Second Interlude Gwen, Under Arrest #5
Allie was especially pitiful, walking along with the full-head unicorn mask under one arm. Allie had always been the most
beautiful girl Gwen had ever known, but in the raw light of the early morning, her face swollen, her hair drab, she looked
twice her age and hard used.
Tana’s son, Jett, seven years old, sat on the bottom step of the bus, clutching a toy fire truck to his chest, but he leapt
to his feet in excitement when he saw them approaching, thrilled to see grown-ups dressed as idiots.
“Whadja get arrested for, Gwen?” Jett asked her.
“Crimes against fashion, most like,” Tana said, glancing at Gwen’s fur bikini. “Are you supposed to be a bear? Is that the
bottom part of a bear costume?”
Donna’s eyes were bright and blind, and she walked like she was balancing an invisible tray on her head, with a rolling gait
but a curious rigidity of the body. She staggered, and Gwen had to catch her elbow to steady her.
“Is she still drunk?” Tana wanted to know.
Gregg had wrapped one arm around his head. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I know I’m going to be sick,” Allie said, shuffling to a stop, bending at the waist, and clutching her knees.
Donna didn’t look back at him. “For Chrissake, don’t do it on the bus. Neither of you. If I have to smell it, I’ll puke too.
Hork it up out here, why don’t you?”
Sasha Pinet swooped in to intercept Gregg before he could follow Donna aboard. “Don’t worry. He’s coming with us. We’ll look
after him.”
“Good,” Donna said, without glancing at either of them. “Keep him. Fucker did nothing while my best friend got punched in the face.”
“She doesn’t mean that, man,” Van said, following Gregg across the parking lot, looking past the groom to Sasha. “She doesn’t
mean that, Mrs. Pinet. None of us slept. There was an angry drunk in the lockup who screamed abuse all night long.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Sasha Pinet said. “I’ve met her.”
Gwen couldn’t figure out why Van was trying to fix things for his sister while his wife got sick. Force of habit, she supposed.
Allie was making little sounds in her throat, sounds something like the coo of a dove, something like a cough. Tana stroked
Allie’s back, and when she began to vomit, she held her hair back out of the spray.
“You get it all up, hon,” Tana said. “Go on and cough up every bit of last night. Get it out your system and we’ll take you
somewhere and get some tea and warm toast in you.”
“Oh, no,” Allie moaned. “I got some on your shoes.”
“I drive third graders to school,” Tana said. “There isn’t a week goes by some eight-year-old doesn’t get sick all over them.”
Only Colin looked well. Colin looked as bright-eyed and fresh as if he had spent a night at the Four Seasons. He had an arm
over Arthur’s shoulders. “Let no one ever say that Arthur Oakes is a bore again. The man has a PhD in kicking ass.”
Then he turned his head to watch Sasha pile her son into the back of the Chevy Lumina with his sisters. Raymond Pinet lifted
his head at last to toss his toothpick.
“You’re a good boy, Donovan,” Raymond said. “But you are damn bad luck. And one of these days you’re going to be in a plane
crash you can’t walk away from. You and your sister both, maybe. Try and take better care of yourself, why don’t you?”
And he walked around the front of the Chevy, got behind the wheel, and drove his family away. Van watched them go, rubbing
the back of his neck.
“I think that’s that,” Arthur said, softly.
“Looks like it,” Gwen said. “Too bad, huh?”
“Is it?” Arthur said.
Gwen thought about it and gave her head a little shake.
“None of us are having much luck at finding our way to ‘happily ever after,’ are we?” Gwen said.
Arthur smiled at her and bumped his shoulder against hers. “I don’t think such a thing exists. Maybe there’s only happy-for-a-little-while,
old chum.”
“Old buddy,” Gwen said, and bumped him back.
Arthur and Gwen sat together in the back of the bus. She didn’t mean to fall asleep with her head on his bicep. It just happened,
before Tana even had a chance to pull out onto the road. At some point, Gwen was aware of Arthur rearranging her so her head
was pillowed on one of his thighs and his arm was over her shoulders.
She never slept in his arms again, but while it lasted, it was good.
8.
They drove her south in an ’84 Cadillac Brougham the color of infected piss. The guy behind the wheel, a US marshal of indeterminate
age, closely resembled the Kingpin from Marvel Comics: big bald head disappearing into a fat neck, ham hock forearms and massive
thighs. He had the look of a hard-ass but was soft-spoken and polite, and after three hours on the road, he pulled off the
interstate and bought them KFC. Daphne ate in the back and wiped her fingers on her reading material. His partner was a woman
of forty with the look of the prairie about her. Broad, pretty features, distant blue eyes, hair swept up. Their names were
Winkler and Fromm.
“What’s that you’re reading?” Fromm asked, a half hour after Kentucky Fried. When Daphne had finished, she had discarded the bones on the floor. They were scattered around her feet and sometimes when she moved, one would crunch under her heels.
“’Bout this plane nearly got blown out of the sky a couple years ago,” Daphne said. “By a UFO. Right over Greenland.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Winkler. “British Airways. I didn’t know it was UFOs. I thought it nearly got blown out of the sky by a white
nationalist named Randy Mathers. You must have better information than I do. Where’d you get the inside dope? The National Enquirer?”
They were making fun of her. Daphne was acutely conscious of being condescended to, and always had been. She didn’t mind,
though.
“Inside View,” she said placidly. “My daughter had friends on that flight. I woulda been heartbroke to lose ’em. I’d like to see ’em when
I’m out, tell ’em how much it means to me, that they looked after my girl while I was stuck inside.”
Fromm and Winkler exchanged another glance. Fromm said, “It’s going to be three years longer after that stunt you pulled in
Black Cricket. And I’ll tell you what, lady, the days don’t pass in West Virginia like they did in that summer camp you just
left. You want my advice, you’ll stay out of the heroin trade in FCI Hazelton. The Ecuadorians got that line locked up. Those
bitches don’t play.”
“Yep,” Daphne said. “Going to keep my nose clean, ma’am. Going to keep to scrapbooking.” She shuffled through the little stack
of newsprint she kept folded into a book stolen from the Black Cricket library, a book she had no interest in and had never
bothered to read, The Once and Future King. There were three articles about BA 238, including a People feature covering the marriage of two passengers in the days shortly after the near disaster. There were articles snipped
from Spin and Rolling Stone, all by the same journalist. There was a profile of a glamorous Fox New York news reporter. There was a news report about
a Maine EMT who volunteered at a Podomaquassy hospice. There were a few academic articles by a professor in medieval literature.
There was a piece from the Wall Street Journal about a young hedge fund manager from Podomaquassy who had staked out big positions in eBay and some other internet start-ups.
“I like to know what the kids I left are doing with their lives. I like to think about them. Makes me feel like I got something
to look forward to.”
Saying their names to herself, a recitation she had come to find comforting. The names never failed to lift her spirits. Saying
them, she always felt like a bullet that had been fired into the future—no, somehow she was six bullets, fired into the next
century. Fired at them.
Colin Wren.
Donna McBride.
Donovan McBride.
Allison Shiner.
Gwen Underfoot.
Arthur Oakes.