"Okay, deal."

"Women said, 'What's with his hair? Is it real? Is that his realcolor?' They said, 'Ooh, me so h.o.r.n.y, me want humpy astro-naut.' They said, 'I'd go metric for you, baby.' Guys weren'tas descriptive. They just called me nothing, but once they sawmy face, they knew the sports segment was over and could switch off the set." He lit a cigarette then lay back and chuckled."TV Ugh."

Susan spooned into him. The sheets felt like cool pastrymarble.

She said, "Near the end they knew they had enough episodesto syndicate, so they stopped focus-grouping. But at the start Igot stuff like 'I can see the zits underneath her makeup. Can'tyou guys find her a putty knife? That's one h.e.l.luva thick paperbag she's trying to act her way out of. Her t.i.ts are like fried eggsgone all runny.' That kind of stuff." Their eyes caught and theyboth laughed.

"I've gotta phone in this grocery order." Eugene punched aphone number into the cordless, and the touch-tone beeps re-minded Susan of a song she used to like back in the eighties.

Chapter Eighteen.

Susan had performed in shopping strips many times, and herafternoon stint at the Clackamas County Mall was by no meansunusual. In fact, as opposed to pageant judges, she found theoverwhelmingly geriatric mall crowds emotionally invisible,and performing before them neither chancy nor stressful, her only stings arising from the occasional heckling teen or a stray leering pensioner. Once in Olympia, Washington, mall securityhad removed an old lech who'd been w.a.n.king listlessly downby the left speaker bank, like a zoo gorilla resigned to a sterilecaged fate. Susan thought it was funny, but hadn't quite under- stood what it was he'd actually been doing. She'd told both hermother and the mall cops she thought he'd been "shaking adonut," which made the cops snort and Marilyn screech. When the cops briefly left the office, Susan had said, "Mom, pleasedon't go filing another lawsuit. Not over this. Just let it go."

"Young lady, who knows what harm that man did to you."

"What harm?"

"It'll be years before you even know, sweetie."

"Mom-no lawsuit. I'm sick of your suing people all thetime. It's my birthday. Make it my present, okay?"

Marilyn's face froze but then immediately thawed. "I'll justkeep on shucking bunnies to help pay the rent.

I suppose some-body has to work in this world."At the Clackamas Mall it had been arrangedfor Susan to per-form a Grease medley, her routine that somehow dovetailed withthe mall's Campaign for Drug-Free Kids. Susan's friend Trishhad just turned sixteen, and drove Susan up to the mall from McMinnville. Marilyn was to follow shortly, after stoppingto meet with a seamstress in Beaverton to go over Susan's au-tumn look.

Susan and Trish parked, hooked up with their mall contact, and then crammed themselves into the Orange Julius bathroomwhere Susan's poodle skirt remained untouched within its pa-per Nordstrom s bag. From a gym bag, she and Trish removedblack jumpsuits and thin red leather ties. Both combed their hair into spikes and applied gel and heavy mascara, then headedbackstage. Susan's name was called, and the two climbed up onto the carpeted plywood risers. They walked like roboticmimes, Trish to her Casio keyboard, Susan to center stage. To thebored and distracted mall audience they might just as well havebeen dressed as Valkyries or elm trees, but Susan felt for the firsttime a surge of power.

Trish hit the opening notes, at which point Susan lifted a rid-ing crop she'd borrowed from one of Don's army buddies. She began to crack the whip in time with the rhythmic nonsense of"Whip It," a by-then-stale new wave anthem. For the first time,Susan didn't feel like a circus seal onstage. Trish kept the synthe-sizer loud, and Susan could feel all other times she'd been on-stage drop away-those years she'd been trussed and gussiedup, barking for fish in front of Marilyn and every pageant judgeon earth, joylessly enacting her moves like a stewardess demon-strating the use of an oxygen mask.

But now-the faces-Susan was seeing genuine reactions: mouths dropped wide open, mothers whisking away children-and at the back, the cool kids who normally mooned her andpelted her with Jelly Tots, watching without malice.

Suddenly the speaker squawked and moaned, and Susan turned around to see Marilyn ripping color-coded jacks fromthe backs of the Marshall amps while a mall technician lamelyprotested the ravaging. Heads in the audience shifted as if they were a field of wheat, in the direction where Susan now turned,glaring like a raven.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Mom?"

Marilyn plucked out more jacks, and her face muscles tensedlike a dishrag in the process of being squeezed.

Susan cracked the riding crop at Marilyn, where it burnedMarilyn's hands, a crimson plastic index fingernail jumpingaway like a cricket. "Mom, stop it! Stop!"

Marilyn grabbed the crop's end and yanked it away from Su-san. She looked to be rabid and scrambled up over the 2-X-6trusses and onto the stage. Susan turned to her audience. Shewas raging. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big hand for"-she paused as Marilyn raised herself awkwardly, like a horse from thick mud-"my overenthusiastic mother."

The audience smelled blood and clapped with gusto as Mari-lyn cuffed Susan on the neck. Three hooligans over by the SockShoppe shouted meows, at which point Susan went momen-tarily deaf from Marilyn's blow. Time stopped for her. She was lifted up and out of herself, and she felt aware for the first timethat her mother didn't own her the way she owned the Cor-vair or the fridge. In fact, Susan realized Marilyn had no moreownership of her than she did of the s.p.a.ce Needle or MountHood. Marilyn's connection was sentimental if Susan chose it tobe that way, or business, which made some sense, but no longer was Marilyn able to treat Susan like a slammed car door everytime she lost control.

Marilyn looked in Susan's eyes, realized she'd blown it andwould never regain her advantage. This sent her into a larger 45O.

Ww&mvna swivet, but its ferocity now didn't faze Susan. She now knewthe deal.

Marilyn lunged at her daughter, enraged, but Susan lookedback at her and with a gentle smile said, "Sorry, Mom, you'rethirty seconds too late. You're not going to get me-not thistime."

Marilyn's arms went around Susan's chest, half as if to stran-gle her, half for support. The clapping stopped and Irish ranover. "Mrs. Colgate, please."

"You backstabbing little wh.o.r.e," she shouted at Irish.

"Mom!"

"She doesn't mean it," Irish said, trying to wedge Marilynand Susan apart. "We've got to get her off the stage."

Mall security arrived. Susan and Irish stood locked in place astwo beefy men used all their might to keep Marilyn away fromSusan.

"Come with us, ma'am."

"No."

Susan said pragmatically, "Guys, let's get her into an office orsomething. She's jagging on diet pills. She needs a cool darkplace."

"Traitor," Marilyn hissed.

Susan grabbed her mother's handbag. She and Irish followed Marilyn into an office, where Susan made her mother swallow some downers. She phoned Don to tell him they'd be late. Irishleft at Susan's asking, and Susan drove her mother home toMcMinnville. Dinner was take-out Chinese, and they all went tobed early.

The next day was sunny and unseasonably hot for April, andSusan sat on the back lawn, suntanning her face between thetwo inner faces of a Bee Gees double alb.u.m covered in alu-minum foil. Marilyn beetled about between the car and theyard, planting multiple flats of petunias, daisies and white alys-sum. This struck Susan as odd, but not unusual. The previous year, Don's workers' comp kicked in and the family had up-graded from a trailer to a house, albeit a small, weed-cloakedand rain-rotted house. But living in a genuine house seemed tosatisfy Marilyn, who didn't give much thought to interior de-sign, exclaiming only how thrilled she was not to have to dis-guise axles with rhododendron shrubs.

Susan continued sunning herself, and in midafternoon shecame in for iced tea and found Marilyn holding Don's huntingknife, a big honker from one of Karlsruhe's most s.a.d.i.s.tic facto-ries. She was using it to carve notches into the wood of the doorframe between the kitchen and the TV room-dozens of slits at various intervals ranging from thigh height up to her shoulders.

Susan said nothing.

Marilyn took a Bic pen and a pencil and began writing namesand dates beside the slits "Brian 12/16/78, Caitlin 5/3/79, Al-lison 7/14/80," and so forth.

Don came in from the front hallway, his hands black withSeaDoo crankcase oil. "Mare," he said, "whatthef.u.c.k are you do-ing to the door frame?"

"Raising the price of the house, honey."

Don and Susan exchanged looks.

"Don't think I can't see the two of you exchanging con-cerned looks." Before her the mythical young Brian had broken the five-foot mark.

Don reached for his hunting knife, saying, "Gimme that."

But Marilyn flinched away, then swiveled around like a Sharkversus a Jet. "Like f.u.c.k I will." Susan and Don were stunned."We're leaving this little sugar shack, kids, but before we do, Ihave to raise its value."

She continued carving slits. "Studies haveshown that the price of any home can be raised by a consistent J52.

ten percent or moreby simply planting about a hundred dol-lars' worth of annual flowers." Allison reached four feet eight."Flowers make a home feel lived in. Loved. So do growth charts.Growth charts indicate happiness, pride, devotion and stick-to-itiveness. Adds 5K to the asking price."

"And where might we be moving?" asked Don.

"Wyoming, you cretin. Cheyenne, Wyoming."

"Oh, Mom-not that again."

"Yes, that, again. Houses are cheaper there. We'll have a guestbedroom and three bathrooms. And you, sweetie, can representan entire state in the nationals. Only a handful of people livethere. The compet.i.tion's nil. Fifty-one gorgeous contestants and only onewill win. Who will replace Susan Colgate as the next Miss USA?"

"We're not moving nowhere," Don said.

"We're not moving anywhere, honey, and yes we are. Thishouse is in my name, so off we go."

"She's loony today," Don said to Susan. "Leave her be."

Susan went back to her tanning, and a.s.sumed the maniawould pa.s.s. Later on, up in her room, she heard the normalclinks and clatters of dinner preparation below. Marilyn called Susan and Don to the table, and the tone of the night seemed al-together normal. Too normal. At that point, their ears roared andthe house shook like a car driving over a speed b.u.mp. Susan'swater gla.s.s tipped over and a framed photo fell from a wall. The three stood up-all was silent save for a faint hiss coming fromthe kitchen.

They walked through the newly scratched door frame to see amanhole-sized gape through the ceiling, and another one di-rectly beneath it in the floor between the stove and the fridge.Don looked down: "Jesus H. Christ-it's a meteorite."

Susan and Marilyn peered down at the blue-brown boulderthat lay on the cracked concrete beside the deep free/e containingDon's venison from the previous fall. Don raced down the stairs,looked at the boulder and then looked up, speechless. The twowomen ran down to join him.

"It's a miracle," said Marilyn. "We've been spared. It's a signfrom the Lord above that we are on the correct path, an omento fill us with respect." She fell to her knees and prayed as shehad once before when visiting her kin back in the mountains.Susan looked more closely at the boulder. "Hey-it's melting, orsomething."

"Holy s.h.i.t," said Don, "it's s.h.i.t."

It was a fro/en ball of s.h.i.t, accidentally discharged from the hull of an Philippine Airlines flight from Chicago to Manila, which paid for the new house in Cheyenne. Don called it "thes.h.i.tsicle." The airline setded swiftly and quietly. Within sixweeks they were living in Cheyenne.

Chapter Nineteen.

The police finished scrutinizing the Susan Colgate shrine in thecar's back seat and left the property. John spent the remainder ofthe day s.p.a.cing out in front of the shrine and phoning Susan'sanswering machine, hanging up on the beep each time. Hetried sleeping but instead had choppy naps, like pieced-together cutting room floor sc.r.a.ps punctuated with frequent eye open-ings and anxious pangs. In the late afternoon he gave up, took ashower, drank an algae shake, had a quick chat with Nylla, whowas just returning from her exercise cla.s.s, then drove the cardown to West Side Video. Ryan was with a customer.

Do you know the name of the movie, sir?" Ryan was askingthe customer.

"Oh, you know-that movie. I think it came in a blue box."

"Do you know who stars in it?"

"That guy.You know?"

"I'm not sure. Is it a comedy or a drama or-?"

"It's really good."

"Okay-any idea who directed it?"

"That famous guy."

"Right."

John moved in. "Hey, buddy-go take a pill, and when your brain clicks in, send us a memo."The customer was chuffed. "Excuse me. I'm trying to choose amovie, Mr. Whoever You Are. Do you have a problem with that?"

John looked the customer in the eye: "You care what I think?"

"Well, um, no."

"Then why are you asking me? Scram. People who knowwhat they want have to get on with their lives here."

The customer skulked away, visibly distressed.

"Oh thank you, John," said Ryan. "You've no idea how longI've been wanting to say something like that."

"The sad residue of too many days lost in meetings with pro-fessional time-wasters."

" If you ever decided to make a film t.i.tled You Know-That Movie,it'd be the most popular rental of all time."

John scanned the store, then said, "Ryan-get off work andcome on. We've got business to do."

"Not now-it's the dinnertime rush, I have to phone in theover dues, and tonight is the 'Women Who Love Far Too Much'Special."

" Ivan and I want to buy your script."

Ten minutes later, in separate cars, they drove to the St. JamesClub bar. John arrived first, and ordered two scotches. Ryan ar-rived, breathless. "Before we discuss anything, John, I have totell you that the police were in this afternoon and they were to-tally all over me about (a) my having built the Susan Colgateshrine, and (b) giving it to you. It was like I was strapped to ananthill and slathered in marmalade."

"She's gone missing. She didn't show up for some ShowtimeChannel movie she was doing. The cops hara.s.sed me, too. But Ihad to explain to them what I was doing sitting parked outsideher house for an hour in the middle of the night with a SusanColgate shrine in the back seat."

"Oh G.o.d-you're a freak!" Ryan laughed.

John didn't laugh.

"Aren't people supposed to be gone for at least forty-eighthours before they become a missing person?"

"I don't know." John put his head in his hands. "Drink."

Ryan drank.

"Nylla-that's Ivan's wife-before I came down here tonight,we were chatting about this and that, and she told me that afterthe crash Susan was gone for a whole year before she cameback. I didn't know it was for that long! I didn't. And it turnsout n.o.body has any idea where she went. Not even the cops."

"But you knew she was in a crash . . ."

"I was in and out of Betty Ford so much in '96 I don't evenknow who was president, you little smarta.s.s."

Ryan was slightly unsure of his footing with this powerful movie producer intent on buying his script, and didn't push thematter, but John went on. "This is to say that if Susan Colgate,who's like the patron saint of missing persons, goes missing,even for one day, then Missing Persons ought to get right on the case, right?"

Ryan asked, "When you two met, she knew who you were?How much did you guys talk? How did you leave it? What wa.s.she wearing?"