“Okay.”
“One other thing, Nelson. Tell Lawn I will invest some money with him — maybe a million or so — as a favor to you and my sister. But the bulk of my fortune, whether or not it includes the half a billion the Brienings are after, is going to be placed in safe investments that are socially responsible. I was just thinking about this after something Arthur said, and my plan is to invest heavily in — for one thing — Applebee’s. tgi Friday’s also, even though it has some unpleasant associations for me now, what with the kidnapping scam and the tgi‘s Dumpster’s role in that. But I love their nachos, too. I just want you and Lawn to CoCkeyed 159 understand that this is the first time anybody in our family ever had such a huge amount of money, and I simply am not about to take any chances with it.”
Nelson did not sigh or roll his eyes over this announcement.
He looked as if he could not figure out for the life of him exactly how to respond.
Quentin Shoemaker and eight of his Radical Drama Queen friends arrived around eleven that night. They had a big wooden box full of the paraphernalia Quentin said they would need for any “action” that might be called for. Among the six was Ethan Kulak, the Rdq‘s psychic, and Savion Davenport, the commune’s astrologer. Kulak was even tinier than Shoemaker, with intense black eyes and a small round mouth that made him look as if he was always about to say something starting with a W. Davenport was also skinny, and had a brown bony face and enough dreadlocks for a small sheep to get lost in. The communards were all in raggedy shorts or jeans and T-shirts, except for a rugged older man named Graham who wore a Hawaiian grass skirt and halter top.
Antoine had gone off to work the overnight shift at Golden Gardens, but Marylou and the twins were in the living room monitoring the eleven o’clock local newscasts for any reports on Mrs. Van Horn, or any new outbreaks of anti-Hunny activity.
The rest of us gathered in the kitchen, where Shoemaker astonished Hunny, Art and me by declaring, “Ethan and Savion have consulted the heavens, the spiritual and energy flows, and each other. And they can say with some degree of certainty, Hunny, that your mother is at the present moment in the town of Lake George.”
“Whoa. Really?”
“That’s amazing,” Art said.
Kulak had placed the photograph of Mrs. Van Horn that Shoemaker borrowed earlier in the center of the kitchen table.
She grinned up at us, and just at the bottom of the frame was the top of a cocktail glass with a swizzle stick peeking out.
“Whereabouts in Lake George?” Hunny asked. “And what is she doing? Is she well? Is she being held captive or anything?”
“Your mother is asleep right now,” Kulak said. “So it wouldn’t be good to call her even if we had her number. She is healthy and contented but somewhat worn out.”
“Wow. How can you tell that?”
“Savion Googled her name, and that helped. There was some kind of blog saying she had been seen in Lake George.”
Hunny’s face drooped. “Oh. You’re getting your information from Tom In Paine. Now I don’t know. That guy is an idiot.”
“Yes, I know he is, but we confirmed the sighting,” Davenport said. “Your mother’s sign of Jupiter is entering the seventh house, and today is August seventeenth, so she is sure to be equidistant between Saratoga Springs and Schroon Lake. That has to be Lake George.”
Hunny looked at Art, who shrugged. “Why the hell not?”
I said, “So you guys have a wireless laptop you carry around to make your calculations?”
“I’ve got my Blackberry,” Shoemaker said. “And Ethan has his human mind.”
I said, “So, Ethan, can your human mind come up with an address for us where Mrs. Van Horn can be found?”
Nelson had phoned earlier to tell us that the motel where Rita and Miriam Van Horn used to like to stay was called the Silvery Moon. We had let Antoine know about that, but no one else had yet been told.
Kulak said, “I am fairly sure it’s the Super 8, but I’m not one hundred percent certain.”
“Hunny and Art’s friend Antoine, along with Tyler and Schuyler, who you met out in the other room, are going to take a drive up to Lake George in the morning to try to check out the supposed sighting of Mrs. Van Horn. Maybe a couple of you could ride along and add your extrasensory GPS.”
The Rdqers agreed to do that and asked if they could spend the night in Art and Hunny’s house. They said they had their Tibetan prayer mats they could sleep on, and they had brought their own dried head cheese breakfast cakes. Hunny said, sure, there was plenty of room. I said they were also welcome to Hunny and Art’s guest room and I would spend the night at home. I thought about inviting some of them to come over and spread their mats out at the foot of Timmy’s and my bed but concluded that Timmy’s bemusement might be limited.
I asked Hunny to walk with me out to my car. It was a hot moonlit buggy August night on Moth Street. We passed the two security guys sitting on the porch, and one of them said to me,
“Are those hippies?”
“You could call them that. I doubt if they would use the word.”
“They look like they are.”
“That word is mostly used now for revivals of Hair. These guys aren’t actors. They’re genuine.”
“I just wondered.”
When we got out to my car, I said to Hunny, “You know, Quentin and his crew are full of shit.”
“I thought they might be.”
“They are good and sweet and decent, but they have no more idea where your mother is than Bill O’Malley does, or the balloon boy.”
“I know. But Quentin is nice to me and he doesn’t treat me like I’m a bad gay person and a traitor to gays just because I’m so fun-loving and enjoy a stiff one once in a while. Oh, I mean drink,” he added and chortled.
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice blowjob, Donald?”
“No.”
“It relieves tension.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I guess you’re getting it at home.”
“That’s part of it.”
164 Richard Stevenson
“Variety is nice.”
“I can’t deny that.”
“Well, maybe some of the Rdq boys will be up for a romp.”
“Hard to say.”
“Donald, girl, do you think I should tell them to go back to Vermont? They aren’t going to be much help, it looks like. But I like having Quentin around to boost my morale. I love that he wanted to lick my feet. At first, I thought, oh, what a weirdo. But he wasn’t referring to shrimping, I don’t think. He meant to show his respect.”
“He admires you a lot. And he’s not alone.”
“Oh, I know. Not everybody’s dumping on me. All the gals out at BJ’s have called and expressed their heartfelt wishes about Mom, and some said I should have kicked Bill O’Malley in the balls. A lot of the gang we normally see at Rocks on Saturday night have been supportive, calling and sending nice cards. I heard that some radio program in Troy called Homo Radio said nice things about me. It’s just phonies like Nelson and Lawn and that type of straight-acting gay person who have been pissing all over Artie and me.”
“I don’t know that they’re all phonies. They just find your uninhibitedness and your…zest for life a little scary.”
“Well, tough titty. Anyway, they are so phonies. I would never tell Nelson — he is so innocent and it would break his heart — but Artie saw Lawn one time out behind a Thruway rest stop getting his dick sucked by a state assemblyman from Buffalo who had just had his picture in the paper for getting a prize from the Boy Scouts.”
“That sounds complicated. But a lot of guys really are monogamous and very comfortable with the old-fashioned two-people-devoted-to-each-other model. It’s safe and comfortable and emotionally rewarding. Biology being biology, some of them may slip once in a while. But overall they aren’t particularly hypocritical. They live the way they live not just for convention’s sake but for love.”