closet that earns its keep. And that’s what I got.
“My place is walking distance from here, over in Arrowhead Court, you can see my trailer if you want. I get off in twenty minutes.”
We look at each other, and she says, “Talk amongst yourselves and decide. Makes me no nevermind. I wouldn’t mind having a little company tonight. If it’s not you all, I’ll find me somebody else.”
She goes out of the room and Renie whispers, “Want to go?” and we all nod.
Forty minutes later, we’re in Wanda’s living room, three of us lined up on a gold sofa, Renie in one of the two swivel club chairs, also gold. We’ve been shown the closet, which is indeed impressive, and now Wanda takes a pack of cigarettes from a drawer in the table by her chair. “Cigarette?” she asks Renie, and Renie takes one. We all do. After a moment, Renie says, “This isn’t tobacco.”
Wanda looks over at her, a mirthful glance. “It isn’t?” She leans back in her chair, looks at Renie. “So let me ask you something. How come you asked me if I was carrying a heavy burden? Do I look like I am?”
“No, it’s just a goof,” Renie says.
“What do you mean?”
“A goof, you know, just a question I keep bringing up for the hell of it.”
Wanda nods, then says, “I’ll tell you, though. I do think all people carry one burden, and that’s fear. It’s a problem, what fear makes people do, and also what it keeps them from doing. I mean, it was fear kept me from doing with my life what I wanted to. And why? I didn’t have any responsibilities to anyone but myself; wasn’t going to hurt anybody by getting out of what I was in, and going in a new direction entirely. But fear, you know, the boogeyman under the bed, you’re just scared of making a change. And then one day you just go ahead and do it anyway and there you are: blue skies.”
She rises up out of her chair. “Anybody want some Cheez Doodles?”
She fills a bowl with them and sets it down where we can all reach it, then says, “Fear and lack of love, those are the A-number-one problems of human beings. Every time there’s another disaster, you know, somebody shooting up a place, you look. Fear. And a lack of love. Or, you know, something wrong with the hard wiring, and they just couldn’t take any love they were ever offered. Or ask for it.”
She eats another Cheez Doodle. “Well, now I’m thirsty. Ain’t that the way? You get one good thing, you just want more.” She goes over to her little fridge and leans in. “Who wants a Dr Pepper or … a Dr Pepper?”
A chorus of I dos, and she hands us each a can. “You all been friends for a long time, huh?”
I smile. “Not so long, really.”
“Huh. Well, there’s an ease to you. I can see you’re having fun.”
“That we are,” Lise says.
“Nothing like a pack of women, having fun,” she says. And then, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, “Anything can happen.”
“WOW,” JONI SAYS. “I never do stuff like this.”
It’s late, approaching midnight, and we’re ready to find a motel, but first we are lying out in a field looking up at a sky that should have put flyers all over town to announce the show it would be giving tonight.
“I do it all the time,” Renie says, and Joni says, “No you don’t.”
“Well, I want to do it all the time, and I used to.”
“Boy, that’s my theme song,” I say.
It’s very quiet, and then somebody snorts, laughing. And then I laugh. And then we all do, we lie in the dark under the stars laughing and laughing. For too long, really. And then Joni rolls up onto to her elbows and says, “I don’t know why I’m laughing so hard.”
“Because we can,” Lise says, and she’s right. It’s as though there’s a dome of power around us, four women lying on the night-cooled earth, looking up and giving props to the same sky Cro-Magnon saw. Though for him the constellations were even clearer, much clearer, I’m sure. But this is enough, this starscape and these women and this moment.
I think I know why Wanda thought we’d been friends for a long time. Because of fate, because of timing, because of our own blend of chemistry, and because of this trip, we do share that kind of