alive.”
“These were Peter, Paul and Mary impersonators. You know, like
Beatlemania
.” He glanced at the traffic light. “A car could rust waiting for this light to change.”
“What was her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The cousin you were dating.”
“She wasn’t
my
cousin. She was Barbara Ellen’s cousin.”
“So what was her name?” she persisted.
“Susannah.”
“Did she come from Alabama with a banjo on her knee?”
“I’m just telling you what happened, since you wanted to know.”
“It must be true. You couldn’t make it up.”
“It’s too weird, isn’t it?”
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is I don’t think you could make anything up.”
“All right then. So now you know—me and Pete, our bonding experience, that night of hell. They sang ‘If I Had a Hammer’
twice
.” He pointed to the traffic signal. “Light’s green.”
Crossing the intersection, she said, “You’ve been through something together, but it wasn’t just
PeterPaulandMarymania
.”
He decided to go on the offensive. “So what do you do for a living, besides being self-employed and working at home?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Painful books. Depressing, stupid, gut-wrenching books.”
“Just the thing for the beach. Have they been published?”
“Unfortunately. And the critics love them.”
“Would I know any titles?”
“No.”
“You want to try me?”
“No. I’m not going to write them anymore, especially not if I end up dead, but even if I don’t end up dead, I’m going to write something else.”
“What’re you going to write?”
“Something that isn’t full of anger. Something in which the sentences don’t drip with bitterness.”
“Put that quote on the cover. ‘The sentences don’t drip with bitterness.’ I’d buy a book like that in a minute. Do you write under the name Linda Paquette, or do you use a pen name?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“
I
didn’t clam up on
you
.”
She glanced sideways at him, cocking one eyebrow.
For a while they rode in silence through an area where the prostitutes dressed only slightly less brazenly than Britney Spears, where the winos sat with their backs against the building walls instead of sprawling full-length on the pavement. Then they came into a less-nice precinct, where even the young gangsters didn’t venture in their low-rider street rods and glitterized Cadillac Escalades.
They passed grungy one-story buildings and fenced storage yards, scrap-metal dealers that were probably chop-shop operators, a sports bar with windows painted black and the air of a place that included cockfights in its definition of
sports,
before Linda pulled to the curb in front of a vacant lot.
“According to the numbers on the flanking buildings,” she said, “this is the address on the registration for that Chevy.”
A chain-link fence surrounded a weed-filled empty lot.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Let’s get something to eat.”
“He said he’d find us sooner than you think,” she reminded Tim.
“Hired killers,” he said, “are so full of big talk.”
“You know about hired killers, do you?”
“They act so tough, so big-bad-wolf-here-I-come. You said you hadn’t eaten. Neither have I. Let’s have dinner.”
She drove to a middle-class area of Tustin. Here, the winos sucked down their poison in barrooms, where they belonged, and the prostitutes were not encouraged to strut half-naked in public as if they were pop-music divas.
The coffee shop was open all night. The air smelled of bacon and French fries, and good coffee.
They sat in a window booth with a view of the Explorer in the parking lot, the traffic passing in the street beyond, and the moon silently drowning in a sudden sea of clouds.
She ordered a bacon cheeseburger and fries—plus a buttered muffin to eat while
“These were Peter, Paul and Mary impersonators. You know, like
Beatlemania
.” He glanced at the traffic light. “A car could rust waiting for this light to change.”
“What was her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The cousin you were dating.”
“She wasn’t
my
cousin. She was Barbara Ellen’s cousin.”
“So what was her name?” she persisted.
“Susannah.”
“Did she come from Alabama with a banjo on her knee?”
“I’m just telling you what happened, since you wanted to know.”
“It must be true. You couldn’t make it up.”
“It’s too weird, isn’t it?”
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is I don’t think you could make anything up.”
“All right then. So now you know—me and Pete, our bonding experience, that night of hell. They sang ‘If I Had a Hammer’
twice
.” He pointed to the traffic signal. “Light’s green.”
Crossing the intersection, she said, “You’ve been through something together, but it wasn’t just
PeterPaulandMarymania
.”
He decided to go on the offensive. “So what do you do for a living, besides being self-employed and working at home?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Painful books. Depressing, stupid, gut-wrenching books.”
“Just the thing for the beach. Have they been published?”
“Unfortunately. And the critics love them.”
“Would I know any titles?”
“No.”
“You want to try me?”
“No. I’m not going to write them anymore, especially not if I end up dead, but even if I don’t end up dead, I’m going to write something else.”
“What’re you going to write?”
“Something that isn’t full of anger. Something in which the sentences don’t drip with bitterness.”
“Put that quote on the cover. ‘The sentences don’t drip with bitterness.’ I’d buy a book like that in a minute. Do you write under the name Linda Paquette, or do you use a pen name?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“
I
didn’t clam up on
you
.”
She glanced sideways at him, cocking one eyebrow.
For a while they rode in silence through an area where the prostitutes dressed only slightly less brazenly than Britney Spears, where the winos sat with their backs against the building walls instead of sprawling full-length on the pavement. Then they came into a less-nice precinct, where even the young gangsters didn’t venture in their low-rider street rods and glitterized Cadillac Escalades.
They passed grungy one-story buildings and fenced storage yards, scrap-metal dealers that were probably chop-shop operators, a sports bar with windows painted black and the air of a place that included cockfights in its definition of
sports,
before Linda pulled to the curb in front of a vacant lot.
“According to the numbers on the flanking buildings,” she said, “this is the address on the registration for that Chevy.”
A chain-link fence surrounded a weed-filled empty lot.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Let’s get something to eat.”
“He said he’d find us sooner than you think,” she reminded Tim.
“Hired killers,” he said, “are so full of big talk.”
“You know about hired killers, do you?”
“They act so tough, so big-bad-wolf-here-I-come. You said you hadn’t eaten. Neither have I. Let’s have dinner.”
She drove to a middle-class area of Tustin. Here, the winos sucked down their poison in barrooms, where they belonged, and the prostitutes were not encouraged to strut half-naked in public as if they were pop-music divas.
The coffee shop was open all night. The air smelled of bacon and French fries, and good coffee.
They sat in a window booth with a view of the Explorer in the parking lot, the traffic passing in the street beyond, and the moon silently drowning in a sudden sea of clouds.
She ordered a bacon cheeseburger and fries—plus a buttered muffin to eat while
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