Alice DuPont lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of an old one, passed Chuck a bottle of Old Parr scotch, and stomped on the gas, pushing the Corvette up to ninety miles an hour. “That’s good stuff,” she said. “Aged twelve years. My soon-to-be-ex-husband distributes the crap. Go ahead, have a pull. There’s more in the trunk.”
Chuck took a drink and passed the bottle back. He wasn’t sure if Alice DuPont was tipsy or flat-out crazy, but for the moment, his fate was intertwined with hers and there was nothing to be done about it except settle back and watch South Carolina flash past. On the one hand he felt happy. With every passing mile he was putting distance between himself and Patricia. On the other – and that’s the problem with the other hand, it jumps in at inopportune moments – he was nagged by a vision of her lying in the bathtub with her wrists slashed. (Years later when her book came out he would learn that Patricia had indeed tried to do herself in by swallowing forty-seven aspirin tablets.)
Alice looked to be in her early 50’s though it was hard to be certain because her face was puffy from crying. Her hair was reddish-brown and naturally curly. Her eyes were blue, sad, and bloodshot. Even before she started talking about the tangled mess her life had become, Chuck sensed her sadness and pain; the story was etched in the lines around her eyes and in the furrows between her eyebrows.
Alice began by saying, “My husband is a miserable, duplicitous bastard, a liar, a cheat and a thief. He stole the prime of my life from me. Twenty-four years of marriage and only this morning do I discover that the sonofabitch has a second family, in Scotland, where he spends half the year on business. Can you believe that crap? Pretty young wife, two small kids, a house, a dog, the whole nine yards. In Scotland. I’d kill him if I thought I could get away with it, I really would. I’d slice his dick off and feed it to his dog. That stuff about a woman scorned is true, though I suppose you’re too young to understand. But you will and I’d bet my last dollar that one day you’ll do the same damn thing to some poor, unsuspecting girl. Men are no better than pigs! Here, have another drink!”
Chuck had another swig and handed the bottle back.
“What are you running away from?” Alice asked.
“The circus,” Chuck said. “I’m a high-wire man but the gig was getting to be a drag, so I asked the boss if I could try my hand at taming the lion. He said no, so I split.”
“Sounds like a load of crap to me,” Alice said. “Don’t most people run away to join the circus?”
“Not me.”
Alice grunted. “You travel light. Looks like you left in a hurry. Maybe the fire-eater was chasing you?”
“It was the bearded lady, all three hundred and ten pounds of her. She wanted me, I wasn’t into her, it was an awkward situation that affected my concentration and when your job is the high-wire, the last thing you need is a distraction like that. It was time for me to bail.”
“Aren’t you a clever one,” Alice said dryly. “I can see why she was hot for you.”
“What can I say? People who defy death for a living have a certain aura about them.”
“Christ. What a load of crap. You’re a born bullshitter, aren’t you?”
“What’s in New York City?” Chuck asked.
“My brother, Sam, the only sane member of my entire family. He lives in the Village with his wife and daughter, plays the sax for a living. Sweet, big-hearted Sammy, who managed to escape the genetic madness that plagues our family. Now Jan, my sister, who I’m on my way to visit if I can remember where she lives, is as eccentric as the day is long. Even when we were kids she was off. She got married right out of high school, moved to Oregon, decided one day that she wanted to be a lesbian, divorced her husband and moved to Manitoba with her new lover. That lasted four or five years, until Jan decided that being a lesbian wasn’t for her after all. She moved to Seattle and met a Chinese engineer by the name of Hai Le Chang. Chang was about five feet tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds soaking wet, a computer geek who designed software for Boeing. Hai had some sexual issues, liked to be spanked, dressed in a diaper, that sort of thing. Oh, we’re a colorful dysfunctional family all right. You want to jump out?”
“Not yet,” Chuck said. “Where are we?”
They were driving in the suburbs now, in a town called Goose Creek, past modest homes on generous lots, tree-lined streets, all-American, picket fences and bicycles in the yard, RV’s parked alongside the houses.
“Do you know how Jan decided to move here?” Alice asked. “She threw a dart at a map of the United States and without a second thought packed her things in a U-Haul and came here. She keeps a Great Dane for protection. She also has a python named Monty that lives under her bed.”
Chuck spotted Jan’s house before Alice did, not that it was hard to pick out. Sweetwater Street was neat and orderly, spilling over with middle-class pride, until suddenly one house ruined the entire mosaic, Jan’s place, of course. There was a 1962 VW Bug in the driveway, sitting on its rims, dented and splattered with bird droppings, speckled with rust; a life-size bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, saber drawn and ready to defend the Old South against all comers, stood on the front lawn. General Lee was surrounded by the weirdest collection of stuff Chuck had ever seen: wrought-iron birds, clay jaguars, a toilet sunk in a flower bed, a claw-footed bathtub full of bicycle tires, a lamp post, golf clubs, aluminum baseball bats, lobster traps, a full-size trampoline; a male mannequin with a noose around its neck hung from a tree; another mannequin, this one headless, sat in a rocking chair on the porch pointing a toy gun at passers-by.
“She’s a junk collector?” Chuck said as Alice parked.
“No, just a crazy woman. The neighbors have been trying to boot her out of here for years, but Jan won’t budge. Annoying people gives her pleasure. Steel yourself, young man. Have another drink. We’re about to enter the Twilight Zone.”
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