“Do you suppose,” Dru said, “that she also asked the others?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He seemed amused at the idea and looked across the grave at his wife and met her eyes and smiled. She was indeed pretty and cute even if she hadn’t learned a thing about sea urchins.
The hearse arrived and four of the mortician’s assistants brought out the casket. All through the church service Dru had avoided looking at it. Now she couldn’t help it. There it was, and underneath the camellias and heather and cornflowers was Annamay, her dearest friend and most gullible confidante. Uttering a little cry of protest Dru ran over to her mother and threw her arms around her.
“I don’t want any more Experience. I want to go home.”
“Why, baby,” Vicki said, hugging her daughter. “I had no idea you were going to be upset. I thought it would be an enriching experience.”
“I don’t want to be enriched.”
“All right. You go wait in the car. John, give her the keys, please. You can unlock the car, can’t you, Dru?”
“I can drive the car,” Dru said.
John handed her the keys and whispered in her ear that she wasn’t to drive any farther than L.A. because there was only half a tank of gas. He looked as though he wished he were going with her.
“Lock the doors and windows,” Vicki said. “And if a strange man comes anywhere near, start blowing the horn.”
“Why couldn’t I just drive away?”
“Because you’re only ten years old and… oh, for God’s sake, do as I say without arguing for once.”
“The horn won’t blow unless I turn on the ignition.”
“All right, then start screaming.”
“If the windows and doors are closed nobody will hear me.”
“Then just sit there,” Vicki whispered fiercely. “Stop this nonsense. You’re ruining Annamay’s funeral.”
“She doesn’t care. She’s not here.”
“Split, kiddo,” John said and gave her a friendly whack on the butt.
The casket was lowered into the ground and the Reverend Michael Dunlop threw in the first handful of earth.
“We all must die,” he said. “Of dust we are made and to dust we shall return.”
When it was over, the family and Ben York went to the Hyatts’ house for some of Chizzy’s coffee and sandwiches and cake.
Dru and old Mr. Hyatt carried their plates down to the palace while Vicki took John to the garage to see the new car Howard had bought Kay to cheer her up. The car talked. The doors said, I’m open, the lights, I’m on, the gas tank, I’m getting empty. Even the speedometer issued a stern warning, Slow down.
Kay wasn’t cheered. She turned away from the car as though it were a bribe, and went on driving the old station wagon she’d used to take Annamay and her friends on outings to the beach and zoo, to Disneyland, Sea World and Marineland. People talked at her, told her the new car was marvelous and she ought to be grateful and why didn’t she drive it to Carmel or La Jolla for a weekend. She paid no more attention to them than to the synthesized voices that came from the car.
Vicki thought the voices were really neat though she was quick to point out one disadvantage as she and John sat in the front seat:
“What if we were making love and we heard someone say, that’s illegal? What would you do?”
“I’d finish making love,” John said. “And then I’d hire a lawyer.”
Vicki giggled and kissed him on the side of the neck. “Oh dear, I guess we’d better go back inside.”
“Why?”
“We’re supposed to be offering our condolences, saying all the correct things.”
“I can’t think of anything more to say than I’ve been saying for the past four months.”
“Still, it doesn’t seem right that we’re out here together like this, happy and everything. Does it seem right to you?”
“Nothing’s a hundred percent right in a fifty percent world.”
“You don’t think we should be… well, suffering more?” “It wouldn’t help them any.”
“Oh, John, you’re so sensible.”
“I’m learning from Dru,” John said with some truth.
Dru was feeding chocolate cake to the goldfish in the lily pond behind the palace. The pond was an exact replica of the larger one beside the main house, and the fish in it looked like babies of the huge colorful fish in the other pond, which were called koi.
Annamay had given names to all the smaller fish and firmly believed that each one knew and responded to his or her own name. Dru refused to buy such nonsense. The fish all looked alike, so if you called Lancelot and one of them responded, it wasn’t necessarily Lancelot, as Annamay always thought. It could just as well be Lucretia or Charlemagne or Beauregard. None of them liked chocolate cake very much.
“I venture to suggest,” the old man said, “that they prefer fish food.”
“Annamay and I tasted fish food once. It hasn’t got much flavor.”
“Apparently that doesn’t bother them. It’s reasonable to assume that taste was originally a condition of survival. What tasted good to a creature was good and what was unpalatable was bad. That doesn’t hold true anymore, alas, or we would all be sitting around eating strawberry shortcake and cream puffs.”
“And french fried potatoes and rocky-road ice cream.”
“Not to mention pecan pie.”
“And tacos and pizza and brownies.” She paused, frowning. She frowned with her whole face. Her eyebrows met, her forehead wrinkled, her mouth squeezed into a straight line. “No. No, not brownies.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the poem Chizzy wrote.”
“I find it hard to imagine Chizzy as a poet. And brownies are surely an odd subject for a literary effort.”
“It wasn’t actually about brownies, it was about strangers who offered you rides in their car and money and brownies. Only the brownies might have razor blades in them.”
“People are writing poems about nearly everything nowadays but brownies with razor blades in them is surely stretching it a bit. Do you remember how it goes?”
“Yes, but I’d rather not say it out loud.”
“I’d like to hear it. It might alter my perspective on Chizzy.”
“But it might also make you feel bad, thinking about Annamay and strangers and things.”
“It might, yes. Yes. You’re right, of course.”
He closed his eyes and twin tears rolled down his cheeks like tiny crystal balls, balls too brief and brittle for any fortune-teller to read.
“Don’t cry,” Dru said, and gave him a kindly pat on the head. He had quite a lot of hair that was real, not a wig like Mr. Cunningham’s. She could see his scalp shining through in places, pink and smooth, and she wondered why scalps, which didn’t matter because they were usually covered with hair, never got wrinkles, and faces, which mattered a great deal, did. It was an interesting question but she didn’t intend asking anybody. Vicki’s answer would be immediate and connected in some way with one of Dru’s misdeeds, and John Campbell would use the occasion to deliver a minilecture on birds or snakes or whatever.
“You’re a nice little girl,” Mr. Hyatt wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Are you as nice as Annamay?”