Pallas had stumbled off the escalator in a light panic, rushing to the doors, outside which Carlos was waiting for her. The revolting woman's singsong merged with the carols piping throughout the store: "Here's pussy. Want some pussy, pussy."
"Ma-a-a-vis!"
Mavis wouldn't look at her. Gigi always uglied up her name, pulling it out like a string of her sticky bubble gum. "Can't you go over ten miles an hour? Cha-rist!"
"Car needs a new fan belt. And I'm not going to take it over forty," said Mavis.
"Ten. Forty. It's like walking." Gigi sighed.
"Maybe I'll just pull over here and let you see what walking's like.
Want me to?"
"Don't fuck with me. Drag me out to that bummer… Did you see that guy, Sen? Menus. The one who shit himself when he stayed with us?"
Seneca nodded. "He didn't say anything mean, though."
"He didn't stop them either," said Gigi. "All that puke, that shit I cleaned up."
"Connie said he could stay. And we all cleaned it," said Mavis, "not just you. And nobody dragged you. You didn't have to go. "
"He had the d. t.'s, for crying out loud."
"Close your window, please, Mavis?" Seneca asked.
"Too much wind back there?"
"She's shaking again. I think she's cold."
"It's ninety degrees! What the hell is the matter with her?" Gigi scanned the trembling girl.
"Should I stop?" asked Mavis. "She might throw up again."
"No, don't stop. I'll hold her." Seneca arranged Pallas in her arms, rubbing the goose-bumpy arms. "Maybe she's carsick. I thought the party would cheer her up some. Looks like it made her worse."
"That stupid, fucked-up town make anybody puke. I can't believe that's what they call a party. Hymns, for crying out loud!" Gigi laughed.
"It was a wedding party, not a disco." Mavis wiped the perspiration forming under her neck. "Besides, you just wanted to see your love pony again."
"That asshole?"
"Yeah. Him." Mavis smiled. "Now he's married, you want him back."
"If I want him back I can get him back. What I want is to leave this fucking place."
"You've been saying that for four years-right, Sen?" Gigi opened her mouth, then paused. Was it four? She thought two. But at least two were spent fooling around with K. D., the prick. Had she let him keep her that long promising to get enough money to take her away? Or was it some other promise that kept her there? Of trees entwined near cold water. "Yeah, well, now I'm for real," she told Mavis, and hoped she really was.
After a grunt of disbelief from Mavis, the car was silent again. Pallas let her head rest on Seneca's breasts, wishing they were gone and that instead Carlos' hard, smooth chest supported her cheek as it had whenever she wanted for seven hundred miles. Her sixteenth-birthday gift, a red Toyota with a built-in eight-track tape deck, was crammed with Christmas presents. Things anybody's mother would like, but in a variety of colors and styles because she couldn't take a chance on having nothing that would please a woman she had not seen in thirteen years. Driving off with Carlos at the wheel just before Christmas was a holiday trip to see her mother. Not running away from her father; not eloping with the coolest, most gorgeous man in the world. Everything had been carefully planned: items were hidden, movements camouflaged, lest Providence, the eagle-eyed housekeeper, or her brother, Jerome, see. Her father wasn't around enough to notice anything. He was a lawyer with a small client list, but two were bigtime crossover black entertainers. As long as Milton Truelove kept them on top, he didn't need to acquire more, although he kept a lookout eye for other young performers who might hit the charts and stay there.
With Carlos' help it was as easy as it was exciting: the lies told to her girlfriends had to be cemented; the items left behind had to signal return, not escape (driver's license-a duplicate-her teddy bears, watch, toiletries, jewelry, credit cards). This last made it necessary to do massive check cashing and shopping on the very day they drove away. She wanted to buy more, much more, for Carlos, but he insisted otherwise. He never took presents from her in all the time she knew him-four months. Wouldn't even let her buy meals. He would close his beautiful eyes and shake his head as though her offer saddened him. Pallas had met him in the school parking lot the day her Toyota wouldn't start. Actually met him that day but had seen him many times. He was the movie-star-looking maintenance man at her high school. All the girls went creamy over him. The day he pressed the accelerator to the floor, telling Pallas her gas line was flooded, was the beginning. He offered to follow her home in his Ford to make sure she didn't stall out again. She didn't and he waved goodbye. Pallas brought him a present-an album-the next day and had trouble making him accept it. "Only if you let me buy you a chili dog," he said.
Pallas' mouth had gone felt with the thrill of it all. They saw each other every weekend after that. She did everything she could think of to get him to make love to her. He responded passionately to their necking but for weeks never allowed more. He was the one who said, "When we are married."
Carlos was not a janitor, really. He sculpted, and when Pallas told him about her painter mother and where she lived, he smiled and said it was a perfect place for an artist. The whole thing fell into place. Carlos could leave his job with little outcry during the holidays. Milton Truelove would be extra busy with clients' parties, showcase concerts and television deals. Pallas searched through years of birthday and Christmas cards from her mother for the most recent address, and the lovers were off without a hitch or a cloud. Except for the crazy black woman ruining the Christmas carols.
Pallas snuggled Seneca's breasts, which, although uncomfortable, diluted the chill racking her. The women in the front seat were quarreling again, in high-pitched voices that hurt her head.
"Exhibitionist bitch! Soane is a friend of ours. What do I tell her now?"
"She's Connie's friend. Nothing to do with you."
"I'm the one sell her the peppers, make up her tonic…."
"Whazzat make you, a chemist? It's just rosemary, a little bran mixed with aspirin."
"Whatever it is, it's my responsibility."
"Only when Connie's drunk."
"Keep your nasty mouth off her. She never drank till you came."
"That's what you say. She even sleeps in the wine cellar."
"Her bedroom is down there! You're such a fool."
"She's not a maid anymore. She could sleep upstairs if she wanted.
She just wants to be close to that liquor is all."
"God, I hate your guts."
Seneca intervened in a soft voice designed for harmony. "Connie's not drunk. She's unhappy. She should have come with us, though. It would have been different."
"It was fine. Just fine!" said Gigi. "Till those fucking preacher types came over." She lit a fresh cigarette from a dying one.