I pity them."

"They looked like they were having fun, kinda."

Marilyn turned on her with a ferocity that let Susan actuallysee that human beings have skulls beneath their faces. Marilynmistook Susan's horror for fear of what she was saying: "No!Don't ever think that-ever. Do you hear me?"

"Geez, Mom, I was only joking."

"You'll never give that type of woman any of your timeof day."

Marilyn returned to her job of cross-indexing Eugene Lind-say's mail fraud scheme, but her body was obviously now awashin Stress chemicals. Susan felt like the young wolf who's just dis-covered the tender, delicious underbelly of the porcupine.The next afternoon they checked in to the hotel in St. Louis, whereupon Susan stayed up in the room to read comics whileMarilyn confabbed with some other pageant moms, learningthat Eugene was staying alone in the same hotel because Renatawas stuck in Bloomington coping with demand for the follow-ing month's Big 'n' Proud convention in Tampa, Florida.

Withalmost no effort, Marilyn determined Eugene's room number,and shortly after she knocked on his door. He answered, clothedonly in argyle socks, striped boxers and an unb.u.t.toned oxfordcloth shirt. He was holding a scotch and Marilyn could see he had little hairs bleached gold by the sun on the tops of his fin-gers. Marilyn knew that Eugene was used to opening doors andletting in exactly whomever he wanted when he wanted. He sawMarilyn and said, "What is this-some kind of joke?"

"No joke, Eugene." She barged into his room. She took it by storm.

"What the f.u.c.k? Lady-get the f.u.c.k out of my room. Now."

"No, Eugene."

"Did the guys at the station set this up? Is this a gag?"

"It's no gag, Eugene, and I don't know any guys from any sta-tion." She coquetted her head and sat with her legs crossed onthe bed.

Eugene gulped his scotch. "I'm not into mutton, lady. Out."

"Oh, Eugene-you've mistaken my intentions."

"You're a show mom, aren't you? I can always tell you show moms. You're all nuts. You're all freaks."

He poured himself anew drink.

"Is drinking a smart thing to be doing?"

"I beg your-f.u.c.k it-I'm calling the hotel cops." He movedto the bedside phone.

"I'm not the one on Stellazine, Eugene. I'm not the onewho's insane here."M&mfna His finger froze on the phone above the zero b.u.t.ton. "Youknow, lady, I ought to-"

"Oh, shut up, you talking hairdo. My name's not Lady, it'sMarilyn, which doesn't mean much. Whatdoes mean somethingis that my daughter wins tomorrow's t.i.tle. She's going to playFurElise and it doesn't matter if Miss Iowa cures cancer on stage,or if Miss Idaho gets stigmata, my daughter wins. Period. And you will make sure this happens."

"This is a joke." Eugene's face relaxed. "The guys at the sta-tion did set this up."

"No joke."

"You're good."

"There's nothing for me to be good at, Eugene. This isfor real."

Eugene's face clenched and his voice a.s.sumed the cool me-tered speech of TV reason. "This is so totally Gothic, isn't.i.t? You'd kill for your little proxy to win. I bet you and your lit-tle Miss . . ."

"Wyoming." The family still had yet to move to that state,but Marilyn had already begun creating technical citizenshipby renting a small storage locker on the outskirts of Cheyenneunder Susan's name. At the present moment she wanted tounbalance Eugene's thinking. "You're wearing a beef bikini,Eugene."

"Wha-?" He reflexively reached for his privates, which hadperhaps escaped containment.

"Read these." From her handbag she removed a bundle ofphotocopies and slapped them onto the bedspread, and fromwhere he stood, Eugene could tell what they were. "How do wespell 'mail fraud,'

Eugene? We spell it F-B-I." Marilyn walked tothe door and yanked it open. "You're a big fish in an itty-bittypond, Hairdo. But it's my pond. Give me what I want and itdoesn't go beyond these walls." She stepped outside and looked in. "I could otherwise care less about you.Turning you in wouldbe like spraying sewage onto a burning house. It'd get a jobdone, but-well, you think it over. Good-bye, Eugene." She shutthe door.

Onstage that night, the pageant flowed like soda. Susan madesemifinalist, then finalist, played her Fur Elise and then stoodwith the other finalists on the stage directly before the judge'sstand. She felt lovely.

She had learned to work with the new all-angle beauty her jaw correction and nose job had loanedher.

And then, looking through the lights, one face openedup through the optical fog-a face that broke through andbecame disembodied from all others in the auditorium. It wasEugene-the trash man!-and he was looking at Susan with thesame wise, knowing face as his 8-x-lO head shot. Her eyeslinked with his, and for the first time in her life she felt s.e.xual.She didn't just put on the pose, she felt naked, proudly naked,and she pulled her shoulders back as if to give more of herselfto Eugene. She was being judged, and she knew she was comingout ahead.

Eugene, meanwhile, looked at Susan. He wondered howhe could have overlooked this scrumptious little gazelle at a previous compet.i.tion. Fur Elise? h.e.l.l, she could play "Chop-sticks" with a spatula and he'd vote for her. He pointed at Susanand then back at himself, smiled broadly with film-star teeth, then winked with the force of a blazing iron scorching linen.

Susan heard music and she heard her name. And then a tiaralanded on her head and she felt the rea.s.suring cool fluttering sensation of the winner's sash draped from her right shoulder.

Afterward, when the crowds had dispersed, Susan tried to lo-cate Eugene amid the vanishing crowds under the ruse of look-ing for another show dog, Janelle, from Hawthorne, California.

"Janelle?" asked Marilyn. "You hate Janelle."

"I don't hate anybody, Mom."

"Janelle hid your left pump in Spokane two years ago."

"They didn't prove that."

"Winning seems to make you so charitable. Testy, too."

"I'm not testy." But she did feel nervous. She was panicking,as her eyes darted about looking for Eugene. Her stomach feltlike a kite that was having trouble getting airborne.

"Of course not, sweetie. Oh, look-there she is over there . . ."

"Where?" Confused, Susan snapped her head in the directionher mother had pointed to. No Eugene there.

"Gotcha."

"Oh Mom."

"Don't worry, sweetie. Whatever's going on, I'm not going topress it tonight. You "re a champion."

Chapter Twelve.

Susan felt the heat from the cooling cheeseburgers slither-ing from the trash bag beside her. Having recovered from theexplosive clamp of the dumpster's lid, her ears now registeredher own slow breathing and the rustle of the bagged trashlooming above her like a potential Nerf avalanche. The smell-that was the strongest sensation, sickly sweet-ketchup, buns, fish, beef and potato mingled with their greases and liquids,varnishing the metal beneath her shoes.

There was no light, and in its absence, the shapes she touchedburst forth on her fingertips like crippled fireworks. She washungry, but her repulsion for the dead food overrode herhunger. She tried shrinking herself, like a bird caught inside ahouse. And then she relaxed. A bit.

She tried to make a seat for herself, batting her hands out intothe trash bags and locating a springy one full of paper cups,foam clamsh.e.l.l containers and paper napkins. She sat on the bagin her corner. The smells around her were not diminishing,and her nose refused to acclimatize the way it would around a barnyard's manure. The smell wasn't enough to gag her, but it refused to be ignored.

Her hunger grew worse, but the thought of eating one of theburgers cooling around her made her retch.

She was thirsty, andthe energy bars in her travel bag tasted like paste and requiredwater to eat. She reached for her bag-her bag! She'd dropped itonto the concrete under the dumpster when the workers cameby. She warbled with regret.

Hours pa.s.sed.

Now she was unbearably hungry. She crumbled, and reachedfor one of the unsold burgers, its heat gone, recognizable asnew only because of its wrapping. She ate it with as much gustoas she might eat Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Her mouth felt like the inside of a catcher's mitt. She rippedopen the bag beneath her and rooted through its contents untilshe came upon a waxed paper cup containing drink remnants. She found a dash of Orange Crush happily diluted with meltedice cubes and downed it in one swig. She rummaged more, culling inert french fries, packets of honey-mustard dippingsauce, p.r.i.c.kly drinking straws and smudged napkins. Presto! a.n.a.lmost full medium-sized Diet c.o.ke, metallic and body tem-perature, flat and wet.

She drank it and then tossed the cup tothe top of the heap. Then she needed to pee, and her hands fum- bled in the trash in search of disposable commodes, two emptymilkshake cups.

Using folded cardboard, she built herself an impromptushanty in the corner. For the shanty's floor she placed a bufferlayer of dry garbage to insulate her from the dumpster's bot-tom, and to one side she built an avalanche shed, so as to be safeif the trash collapsed during the night. For a pillow she used folded cardboard, onto which she placed a bag full of crushedwaxed paper cups.

She was surprising herself with her adeptness at navigating inside her new world-in her new life she'd have to start at the bottom-this was her trial by fire. And so it was with a strangepride that she fell asleep, proud she could handle herself nomatter what was tossed her way, and her sleep was dreamless.

She was wakened with a stun-gunned jolt of fear by the industrial crash of steel on steel. Morning-a dump truck come to lift her and her new home away.

She heard the locks above her being unlocked and thenalmost immediately the dumpster was jolted upward, andher body was compressed by the wall of trash bags that hadbeen against the opposing wall.

Her mind raced-a trashcompressor-oh G.o.d. Within seconds she was upside down anddrenched in trickling soda pops which percolated into her sleep nook. Then the bottom fell out of her world and she was brieflyweightless while tumbling into a truck bed, pelted with waste,the morning sun blinding her.

The bed was full, and mercifully it had no compressor. Feel-ing like Bugs Bunny, she poked her head up from her trash and looked over its edge and into the commercial strip she'd walkedthe night before, haloed in sunlight beaming in low from theeastern horizon. The truck moved onto an interstate with fresh, nonburger winds filling her nostrils and cleansing her hair ofketchup packets and salts and peppers.

It was a long ride, and Susan lay atop the waste and felt thesun on her eyelids.

The truck slowed down, changed gears, stopped, started,made various turns and then rumbled onto the dirt of a sanitarylandfill. Trucks around her were beeping as they maneuveredthemselves in reverse gear, as did Susan's. Its bed tilted up, up,then up some more, and yet again Susan felt weightless, scram-bling up the dumping trash as though she were a monkey walk-ing up a down escalator. She finally came to rest on the crown ofa crest of a heap of trash. Sun-warmth-freedom.

She could only see trucks, not people, and she walked downand through the cones of junk, seemingly groomed but utterlyfilthy.

She came across a scarecrow for seagulls. She stole its mantle,a men's XL down ski jacket with felt pen stains around itshem, and small castanet of sporty ski lift tags chattering on itszipper.

Inside its chest pocket was a pair of bad, cheap aviator gla.s.sesof the sort found in dime stores. She put them on. She swept herhair back and left the dump, smiling.

She headed toward Indiana.

Chapter Thirteen.

The day John chose for his walkout, he didn't wake up in themorning knowing that would be the day.

Rather, he felt atwinge-10:30a.m. in the Staples parking lot, while closing thedoor of his Saab under a rainless sky-and realized the time wasnow. His soul creaked just a bit, like a house shifting off its foundation just ever so. It felt to him like the moment once ayear when he smelled the air and knew fall is here; or like themoment when a tamed animal bites its master's hand and re-verts to the wild.

He shut the car door, and the annoying sonic blinks from in-side stopped. Cindy and Krista had liquidated his chattels andwere off once again to pursue their acting careers. He had$18.35 in his wallet, which he placed in the Muscular Dystro-phy can by the cashier's till at Staples. He tucked his wallet, con-taining his driver's license, his credit cards, his variousunmemorizable access code numbers, as well as home and stu-dio security card swipes, discreetly inside a littered KFC box,which he dropped in a trash bin.

He was wearing a blue cotton b.u.t.ton-down dress shirt, a previously unworn pair of cocoa ("Never chocolate," as twinCindy had informed him) slacks and a pair of shiny blackloafers Melody had given him on a distant birthday. He removed 4 oo his wrist.w.a.tch and placed it on a bus stop bench. He wore nojewelry.

He remembered his vision of Susan, its clarity and convic-tion. This reminded him of how he felt when he'd been calledup onstage to receive his high school diploma. It had been yearssince he'd been sick or weak. Beneath his robe he was almost ac-robatic with good health as members of the good-looking-girl-clique in the crowd behind him gave him cheeky squeals ofrea.s.surance that he was in fact a new person crossing a newline. He had the giddy sensation that came with knowing a partof his life was absolutely over and something a.s.suredly moremarvelous lay ahead.

He walked east, and an hour later was soaked in sweat. Food.

It was time to eat and rest. Some blocks ahead was a BurgerKing, and once inside, it dawned on John that he was money-less, so he asked for and received a gla.s.s of water while he triedto make a dining decision. A quick glance at his reflection in acounterside mirror reminded him that he hadn't shaved that day, and was now entering that small pocket of time in whichhe would look raffish, and soon after that, unmedicated.

"Can I help you, sir?" asked the manager with an air ofunderstaffedness.

"Not just yet. Thanks." Staying any longer was pointless. Inhis enthusiasm to run away, he'd skipped over the subject of food,a.s.suming that it would somehow just appear. Walking awayfrom the restaurant's chilled cube of air, he couldn't help butnotice the colorful composts of uneaten food that filled its nu-merous cans, and as he continued his eastward trek, he realized he'd have to quickly invent some sort of nutritious idea.

The sun peaked and quickly fell to the horizon. The thrum-ming of cars was constant. It grew dark. The neighborhoodshe pa.s.sed through were consistently deteriorating, and sooneven the fast food and gas outlets vanished. He was sweatyand thirsty and knew that by now he must be looking rather strange. He wondered how long his $150 haircut would keephim looking like Joe Citizen. His stomach cramped with hungerand dehydration.

A mile farther, at a road junction he spotted a McDonald's. Atleast there he could s.h.i.t and wash and devise a food plan.Knowing this, his steps resumed their earlier bounce, and in the McDonald's men's room he sploshed his deranged face with tap water and then entered the main dining area, occupied by a fewseniors, three borderline homeless cases and a sullen clump ofAsian teens busy flouting California's nonsmoking laws. Thecounter staff were almost medically, clinically bored, and lis-tened to John's request for water as if he were a dial tone. But hereceived a gla.s.s of water, which bought him time, and then,eureka!-the teenagers took off, and in their wake left aYosemitecampground's worth of meal trash.

Quickly, under the guise ofmuttering his moral outrage, he took the food trays and theirremnants and stuck them into trash bins, carefully leaving be-hind the juiciest chunks of burgers, fries and nuggets, which heplaced onto a paper place mat, folded up, and carried out of the restaurant like a disco purse.

Outside, he scoured the vicinity looking for a place to eat andchose a small concrete piling behind the restaurant, by somerangy oleander shrubs overlooking the dumpsters and utility hookups encased in wire fencing.

A helicopter flew overhead. He ate his food and then found aplace to lie down, behind the oleanders, a spot free of urine,sc.r.a.ping together a pillow of bark chips that made his forearmsitch. He smelled something oily. He felt the heartburn! woozi-ness of having taken the wrong carnival ride.

At midnight the McDonald's lights went off. John watchedtwo staffers come out back, fill the dumpster with plumpwhite bags, and lock up the caged area. Like a coyote, he caughthimself looking for any stray bits of food they might havedropped. Before he fell asleep, he figured the night staff wouldstill be sleeping when the morning employees arrived to open up, and so wouldn't recognize the mumbling transient with a Fred Flintstone five o'clock shadow.

John was a n.o.ble fool. His plan to careen without plans orschedules across the country was d.a.m.ned from the start. Hewas romantic and naive and had made pathetically few plans. He thought some corny idea to shed the trappings of his lifewould deepen him, regenerate him-make him king of fast-food America and its endless paved web.

Each day John felt dirtier and more repulsive. He stank. He'dtried to wash his underwear in a gas-station sink using granu-lated pink industrial soap, and he'd put it out across the top of afence to dry, but it had blown onto a mound of sawdust on theother side.

He learned how to avoid the police. He slept in hedges. Hecontinued wandering east, neighborhood by neighborhood,out into the fringes of Los Angeles County. He came to hate dogs because they recognized him as a roamer and announcedit with their barks.

He sc.r.a.ped together aluminum-can money to buy-and helaughed as he did so-bourbon-cheap booze! Nice and sweet,and just as delicious and unsophisticated as the first time he'd tried it in his teens.

In Fontana, a dead steel town sixty miles inland, he fulfilledIvan's prophecy and stole laundry from a clothesline, a UPSdelivery man's uniform which fit him surprisingly well. Hescanned the house, and n.o.body was in. He jimmied the lock ona flimsy aftermarket side door. Inside, he showered, washed his 4O3hair, shaved and donned his new uniform. He bundled up hisold clothing and wedged it between two plastic stacking chairs on the rear patio as he left.

The UPS uniform was his ticket to respectability. With it, hewas able to go almost anywhere in public, regardless of hy-giene, with almost no scrutiny. It made him appear casual, in-dustrious, sober, a charmed messenger.

He made no friends, but to his surprise scored with a fewwomen turned on by his UPS togs. He hated himself for havingthe experiences, not so much for their tawdriness, but because such flings felt as if they were against the rules-which madehim suddenly realized he had rules, not something he'd ex-pected.

He felt moral, a distinctly new sensation. Maybe theroad was changing him after all.

His first tryst was with a woman-twenty-nine? thirty-two?-tense as an overstretched guitar string. She was reading a copyof Architectural Digest in the BP gas-station convenience mart. Theylocked eyes.

John said, "I'd say the magazine started to go downhill when they shifted their focus from pure architecture to that of Homesof the Stars."