Susan jolted with surprise when she saw a shrine to herself — a color photocopy enlargement of an old magazine photo mounted onto brown cardboard. In the photo she was fifteen, with heavily gelled New Wavey hair, singing Devo's «Whip It» at the Clackamas Mall, Clackamas County, Oregon. In the upper-left corner was her friend Trish, playing a Casio keyboard. Susan looked at her own eyes in the picture, heavily mascaraed, and with an intensity and a naïveté that made her smile. She remembered secretly applying it in the Orange Julius bathroom. She also remembered afterward, the battle royal with her mother, who thought Susan was to be performing a medley of songs from Grease. Susan smiled that this funny old picture, of all the Susan Colgate images in the world, would be singled out and stuck in the middle of a damaged Ohio sorghum field as her final tribute.
There was a letter duct-taped to the bottom of the photo. At a glance, it looked to be like the ones she received in sackloads during the peak years of Meet the Blooms, letters that had often been postmarked U.S. Federal Penitentiary, Lompoc, or some fellow correctional facility. The letters frequently began with poems that were always sincere but almost invariably dreadful. This letter read:
Susan, my name is Randy James Montarelli and I was born on the same day as you, September 4, 1970. You were kind of a yardstick in my life. There were a lot of people like me, I think, out in the boonies who followed your life's path as if you were a sister, or maybe because you managed to escape a junky life and go on to something better. Regardless, we were always out there cheering for you. Anyway, now you're in heaven and we're still down here and I think I'm too old to find another Susan Colgate, and so life is going to be just that much harder now. I live alone (I'm not the marrying type!) but I have two dogs, Willy and Camper, and an okay job. I guess I never thought you'd go first. Somehow that felt like part of the deal. This is so stupid and all, putting these words on a sheet of paper in Magic Marker letters, when nobody's ever going to read it, anyway. I don't live in Seneca. I live in Erie, that's in Pennsylvania. I drove down here last night (4 1/2 hours!) because if I didn't, I couldn't live with myself. I'm sorry your marriage to Chris didn't work out but you were too classy for him, anyway, and I know those party hound types, and they're all flaky in the end. No offense. I always knew you'd get into movies someday, too, and it was fun seeing you in Dynamite Bay just this past month. Well, I could go on here, but my throat feels all tight the way it did driving down here. My friend Casey (she works in the cubicle next to me at the plant) says I make it too easy for people to take advantage of me, but I don't agree. I know sometimes it looks as if I'm getting used, but I really do know what's going on. I'm running out of space here. Say hello to heaven for me, and Jon-Erik Hexum, too. Did you ever meet him? He was on an old nighttime TV soap and … well … that'sanother story. Cheers to you, honey.
Your loving and loyal fan always,
Randy
1402 Chattanauqua Street
Erie, Pennsylvania
PS: I found the Wyoming license plate for you at a yard sale the day your plane crashed. I think it was a sign of some sort.
Beneath Susan's photo was the Wyoming plate, a Charlie Brown Pez dispenser with a dozen candy refills, a bottle each of shampoo and conditioner from a Marriott hotel, and a copy of TV Guide with the cast of Meet the Blooms on the cover. Susan knelt, looked both ways to ensure nobody was watching, took the letter, folded it up, slipped it into her pants pocket, and then put the shampoo and conditioner in her nylon sports bag. She walked away from the crash site, attracting not the slightest hint of suspicion from bystanders, and headed down the four-lane road in the opposite direction from the Galvins'. A bus stopped to discharge passengers and Susan got on, paying for her ticket with four quarters from the sports bag's bottom. She took a transfer and, at the bus route's end, hopped onto another bus which drove her into Toledo. She hopped off at a minimall adjoining the Maumee River, and as her feet touched the ground, she did some arithmetic and figured that if Flight 802 hadn't crashed, at that moment as she stood there in the minimall, she would have been driving to her herbalist after finishing her aerobics class in Santa Monica, then maybe heading home to see what the mail had brought, while checking her answering machine.
Her answering machine. It was probably still connected.
Over by the Blockbuster she saw a phone booth, and once there, she saw that the video store was having a 99-cent Susan Colgate tribute. She dialed her answering system's code numbers, figuring that the odds of anybody analyzing her phone account were minute. A series of bleeps revealed that she had five calls:
«Susan, this is Dreama. I did your numbers for you and boy, is Thursday going to be a heckuva lucky day for you. As your numerologist, I advise, no, I implore you to rush out and buy as many lottery tickets as possible — and once you win, treat me to a new set of brakes for this heap of mine that keeps breaking down. Dinner at Chin's next Tuesday. Gimme a call.»
* «Meese Colllllll gate … it's Ryan from West Side Video and you're six days overdue with The Breakfast Club and the Hitchcock three-pack. You know how cruel we can be to those who displease us. Oh, and I saw you in Dynamite Bay and you were really hot. Shoot. Now I've gone outside the boundaries by saying that to a customer, but still, you were really hot. I'm Ryan. Say hi next time you come in.»
* A satellite beep followed by the sounds of hanging up.
* Another satellite beep followed by sounds of hanging up.
* Another satellite beep followed by,«Sooz …» It was Chris and another beep and his voice sounded highly drunk and highly high. «I …» In the background was muffled German and the sounds of a bar or restaurant. «You …» Something dropped with a clink on the German end. «I guess it's time for walkies, honey.» A man's voice asked Chris who he was speaking with, and he replied, «Max, in Santa Barbara.» Chris breathed for a bit and then hung up.
Susan looked out onto the river, caramel and yellow under the dissolving yellow sundown. In the near distance she heard trucks and air brakes. Music blared from cars at the lot's other end — smoking, groping teens. She took her sports bag, hopped over a small pine shrub and walked down over cracked boulders and rusty industrial fossils to the river's edge. She tested the water with her fingers — cold, the temperature of a cheapskate's swimming pool. She then stripped off all her clothes and Karen Galvin's wig — wigs usually made her scalp itchy and sweaty in any role she played — and she gently walked into the Maumee River, her toes touching mud and rock, her inner legs electrified by the chill, her armpits flinching with shock, and then finally an otter's plunge into the brown broth, emerging far out in the middle, her head periscoping the view of Toledo. A short while later she washed her hair with Randy Montarelli's shampoo, then shook it dry. She dressed and rewigged herself.
Susan walked up the bank and over to a commercial strip of fast food, car dealerships and complex traffic lights. It was now almost dark, and she was hungry, and tired of the chocolate energy bars. She strolled the sidewalk-free neighborhood as if seeing her country for the first time — the signs and cars and lights and shop fronts bigger and brighter and more powerful than they needed to be. She caught whiffs of fried chicken and diesel fumes, but having spent her only quarters, she couldn't buy food. She was starving. She walked for hours. She passed eighty Wendy's, a hundred Taco Bells, seven hundred Exxons, and then she came up on her nine hundredth McDonald's, where she decided to use the bathroom.