking day! What do you think I meant when I said this is on account?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” said Floyd, hurrying him along. “But that last batch, it was blank, baby. Blank, blank.”

“It was not blank,” said JD, twirling his mustache, completely in control and straight. “It was blue velvet. It was cut. And it was cut for two reasons. One, you’re out of fucking money. You ain’t got a house account no more, because the five grand you gave me, you blew on blow, you chased yourself out of Rapid City with your little balloon habit. And two, I was doing you a favor. I thought you were getting so far strung-out, soon we wouldn’t be able to bring you back. I was watching your back, Floydie-boy, and this is how you repay me? You bring me your pussy posse, more bag brides to pay for your fix? Where’s your regular skeezer, where’s Lori?”

“Bag brides?” mouthed Gina.

“Pussy posse?” mouthed I.

“You spent 5000 dollars of my money in the last two weeks?” said an aghast Candy.

JD looked us over. “I’ll give you a hundred and a dime bag for the three of them for an hour. But that’s it.”

Floyd said, “Now, JD, if we could be reasonable about this …”

But Candy had had enough. “I want my fucking money. My twenty grand, and I want it now.”

Next thing you know, we were all out on the street, shoved none too gently by two of his bouncers. The door to the bar slammed. There was no re-entry. We didn’t move from the sidewalk.

“I don’t think he’s right,” explained Floyd. “I think he’s hanging on to my money. Our money. Your money. Honest, I didn’t … I just got a bit a day, to tide me over, I didn’t … honest, Candy, you have to believe me.”

“Did you give him all of my money?” Candy said in a low voice, struggling to control herself.

“Really, I think I gave him much more than five. I’m almost sure. I thought I gave him everything. For safekeeping.”

“You gave my money to your dealer for safekeeping,” she said flatly. “Where’s your share of my money?”

“Long gone, baby,” croaked Floyd. “Long, long gone.”

We walked beside him down the dark street. There was no one out, but the lights were on in the two or three bars still open. He swayed while walking. I wondered about Lori; JD called her a bag bride, so did Candy. What did that mean? I tried not to glean meaning from its use in the sentence JD used, but to do that, I had to not think of the sentence, and that sentence kept parading in my head like Macy’s giant balloons on Thanksgiving.
A hundred
bucks for the three of them for an hour
. I held on to Gina’s arm. She held on to mine. Candy walked unsupported, as if she had to stand a little stiffer now that her meager dreams had turned to ashes. Music piped from the bars, and the jukebox, even in this remotest of remote corners, as if having only one universal song, was playing “I Will Survive,”
I will survive
.

“Floyd, I thought you were my friend,” was what Candy managed to say when we reached the Fireside Brewing Co. where Lori was waiting.

“I was. I am.” He stumbled, he stammered. “I’m sorry, Cand, I wouldn’t have gotten so hooked without your money, but the money was there, and the dope was there, and I really thought JD was gonna keep it safe for me. He gave me bad stuff that last time. He shouldn’t have taken anything for it.”

“I think by the time he gave you gunk instead of junk, you had nothing left to pay with, Floyd,” said Candy, without looking at his pale, slightly remorseful face.

“I’m sorry.”

“This sorry of yours, is it going to buy me two tickets to Australia?”

“You don’t want to go to Australia, baby,” said Floyd. “Alligators there.”

“It’s crocodiles, you moron. I thought you were like me, Floyd. I thought you and I understood the same things.” She was crying.

“We did.” He bowed his head. “Harry Jones was stronger. It’s my Judas.”

She slapped him hard across his pink face. He was crying, too. Then she walked away. We hurried past, not looking at him. “Was nice to meet you, girls!” he called after us. He called after her, holding his face, “Candykins, honey, sugah, you left my money alone, right, baby? You left it for me in the box?”

“Yes, right next to my two tickets to fucking Broken Hill,” she called back without turning around.

We were alone in the street after he shuffled inside. I was afraid Candy was going to break down completely, and I didn’t know how to deal with her despair. I’m not very good with extreme emotion. I don’t know what to do when I see it, when I feel it. It frightens me. Tomorrow was Sunday. What were we going to do? What was she going to do?

The Alex Johnson historic hotel was around the corner from Fireside, and we trudged our way up six flights of stairs, because the elevator was being serviced at two in the morning.

“Cand, Floyd’s girlfriend, what does she do?” Gina asked.

“What do you mean? She’s obviously an addict herself,” she replied.

“
Does
she sell her body for dope?”

Candy shrugged. “We all have to feed the monster,” she said. “So I guess that’s what she does.”

Gina realized she was talking to the wrong person if she wanted
to elicit shocked condemnation in response to a young man pimping his girlfriend in return for some poison. She turned to me, but I was beyond shock at this point. Candy looked so forlorn, sitting on the bed, shuffling through her bag for comfort, an explanation, a solution. She was counting the money she had won at the Isle of Capri casino, the money she got from under Floyd’s bed. I went to sit next to her. Putting my arm around her, I said, “Don’t worry, Cand, it’ll work out. Honest, it will. How much is the chick in Reno holding for you?”

“Floyd was my best friend,” she said. “He and I were soul buds. If he didn’t keep himself, how could Jessica? She’s like me. She went out to Reno to make a little more money. I gave her a thousand to take with her.” She continued to count. “I got twelve hundred bucks,” she said, putting the greenbacks on the bedspread. “Enough for nothing.”

“It’s better than nothing,” I said. “It’s probably more than I got.”

“Yes, but you didn’t bring enough for a two-week trip! This money is for my whole life.”

There was nothing I could say, my own petty thoughts notwithstanding.
Not enough for a two-week trip? But I counted so carefully
! Gina sat on the other bed, looking at us, fretting. She kept giving me looks. I didn’t know what she wanted, so I ignored her.

“I trusted Floyd,” said Candy. “You don’t know. That guy you met, that’s not Floyd. Floyd was the nicest, sweetest boy. He prayed, he promised he would help me. His mother told me he was an angel. He cleaned up, made dinner, washed her floors. One Christmas, he asked for a hand-held vac. That was Floyd. He was a good friend. I never doubted him. I thought my money was safer with him than at a bank.” She started to cry again. I didn’t know what to do with my insufficient arm.

Gina came over and sat on the other side of Candy, patting her, comforting her. “It’s okay,” Gina said. “Really. You have 1200 dollars. That’s a lot.” She smiled. “And maybe when we get to Reno, we can gamble a little, win some more. One good win, and you’ll be back in business.”

“We’re talking 20,000 bucks, Gina,” Candy said, swiping the tissue I was handing her. “We’re not talking about quarters in your poker machines. Do you know how many frogs I had to kiss to get that money? How many dances, how many laps, how many movies I had to make to earn that money? You’ll never understand.” No amount of tissues were going to be enough.

“I can’t imagine.”

I couldn’t imagine.

After a while she calmed down. “Oh, well,” she said, blowing her nose, getting up, fetching a drink. “Oh, well. Easy come”—she smiled— “easy go. The things you come by without grace, you lose without grace.” She said it, but you could tell, she couldn’t make peace with it.

Later that night lying in bed, not sleeping despite body-bending exhaustion, she said, her voice breaking, “I saved it for her, my baby. I saved that money, denied myself everything, didn’t put myself through typing school, didn’t stop working so the baby could have it. I gave it to Floyd, and now look. Had I kept it, Erv would’ve taken it. Or my mother would’ve spent it. Mike’s mother confiscated it. I couldn’t give it to my father. Made me feel too guilty. What was I supposed to do?”

There was nothing to do. We closed our eyes. “What do you say at the end of a day like today?” I whispered to Candy on the clean linens. “A day that’s long like a life.”

She turned her body to me, crawled close, put her head in the crook of my arm. I held her lightly, her legs next to my legs, her stomach next to my ribs.

“You say,
O
Lord Jesus Christ, please show me the path of my life.
I am poured out like water, my heart is like wax. It is melted into the
heat of my bowels. Be not far from me, hasten to help me, deliver my
soul from the sword, and bless Tara and save Tara and give her eternal
life.
”

I spooned her, drew her near.

“
I am guilty of an abundance of sins
,” Candy continued to whisper, “
but I would wash Your feet with the abundance of my tears and wipe
them with my hair. I don’t want to be deprived of absolution for the
many wrongs of my life. I reflect on the magnitude of my shame, but,
though in terror, I foolishly remain in my sins. I live in the night of
carnal desires, shrouded in the dark moonless love of night. Do not
despise Your servant in Your boundless mercy. My sin is ever before
me. The harlot from the depth of her soul cries out, do not cast me
away or destroy me, O my God, but receive me in my repentance,
and save me
.” Candy sighed painfully. “That, Shelby Sloane,” she said, “is the Hymn of Cassiani.”

Sunday morning came too soon. Candy, early to rise, was up and dressed before I stirred. She said she was going to church; would we like to come? We were in bed! We said no, though I may have said yes, had it not been so early. “This is what I’m going to do,” Candy said to Gina and me. “I’m going to walk the three blocks to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, and attend the ten o’clock service.”

“Why?”

“I like church,” Candy replied in a chipper voice. “And apparently they celebrate the liturgical Latin Mass. So. That’s what
I’m
going to do. Things change, and I have to make other plans. I have to figure things out. Doesn’t seem ideal, I know, but I’ve got to play it as it lays. You two pack your things, and go downstairs, get some brunch. It ends at noon, so I suggest you hurry. I’ll take the one bag I’ve got with me. When you’re having your hash browns, talk it over and decide what you want to do. About me. I won’t be back until 12:15. If you want to go, walk to the alley, get in your car, and drive away. Shelby, don’t forget to study that map, because Wyoming is a big state and has mountains everywhere. You want to be careful to avoid them, but going around them is going to triple your distance. Talk about it, decide, and then don’t think twice about me. Absolutely go. But if at 12:15
I come back, and you’re still here, I’ll know that you have chosen to stay with me. There won’t be anymore of this, woe is me, if only we’d not picked her up, kept on driving, blah, blah that you’re both so prone to, especially you, Gina, but then you make Shelby feel guilty, too. So decide. Walk across the street, get in your car, drive, or wait for me to come back from church and we’ll go together. It’s as simple as that. You have over two hours to mull while you’re having stale coffee.”

With that, she walked out, and the door swung shut behind her.

She was wearing my floral skirt and Gina’s collared white blouse, which I guess she wasn’t giving back if we were leaving without her.

We tried to cook up a plan, for her, for us, to help her, to help us. Suddenly she was our problem, our thing to solve, like Professor Plum in the study with a candlestick. We sprung to dialogue slowly, almost reluctantly.

“She can’t go to Australia.” That was me.

“Duh. That much is obvious. But she’s got to go somewhere.” That was Gina.

“It’s unbelievable about Floyd. What a loser.”

“Yes. But she’s got to move on. He spent her money, and that’s that. He doesn’t have it to give her. She’s lucky she managed to get a few bucks of it back.”

“I can’t believe she was so trusting,” I said, a little more animated. “I would have never given my money to anyone.”

“But that’s you. You also wouldn’t do a number of the things she does.”

That was true. “But now what’s she going to do?”

We beat around that question, tried to figure it out. What would we do, if we were in her shoes?

“I’d never have had the baby,” said Gina. “I’d never give my body away for money, I’d never star in a porn film, I’d never hitchhike, or steal the film hoping to bribe the man who made it.”

“She’s not bribing him. She’s insuring herself. Stay away from me, she says, because if you touch me, you’ll go down.”

“I’d never get mixed up with a man like Erv,” said Gina. “I wouldn’t go to Australia. Australia! What is she thinking? So the answer to your question of what I would do—
that
. I’d never be in this position in the first place.”

I said nothing. Easy for Gina to say. Nice loony mother, nice busy father, a sister, a grandma, dogs, cats, suburban house, pleasant Christmas. Aunts. One less than before, but still. Family things. What would
I
do? I must admit, I couldn’t see myself to this point either—because along the way I would’ve made different choices that would not have brought me here. I wouldn’t have given myself to men for money either, but if I had, I would not have sent my money to Floyd, no matter how dependable Floyd seemed to be. But then, if I didn’t work at a job like Candy’s, I never would have made 20,000 dollars at seventeen. I would have made 600 bucks working at McDonald’s, and it would have gone on sandals, shorts and maybe gas for the car. Australia would be out of the question, but then so would many things. Hitchhiking. Having a baby at twelve. Mike dying would not be an issue; he would die, and I would feel sad 3000 miles away and go work my afternoon shift serving burgers to a lunch crowd, making thirteen dollars after taxes. So, like Gina, I also couldn’t figure out what I would do based on what I would do, and thus we sat on the bed, counting out the minutes. We were on the sixth floor and outside the small window we saw the tops of other buildings, down below a movie theater and an empty street, with our little yellow roller skate parked in an alley somewhere yonder back, out of sight. I was hungry, thirsty.

We jumped up, got ready, flew out. It was eleven. We rushed downstairs with all our luggage, because the alley where I parked was two blocks away. We got a table, nesting our suitcases with us. The restaurant was dark, down three steps, almost in the basement, while outside was light and sunny. I wanted to be outside, to go for a walk. To go swimming.

The food was sub-par, but on the plus side it was almost warm. The minestrone soup was too salty, the coffee weak, the corned
beef hash greasy. The sweet potatoes were pretty good, had marshmallows. I ate three helpings. It was 11:35.

“She gave us an out. It’s our ticket out,” Gina implored me. “We can’t help her, Sloane. I know you want to. I do, too. She’s really grown on me. But we can’t. I’m telling you, we can’t. We did all we could. Look how far we got her. From Maryland all the way to South Dakota.”

“We can’t really lay claim to Maryland.”

“She told us it would be all right. We should run while we still can. No guilt, no worries. That’s why she goes to church, so she can forgive people like us.”

“That’s not why she goes to church,” I said. “And forgive us for what? I thought we did all we could.”

“You obviously don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so because we haven’t. You want to go after what happened to her yesterday? After all you now know about her? After what she’s been through?”

“How are you going to help her, Sloane? How are you going to get that monkey off her back? What are you going to do? You have money? You don’t have enough to take this trip without me. You can’t lend her a few bucks until she gets back on her feet in Sydney and wires you some kangaroos instead of repayment.”

Gina was right.

What if Mike’s parents wouldn’t give her the baby? What was her plan then?

God, what if they did? What was her plan
then
?

We sat heavy-hearted at the table and outside across the street, Audrey’s Wedding Fashions was opening up for a few hours on a Sunday, and a young girl with her mother stood expectantly outside its doors. The girl was holding her mother’s hand.

It was 11:55.

“Come on. Please,” said Gina. “Please.” She squeezed my hand. “I came with you,” she continued, “because I wanted us to be friends again. I didn’t know how we were going to do it. But we were once so close. I wanted that again.”

“Is that why you brought Molly?” I smiled lightly. “And wanted to move in with Aunt Flo? And didn’t want to go on the road alone with me?”

She shrugged sheepishly. “I admit I was a tiny bit conflicted. But you fixed that whole alone thing, didn’t you?” Her eyes were not accusing, her familiar face, minus eyebrows, minus most eyelashes, was staring at me beseechingly. A few years ago we had gone down to the Jersey shore with our friend John Turner and his parents. We spent all day, all week jumping the waves together. Then she and John would bury me in the sand. It was one of the greatest weeks of my life, the week coming with full acknowledgment of feeling happy to be alive, to be carefree. And then Gina went and ruined it with awful Agnes. Still. I achingly longed for that feeling again, of riding the waves in the sun without a care in the world.

And then I thought of Candy. What if she never in her life had had a day like that, frolicking with friends? She probably never had. My warm flush of flashback cooled as if vaporized.

Reluctantly—looking away from the wedding shop, where I was trying to catch another glimpse of mother and daughter through two sets of reflecting windows—I opened the atlas. “I know you’re right,” I said. “But I just can’t go.”

“Sure you can,” she said hurriedly. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Gina,” I said calmly. “Figure what out? We’ll get in the car, I’ll put it into first—and then what? Left or right? Or straight? Which way?”

“We’ll figure it out!”

“Which way out of the alley, Gina—left or right?”

“I don’t know!”

“Precisely,” I said calmly. “Which is why we have to look at the atlas.”

Noon.

12:05.

I couldn’t find adequate roads to lead us from South Dakota to Utah through Wyoming. I saw only I-90 up north, which we couldn’t take, and I-80 down south, which we also couldn’t take.
From the looks of the atlas, it seemed as if Wyoming had no other roads.

We paid and walked outside, dragging our suitcases behind us. Sixth Street was empty and sunny. Gina’s shoulders were slumped. Mine too.

12:09.

We walked to the intersection, slowness guaranteed by our suitcases and the duffel bag on my shoulder. And by other things. At the corner of a deserted Main and Sixth at high noon on a Sunday, Gina said to me, “You’re stalling.”

“I’m not.”

“You are! You are stalling. You don’t want to leave without her.”

“I’m not stalling,” I repeated. “But, no, I don’t want to leave without her.” I took a breath. “Gina, you should know me better by now. I’m not going to leave without her.”

Gina took a step away. “It goes against all reason. It’s illogical, it makes no sense.” Her gaze clouded. The light turned red, green, red. 12:12.

I stared at the pavement, my head hanging, my eyes cast low. I didn’t want to spend a minute more either in this town or talking to Gina about Candy. “We can’t leave her, Gina,” I said. “We just can’t and that’s all there is to it.”

Candy was right. Things had changed. You never noticed as they were changing. Like the transformation of America, from east to west. The transformation was always in the past. Somewhere in Nebraska. By the time you got to South Dakota, you looked and things were different. Gina and I, childhood friends—with nearly forgiven though unforgotten Eddie between us like a fish-bone in the delicate lining of the throat—looked for the girl we picked up on the side of the road, like a bag of trash we were going to discard later when we could find a receptacle, the girl who sat on the hood of my car in Interior, a deserted western town, and told us how she was going to find a place to raise a child she gave birth to, like I hoped my mother had gone to
Mendocino to find a place to raise me. And maybe my own mother, too, sat on the hood of someone’s car and told them how she was going to come and get me, and she and I would find a place to live together.

No, not like that, I thought, closing my eyes, squeezing them tight so Gina wouldn’t see. More like my Emma found a place and raised me. She didn’t want to; who’d
want
to be saddled with a baby, with someone else’s baby? And she was once young, she told me she used to sing, and wanted to go to dance school. But then instead she found work cleaning other people’s houses. And after my father left, there was no more talk of dance or singing. Instead, she bought me a bed, and a little lamp with horses on it, because she knew I liked horses, and every night made me dinner, and washed my pillowcase with pink flowers on it. When I needed sneakers, she bought me sneakers. When I needed to go, she bought me a car.

I didn’t know: did my mother leave and hope to come back, like Candy, and just couldn’t; or did she leave and know she was never coming back? Did her postcard words mean,
I will see you
soon, Shelby, or Say hi to Shelby because I’m not going to see her
anytime soon
.

I couldn’t take it. I told Gina to go back to the hotel lobby and wait for me, that I would be right back. Rushing across the street to the corner, I stopped at a phone booth and dialed Emma’s number collect. It was Sunday afternoon, but the street was empty. There was no one strolling, window shopping, pushing babies along the way. Only my soul was outside. Gina had gone back to the hotel, dragging her suitcase. With my own suitcase at my feet, I pressed my head against the dirty glass.

“Emma,” I said, when she accepted the charges, “it’s me.”

“I know who it is, Shelby. What’s wrong?” She sounded concerned. “Where are you?”

“I’m out on the street,” I said. “How are you?”

“How am
I
? I’m fine. How else should I be? What street? How are
you
?”

“Oh, fine, fine. We’re in Rapid City.”

“South Dakota,” Emma said. “You’re so far. You sound far away. Are you having fun?”

Forehead pressed hard against the filth of the phone booth, keeping my voice like glass too, I said, “Oh, sure. I’m having a
great
time. Thank you for my car.”

“What’s wrong?” she said. “Are you in trouble or something?”

“No, no.”

“You need money?”

I hesitated. “No, no.”

“How much do you need?”

Twenty thousand dollars? “I’m okay. Really.” I couldn’t say anything, and she didn’t say anything. “How do you know where Rapid City is?” I asked instead.

She laughed lightly into the phone. “You think you’re the only one who was ever young, child?” she said. “Once upon a time, I too traveled across the country.”

“You did?” Why was that so shocking? “By
yourself
?”

She laughed. “No. I went with my boyfriend. We were three months on the road.”

“Three months! And then?”

“Then, I don’t know. We must have broken up. I came back home, got a job.”

“I can’t believe it. Where did you go?” I wanted to keep her on the phone.

“Where didn’t we go,” she said. “Alaska. Hawaii.”

“So funny,” I said. “And there I was thinking you’ve ever only been to Maine. With me.”