Road to Paradise Read online

  When at last Candy felt it was safe to get going again, it was excruciating to watch the time tick away, one minute at a time, and to know that in that one minute we’d gone maybe a third of a mile. Traffic lights were on every corner and were all red. Farms receded into gray fog. Now, as the sky shaded to dark blue, the rain slashed harder. The lights, red and yellow, glistened off the streaming black asphalt and pierced the night like bullets. I longed to ask Candy if she thought Erv knew where she was, but I didn’t want Gina, who looked to be almost sleeping, to become reacquainted with our troubles. I wished Gina would sit in the back and sleep so I could talk to Candy.

  “The Jews didn’t need a Savior,” Gina said suddenly. “Why do we?”

  Wow, I thought. New Melleray really got under Gina’s craw. She just couldn’t let it go. Half asleep, Candy replied. “Was Jesus a simple man? A great man? A chosen man? A delusional man? A clever promoter of himself? An imaginary man? Or God Himself walking around Galilee?”

  “Take your pick. Nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong. We’re all right in a sense.”

  “It’s like the United Nations.” That was my one contribution.

  Gina turned away.

  “Who’d want to live in such an arid desert?” asked Candy. “Who’d want to miss out on the most sublime gift ever offered man? Not me.”

  “I don’t think you know where you want to live, Candy,” said Gina.

  Both road and sky had darkened. I had driven for so long I couldn’t believe we were still in Iowa, that we hadn’t yet reached Sioux City on the river across from Nebraska. How was it possible that nearly a week had passed and we were in the same state? I was so weary of being behind the wheel, and it was too dark to see the map. We had been rolling steadily uphill, and I made a lame joke about a city that was right on the river being so high up in the hills. Gina humorlessly said that was because we were still miles away, and that just depressed me further. I thought a road trip was supposed to be fun. How much money did I have left? I was afraid to count. Every time we stopped we bought bagfuls of chips, pretzels, popcorn, and Cokes. The car was filling up with greasy plastic bags like a water tank.

  “Don’t worry, Shel,” said Candy. “Look, let’s stop here. I see a place.”

  On our side of the highway stood a drab little unit called Pines Motel. It was set back from the road, which both Candy and I liked, and in front was a bar, with flashing red neon that blinked “Bar n’ Grill.” Candy said a bar was good. I said a grill was good for my empty stomach, but she was already out of the car and inside the tiny office to get us a room. Neither Gina nor I moved. We sat and watched her through the two sets of doors and windows. It was still raining something awful.

  “God, what’s wrong with you?” I said.

  “What’s wrong with me? I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask me that.”

  “I’m asking. You’ve been picking on her the entire day.”

  “Gee, I wonder why.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Are you, Sloane? Are you really? Doing the best you can?” Gina emitted a black chuckle. “Nicely done.”

  I swirled away in my seat.

  “Look at where we’re staying,” Gina said. “A few days ago we’d never be caught dead staying in a place like this. We’d pass it on the road and say, aren’t we lucky we’re not the type of girls who stay in a fleabag motel marked with omens and evil portents.”

  “It’s not marked—”

  “Shelby, don’t be so fucking naïve. Stop pretending you’re ten. Look around you! Open your eyes. We’re hiding out in a trash dump because the chick you insisted on picking up is being followed by someone who wants to kill her. What do you think is going to happen to us when we become witnesses to her murder? You think a man who will kill her is just going to leave us alone? You didn’t listen to me, you didn’t listen to a word I was telling you. You wouldn’t take my advice. You acted as if you were not my friend.” She shrugged. “Well, why not. And you ask what’s wrong with me!”

  “Gina, I am your friend, come on,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for this. But it’ll be all right. We’re just going to drop her off in Reno. It’s on the way—”

  “Have you asked yourself what business she has in Reno? And how do you know she’s not going to need your help after she gets there? What gives you the idea that she won’t be requiring your services past Reno?”

  Grimly we watched her paying, talking to the office clerk, smiling. Gina was right. “I will tell her that after Paradise we’ll—I promise. I will tell her—”

  “Shelby, give it a rest. You’re going to be carrying her water until you save her. I know it. You know it. She knows it. The only thing you don’t know that I know—and that she also knows, by the way—is that you won’t save her. You’re spinning your wheels for nothing.”

  “What you’re saying is not true,” I said, ashen, but I couldn’t look at Gina. “What you’re saying isn’t right. I’m not carrying her water. I’m just helping her out.”

  “Can’t you see? She’s using you!”

  “Abandoning her is wrong.”

  “Yes, and we know how you’re all about the right and wrong, Shel.”

  I tutted in wretched frustration, but thankfully Candy opened the door, like Pyrrhus. “We can park over there, by the last cabin under the trees. Won’t be able to see the car from the road at all. The manager said they serve food at the bar till two in the morning, so we’re all set. Come on.”

  I did as she told me. I drove to the room, parked behind the bushes. We unloaded. The room smelled unsavory, of unsavory people and their unsavory lives. Gingerly we put our things on the chairs, and walked back across the gravel to the bar in the rain. Before we left, Candy had transformed herself once more. She had reapplied her black liner and red gloss so dark it looked black, too. She moussed her hair, put on her own clothes, a miniskirt and short white T-shirt with no bra. Her nose-ring went back in, so did the belly-button ring. I’d never known anyone who had had her belly button pierced and wondered if it had hurt her.

  At the bar, we drank enthusiastically, and ate listlessly. We were the only girls in the bar, and while this made me distinctly uncomfortable, Candy seemed to revel in it. Gone was the girl from the abbey, walking quietly with her father through the pine paths and falling mute in the cloisters. She was flirty on the barstool, smiling tantalizingly at the truckers. Gina admonished her to be more careful but Candy shushed her to be quiet. At that, Gina tutted and said she was going back to the room. I got to my feet and said me too. Shrugging, Candy barely looked up from her drink, her coquettish eyes lowered to the bar counter while a very inebriated, heavy, older man spoke close to her ear. I was almost out the door when I turned around and saw her, a young girl in a bar, verbally jousting and coming on to truckers. Torn for a moment between acting in my self-interest (mollifying Gina so she wouldn’t leave me) and Candy’s, I sighed and turned back. Gina swore, but I was already sitting down at the bar, pretending I hadn’t heard. What a funny animal man is—when faced with a choice between his own preservation and the protection of the assuredly lost, he opts to crawl back to the barstool. Peculiar and distressing as it was, I crept back to the inexplicable.

  There were a few tables, a few patrons; everyone smoking; on the jukebox Fleetwood Mac was so afraid, probably of the devil woman and then Billy was a hero. And when Billy was being a hero, I started paying attention to Candy’s new squeeze. He was young and countrified, had a nice little drawl; Candy and I enjoyed listening to him. He said yes, ma’am, and hello there, miss; he was polite and young. I was wearing a baseball cap because my hair was wet and gross from the rain and had on no makeup. I felt more wretched than usual, which is saying a lot, while Candy sparkled and smiled, her eyes made up, her tattoos hidden, looking petite and so pretty. The young Kentucky stud, whose name was Hoadley Dean, went on and on about driving on I-80 for the last four hours and hating the rain. We nodded in vigorous
agreement. He asked where we were headed. Demurely Candy said Rapid City. Bat eyelashes. Ah yes. Hoadley had been there. “Yes,” Candy said. “Me too. My aunt and niece live there. My aunt was married but her husband just died. I’m going to visit them.” She introduced me. “This is Virginia. My cousin.” She stuck out her hand to Hoadley. “I’m Ronnie. Short for Veronica.”

  “Well, good to meet you, Virginia and Veronica,” said the milky-haired, spotty young man shaking our hands and smiling from behind his beer. “Don’t meet too many nice girls on the road.”

  “I bet you don’t,” said Candy. “And who says we’re nice girls?” She threw back her head and twittered, he twittered back and leaned his body closer to her on the barstool. They talked about Rapid City. I had thought much of what came out of Candy’s mouth was a lie, but she talked about Rapid City as if it were not. There was a place on the map called Rapid City, South Dakota, and Candy spoke of the Fire Brewing Co. on Main Street and Wall Drug, where she said she had worked for two summers while staying with her folks. The aunt used to have this cute little car, she said, a hand-me-down rusted red Camaro, which she let Candy borrow.

  “Hey,” Hoadley said, “as you were driving, you didn’t happen to see a cute little yellow Mustang on the road, did you?”

  “No, why?” Candy smiled. I froze. “Should we have?”

  “There’s a reward for finding a runaway in it,” he replied with a shrug. “It’s all over the CB.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Candy said, perking up. “How much of a reward?”

  Hoadley eyed her, his casual gaze becoming less casual. “A few bucks,” he said carefully. “Nothing major. What’s it to you, sweetheart?”

  Candy circled the air with her finger, as light as if she were at a ball game. “Just makin’ conversation, cowboy. Haven’t seen the yellow ’Stang. But let me ask you—if we see it, how do we let you know?”

  He admitted that would be difficult. “I wasn’t askin’ you to look out for it in the future. I was askin’ if you’d seen it in the past.”

  “In that case, no,” she said. “We only came up from Waterloo, though. Took us forever in that rain.”

  “Tell me about it. It took me longer to go the few miles north from Omaha to Sioux City than it took to drive all day ’cross Iowa.” He drank. “They wouldn’t be local, anyway. They’re on I-80. Heading west. But still, thought I’d ask, just in case. No harm in asking.”

  “No harm at all,” Candy agreed.

  Hoadley lowered his voice. “Reward’s five thousand bucks.”

  Candy whistled. “Wow. Nice chunk of change.”

  “No kidding. I’m gettin’ married next month. Could really use it.”

  “I bet. Someone must really need to find that girl.”

  “Three girls.” He eyed her. “About your age.”

  “I’m twenty,” said Candy. “But three? That’s a lot of runaways.”

  “The other two are transporting her. I bet they have no idea it’s a felony to knowingly transport a minor across state lines.”

  “Well, we’ll be on the lookout,” Candy said quickly, while I sat with a paralyzed grimace on my face. “So are the police involved, then? The FBI, if it’s an interstate thing?”

  “Nah. Man who’s looking for her says it’s family business. He prefers to keep it that way.”

  “I see. Though like you said, I doubt they’re this far north. But you think it’s the only yellow ’Stang on the road?”

  “Probably.” He downed his beer and inched closer to Candy. “I’ve never seen one.” He settled around his barstool and hung his arm near her. “So what do you say, sweetheart?”

  I tried to excuse myself, like a child who walked in on her parents and just as awkwardly. Candy said quietly, “Where’s your room?”

  “Right out front,” he said, all perked up, as if he didn’t think it would be that easy.

  Lowering her voice, she said, “Tell me your room number and I’ll meet you there in fifteen. I just have to tuck my cousin in.”

  He grinned wide. “Bring her, too,” he said, with a double lift of his brows.

  Candy smiled. “Tempting. But I don’t think she’ll go for it. A bit of a prude, you know?”

  “Ask her.”

  But the prude was already off her barstool, moving fast toward the door. Candy caught up with me. “We gotta go, now,” she said.

  “Really? Oh, well, only if you think that’s a good idea.”

  “Stop,” she said. “Go quick. Pack up the room.”

  “What about Gina?”

  “Bring her, too. No use leaving her behind. She’ll get cranky.”

  “When we drive out the only exit, and his room is right at the front, you don’t think he’ll notice?”

  “I don’t think he will. He’s pretty wasted. Just go back to the room, get our stuff, load up, and let me worry about him. Be ready with the car running in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Twenty-five minutes, you’re joking!”

  “He won’t last longer than that.”

  “For goodness’ sake! I don’t mean that,” I said, impatiently. “I mean twenty-five minutes is not enough time to pack and get out.”

  “Shel, just quit yakking and get packing, will ya? We have to go!”

  “After you’ve finished with him,” I persisted, “you know he’ll go straight to the office and ask what kind of car the devil girls were driving.”

  “Boy, you sure do worry about a lot of stuff,” Candy said, urgently prodding me along the gravel. “When he goes to ask, the office manager will tell him we were driving a brown Comet, 1973. License plate fake. Let him try to track it down.”

  “Candy, you’re too much.”

  “Thank you. Now do you remember what you have to do?”

  “Hmm. Gina’ll go through the roof.”

  “What else is new. Go. Get everything out of the room, including my stuff, and wait for me outside with the car running.”

  “I know, I know.”

  So back she went inside the bar to Hoadley, and I ran to the room. As predicted—though it didn’t take a Nostradamus—when Gina, who was undressed and watching TV in bed, found out that we had to leave, she went berserk. She said she wasn’t going. Absolutely not going. She turned up the TV, then started yelling over it. I argued back and forth with her for a few minutes, then threw up my hands and started collecting our things. I told her I was getting in that car in seven minutes, and if she wanted to get to Bakersfield she’d better move her ass.

  We were both hyperventilating by the time we slammed shut the motel door and jumped inside the Shelby. “This is sick,” she hissed. “This is demented. We’ve been driving all day, it’s pouring out, we haven’t slept, we’re disgusting and unshowered, and when she says jump, you ask how high without even a blink. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I retorted—there was a rap of knuckles on the window. Gina slowly, theatrically, furiously, opened her door, got out, stood glaring threateningly at Candy, who pulled forward the seat and hopped in.

  “Let’s go,” she said. Gina took her time. I didn’t even wait for her door to close all the way before I stepped on the gas (“What the fuck is your problem!” she yelled), and the sound of spinning tires on wet gravel was like a million nails on a million blackboards.

  It resounded in my ears as I made a right and kept going. I didn’t stop. No one was out in the courtyard in the rain, where the wet Christmas lights twinkled all year round.

  “Where’s Hoadley?” I breathed.

  “Asleep in his room. He had a lot to drink. He was tired.”

  “Did he know you left?”

  “Nope.” Candy stuck her hand clutching a wad of twenties in between the seats. “But did give us a little money for our trouble.” She chuckled.

  “It’s all so funny to you,” Gina hissed, with unsuppressed hatred. “My whole life since we met you has been one unending nightmare.”

  “Melleray was a ni
ghtmare?” I asked.

  “Shut up! Yes, everything’s been a nightmare! You and your pretend indifference to what you’re doing to us. Sloane, why is she still in our car? Just pull over on the side of the road and open the door. What are you worried about? Clearly she’s going to be fine, better than you and me, who are being dragged out of an infested bed at midnight. How long is she going to be with us? Let her out right now!”

  I didn’t answer. It was raining. It was night. My mind, my heart was closed to it. I couldn’t even entertain it as a hypothetical option. I knew Gina wasn’t serious, I knew she knew I’d never do it. “Come on, Gina, stop. Be reasonable.” But this made Gina only more heated up. “No, of course not. Why would you?” I was having a hard time concentrating on driving.

  “Don’t you understand?” she said to Candy. “You are not my friend. I’m sorry, but I don’t care what happens to you. I just want to get to California, to my boyfriend, and never think about you again. That’s what I want. So don’t try to appeal to my better nature, don’t try to tell me to help out my fellow man. I have less than zero interest in helping you.”

  Candy said nothing.

  “Look what’s happening, and all because you’re in our car!”

  I gripped the wheel harder. I couldn’t see the slick road for the rain. I was driving real slow, thinking that whether or not Candy was in our car, it was obvious that cowboys like Hoadley were everywhere, even on U.S. 20, looking to score five thousand bucks, off me, off Gina, off my Shelby.

  “Let me tell you something,” Gina continued. “You are not normal. This isn’t normal. In a normal world, this doesn’t happen. Mothers stay with their children. Mothers don’t throw their children out.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? And who says my mother threw me out?”

  “Girls, please.” I was trying so hard to see the road, to not hear them.

  “She didn’t stay with you, though.”

  “So that’s my fault?”