The Three Sisters (6 page)

The three sisters became a reality a year later when Regina joined us. She had grown up outside of San Francisco in a suburb that was a hotbed of contentment. She was well-provided for and never had to worry about her parents making ends meet. That certainly wasn’t the way I had grown up. Her corporate dad had money to burn, and her mother did a good job of spending it.

Regina was one of these people who kept on top of every fad in TV, music, the movies, and other popular arts. In addition to this, her parents instilled in her a nostalgic love of the ever-halcyon past. Whether it was screwball comedies, Big Band music, Gershwin or Coward musicals, or episodes of
You Bet Your Life
, she enjoyed
them all.

We all had different artistic tastes, and they complemented each other quite well. Theodora loved the classics while I loved the avant-garde. I loved the esoteric while Regina loved the exoteric. For a performance at the Kennedy Center, I would choose the
Ballet Mécanique
, Theodora would choose
Swan Lake
, and Regina
The Red Shoes
. We all learned from each other.

Regina was happily adjusted all through her twelve years of public school (I always wondered if the fact that she never attended Catholic School caused this), but Berkeley changed things. Her parents forgot to insulate her against reality, so when her liberal professors convinced her that all was not right with the world, Regina took it upon herself to make a single-handed attempt to right the wrongs which existed and to convince others that the world and America were not as bad as the critics claimed. Why she chose to become a Maryknoll nun instead of joining the Peace Corps or the Red Cross I’ll never know, but
she did.

She rarely talks about her experiences in Central America because of what happened there. Whenever you do bring it up, she changes from the sprightly, carefree Regina everyone knows and loves into some pensive questioner of life. Until her stay in Central America everything had gone well for her, but down there she came face to face with people who didn’t care about other people’s rights. She found that seeing people die in real life was quite different from watching it in a movie theater or on TV. After Regina had been working in Central America for about a year, some gunmen kidnapped and killed her best friend. That was too much for Regina, and she gave up the sisterhood fearing more for her life than for
her soul.

A month later Regina was back in the States, specifically in Los Angeles, where she unsuccessfully tried to break into the movies and TV. She wanted no part of the world she had left back in Central America and did all she could to separate herself from the past. Despite this, at the request of some nuns she had known down there, Regina went to Washington to testify before Congress about human rights in the country she had worked in. While in Washington, D.C., she visited the Kennedy Center, and Victor, who was as interested in her concinnous proportions as in her talents, hired her without a
moment’s hesitation.

It was Regina’s responsibility to keep track of the latest fads and fashions in popular culture and turn nostalgia into presentations for our customers. A lot of the people who visit the Kennedy Center are middle-aged or older, so all she knew about American culture of the thirties, forties and fifties was put to good use. Regina was supposed to stay with Thea and me temporarily, but wherever she went the men followed. The three of us got along amazingly well, so as a result of an amazing confluence of events, the three sisters
were born.

Our artistic activities provided us with the financial means to enjoy life, and with members of the nation’s elite visiting us daily, we got the chance to meet and talk with more interesting and powerful people than we could ever have met at any other job. In fact, we probably knew more about the government and its parasites than most political scientists in the nation. We doubtless could have written a textbook on the government if we had had a mind to, but an academic career interested us not in
the least.

So there we were, happily pursuing philosophic and philophallic pleasures that would have enticed the most discriminating degenerates. Business boomed and Victor decided to expand. He built a new Kennedy Center in New York the next year and in the spring of
1979
, he sent Regina, Thea, and me out to the West Coast to help open up a new Kennedy Center in California. All seemed to be best in the best of all possible worlds, and Theodora started complaining that it was all too good to last. Unfortunately, it was, and on May
1
,
1979
we were arrested in Tennessee by a jealous sheriff. But if I was to have my way, we would not stay in jail
for long.

CHAPTER II

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different
person then!”

“Explain all that,” said the
Mock Turtle.

“No, no! The adventures first,” said the gryphon in an impatient tone: “explanations take such a
dreadful time.”

– Lewis Carroll,
Alice
in Wonderland

t
is finished.”

Meanwhile, one thousand nine hundred and fifty
years later.

“Jesus H. Christ, what the hell is that?” screamed Coito Gott. Wearing a police uniform which the erstwhile nun had just copped from the courthouse, Coito was standing in Lewisville’s city square staring at Tony Olisbos, who had inexplicably switched cars on her. Tony had been employed by Victor to drive the three sage sisters from California back to Washington, D.C., and although he had acted as their chauffeur all the way, he had failed to keep them out
of trouble.

“It’s a hearse,” replied an intimidated Tony, cautiously replying to Coito since he feared that she was ready
to explode.

“You really take the cake, Tony. Who in God’s heaven ever heard of anyone escaping from jail in broad daylight in a hearse?” Coito’s obstinate red hair stood firm against the breeze which rustled the trees above her in the city square. She surveyed the area to study the inhabitants’ behavior and determine how much attention she, Tony and the hearse
had drawn.

Among those falling victim to her eyes were the Warring brothers, sitting several dozen yards away. They were in the habit of occupying the bench on the northeast corner of the city square on their days off from the town’s Easter grass plant where they were employed. The Warrings had seen the hearse pull up five minutes before, reminding them of several friends who had recently passed away. Both had started to recall “the good old days,” as was their custom, when coitophilic K began commanding the scene in front of the hearse, first screaming at Tony, then pushing him against the car. The two brothers began to wonder what was going on, and though the Warring brothers followed the altercation that developed between Coito and Tony, they were more interested in Coito’s undersized uniform, which clung ever-so-tightly to her body, than what the two were saying to
each another.

“I swear, Tony, if I thought I could strangle you and get away with it, I’d do it. So just where’d the hearse come from? And what happened to our
other car?”

“Well, I knew the other car hadn’t been working so well ever since I took that shortcut in Texas and the car broke down and…” Tony stuttered while shuffling his feet, “…and with you three in jail I, I thought they’d be trying to find the car we had before, so I was at a
7
-Eleven and there was this big car there with the engine running and everything, so without even realizing it, I switched cars because I figured they would find us in the other car for sure, especially if it broke down like I thought it was going to do
and …”

“But why did you have to steal a hearse for Christ’s sake?” Coito noticed that the people in the square were beginning to observe her and Tony. She looked at her watch and wondered what was keeping Regina and Theodora. Then she looked back at Tony. “And besides, you know I don’t like black. It’s too morbid. Why couldn’t you have stolen a handicapped blue-colored car or a sporty cherry job with some power under the hood? Why didn’t you steal a Porsche so we could have torn out of this hole-in-the-wall at
120
miles
per hour?”

“I’m sorry, Ms.
Gott, but—”

“Oh, get in the car so we can pull out of here as soon as Regina and Thea
come out.”

Just then, Robert, the elder of the Warring brothers, spotted Regina Grant as she reached the steps of the courthouse. All he could do was stare at Regina’s blonde hair, cherubic face, and hourglass shape that would have stopped the sands of time, making her the personification of bodily perfection. Both men fell silent upon seeing her, for Regina, who placed little faith in social rules and regulations governing decency, had not bothered to waste time buttoning up her stolen police uniform’s shirt, giving the Warring brothers and others a full view of braless Regina’s most
distinguishing features.

Oblivious to the eyes that followed her, Regina ran toward Coito and Tony. The Warring brothers, following her every bouncing step, changed their conversation from remembering the recent demise of friends to discussing the progress of the women’s liberation movement. “I really thought and hoped she was a new member of the Sheriff’s Department,” George Warring told a newspaper reporter from Nashville later that day. “I wouldn’t mind being picked up for drunk and disorderly by her,”
he added.

“Tony,” cried Regina, “Where’s
Sister Carla?”

“She’s walking around in the back,” he replied, pointing with his head as Regina looked inside to see their pet penguin looking up at her. Regina gave a sigh of relief to hear Sister
Carla’s honk.

“I thought we’d lost Sister Carla for sure. Thank God she didn’t
run away.”

When the town’s sheriff had arrested the three sisters for trespassing on the property of the Second First Baptist Church of Lewisville two days before, Sister Carla had escaped the forces of the law and was waiting outside when Tony returned to the deserted church with their order from the fast food restaurant down the road. Not knowing where the three sisters were, and too afraid to inquire among the town’s residents about his traveling companions, Tony had only discovered what had happened to the three when he visited a local bar where a drunk Deputy Sauras had bragged about the arrests to his
drinking buddies.

“Did you feed her, Tony?” asked Regina, which rhymes
with China.

“Of course.”

“You better have,” she warned him. “We really shouldn’t have brought her on a long trip like this. I know she’d rather be back in Washington with the other penguins, but I do love having
her around.”

“Where’d the hearse come from?” asked Regina with a long eye. “Wow, just think of all the fun we can have in there,” Regina added, her imagination already running wild with the possibilities of driving across America in a roomy hearse. “Just like
Harold
and Maude
.”

“Before you get too excited, you ought to know that Tony stole the Hearse,” K informed Regina just as she saw two older men sitting on a bench get up and begin walking toward them. Coito, conscious of the attention they were getting, was preparing to go inside to see what was
delaying Theodora.

“From a funeral home?” asked Regina, uninterested in the people who were
watching her.

“No, I think a band of gypsies owned it,” said Tony, “because while I was killing time until I was supposed to meet you three here at four, like K told me to do, I went to a
7
-Eleven where all these gypsies were roaming around trying to shoplift or hold the store up or something and that was where I took it,
so naturally…”

“I’ve always wanted to do it in the back of a hearse,” confessed Regina. “And it’s got curtains so we can have some privacy if we want it. You know what’d be great, K? If we could get a hearse with a sunroof or, no, better yet, a hearse convertible. God, that’d be the life, riding down the highway in a hearse convertible with the music blasting away. Boy, this is going to be fun!” Regina pirouetted on her right foot out of happiness as the Warring brothers and other townspeople followed the circle she described. When she stopped, she suddenly added, “But we really should get going as soon as Thea gets out here.” Though Regina allowed nothing to dim her optimism and
joie de vivre
, Regina had learned to temper her ebullience when reality
demanded it.

“Christ on crutches, what in the hell is keeping Theodora?”
swore K.

“She shouldn’t be much longer,” promised Regina whose Aventine apples were being fully appreciated by the
Warring Brothers.

“About time,” Coito screamed as she looked up to see Theodora emerge from the courthouse carrying a book in her hand. The Warring brothers looked over at Theodora, who disappointed the brothers by having buttoned up her blue police shirt
before emerging.

“Sorry I took so long,” Theodora apologized, “but I forgot
my book.”

“I can’t believe this. We’re breaking out of jail, and you go back for a damn book? What am I going to do with
you, Thea?”

“Listen K, I’m not too happy about this jail break in the first place,” objected Theodora, her dark hair being blown against her face by the wind. “Victor would have gotten us out on bail in a few days, and I doubt they would have brought us to trial anyway. How would it look if the sheriff’s sons testified in court that they had participated in an orgy with three former nuns in their own church? If you just weren’t so damn impatient,
we could’ve…”

“I told Victor I’d give him forty-eight hours to get us out of jail,” asseverated Coito. “I told him if he didn’t spring us by then, on the third day we’d rise from our cell, and so
we have.”

“But K, if you’d just waited, they probably would have let us go. Now we’re going to be in
real trouble.”

“Look, I’m not wasting my life in some hick jail because some corpulent sheriff caught us with his kids during the week where they wouldn’t go on Sundays,” continued K. “Jesus, Thea, we’d’ve been in jail for another month if it’d been left up to you. You’d’ve written a book about how to escape before you’d’ve done it. Remember this, words don’t get you anywhere,
action does.”

“But what’d you have to hit the
deputy for?”

“Oh, come on Thea, I just pushed him back to make sure he’d stay in the cell. I didn’t even bruise him. Besides, I was tired of listening to that country and western crap they were playing in there. He should’ve known that kind of music makes people violent. Come on, get in the hearse, and let’s get going before we really get in trouble,” commanded Coito
clept K.

“Hearse?” shouted Theodora. The brothers Warring were walking toward the three to engage them in conversation and tell them what a wonderful job they thought the police were doing so the brothers could get a closer eyeful of Regina’s bountiful bosom when Tony finally started
the motor.

“Tony stole it,” K told Theodora, anxious to see
her reaction.

“He stole it? God, now we’re accessories to auto theft or whatever the legal term is,” said Theodora, looking like she had just been told a friend had died. “At least before, if we had gotten across the state line and stayed out of Tennessee, we might have beaten the trespassing charge with some help from Victor, but now if we take that car across the state line, we’re done for,” concluded Theodora, who was beginning to grow depressed. “We’ll be in a federal penitentiary
for sure.”

“Look at it on the bright side,” countered K as she stepped on a cockroach. “Federal prisons are much nicer than state prisons. Anyway, what’s done is done. Come on, we’d better get going while the going’s good—unless you want to wait around here until the sheriff returns. Come on, Tony, let’s get out
of here.”

“Yes,
Ms. Gott.”

“Don’t be a killjoy, Thea,” Regina said as she opened the door to the hearse. “This is going to be fun. We’re fleeing from the police like the lovers in
Gun Crazy
or some other
film noir.”

“Well, I just hope we don’t meet the same fate
they did.”

“Or give me some guns, and we’d be running from the police in the middle of an early Jean-Luc Godard movie.”

“She’s right, Thea, let’s get out of this hole-in-the-wall before it’s too late, lest our merry meanderings end for good,” demanded Coito as Regina turned around and saw the two Warring brothers staring through their glasses at Regina’s nakedness as if she were some modern-day Bathsheba.

Quicker than Hell would scorch a feather, Regina and Theodora leaped into the car as Tony sped away from the town square, running a red light and barely missing a Volkswagen, which slammed on its brakes to avoid an accident. Minutes later, the hearse passed the Second First Baptist Church of Lewisville, which lay several hundred yards before the COME BACK TO LEWISVILLE SOON sign at which Coito made an obscene gesture. The last stoplight behind them, they headed for the interstate to put the location of their brief incarceration behind them
for good.

“God, why do they have to paint hearses black?” complained K. “I feel like I’m in a furnace. Will you at least turn the air conditioner
on, Tony?”