Back at the building where we had stayed, the bike kids had reappeared, murmuring amongst themselves. Jacky leaned against the front stoop, a few feet from them. I sat down in the grass opposite my drummer.
“What do you think of StageHolo? I mean really?”
He spit on the ground.
“Me too,” I agreed. “But given the choice between starting over with nothing, and letting them rebuild us, what would you do? If there weren’t any other options.”
He ran a hand over his braids. “If there weren’t any other options?”
I nodded.
“There are always other options, Luce. I didn’t sign up with you to do fake shows in some fake warehouse for fake audiences. I wouldn’t stay. And you wouldn’t last.”
I pulled a handful of grass and tossed it at him.
He repeated himself. “Really. I don’t know what you’d do. You wouldn’t be you anymore. You’d probably still come across to some people, but you’d have the wrong kind of anger. Anger for yourself, instead of for everybody. You’d be some hologram version of yourself. No substance.”
I stared at him.
“People always underestimate the drummer, but I get to sit behind you and watch you every night. Trust me.” He laughed, then looked over my shoulder. “I watch you, too, Silva. It goes for you, too.”
I didn’t know how long Silva had been behind me, but he sat down between us now, grunting as he lowered himself to the ground. He leaned against Jacky and put his grimy glass-dust boots in my lap.
I shoved them off. “That was an old man grunt.”
“I’m getting there, old lady, but you’ll get there first. Do you have a plan?”
I looked over where the bike kids had congregated. “Hey, guys! Do any of you have a car? Or, you know, know anybody who has a car?”
The bike kids looked horrified, then one—Dijuan?—nodded. “My sister has a Chauffeur.”
“Family sized?”
Dijuan’s face fell.
Back to the drawing board. Leaning back on my elbows, I thought about all the other bands we could maybe call on, if I knew anybody who had come off the road, who might have a van to sell if Daisy didn’t reappear. Maybe, but nobody close enough to loan one tonight. Except . . .
“You’re not saying you’re out, right?” I asked Silva. “You’re not saying StageHolo or nothing? ’Cause I really can’t do it. Maybe someday, on our terms, but I can’t do it yet.”
He closed his eyes. “I know you can’t. But I don’t know what else to do.”
“I do. At least for tonight.”
I told him who to call.
Truly arrived with her sister’s family-sized Chauffeur an hour later. We had to meet her up on the road.
“It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll get there,” she said. The third row and all the foot space was packed tight with the Moby K. Dick amps and drums and cables.
“Thank you so much,” I said, climbing into what would be the driver’s seat if it had a wheel or pedals. It felt strange, but oddly freeing as the car navigated its way from wherever we were toward where we were going.
I was supposed to be upset. But we had a ride to the gig, and gear to play. We’d survive without merch for the time being. Somebody in Pittsburgh would help us find a way to Baltimore if Daisy hadn’t been found by then, or back to Columbus to reclaim her.
With enough time to arrange it, the other bands would let us use their drums and amps at most of the shows we had coming up, and in the meantime we still had our guitars and a little bit of cash. We’d roll on, in Daisy or a Chauffeur, or on bikes with guitars strapped to our backs. No StageHolo gig could end this badly; this was the epic, terrible, relentlessness of life on the road. We made music. We were music. We’d roll on. We’d roll on. We’d roll on.
— The Narwhal —
One week after she was hired for what had to be her best Oddjobz gig yet, a whale arrived at Lynette’s door.
So many things could go wrong answering Oddjobz ads. Lynette had taken enough sketchy jobs that she’d learned how to protect herself. She arranged to meet Dahlia at a crowded hipster coffee shop, with her best friend, Paula, hiding in plain sight in case the stranger turned out unbearably creepy. Paula enjoyed the subterfuge, positioning herself spy-thriller style behind the Baltimore Sun, front-page headline blaring STUPENDOUS SUPERS SAVE NEW YORK AGAIN. She’d bought an actual print newspaper just for the purpose.
Dahlia had not set off any alarm bells. She arrived looking friendly and sad, fitting for the circumstances, a fiftyish white woman with an air of freelance life coach/yoga instructor. She had laid out her plan to drive her recently deceased mother’s car to her home in Sacramento, talking up the route highlights, which were the main selling points for Lynette, and the eight days they’d have to make the drive. She’d pay for a hotel room for Lynette every night. When Lynette accepted the gig, Dahlia bought the one-way air ticket from Sacramento back to Baltimore on the spot, to prove she was serious.
A week later, at 9 AM sharp, Dahlia texted from the street:
Outside
Not leaving car
Surrounded by children
Time to go
Lynette opened her front door to a double-parked whale. The neighborhood kids had been drawn across the street from the playground, but they weren’t surrounding it so much as clumping a few feet in front, staring. Who wouldn’t stare? She took a moment herself.
The whale’s blue-silver body looked like fiberglass. It seemed to have been built on a station wagon’s chassis, the tail arcing up off the wide back end. The only art cars she’d seen, at festivals and fairs, had looked like they were happier standing still than moving; this one looked ready to dive into the road. One painted eye gazed back at her beatifically from above the passenger window.
“You riding in that, Miss Lynette?” asked Case, her neighbor’s oldest, inching closer. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of Astounding Man’s perfect face, and his slogan, “Another day, another city saved.”
“I guess I am,” she said, trying to sound casual, then abandoning that idea. “All the way across the country.”
The kids looked suitably impressed.
The interior resembled a station-wagon interior; she’d half been expecting a ribcage. She tossed her bags into the backseat beside Dahlia’s bags and boxes, then slid into the front passenger seat. The dashboard had the usual buttons and dials and levers you’d expect someone’s mother’s station wagon to have, and then a whole bunch of mystery buttons.
“If you don’t know what it is, don’t touch it,” Dahlia said. “I have no clue what any of these do.”
Lynette was about to protest that she wasn’t going to touch anything, but then decided not to start a long drive on the defensive. “I’ve always liked whales,” she said instead. “You didn’t say the car was a whale. This is awesome.”
“We should get moving. We’ve got a tight schedule to keep if I’m going to be back at work on Tuesday.”
Lynette didn’t know how to respond to that either, so she stayed silent as Dahlia pulled away from the curb. The kids followed. Their wonder reminded Lynette of when the circus used to parade their animals down Lombard from the arena to the train yards on their way out of Baltimore. She and her friends would be playing on the stoop and suddenly an elephant would come into view. It had always been unexpected and magical. The circus didn’t come anymore.
Like her, none of these kids had ever been anywhere. The farthest she’d ever travelled was to DC, on one class trip to the Capitol. On that trip, she’d bought a commemorative coin which she still kept in her pocket: a lucky charm and a promise to herself that she’d someday be the kind of person who collected spoons or coins or magnets to show all the great places she’d been.
People in movies were always heading out on epic road trips, but they
seemed to have more money and time than she did, not to mention cars. This whole trip, with its benefactor, its employment factor, was as much of a miracle as a whale appearing at her door or an elephant walking west on Lombard.
The junkie teenagers panhandling on the corner of MLK missed a whole light cycle watching them idle at the red. As the whale merged onto the highway, other cars honked and waved. A strange celebrity; it would get old if cars honked at them for three thousand miles, but for a little while it would be fun.
“Does this always happen?” she asked.
Dahlia looked over, giving her full attention to Lynette, even as the whale plunged forward. “No clue. This is the first time I’ve ever driven this thing.”
“Oh! You said it was your mother’s. I figured you grew up with it.”
Dahlia laughed. “It’s a funny picture, isn’t it? My mother running her errands in this? I don’t know if I would’ve been proud or mortified.”
Watch the road, please, Lynette didn’t say.
“As far as I knew, she drove a maroon Camry, but she left that to charity. This is the one thing she left me in her will. She said ‘I don’t have money and you don’t need money, so I thought I’d give you the only thing I ever made that mattered.’ I figured I’d take it home with me and then figure out why she gave it to me and what to do with it. I had to trek halfway to Delaware to find the garage where she kept it, too. It might be our old family station wagon underneath but I’m not sure.”
Dahlia returned her attention to the road, and Lynette made a mental note not to ask any more questions unless they reached a straightaway. She busied herself downloading an app that showed all the tourist highlights along the route, setting up notifications for everything she hoped to see.
Ten miles before they reached the spot where her app told her the Appalachian Trail footbridge crossed over the highway, Lynette asked Dahlia if they could pull over to take a picture with the marker.
“It’s just a sign.” Dahlia picked a hair off her sweater, lowered her window a few inches, and flicked it out.
“But a cool sign! I’ve always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail,” Lynette said. “People walk it, and it’s almost as far as we’re going to be driving, and even the drive takes a week. I’d love to document that I made it this far. Twenty seconds. That’s all.”
Dahlia again shifted her entire body around in the driver’s seat to address Lynette. “I’d really rather not stop this early since I don’t want to drive this car after dark. I have no idea how well it’s been maintained, and I don’t feel like getting stranded. Let’s just get to Ohio today. Then we can talk about places to stop.”
I-70 banked and climbed, and the car juddered as two wheels met the shoulder. Lynette, watching the road from the passenger seat while the driver watched her, gave up.
“Sorry. Never mind.” She tried to take a picture with her phone as they passed, but it came out blurry.
In that moment, Lynette started thinking of Dahlia as “Boss” instead of her name, to remind herself that this woman was paying her to help with the drive, not sightsee. Lynette didn’t have a vote. They weren’t friends. Maybe Dahlia’d be less tense once they were farther along.
But, no. Even when Lynette drove, the Boss’s schedule ruled. She knew exactly where and when she wanted to stop for meals and sleep. She left a little leeway for bathrooms, but not much. Over the next two days, they zoomed past Fallingwater, a giant coffee pot, the John & Annie Glenn house, and dozens of assorted parks and museums. Lynette spotted Vandalia’s water tower from the highway, but not the Kaskaskia Dragon somewhere below it, waiting for her to drop a coin in the slot and make it breathe fire.
On the first night, at a roadside motel in Ohio, eating takeout burger and fries on her bed, Lynette had still held out a little hope. She’d taken tourist brochures from the lobby and spread them in front of her, mapping them on her phone as she ate. Nothing within walking distance. The Boss would never let her use the car to go sightseeing, and no place would be open by nightfall in any case.
Anything Lynette wanted to see, she had to see through the car window. Maybe it had been her own fault for assuming “see the country” meant “stop along the way through the country” and not to watch it all stream by the windows. Maybe it was her fault for not questioning why someone wouldn’t have a friend willing to make the journey with her. She knew all the things she’d clarify if she were ever offered this opportunity again.
“There’s got to be something you want to stop for,” Lynette said as they passed signs for the Model T Museum. She was behind the wheel, but she knew better than to pull over. “A waterfall. A tourist trap. The Grand Canyon.”
“A big hole in the ground.”
“Something else, then?”
“It’s not a tourist thing.”
“What, then?” This was the first time Dahlia had mentioned interest in anything at all. Lynette tried not to get her hopes up again.
Dahlia pulled a photo out of her purse, then replaced it before Lynette could see it. “This was in my mother’s top drawer. It says ‘Baleful’ on the back, and I found a town called ‘Baleful’ along this highway. I wanted to drive through and see if the movie theater in the picture is actually there.”
“Drive through? You don’t even want to stop?”
“If we’re on schedule, we’ll reach there halfway through the day. It’ll be too early to stop.”
Of course.
At least driving the whale was fun. It was bigger and heavier than anything she’d driven before, like it wanted you to feel like you had earned that lane change, and the dorsal fin and tail caught wind, creating a rudder effect. It would be hell to park in a city, but out on the road it just took muscle and spatial awareness.
She liked driving; the rest frustrated her. The tight timeline, the rigidity. The only small rebellion Lynette found was in pressing random buttons and turning mystery dials. Dahlia had made it clear that neither of them should touch anything before they knew what it did, but Lynette found it easy enough to reach for the radio and knock something else instead. She tried to figure out some of the extra features before she tried them; the puzzle killed time. The one with a pig icon opened a panel of ham radio controls, though she didn’t get enough time with them to see how to use them before Dahlia made her close the panel again. The redundant defrost icon on the arm console activated a radar jammer.
“Aren’t those totally illegal?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t turn it on, then.”
She always apologized immediately after; by now Dahlia probably thought she was completely incompetent, pawing at random buttons instead of asking for what she needed. She took comfort in that deception.
“Would you be more careful?” Dahlia asked after she flipped a switch that made the entire car squeal like an abused megaphone, spooking the horses in the adjacent field.
Lynette tried to change the subject. “Did your mother do all this herself?”
“I have no idea. I told you, I didn’t even know this car existed. I wouldn’t have said she was the kind of person to drive a whale around town, and I wouldn’t have said she was the kind of person to modify a car with secret buttons to deafen the passengers. She had an engineering degree, so I guess she could have done it? She always said it was impossible for a woman to get an engineering job back then, so she engineered me instead. She was just a normal mother. We didn’t get along well—she always pushed me to do more with my life—‘If you’re going to be a lawyer, can’t you at least be a lawyer for good, not evil?’—but a car like this doesn’t fit at all. I guess she had a secret artistic side.”
“Are you an evil lawyer?”
“Not from my perspective,” Dahlia said, without elaborating or inviting follow-up. At least that explained how she had the money to pay Lynette and fly her home.
“What do you do, Lynette?”
“This.”
“You drive? Like a ride share?”
“No, you need a car to do that,” Lynette said. “I do Oddjobz.”
“That’s enough to make a living?”
“It’s enough for me to cover my bills and pay my parents some rent. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do.” She tried not to get defensive.
“You’re what, twenty-three? You’ve got time to figure it out.”
Definitely time to change the subject. “Can we stop for dinner soon?”
The Boss sighed. “I’d like to get a little farther west first. Granola bar to tide you over?”
Lynette reached for her fast-emptying snack bag. After this trip, she planned never to eat another granola bar again.
As the Boss opened and closed her window for the two-hundred-and-twenty-first time, Lynette looked around for a button that would blow out the window once and for all. Sure, they’d be stuck with highway noise and wind for another fifteen hundred miles, but at least Lynette’s ears would stop popping.
She thought she’d been a gracious companion. She listened to music in earbuds. She tolerated the relentless schedule, the ridiculous refusal to take any joy from the trip. Still, it was hard to keep all the little irritations from magnifying.
“Why do you do keep opening and closing the window?”
“I don’t,” said the Boss, turning her attention away from the road. She did that a lot too, turning her whole attention to Lynette whenever either of them spoke, no matter the traffic or the road condition, so that Lynette had mostly stopped talking altogether. She’d picked a two-lane straightaway to ask, no cars ahead or behind, but she still dug her nails into her seat and watched the road, as if she’d have any control in the passenger seat.
“Never mind. I must’ve imagined it.”
No point in arguing. How do you convince someone they are doing something when it’s clearly so habitual they don’t even know they’re doing it? You don’t. You mind your own business, concentrate on the road or the view, and maybe, maybe, you start keeping track on your phone, sending text updates to your best friend, fifteen hundred miles of open-close behind. The return text, which Lynette casually shielded from Dahlia’s wandering gaze, read “OMG how can you stand it?” followed by a silent scream GIF.
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea Page 22
