and since I didn’t have a goal, I was quite surprised by the turn of events. So, at four in the morning when we climbed into our room, sneaking in like thieves into the den, we felt as if we’d run a marathon, or aced the SATs, or perhaps come in first and second in our class. Giggling, inebriated, and relaxed, Gina barely threw off her clothes before climbing into bed, and though I was also drunk, I folded my clothes, put them away, and got out my outfit for the morning, my notebook as well, but in bed I asked how in heaven’s name I was supposed to drive tomorrow, and Gina, nearly unconscious, muttered, let’s stay a few more days. I tried to remember my mother, whether the cover charge had been more or less than I’d budgeted for, and to count up how much money we’d spent so far. Had I paid for any of the drinks? I think I ordered bacon potato skins and buffalo wings, and tipped the waitress, maybe bought one drink. Thirty bucks, forty? But a song of freedom kept whirling in my head for the happy road day, won’t you help me sing … redemption songs. Redemption songs.
We woke up at noon! Which was so not like me, and for some reason noon and sobriety didn’t make me feel as great about the previous night as last call, intoxication and songs of freedom had. I’d had a bad dream. And, who were those guys we’d been with?
“Who cares?” Gina said, stretching, rolling over. “We were like men last night. We came, we took what we wanted, we left. Wasn’t it awesome?”
My heavy skull cracking and my mouth parched, I said, “Yeah. Totally.” I wasn’t used to drinking, I was dehydrated. My dream had been so creepy and real, I didn’t know how I had continued sleeping. I sat up in bed and looked around. Everything in the room seemed to be in place. Our two suitcases, our makeup. Maybe we could ask Aunt Betty to let us do a wash today. “Did you get his name?”
“Todd.”
“Hmm.” I licked my lips, touched my face. Did I forget to take off my makeup? Yuk. “Mine said he was Todd, too.”
We stared at each other for the briefest of moments. “So?” Gina pulled open the curtain to glance outside. “So maybe they lied about their names. What, you think guys’d care if we lied about our names? If I said my name was Kathleen, you think they’d care? Look, a beautiful day again. And so hot, too. Want to go swimming? And tonight we can go back to South Bend.” She winked naughtily. “We’ll try the Linebacker Lounge this time.”
“Swimming?” I was still stuck on the boys and the dream. “Swimming where?”
“Uh—Lake Michigan?”
“Oh.” We were stretched out in bed. “But we didn’t lie, did we?” I said. “We could’ve, but we didn’t. We wanted them to know us.”
I didn’t tell Gina my bad vision of trouble: I had woken in the blue of night, and there, in our room, in the chair by the door, sat Ned, watching us, his scalp flaking, his belly overflowing, eyes slow-blinking.
We threw on clothes and went to the kitchen, where Aunt Betty eyeballed us like we were stale cheese. Ned sat at the corner table, reading the newspaper. He didn’t look up. Betty said the dogs had barked at four in the morning and woken her. “They never bark in the middle of the night.” Cleverly, we said nothing. She asked why we slept so late when we went to bed so early. Again, a simple shrug sufficed for reply. But at that moment Ned looked up from his early 70s newspaper, and gave me a slow blink.
I got scared, then. Perhaps, after all, nothing in the night had been a dream. When I quickly looked away from him, I saw Aunt Betty staring at me with those doe moist eyes, now wary, and considerably cooled.
As she was sliding me some unfriendly toast and burnt bitter coffee, she asked if we wouldn’t mind taking two of her homegrown Chihuahuas to a very good customer a few miles away. She said the pups had been born eight weeks earlier and the woman’s young sons were dying for them. They’d been inspected and paid for so all we had to do was deliver them, a quick in and out drop-off thing.
“See, Sloane,” said Gina, sipping her coffee as if it were champagne, “there are some people in this world who like dogs.”
I ignored her, pushing my cup away. “Aunt Betty, did you tell the woman,” I asked, “that whether or not her sons get the puppies at eight weeks or eight years, the Chihuahuas are going to look exactly the same?”
“Excuse me?” She remained humorless, and then turning to Gina said, “Please, niece? A favor to me?”
Gina looked at me with a friendly open shrug, as in, why not? I wasn’t reluctant, just silent. “Aunt Betty, we’ll be glad to, right, Sloane? But I haven’t seen you for so long, we wanted to stay a few more days, go to the mall, swim in the lake. Is that okay?”
Betty shook her head. It wasn’t okay?
“I’ll give you 200 dollars to deliver the dogs today.”
That’s when I perked up, that’s when my cement-head morphed upward into swamp-head. “Two hundred dollars?”
Gina generously offered to split it with me.
“Oh, you will, will you?” I returned. “Well, why not, after all, you’ll be doing half the driving.”
“Shut up. Aunt Betty, we’d love to, but please, can we go tomorrow?”
Vehemently, Aunt Betty shook her head. “You have to leave today.” Suddenly 200 dollars became a hefty chunk of change to drive two rodents a couple of miles down the road. I became suspicious. “Hang on a sec,” I said, my turn to narrow my eyes, furrow my eyebrows. “Where exactly are we going?”
“De Soto.”
“Ah, well, De Soto.” I got up to swill my coffee into the sink. It splashed and left a terrible mess. Not one to leave a mess behind, I cleaned it while saying, “And where might this De Soto be?”
“I have the address,” said Aunt Betty. “It’s just down 55-South. It won’t be any trouble. It’s on the way for you, girls.”
How many places were “on our way?” How could everything be on our way? Every single thing? What kind of coordinates did our way have? It zigged down and zagged up, it meandered on country roads, on Erie Canal, then curved around a bend—South Bend—and a lake, two Great Lakes even, and now was jutting on 55-South. South! Did anyone realize we were heading west? Everything between New York and California, point A and point B was on the way. Everything between the coasts was on the way. From Canada to New Orleans was on the way.
I went to get my map. Aunt Betty also disappeared, emerging a few moments later with cash in hand. “Are you girls packed, ready?”
“Ready? Aunt Betty, we just got up. We haven’t even showered!”
Betty frowned. “Why would you need to shower again? I heard you showering at nine last night.”
Without a blink, Gina said, “Always like to start my day with a shower, Aunt Betty. Sort of like brushing my teeth.”
“Well, no use wasting my water. I got a well around here, it runs dry on hot
