Miss Wyoming Part 23

"s.h.i.+t. Like I'm the person to speak? Thirty-seven and single.But I did make The Other Side of Hate, and you know why itbombed?"

"Why?"

"Because I thought I could fake it. It was so humiliatingwhen it tanked. People think I don't care, but I do. Those reviewswere just-ouch."

"But now?"

"I guess the thing about exposing your heart is that peoplemay not even notice it. Like a flop movie. Or they'll borrowyour heart and they'll forget to return it to you."

The air between the two of them was thick and warm like ina tent. Neither knew what to say next. Ryan came in out ofbreath. "Try finding a taxi in L.A. My car battery's dead." Hemade does-he-know?

eyebrows at Vanessa. She shook her head.John had the desperate look of somebody who's about to quit ajob they've held for twenty years.

Vanessa explained to him what an MSP was-a complexcomputer program, the opposite of a SpellCheck-a Mis-SpellCheck. The premise of the MSP is that all people con-sistently misspell the same words over and over, no matterhow good a typist a person might be. Misspelling patternsare idiosyncratic-unique like fingerprints, and the MSPalso takes into account punctuation patterns, rhythms andspeeds.

"You could log on as Suzanne Pleshette or Daffy Duck, b.u.t.the MSP will identify you after about two hundred fifty words.It's so finely tweaked, it can tell you whether you're having yourperiod or if your fingernails need tr.i.m.m.i.n.g."

John asked why the cops hadn't run an MSP already. Vanessasaid: "This is hush-hush stuff, John.They only do it if they thinkyou might be linked to a missing plutonium brick or to traceyou if they think you're violating your position in the wit-ness protection program. It's not a standard security check, let alone for a starlet missing a few days. It also sucks up so muchmemory that all the in-office computers develop Alzheimer's while it's in use."

John slapped a $100 bill on the table. "Come on," he said."We're going to Vanessa's office."

John and Ryan were in the car following Vanessa. Johnphoned Ivan to see if he'd fly them in his jet stowed not far away at Santa Monica Airport. John could feel Ivan's sigh on the otherend. "To go where, John-O?"

"Wyoming, probably-I'm only guessing. For Susan."

Ivan hesitated. If nothing else, the Susan Colgate fixation hadbrought John back from the dead after Flagstaff. "There's theEuropean marketing meeting for Mega Force this afternoon. Yousaid you'd be here." Ivan was silent a moment, then spoke."Okay, John-O."

"Great. We'll be on the tarmac in a half hour."

It was a brainless sunny day, and the high noon sun flattened out the world. The trees looked like plastic and the pedestrianslike mannequins. Patches of shade formed deep holes. Asarranged, Vanessa parked her car in her company's lot whileJohn and Ryan parked across the street, "it's Security City in there," said Ryan. "They don't just take your picture when youdrive in there. They take your dental X-ray."

"Do you have any idea whatVanny's doing right now, Ryan? She's going to get fired for using this MSP thing."

Ryan said, "You call herVanny?"

John waved his hand in a well-of-course-I-do manner. Ryanthen asked John, "Well, we knew she might get fired. Is she doingit for me, or is she doing it for you?"

John laughed a single blast of air.

Ryan fiddled with the rearview mirror outside the pa.s.sengerdoor. "You know, John, when you grow up these days, you'retold you're going to have four or five different careers dur-ing your lifetime. But what they don't tell you is that you'realso going to be four or five different people along the way. Infive years I won't be me anymore. I'll be some new Ryan. Proba-bly wiser and more corrupt, and I'll probably wear black, flyBusiness Cla.s.s only, and use words like 'ca.s.soulet' or 'sublime.'You tell me. You're already there. You've already been a few peo-ple so far.

"But for now-for now me and Vanessa-Vanny, really dolove each other and maybe we'll have kids, and maybe we'llopen a seafood restaurant. I don't know. But I have to do itnow-act quickly, I mean-because the current version of me isebbing away. We're all ebbing away. All of us. I'm already lookingbackward. I'm already looking back at that Ryan that's sayingthese words."

They sat and stared at the low-slung corporate-plex. The ten-sion of waiting for Vanessa was becoming too much. They didn'ttalk. They tried the radio, but it came in choppy so they turnedit off. A bus stopped beside them and John and Ryan watched the pa.s.sengers inside it, all of them focused forward and in- ward. The bus pulled away and they saw Vanessa burst out ofthe company's front door carrying a cardboard bankers' box.Her stride was off as she speed-walked to her parked car. Shepulled away onto the main road, up beside John's car. She rolleddown her window and said, "C'mon, let's go to the airport."Her eyes were red and wet.

"Are you okay?"

"Just go. I'll meet you there." She sped away.

By the time they reached Vanessa at the Santa MonicaAirport's parking lot, she'd composed herself.

"Shall we go to Cheyenne, then?" she asked.

"Honey?" said Ryan.

"It's okay," Vanessa said. "I didn't like it there anyway."

"I never even got to see your cubicle."

Vanessa opened up the bankers' box and Ryan looked inside. There was a Mr. Potato Head, a framed four-picture photo boothstrip of her and Ryan, a map of Canada's Maritime region, andseveral plump, juicy cacti.

Ivan was at the airport. John slapped him on the shoulder andintroduced him to Ryan and Vanessa. Ten minutes later theywere up in the air.

"I found her," Vanessa said.

"Where?" said John.

"She's working for a defense contractor. In the paralegal pool.Radar equipment. Guess what name she's using."

" Leather Tuscadero."

"Ha-ha." She looked out the window below at the warehouse grids of City of Industry. "Fawn Heatherington."

"That's so corny," Ryan said. "It's like something right out ofThe Young and the Restless."

"Ivan," said John, "make sure we have a car waiting for us onthe tarmac at the other end. And make sure there's a map inside it. We'll be there in a few hours."

Vanessa said, "There's something else strange I found out."

"What? "asked John.

"Judging from various spikes in her typing speeds and fre-quencies compared against her other data-she used to do datainputting for the Trojan nuclear plant up on the Columbia Riverback in the late eighties-particularly as regards her use ofs.h.i.+FT key and the numbers one to five, I'm going to make an educated guess here."

"What would that be?"

"Marilyn's going through menopause."

John looked at Vanessa and then turned to Ivan. "Ivan, Vanessanow works for us."

"Good," said Ivan. "What will Vanessa be doing for us?"

"Running our world." John felt a bit better for having con-spired to make Vanessa lose her job. He was smoking furi-ously now.

"I thought you quit last year," said Ivan.

"I smoke when I'm worried. You know that."

Ivan noticed that John made no connection between hiscurrent posture in the jet, alert and driven, versus the crumpledheap he'd been on the floor months previously.

They landed in Cheyenne. An airport worker directed them to their car. Ivan asked Vanessa to be navigator. "No time to start your new job like the present." She sat in the front, andIvan leaned over and whispered to Ryan, "The secret to success?Delegate, delegate, delegate-a.s.suming you've hired somebodycompetent to begin with."

Ryan felt like a thirteen-year-old being given advice by acigar-chomping uncle.

They drove through the city. It was a cold hot day on thecusp of a harsh autumn. The air felt thin and they managed tohit every red light as they wended through this essentiallyprairie town that was more Nebraska than Nebraska, certainly not the alpine fantasia conjured up by the name Wyoming, orfrom John's prior experience in the deepest Rockies filming TheWild Land.

"Over there," said Vanessa, "the blue sign. Calumet Systems-purchased just last week by Honeywell."

They encountered yet another low-slung corporate gla.s.sblock surrounded by a parking lot full of anonymous-looking sedans and a wire fence topped with razor wire. A securityCheckpoint Charlie precluded their entering the lot. Vanessamade John pull the car into the Amoco station across thestreet.

John said, "Ivan, did you bring the binoculars like Iasked?"

John looked, but didn't know what to expect to see-Marilynmaking coffee in the cafeteria? Filing a letter? Readjusting herPeter Pan collar?"

"Can I see those, John?"

He handed Ryan the binoculars and Ryan scoured Calu-met's lot. John turned on the radio and settled on a Spanishdance station, which Vanessa turned off. "This is no time for theCheeka-Chocka."

Ryan said, " I can see her car."

"Bulls.h.i.+t," said John.

"No. I do. It's a maroon BMW I remember it was in the newsfootage when Susan went home to her mother's."

John said, "Paralegals for prairie defense contractors don'tdrive BMWs."

Ryan continued staring at the car through the binoculars. "John, you forget the settlement Marilyn made and then lostwith the airline after the Seneca crash. She's clinging to her lastremaining item of wealth like a lifeboat."

"It was a claret-colored BMW," said Vanessa, adding, "So what's the deal, John? I mean, we find Marilyn and then what?We trail her all day and all night?To what end?"

"She'll lead us to Susan."

"How do you know that? My professional finding instincts arebaffled."

"We don't know where Susan went that year-n.o.body does.But Marilyn vanished, too, and now suddenly we find she'sFawn von Soap-Opera working here in Cheyenne at a defenseplant. I mean, two people in a family vanish? That's no coinci-dence. Defense contracting? Spying? Espionage? Who knows.But there's a link. A strong one."

"Oh ray," said Ryan. "I don't quite believe this myself, but La Marilyn has left the building. She's walking toward her car. Jeez,what a mess she is."

"Let me see," said Vanessa. "Work isn't over until five.Why's she leaving early? s.h.i.+t-Ryan's right. It is her-witha $6.99 hairdo and a pantsuit ordered from the back of a1972 copy of USSR ThisWeek. I thought she was supposed tobe stylish or something." She kissed Ryan. "Agent 11, you are John started the engine to follow Marilyn, who was pull-ing out of Checkpoint Charlie. They turned onto the mainstrip, just then plumping up with the beginnings of rush-hour traffic. They skulked three cars behind her for manymiles, past a thousand KFCs, past four hundred Gaps, twohundred Subways and through dozens of intersections over-loaded with a surfeit of quality-of-life refugees from the coun-try's other larger cities, with nary a cowboy hat or a c.r.a.pped-outRanchero wagon to be seen in any direction.

They drove outof Cheyenne's main bulk, and into its fringes, where the fran-chises weren't so new and the older fast-food outlets were nowinto their second incarnations as bulk pet-food marts, storage 26O.

facilities and shooting ranges. Marilyn pulled the car into the lotof the Lariat Motel. She got out of the car and ran into roomnumber 14.

"Well, kids," said John, "guess where we're spending thenight."

Chapter Thirty-one.

Erie was having a bad winter that year and Randy's heating wason the blink. Randy, wearing several layers of sweaters, waschannel surfing around dinnertime, chili vapors drifting infrom the kitchen, when he found CNN announcing that Mari-lyn had settled her airline lawsuit for ka-ching-point-four milliondollars.

He whistled, slapped his thighs and yodeled, "Soozon-oozan-oo-AY-oo." She came in from the laundry room, where shehad been changing Eugene Junior's diaper, and watched thecoverage stone-faced: Marilyn, her arm around her lawyer'sshoulder, was emerging like a catwalk model from a Manhattan courthouse.

"She's got gum in her mouth, the old crone," Susan said."You can tell because of the slight lump behind her left ear. Shedoesn't think people can tell, but I can. She thinks gum chewing develops your smile muscles."

Marilyn spoke into a copse of network mikes. She said that justice had prevailed, but dammit, she'd happily forfeit everypenny of her settlement for the chance to speak to Susan againfor even one minute.

"Oh, Randy, this is so Oscar clip."

Randy's eyes darted between the screen and Susan's face. Thetrial had cast a spell on the house in the three months since Susan had arrived. She pretended not to care, but she did. Even on the days she claimed not to have read the paper, she was in-variably up-to-the-minute on the trial's progress, and never losta chance to a.s.sa.s.sinate her mother's character. More importantlyto Randy, Susan had let it be known over the past months thatonce Marilyn finalized her suit, she, Randy and the baby wouldmove out to California and put into action "Operation Brady,"which Randy hoped would be the next phase of his life.

"Look, Randy, she's still wearing those cheesy Ungaro knock-off outfits, and she's even got those fake Fendi sungla.s.ses shebought at the Laramie swap meet." She smiled at Randy. "Well,there, pardner, looks like we're a packin' up and headin' west."

Their plan was not complex. Randy, Eugene Junior, and thedogs were to drive to Los Angeles. Once there, Randy wouldrent a Brady Bunch house in which he and Dreama would raise the baby in a deftly twisted version of nuclear familyhood. Su-san would have to live close by until what could only be an enormous amount of fuss died down. Susan wanted to mini-mize any public glare Eugene Junior might have to endure. But most of all, Susan wanted to keep Marilyn away from the child."That greedy old battle-ax's claws are never going to touch Eu-gene. Ooohh, that's going to torture her-more than anything-no access to Eugene. Finally I'll have a bit of youth I can takeaway from her."

Randy said, "Sooner or later the kid's going to need a Social Security number, Susan. I mean, technically, in the eyes of theU.S. government, Junior doesn't even exist."

"Randy, Eugene Junior is going to be a Stone Age baby.There's going to be no paper trail on him at all-not until thingsquiet down. It's going to be a tabloid shark frenzy. We can dopaperwork then."

They worked quickly. On the day of her reemergence into the world, she drove down to Pittsburgh with Randy andEugene Junior, and waved them off in an unparalleled spasm ofblubbering. A chapter of her life was over as neatly as if followedby a blank page in a book. Then, wearing an anonymous, un-traceable Gap outfit-unpleated khakis with a navy polo-neck s.h.i.+rt-she sauntered into a suburban Pittsburgh police station.She'd styled her hair in the manner she was famous for in Meetthe Blooms, the lanky girl's ponytail, and despite the years, shelooked deceptively young, and not too different from the wayshe once looked on the cover of TV Guide. She walked up to the front window and could tell right away that the female duty officer had recognized her-instant familiarity was a sensationSusan remembered from the heightened portion of her career.The officer at the counter, name-taggedbryar, was speechlessas her brain reconciled what she was seeing with what she thought she knew.

"h.e.l.lo, Officer Bryar," Susan said thoughtfully, as though shewere about to offer a sample of low-fat cheese ropes at the endof a Safeway aisle. "My name is Susan Colgate. I-"she pausedfor effect-"I'm kind of confused here, and maybe you canhelp me out."

Officer Bryar nodded.

"We're in-I mean, right now we're in, let me get thisstraight, Pennsylvania. Right?"

"Pittsburgh."

"And today's date-I read it on the USAToday in the box out-side. It's-what-September 1997?"

Officer Bryar confirmed this.

Susan looked around her and saw a generic police station likeone on the studio lot: flag; presidential portrait; bulletproofwindows and video cams. She made a point of looking directly and forlornly into all of the cameras, knowing that the policedepartment might well earn enough to finance a new fleet ofpatrol cars from selling the footage she was generating forthem. She turned back to Officer Bryar: "Well, then.

Last thing Iremember I was heading to JFK Airport in New York to catch aplane to the Coast and now it's- Forget it."

A media zoo ensued, and Susan was grateful to be housed ina cell in an unused portion of the civic jail.

Her life of privacy with only Eugene, and then Randy and Eugene Junior was over.Her holiday from the variety pack of Susan Colgate ident.i.ties forwhich she was known had come to an end.

A deputy brought Susan a small tub of blueberry yogurt anda KFC lunch pack of chicken and fries.

Susan said thanks, andthe deputy said, "I thought you were really good in Meet theBlooms. You were the best on that show."