Page 26 of Road Refugees

I exhaled loudly. “Yeah. Well. Not like that’ll ever happen. Thanks for telling me, Arkie. I mean Sock Monkey.” I giggled. My grief for my father had ended. He wasn’t even due that one minute of sorrow. “I’m going to see you tomorrow! Tell me where to meet you so I can tell my chauffeur.”

“Sock Monkey” told me to meet him at an indoor archery range called the Hip Quiver, of all things, and I laughed. If that name was typical of this new town, then I was all in. The new Heaven was hip, breezy, took things as they came. Hell, maybe now that I’d found Arkie, I would change my name! Why couldn’t sweetbutts have street names, too?

“Bye, Arkie,” I whispered. “See you soon.”

“Come on,” said Bee, who’d been standing behind me. “Let’s get you some wine. You like wine?”

Boy, did I like wine! She put the bottle and a couple of glasses on the coffee table then vanished with her buff husband. I was itching to get at the wine because I didn’t feel sufficiently lubricated, especially not to talk with Town, who was getting to me more and more. Why was a guy I’d just met that morning so important to me? I had to find out. Instead, we stood there idiotically staring at each other.

At last I made a lunge for the glass, plopping myself on the couch.

“I’m glad you found your brother,” said Town, still standing. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go tomorrow.”

“He said he lives in a tiny apartment above an archery range.” I had no idea why I said that. But my coverup was even worse. I took a big glug of the wine and said, “Where will you be staying, with your friend Crybaby?”

“Nah,” said Town, finally sitting next to me. “Crybaby lives with his brother. There’s no room for me. There’s got to be some hotel or Airbnb.”

“What’s an Airbnb?” I asked, gulping some more. That was when it hit me. I was starting to feel the way I felt on the highway outside Cornucopia. You know, before I staggered and passed out in the middle of the road. I put my glass onto the table. I wanted the happy buzz to last, not the passing out part.

Town chuckled at me! I knew I was a moron and would keep running into these things I knew nothing of. “I keep forgetting,” he said, “that you’ve been apart from the world for a long time. It’s like a bed and breakfast, but with private people offering their homes.”

I made a circle in the air with my forefinger. “I’ll bet these Bare Bones guys have all sorts of places like that.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve heard they’ve got a whole hotel up by Mormon Lake. They call it a bud and breakfast because they’ve always allowed smoking weed. Maybe I’ll stay there. I need an environment like that, after all . . . all I’ve done.” Leaning forward, he laced his fingers together, like an official army captain. I could see him ordering people around. He had that steely jaw and flashing, black eyes. “How’d you wind up with the Friends of Distinction?”

“Oh, right. Well, you see . . . My husband used to give me Mickey Finns in order to, you know, use me.”

His handsome face fell. “Oh, God. Chloral hydrate. That’s horrible.”

“Well, no, I welcomed the Mickey Finn part. It made me forget, especially when mixed with alcohol.”

“Ah,” he said, as if now he understood why I drank so much. “But if he wasn’t doing that, you wouldn’t have needed the chloral hydrate.”

That was true. “So apparently the other night I, ah, blacked out, and walked outside the compound with no one noticing me. I came to on a bus stop bench. But then I began, ah, feeling weird while walking. Apparently, I fainted in the middle of the highway, and Byron Riddlesberger found me. Luckily he had a sidecar for puppies he brings to people—”

“Puppies? What kind?”

“You know, I don’t know. He breeds them and brings them to buyers.” I left out the part where he’d stack them in cages per Orchid. With Linus lying at our feet, his black marble eyes looking up at us, I didn’t need to bring that up. I ruffled Linus’ head with my fingertips.

“Well,” huffed Town indignantly. “That doesn’t redeem him in my eyes. What I saw inside that empty store was enough to convince me. I needed to get you out of there.”

“And thank you for that!” I almost put my hands on his muscular chest. Fear stabbed me, fear of intimacy. I grabbed my wine glass instead and gulped some more.

Town said, “Sounds like you went out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Well, no more. Once I get situated with Arkie, I’m never leaving his side.”

“Good. You like to farm.”

I had to think. Did I like to farm? I sure had been talking a lot about it lately. “Well, yes. I think I liketo work. A woman’s work is never done, you know. I’d wash and dry dishes while Orson smoked his pipe.”

“I’d never do that,” Town insisted. “I work as much as a woman, if not more so. Though I might smoke the pipe.”

Well! “I made moonshine, too,” I admitted. “It was a dark brown and smelled like burning explosives. When you drank it, lights would flash like pinballs.” That ‘shine had buoyed me through many horrifying days and nights.

“Pinballs,” Town echoed, grinning.

Oh, good God. I just showed my age. But I knew of no video games to compare the feeling to.