Tunnel of Love

by Hilma Wolitzer

  When Linda announced that she’d better call Nathan to pick her up, Cynthia tried to talk her out of it. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Mellors will drive you home in the Jeep.”

  “No, thanks, really,” Linda said. “Nathan is waiting for my call.” She was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by Cynthia’s generosity. How could she ever live up to it?

  Nathan’s line was busy. She had to dial three or four times before she got through, and it was awkward, with Cynthia in the room. Linda felt the need to make excuses for Nathan: “It must be a business call,” she said. “Or maybe he’s trying to get in touch with me at the same time.” And then, “Gosh, I hope his phone’s not out of order!” When he finally answered, he said he’d come and get her, but that he had another quick errand to run first.

  Lupe came back with the baby and her belongings and the two big dogs bounded in with them. “Aren’t you sweet! You came to say goodbye to me, didn’t you?” Linda said, while they lavished her with canine love.

  “You make friends everywhere you go, don’t you?” Cynthia said.

  “Oh, they’re just a couple of old pussycats,” Linda said.

  “Well, Bismarck and Brunhilde are not the man-eaters they were hired to be,” Cynthia admitted. “But believe me, they don’t take to the mailman the way they’ve taken to you. You have a rare quality, Linda—you bring out the best in everyone.”

  Nathan took his sweet time getting there, forcing Linda into further embarrassing conjectures about traffic and car trouble. And when he showed up at last, he honked long and noisily for her, like a rude teenage suitor. Linda said her goodbyes and hurried outside. She was surprised to see Robin sitting beside Nathan in the Z, her face almost hidden by that explosion of hair. When Robin saw Linda, she climbed into the back without a word. Linda deferred her own good news to ask some pressing questions. “What happened to Lucy’s father? And where did you two find each other? You weren’t hitching again, Robin, were you?” But Robin played dead back there and Nathan said, hastily, that he’d driven past the mall on his way here, spotted Robin, and given her a lift. Linda thought she saw them exchange a fast, friendly glance in the rearview mirror. Then Nathan put a tape on, at full volume, ruling out the prospect of any further discussion.

  Robin knew that if it wasn’t for the accident, she would probably still be a hostage of that psycho in the Buick. But, as it happened, the car just ahead of them on the freeway collided with a truck, right before an exit, and when the psycho jammed on his brakes, she was able to jump out and run for it. “Stupid cunt!” she heard him say as she took off, even though the two drivers in the crash were both men. There was a lot of excitement, what with the broken glass and the drivers screaming at each other and all the horns honking. Other people got out of their cars, too, to rubberneck, so she wasn’t that conspicuous running across the lanes to the off ramp, even when she tripped over a stray hubcap and skinned her knee. She didn’t know where she was—they had been driving forever—and nothing around there looked familiar. But there was a gas station only a few yards away and she headed for it. An attendant came up to her and said, “Hey, were you in that accident, kid? Are you okay?” It must have been her tangled hair and her bleeding knee. Robin said, “Yeah, I’m fine, I just gotta use your phone, okay?” The guy said, “Sure, go into the office, and you’d better sit down, you’re white as a ghost. Do you want a drink or anything?” Robin told him she’d have a Coke, and while he went to get it for her from the machine, she went to the office. She would have called Vicki to bail her out, but her mother had a stroke or a heart attack or something the other day, and she had gone to Akron to take care of her. So Robin called Rosalia, who wasn’t home, and then, with her heart skipping madly Lucy, whose line was busy, and finally, as a last resort, Nathan. By then the attendant had come back with her Coke and a bag of chips, and she was able to find out where she was and tell Nathan. He didn’t sound thrilled to hear from her, but at least he didn’t ask a lot of annoying questions, the way she knew Linda would later. He only cursed a little before he hung up. And he kept his promise not to give her away to Linda. They all rode home together in peace and quiet, except for Phoebe, who kept bouncing on Linda’s lap and making these funny little chirping sounds.

  15

  The Kiss of Death

  MADMAN MOE’S (“STOP ME before I sell again!”) Used Car Emporium was on Valencia Boulevard, a few miles south of the airport, and directly in the flight path of incoming planes. As soon as Linda stepped out of Nathan’s Z, with the sleeping baby glued to her chest and the diaper bag hung over her shoulder, a DC-10 came shrieking down through the cloud cover, setting off a frenzy among the plastic banners and threatening to shear off her head. She ducked, and shrieked, too, while Phoebe, who could sleep through anything except Linda’s desire for her to sleep, stayed blissfully unconscious. No wonder Madman Moe screamed that way on his late-night commercials; he was probably deaf by now from all the noise. After the jet was gone, Linda looked up at the billboard above the trailer at the rear of the lot. A giant-sized Moe in his trademark straitjacket looked back at her with a lunatic gaze. Stop me before I sell again! he pleaded. Well, she certainly would if she could.

  A moment later, Robin shimmied her way out of the shelflike backseat of the Z, and stood with her back to Linda and Nathan, staring avidly out at the gleaming rows of cars.

  Linda sidled up to her and whispered, “Now remember, we’re not made of money!” as a salesman came out of the trailer and strutted toward them. “Howdy, folks,” he called in greeting when he was halfway there, a little middle-aged man in cowboy boots and a white jumpsuit. “Buenos días,” he added when he got closer. “And what is your pleasure today?”

  Before Linda could come up with some breezy reply, like “Just browsing, thanks!” or Robin could say God knows what, Nathan said he was looking for a no-frills car for the lady, just something clean with automatic, air, and a fair price tag.

  Linda was impressed by the straightforward way he did business, without the digressive, delaying preamble of small talk. She could hardly ask the time of day of a stranger without commenting on the weather first.

  “Clean,” she heard Robin mutter. “Give me a break.” Red as fresh blood, she would have said, and faster than a rocket ship in orbit. Something slung so low you’d need limbo music and a shoehorn to get you in and out of it. Something like the Batmobile or Nathan’s own car was probably Robin’s pleasure today. But Robin was a not-quite-fifteen-year-old without a driver’s license or any real money, and Linda was the customer here, even if Nathan was doing the talking. She nodded brightly to back him up, and then they all trailed the salesman across the lot. Robin dragged her feet past the later, slinkier models, the ones with little flames painted delicately on the doors, fancy chrome wheel covers, and finishes that gave back the blazing sun like mirrors.

  Linda tried to distract and mollify her by handing Phoebe over. She was just starting to wake up, and would begin reaching for Robin soon, anyway. Phoebe truly worshipped her; Linda was merely a fill-up station on the highway to love. She suspected that Robin sneaked the baby sips of Coca-Cola when she wasn’t looking. Phoebe’s four tiny teeth had barely broken ground and were probably already riddled with holes.

  Robin draped the baby across her shoulder and stayed just on the outskirts of their little scouting party. The salesman seemed to have read Nathan clearly; the cars he led them to were definitely sensible in appearance. Dull, matronly-looking sedans, clumsy station wagons, all the shy homely wallflowers of the used-car world. Robin kept making strangling noises, as if she had a slab of steak stuck in her throat, and the salesman glanced anxiously at her from time to time during his spiel, which was peppered with Spanish phrases. “Miren, amigos! Check it out,” he said, patting the stodgy rump of an ’83 Fairlane, and Robin pretended to puke across its hood.

  Linda nudged her and hissed, “Stop that!” Then she smiled amicably at the salesman. “Don’t mind her,” she said.
“She just wants us to get something … spiffier.”

  That adjective only elicited more offensive noises from Robin, and Linda finally grabbed her arm. “Listen,” she said. “I need a car to get me to and from work, not to show off to your little druggy friends.” Maybe she should have just accepted Cynthia’s offer of a loaner car from the studio. But she’d done so much for them already. Only the other day she’d volunteered to take Phoebe for a few hours, while Robin was at the movies, so that Linda could do some housework without any interruptions. Robin wasn’t happy about the arrangement, although the baby was perfectly fine at Cynthia’s, and Linda got a lot done in the apartment, even enjoying the guilty pleasure of a short nap. Robin’s general wariness of others reached new heights with its focus on Cynthia. “How come she gave you this?” she’d asked, referring to the pink jumpsuit Linda had worn home from that first private training session.

  “My things were all sweaty,” Linda explained. “And Cynthia was going to give it away, anyway.”

  “Why? It looks brand-new to me.”

  “I guess she didn’t like it anymore,” Linda said.

  “I wouldn’t take anybody’s disgusting old hand-me-downs,” Robin said. “I wouldn’t take charity.”

  “You just said it looks brand-new,” Linda said. “And it’s not charity, it’s a gift. You take gifts, don’t you?” But Robin only gave Linda a pitying look.

  Now she made a similar face, and yanked the diaper bag from Linda’s shoulder. “Come on,” she said to Phoebe, “let’s you and me look at some cars.” In moments she was tailing another salesman and his customers, an androgynous young couple who seemed to be welded together at the hip, and were into much flashier models. Their confused salesman began holding car doors open for Robin and Phoebe, who slid right in, while the Siamese twins circled them, casing the exteriors.

  Linda knew that Nathan was only being practical, but she couldn’t help glancing wistfully at Robin, with Phoebe on her lap, wildly turning the wheel of a bronze, bullet-shaped Camaro, like the heroine of a car-chase movie. At the same time, Nathan urged Linda behind the wheel of a tan Delta 88, while he went off to tinker under its hood. It was a hot day, and ten times hotter inside the car. Linda left her door wide open, and she bounced around on the blistering vinyl seat so she wouldn’t become bonded to it.

  When Nathan finally banged down the hood, she jumped out. A few other salesmen and customers dotted the expansive field, but in a quick survey she couldn’t locate Robin and Phoebe. Nathan and their salesman were going back and forth about cylinders and pistons and sparks. Linda cleared her throat and the salesman turned to her. “Want to give her a spin?” he asked, and Nathan shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”

  When the salesman headed back toward the trailer for the keys, Linda said, worriedly, “I don’t see them anywhere, Nathan, do you?”

  “Who, the kids?” Nathan asked. He hooked one arm around her neck and reeled her in. “They’re probably closing a deal on a Vette.” When Linda didn’t even smile, he said, “Maybe they went to the trailer to use the ladies’ room. Or across the street to get some ice cream. Don’t worry, they’re around here someplace.”

  “Why don’t you take the car out yourself,” Linda suggested, disengaging herself. “You know more about it, anyway, and I want to look for the girls.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Robin is almost fifteen, and we’ll be right back. This is gonna be your baby, Linda, so you’d better see how it handles.”

  But Linda’s attention was divided, and it didn’t really matter how the car handled. They were all lethal weapons she had not been properly trained to use, and the freeways were all minefields of disaster. Back in Newark, before Wright had taught her to drive, with such loving patience, on five of the last precious Sundays of his life, she’d taken buses or he’d driven her wherever she had to go. If she hadn’t followed her instincts, like some poor dumb lemming, all the way to California, she might never have had to drive again. But it was impossible to live here without a car. Robin (where was that girl?) was right about that, at least.

  The salesman came back and swung the keys to the 88 in front of her face like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. “Las llaves, senorita,” he said with painstaking enunciation.

  “She speaks English,” Nathan reminded him, and he grabbed the swinging keys and opened the driver’s door. “Let’s go,” he said to Linda as he hustled her in. Then he dropped the registration to the Z into the salesman’s waiting hand and got in beside her. The car was still an inferno. Linda had to pat the steering wheel several times before she could bear to grip it, and seat belts were completely out of the question. They rolled down their windows and let in more hot air, and then Linda turned on the ignition with a grinding screech.

  “Let go of the damn key!” Nathan yelled at her.

  The salesman waved to them as they pulled away. “Vayan con Dios!” he called gaily.

  “Same to you, gringo prick!” Nathan called back, but his words were lost in the roar of the exhaust.

  Linda drove slowly out of the lot and then around the block three times. “How is it?” Nathan kept asking her, and she kept repeating, “Fine, just fine,” although the car felt exactly like the treacherous stranger it was. After their third rotation, Nathan motioned for her to pull over, and they switched places. He drove back to the lot, testing the air conditioner, the windshield wipers, the lights, the signals, and the radio on the way.

  Their salesman was waiting to welcome them back. “Have you seen my stepdaughter and my baby?” Linda asked him. She held her hand up to approximate Robin’s height. “Long blond hair, wearing cutoffs and an ‘I’ve Seen Elvis’ T-shirt?” It made her uneasy, describing Robin that way, as if she were actually missing and Linda was reporting her disappearance to the police.

  The salesman looked blank for a moment, but then he said, “Oh, yeah. The blond kid, right?” He glanced around. “She was here a minute ago, I think. Maybe she’s waiting for you in the trailer.” He herded them in that direction, crooning a sales pitch, while Nathan recited a counterpoint of complaints about the car. Linda wondered if the salesman had actually seen Robin and Phoebe, or if he’d just said that to lure them inside. She wondered if Madman Moe would be waiting there, strapped into his straitjacket, ready to scream his insane slogan at them. She tried to bring up the matter of the girls again with Nathan, but another jet roared overhead, and he put his finger to her lips, probably afraid she was about to spoil his negotiations for the 88.

  He’d warned her earlier that day, right after he’d picked them up, to let him handle the whole thing. He knew about cars and he knew about car salesmen, who, he seemed eager to inform her, were “the stinking bottom of the human shitpile.” He’d worked briefly as a mechanic’s helper at a lot in El Monte, so he knew. They all turned back odometers, he said, painted over rust and scuffed tires, and even fished out flood cars, polished them up, and sold them for new. “But isn’t that against the law?” Linda asked, and Nathan whooped with laughter.

  After the furious heat outside, the trailer was as cold as a meat locker. Robin and Phoebe were nowhere in sight, and no one in there resembled Madman Moe, either. A couple of salesmen played cards at a desk, while another one murmured into a phone, and a hard-looking woman with towering orange hair was speed-writing a contract for an elderly man.

  Linda whispered, “Excuse me a minute,” and ran to the door marked REST ROOM at the back of the trailer. She knocked and then opened the door, but there was no one inside. The faucet dripped into the rusted sink in a steady, ominous beat.

  As soon as Linda returned, their salesman ushered them to a desk in the far corner, on which there was only a pad, a ballpoint pen, and one photograph, in a chipped plastic frame, of himself standing next to a big Cadillac. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, taking his own seat. “Make yourselves comfortable.” He patted his glistening brow with a handkerchief. “Boy, some scorcher, isn’t it?”

  “So how much?” Na
than asked, getting right down to business again, while Linda sat next to him, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap.

  “For you, my friend, only one sixty-five per month,” the salesman said.

  “The price, man,” Nathan said impatiently, “I’m talking about the price.”

  “I told you, amigo, one sixty-five per month, and believe me, you won’t get a better deal anywhere in the state.”

  “This guy’s a riot, isn’t he?” Nathan asked grimly, and Linda offered him a tentative smile.

  The salesman began diddling with the pen and pad, making mysterious little markings and then crossing them out and making new ones. Finally he wrote something with a flourish on a fresh page and slid the pad across the desk to Nathan. “You look like really nice people, so I’m giving you a fantastic break,” he said.

  Nathan lifted his sunglasses, glanced at the pad, and slid it back, hard, across the desk. The corner of the pad caught the salesman in the gut, and he let out a little “Oof.” “Hey, man,” Nathan said, “I came here to do business, so don’t jerk me around, okay?”

  “That’s an insider’s price,” the salesman protested, but Nathan stood up, and after a beat Linda took his cue and stood, too.

  “Listen, amigo,” the salesman said. “It’s Sunday, right? The day of rest, right? I want to get home to my family, and I’m sure you want to get home with yours. Lovely family, by the way. I had a really good week, moved a lot of vehicles, so if I have to top it off with a cost-price deal, so be it.” He wrote a new figure on the pad and this time he handed it to Nathan, who handed it right back.