The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (6 page)

"This is an occasion," he says. "We should
celebrate." This is another thing Trevor likes. He'll celebrate anything--the
vernal equinox, Secretary's Day, not having to get X-rays at the
dentist.

"What do you have in mind?" I say. I lick the
inside of his ear, which usually drives him crazy, but he isn't even thinking
that direction.

"Let's drive up to the falls. Let Bob turn
three hundred thousand in a special place." Bob is the Mustang's name. Bob
Weaver, like bob and weave, because of the time he needed a new axle, and the
car curved and swerved all over the road.

"Great." I buckle up. People who drive without
seat belts are asking for trouble, and I didn't want to end up as one of those
sad yearbook pictures of the kid who died. On the freeway, the air whooshes at
us, smelling good enough to eat, sweet and warm as ripe blackberries, and my
hair whips around my face and catches in my mouth. Trevor turns some music on,
that heavy metal crap that's his favorite, all electric guitar and not acoustic,
but it's his celebration so I don't complain.

"I feel like we're lacking something here," I
shout.

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"Wha'dya say?" Trevor shouts. We head down
I-90, toward the Snoqualmie Falls exit.

I turn the music down. "It's a monumental day
for Bob. Let's spice things up."

"Hats?" Trevor suggests. See, before I insisted
he get straight, he would've said,
A toke?
Or,
Tequila?
I didn't
want some guy who was all smeary and glazey who wasn't
present.
Hey, I
could've conversed with my lava lamp if I wanted that. I wanted what was
real.

"Nah," I say. "I'll know it when I see
it."

Trevor shrugs. We keep driving. We pass a
storage rental facility, a couple of coffee stands, a museum set in a train car,
a place where they sell garden statues.
A place where they sell garden
statues!

"Trevor. Turn around. Look." Trevor flips a U
right there. Arcs into the gravel of the lot, tires crunching. He knows I love
walking up and down the outdoor aisles of those places, checking out five-foot
cement ladies holding cement urns spilling cement water, plaster frogs,
birdbaths, and tiki heads big enough to scare God. "Let's find someone to ride
in the backseat."

"Cool." He shrugs again.

We meander along the paths, to the sound of
trickling fountain water and the
kershun-kershunk
of gravel under our
feet. "A gnome?" I suggest, mostly because he's small and affordable and I like
his red hat.

"Nah. Gnomes go on trips all the time. You know
those gnomes that get abducted from some old lady's garden and then she starts
getting postcards with his picture from the Eiffel Tower? Shit like
that."

"Yeah, you're right." We crunch along a bit
more, X-ing out huge mermaids and enormous lions for obvious reasons. Trevor's
strong, but hey.

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We're in the Buddha aisle. Big,
bowling-ball-tummied ones that smile like they're up to something nonreligious,
huge head-only's, with dangly earrings that are fashion don'ts for anyone. Then
I see them on a table--medium-size Buddhas sitting cross-legged and wearing
tall, bumpy hats. Their faces are long and graceful and missing the pudge of the
others. Plus, they look like chick Buddhas, not guys, if that's possible. My
knowledge of Buddhas is on the slim side.

"How about her?" I point.

"Is it a him or a her?"

"I can't exactly tell."

"Lift it up and look underneath," Trevor says,
and chuckles. "Hey, sure, why not? She'll look good later in your mom's front
yard."

There are about twelve of the same figure on
the table, and we check them all out to find the best one. She's heavier than
she looks when I carry her over to the sales guy.

"We better make sure she's not some fertility
god or something," Trevor says, and pinches my butt. "What's her name?" he asks
the chubby man who's drinking a Fresca behind the cash register.

"Ron," the guy says. Trevor and I look at each
other and we try not to crack up. We both realize the guy has just misheard
Trevor and told us his own name. He fishes around behind the counter, puts the
statue in a Budweiser box, and hands her over. Trevor carries the box and sets
it in the backseat.

"Buckle Ron in for safety," I say, and Trevor
snorts a laugh. He buckles the seatbelt around the Budweiser box, and off we go.
It feels more festive now that there are three of us.

Trevor heads to the falls. The music is back
on, and we are in

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the cool, damp air of the forest, curving
toward the top of the falls, where a hotel and visitor's center sit at the
cliff's edge. "Two hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-eight," he
announces. "I want it to change right by the falls." Trevor eats up another mile
finding his perfect location. He has a mile left, and drives forward and back
about seven times before he uses enough mileage to fulfill his goal. Already,
two cars have honked at us, and a motorcycle roars past in a pissed-off
fashion.

"Here goes," Trevor says. "Three. Hundred.
Thousand." He rolls neatly to the side of the road, where our view of the falls
is perfect. The water is meringue white, frothy, steamy, thunderous. I can feel
mist on my face.

Trevor kisses me, and his mouth is warm. After
a long while, we come up for air. "How you doing back there, Ron," Trevor
asks.

I'd forgotten about Ron the Buddha. I look back
at her, and she seems so serious with her head sticking up over the Budweiser
box that I crack up.

"We're going to have to start saving for his
college," Trevor says.

"With her grades?" I say.

"His. Hers. Hermaphrodite Buddha," Trevor says.
It's a compromise. We drive back to the visitor's center, stand with the
tourists, and watch the falls roar and crash. I sneak my way into the background
of at least four videos, so that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of
the camera owners will have yours truly saved for posterity.

We lean over the railing, let our faces get
whispered with water. "Where are all the places you've laid your head?" I ask
Trevor. The question has been nagging at me, hangnail-like; every

43

time I think I've forgotten about it, it
catches on a thread. Maybe I've been mentally flicking it back and forth with my
finger all along without realizing it.

"That's a Funny question," Trevor says. I can
tell he doesn't mean ha-ha funny, but Coyote funny. He knows she asks questions
like that sometimes.

"Yeah. But I got to thinking. I haven't been
anywhere."

"You've been to Hawaii to visit your Dad. I've
never even been on a plane," he says.

"Tell me your places," I say. I put my hand
into his back pocket and bring him closer to me, maybe because I feel a little
superior in this regard.

"Home," Trevor says. "And all those sleepovers
when you're a kid. Benjamin Cassova's basement. I slept in the woods once.
Stoned. Woke up with, like, a million mosquito bites."

"Serves you right. I forgot about
sleepovers."

"Did you ever put someone's pinky in a water
glass while they slept 'cause it was supposed to make them pee?"

"Yeah. And Ouija boards. Oooh, ooh," I say,
making ghostly noises. I tickle Trevor, who grabs my wrists.

"East, west, home is best," Trevor
says.

"I think we're limited human beings," I
say.

"I've got you," he says. "That's all I need.
With you, there's no limit."

"How about I drive back?" I say.

"Oh, In, you know I love you. But you only made
it to your eighteenth birthday because you didn't have a car."

"I'm an excellent driver," I say.

"You took out an entire line of traffic cones
in a construction zone last time I let you."

44

"Two cones. Three. Big deal."

"Forget it, gorgeous."

Trevor takes me home. Me, Bob Weaver, and Ron
the Buddha. My heart is still and satisfied. Wait, not
still
--that would
be a bad thing. Calm. Calm and satisfied. There's nothing else I desire right
then--not a sweatshirt to be warmer or a T-shirt to be cooler or a Coke or a
vacation or stereo speakers or one of those wacky sets of spoons from every
state of the union. What I am is happy. And maybe that's the closest definition
for the word we can get, a life equation: An absence of wanting equals
happiness.

I had stuck the plate of Mom's pie in the
Budweiser box, so Ron is holding it in her lap. Mrs. Denholm next door pretends
to get her mail even though it is Sunday, peering my way and no doubt thrilled
that she's caught me in a shocking display of teen alcohol consumption. Trevor
heads home; he'd promised his mom he'd fix the wobbly day care swing before she
got sued.

I don't see Bex anywhere and Severin is gone
too, but I hear Mom talking on the phone in the kitchen. Actually, she stands in
the back doorway, the screen door propped open with a toe. She has her eye on
the backyard as she speaks. "No, I don't want to do that," she says. "Too scary.
Then you got to pay it back at what, three hundred bucks a month?" Envelopes and
papers are spread all over the kitchen table. Mom hears me, turns, and gives a
puzzled look toward the box in my arms. I give her an
I'll-explain-later
shrug, set it on the floor, and put the pie in the fridge.

"Quick, talk to Bomba," Mom says, and hands
over the phone. "That goddamned cat." I can see what she's looking at now.
Freud, meowing pitifully from a high tree branch. He's a sociopath toddler who's
just painted on the walls and is now trying

45

to hide his purposeful intent behind
innocence.

"Goddamned cat," Chico says in his parrot
mini-clown voice. "Goddamned cat. Goddamned cat."

"Hi, Bomba," I say.

"Is everything okay?" Bomba says. She and Mom
both answer the phone this way, as if they're on permanent crisis-car-crash high
alert. Still, it's great to hear Bomba--even her worried voice is as cushy and
comfy as a beanbag chair.

"Umm ..." I look outside. "Freud's in a tree,"
I say. "Oh God, Mom's standing on a lawn chair. Mom should never stand on
anything."

"Maybe you better go help her." Bomba sounds
nervous.

I watch. "She's waving a flip-flop at him. He's
not moving. No, wait. Here we go. Freud's found reverse. He's backing up. Okay.
He's down. She's ... Whoa, hang on. O-kay. She's down too. Incident
over."

Bomba sighs. "So, how are ya? How's
Trevor?"

"Everyone's great," I say. "Trevor's car just
turned three hundred thousand miles."

"Man, I know how that feels. My
body's
just turned three hundred thousand miles."

"Come on, you're a spring chicken," I say.
"Maybe you're a summer chicken, there in Arizona."

"I'm a summer chicken bored out of my skull. Do
you know how annoying endless sunshine is? How's school?"

"One and a half more months and I blow the
joint for good."

"As long as you're not puffing any joints," she
says.

"Bomba! God. You're not supposed to know about
that stuff."

"Right. I forgot," she says. "The sixties never
happened. I don't know about sex either. Your mother and uncle were conceived
by

46

immaculate conception. No, wait. Actually,
immaculate misconception."

"Imagine trying to fly all that stuff by today?
Sure, I'm pregnant, but it's not how it looks. God did it, when I was just
minding my own business. I was sleeping, yeah. I wasn't even aware anything was
happening. Ri-ight."

"Covering up some hanky-panky, yesiree," Bomba
says. "Listen to us heathens. Lightning's gonna strike."

"Wait, here's Mom."

"Love you, girl," Bomba says.

"Love you, Bomba." I hand the phone back over.
Mom's forehead is sweaty. Freud saunters in all cool and swingy as if maybe
we've already forgotten his panicky tango up there in the tree.

"Nice try," I say to him as he strolls toward
the living room.

"Here, kitty, kitty," Chico says. But it's too
late. Freud is already gone.

Our house used to have a garage but didn't
anymore and that's how we each had our own rooms. You walked through Bex's room
to get to mine. She isn't in there, though, so I step over her clothes on the
floor and her pj's and her old stuffed dog, Syphilis, who she had since she was
four, and her most recent school project, a diorama of a scene from
Holes.

I lie on my bed, on this Mexican blanket my dad
sent from some trip he took a few years ago. It has this mildly icky wool smell
that I love. I'm lying there for, like, a second and then pop up because I'm
already bored at being still. Being a waitress, everything goes so fast; normal
life seems as fast-paced as government-access television.