Chapter 13

AUNT SHIRLEY TO THE RESCUE

It was Bonnie who came up with the solution. “I’ll call my aunt. She’ll come and pick us up, and on Monday they can fix the car and she can drive Stu back to get it.” She made the call from a phone booth behind the Dumpster. It took her quite a while. Duff watched her pace back and forth as she talked and waved her hand in the air. Finally she hung up and walked back to them. “She’ll come,” she said. “She doesn’t love it, but she will.”

For the next hour and a half, they sat on a tiny patch of grass over by the gas station restrooms, shaded by a scrawny bush, and tried not to expire from the heat. Duff’s thoughts swirled around in a limp, random way. Project Rapid Vortex, Bonnie’s singing voice, photovoltaics, french fries—they all bobbed up, but he didn’t have the energy to pursue any of them. His shirt was sticking to his back. Sweat dripped into his eyes.

At last a big, blunt-nosed van, cherry red, pulled up at the station. It stopped, its huge door opened, and out stepped a small, wiry woman with white blond hair arranged sculpturally on her head. She wore ironed jeans, a pink silk blouse, and glittery earrings in the shape of hearts. Duff and Stu and Bonnie hauled themselves up off the ground and went to meet her. Bonnie gave her a peck on the cheek.

“This is my aunt, Shirley Hopgood,” Bonnie said. “Also known as LaDonna Wildmoor.”

An alias? thought Duff. She’s a criminal, too?

“My pen name,” said the aunt. “I’m a writer.”

Oh.

“It’s great of you to come and get us,” said Stu.

Shirley gave him a narrow-eyed look. “And you are?”

“Stu Sturvich,” said Stu. “Volunteer driver for your lovely niece. On my way to pursue interests in California. Also”—he waved a hand at Duff—“Duff Pringle, computer genius.”

“And how do you happen to know Bonnie?” Shirley asked, looking at Duff.

Duff started to explain about his job in Silicon Valley, and his car that broke down, and how he’d met Carl and driven the Chevy to St. Louis, but long before he was finished Shirley nodded briskly and said, “I see, I see,” and told them to put their baggage in the car because she had things to do and couldn’t stand here talking in the blazing sun. “What is this?” she said when Bonnie lifted Moony’s carrying case into the back.

“This is Moony,” Bonnie said. “My dog.”

“Oh, dear,” said Aunt Shirley.

When the van was loaded, they climbed in. Bonnie sat in the front, Duff and Stu sat in back, and Moony sat in his crate in the space behind them. Aunt Shirley drove at a good clip down the road, and even faster when they got to the highway. She would zoom up in back of a car, ride its rear bumper for a minute or so, as if threatening to drive right over it, and then ram her delicate foot down on the accelerator and pass the car in one great swoop. This made for a rather lurching ride for the passengers, who didn’t have a steering wheel to hold on to, but Aunt Shirley didn’t seem to notice. She was busy talking.

“I don’t believe anyone would call me a critical person,” she said. “But I must say, Bonnie, that I am the tiniest bit annoyed with my sister. This is the fourth time this has happened. If she has to engage in illegal activities, why can’t she do it more intelligently?”

“I don’t know,” said Bonnie.

“I’m amazed you can tolerate it.”

Bonnie shrugged.

“Well, never mind. I don’t like to be negative. Let’s talk about you, dear. I haven’t seen you for quite a while. What are you up to?”

“Oh, school, you know. And singing.”

“Singing? In the school choir? How lovely. That’s interesting to me, dear, because in my latest work I have a musical theme, a soprano who falls in love with the orchestra director, a man who has vowed never to marry again after the tragic death of his first wife in a volcanic eruption.”

“Actually, I don’t sing at school, I sing with my guitar,” said Bonnie. “I write my own songs.”

“Oh, pop music? I see. Well, that’s lovely, too. I often mention a sweet popular tune in my writing, as a sort of background music. Do you know ‘Your Bluebell Eyes’? Or ‘Be Still, My Naughty Heart’?”

“I write my own songs,” Bonnie said again. “I don’t know those.” She turned away and gazed out the window.

Aunt Shirley, who was thundering up behind a VW, didn’t ask what kinds of songs Bonnie wrote. “I find that weaving a strand of music through my stories is deeply enhancing,” she said. “Though of course in the movies it’s much easier, you can have real music.” She passed the VW by swerving into the slow lane, causing Duff to crash sideways into Stu. “I’m confident that movies will be made of my books before long. The only obstacle is my agent, who simply will not push hard enough.”

Listening to this conversation, Duff felt bad for Bonnie. She not only had a criminal for a mother but a conceited airhead for an aunt. He gazed at the back of Bonnie’s neck, trying to beam sympathy at her. He could see the backs of her ears and the little gold stems of her earrings. The label of her T-shirt was sticking up. He thought about reaching forward and tucking it back down. Would it be all right to do that? Would she be freaked out? Should he say something casual first, like, “Your label is sticking up, I’ll fix it for you”? Or should he just do it? After thinking about it this way for several minutes, he decided that because it was impossible to do it in any way that seemed natural, he’d better not.

Outside, the landscape was filling up with houses. The closer they got to Albuquerque, the more trucks roared alongside them, huge trucks trailing gray smoke from their exhaust pipes. There were also a lot of old pickups and old jeeps and old panel trucks, also trailing smoke. “Look at all that,” Duff said. It made him grumpy. “How come those guys aren’t arrested for pollution? They’re messing up the atmosphere even worse than we did in the Chevy.”

“Oh, gripe, gripe,” said Stu. “Mr. Pollution-Buster.” He reached over and tucked down the label at the back of Bonnie’s T-shirt. “Label’s sticking up,” he said. Duff felt hatred like a lake of boiling oil around his heart.

Around four, they pulled into the driveway of a Spanish-style house with a neat green lawn and a pink potted geranium on either side of the front door. The automatic garage door yawned open, revealing a garage that already contained a car, a much smaller car than the cherry red van. A blue Toyota, Duff saw as they pulled in. He also noticed a battered black car parked across the street, which caught his attention because there were two men sitting in it—not starting up the car or getting out of it, just sitting there. He and Stu and Bonnie unloaded their bags, and as they did, the two men stared at them. Odd, Duff thought.

They went into the house. Moony had to stay in the garage, inside his crate. “My decor is unsuitable for dogs,” Shirley said. “It’s pastel.” The door from the garage led into a very neat kitchen. A bowl of artificial daisies was exactly centered on a round table, and a row of spotless copper pots hung above the stove. From the kitchen, Duff could see into the living room, where the carpet was pale rose, the curtains were looped and fringed, and glass animals stood on spindly tables. This was the sort of house a large, tall person would have to move carefully in—or, even better, not go into at all.

But here he was, and here he would be for one night at least, until he could come up with transportation for the next leg of the trip. If somehow he could make it to Los Angeles by tomorrow, then maybe he could get to San Jose the next day—the very day he was supposed to start work. How he would do this he didn’t know.

Phone Call #6

Saturday, June 29, 4:20 PM

Rosalie: Yes.

Rolf: Us. They just got here—Bonnie, two boys, and Shirley. In Shirley’s car.

Rosalie: What? Shirley’s car?

Rolf: Yeah. No Chevy.

Rosalie: [Furious sputtering]

Rolf: What should we do?

Rosalie: Get in there! Ask Bonnie! Ask her where my car is! And ask her who those punks are she’s got with her, too.

Rolf: Okay. Will do.