Road to Paradise. Paullina Simons

she told us our ready-to-emit radioactive fumes nuclear reactor was nothing more than a cooling tower for a regular Indiana power company generator. We lost interest in shopping after that. It was only fun when we thought we were being risk-takers, living life on the edge. “How long do you think to St. Louis from here?” I asked the BCBG cashier, as I was giving her money for my new white shorts. “A few hours, right?”

      “St. Louis, Missouri? Try eight hours. It’s about 400 miles from here. Probably longer, what with the rush-hour traffic near Chicago.”

      Eight hours! It couldn’t be! Mealy-mouthed, I said, “You said, St. Louis, Missouri. Is there perhaps another St. Louis? Somewhere in Michigan, maybe?”

      Dejected we walked back to the car. “Some map reader you are,” Gina criticized.

      “Yes, and your help was invaluable,” I snapped. “Now what are we going to do? We’re never going to find that house in the dark. Aunt Betty said.”

      “Let’s try.”

      “Try what? We couldn’t figure out the mileage on a map in broad daylight!” I wanted to get on the highway and drive until I hit the ocean on the other side. Just stay on one straight road. Gas? Right there. Food? Right there. Lodging? There, too. Everything, anything right at my fingertips. I wouldn’t even need a map.

      We let the dogs out on a patch of grass. They were panting, rat-like, sniffing dandelions. Did rats pant? It was hot, it was four p.m. There was no way we could arrive at a stranger’s doorstep at midnight. Resigned to a night on the road, we decided to take the dogs and ourselves swimming. We would take the gateway to the west from St. Louis to get to California. Aunt Betty said. We each picked up a mutt and headed toward the car.

      In the parking lot, with Chihuahuas in our hands, we passed a group of guys getting out of a pick-up truck. I instantly recognized one of them as the “Todd” I’d been with last night. “Todd!” I called, to get his attention. Hey! Look in my direction. Nudging Gina, I motioned toward them, about ten yards away. “Todd!” Gina said to her own “Todd”, but louder. No one looked up. They were laughing, talking among themselves. They glanced peripherally at us, as in, we’re five guys, none of us is named Todd, and there are two chicks with dogs in our path. I waved, and they waved back, said something to each other, laughed heartily, passed us and walked on. Gina and I stopped walking. I looked at her, stupefied.

      “What?” she said. “They were with their friends.”

      “They were.” And last night was dark, and we were dressed differently, and so were they. It was loud; there was Sloe gin. But still. The following day, in broad daylight, a young, well-groomed, smart young man, who not twelve hours earlier had Biblical parts of him inside Biblical parts of me, passed me in a parking lot and didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know who I was. We could’ve shaken hands last night. I could have served him a drink. I could’ve sold him gum at the local gas station, and he would’ve walked by me slower today, he would’ve paused for the briefest moment to say, gee, you look familiar. Don’t I know you from somewhere? Oh, yeah. Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. Todd didn’t do any of that. No young man and young woman could have been more intimate, and yet, he passed me in an outlet mall and didn’t know me. I wasn’t even a stain on his memory like he was on mine.

      “Unbelievable.”

      “I know,” said Gina. “But look, we agreed to take the dogs. We took her money. Spent some of it. We can’t go back now.”

      After a moment’s silence at the gasping realization of how far Gina’s thoughts had been from mine, I said, “No, of course. We have no choice. Let’s go.”

      I cared less about the dogs now, about St. Louis. My heart began to hurt a little bit.

      Slowly I started up the car, and we rolled on.

      “I’ll give you my share of the $300,” Gina said, “if that’ll make you feel better.”

      That wasn’t what was making me feel bad.

      “Gina, doesn’t it bother you that they didn’t recognize us?”

      “Couldn’t care less. Hey, turn here. We’ll go swimming.”

      Reluctantly, I turned into a deserted National Dunes Park; in the car, like ferrets in a sack, we changed into our bathing suits and set off for the beach. The only thing that saved the dogs from immersion was the 126-foot, 80-degree incline sand dune that neither Gina nor I could climb while holding them. And what saved us from swimming after we struggled up Mount Baldy like Edmund Hillary and his Tonto was that the lake was another half a mile of sand away. We stood asthmatically at the crest of the dune. Lake Michigan didn’t look like any lake I’d ever seen—it was like an ocean with white sand.

      “Did you know that Lake Michigan is our largest lake?” said Gina. “It’s the only Great Lake entirely within U.S. borders. It’s got 1100 cubic miles of water in it.”

      “What I would give for a pint of that water right now.” I was so hot.

      “You and the Chihuahuas. Imagine how thirsty they are.”

      “Maybe it’s best we didn’t bring them. What if they couldn’t swim?”

      “All animals can swim,” said Gina. “Even cows can swim.”

      That made me laugh. She always somehow managed that, to say something supremely silly.

      We slid down 130 feet on our butts back to the parking lot. Sandy, hot and exhausted, though we’d done nothing all day, we got back to the car, and while the crazy dogs were running around the pine needles chased by Gina, I examined the map, trying to get my bearings, control things. I had been looking just at the road to St. Louis, but when I traced the road from St. Louis to California, I quickly realized we had a bigger problem than driving a few extra hundred miles south. The Interstate out of St. Louis west to California was I-70, but when I-70 got to the middle of Utah, it just sort of dissipated. Broke into a dozen little pieces that became other roads that headed north and south, but not west to the Pacific coast, not west to Mendocino.

      “I knew it,” I said to Gina when she returned, panting. “I may know nothing, but I knew we had to stay on I-80. From the beginning I said so. George Washington Bridge to San Francisco, that was my planned route. But no. We had to go all the way to Maryland, and come all the way back, and now we have to go all the way to St. Louis and come all the way back. We have to make an 800-mile detour. Eight hundred miles!” I shook my head. “This is crazy. Why, oh why, did I agree to something this stupid? Plus two days’ time driving to De Soto!” My voice was so high, I sounded like somebody’s exasperated parent, trying to explain why mumsie couldn’t just drop everything and buy her darling a pony. We can’t. We can’t. We can’t. “It’ll cost us more than 300 bucks and we’ll lose two days. That’s if we find this little De Soto. It’s in St. Louis, the way New Jersey is near New York.”

      But it was impotent rage. I couldn’t go back to Aunt Betty’s, and I knew it.

      Gina looked composed and unconcerned; she rubbed my arm, said shh, tried to use a soothing voice, as if she were now the mumsie, and I was the unreasonable tot demanding a pony. “It’s fine,” she said. “We’ll be okay. So we’ll go to St. Louis? What’s a couple of days in the scheme of things? I’ve never been to St. Louis. Don’t you want to see the Arch? We can go all the way to the top. Did you know it’s the world’s tallest man-made monument, at 630 feet?”

      I was so tired. I wished Gina, all perky and bubbly, could drive so I could sleep. If horses were wishes.

FOUR

1

       Candy

      We