Road to Paradise by Paullina Simons

Author:Paullina Simons
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780007283439
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

It’s impossible to explain how interminable seems the road when it’s late at night and you’re exhausted. There is no mile that doesn’t go by in slo-mo, no traffic light that doesn’t stay red for hours. We were stopped behind a line of cars at such a light. A few streetlights, cars, fast food joints. That’s how we knew we were coming back to civilization—a McDonald’s followed by Kentucky Fried Chicken. Was Candy scared? I couldn’t tell; in the rearview mirror, I could see she was looking out the window.

In Sioux City, there was no Holiday Inn or Budget Inn, and the Best Western and the Clarion, too rich for our blood in any case, were sold out. We didn’t dare pull into a gas station to ask about lodgings because it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps every gas-station attendant had a CB, and no sooner than I’d put a drop of fuel in my car, he’d be calling in my latitude and longitude to a man named Erv.

Where was Erv? Was he traveling on I-80 in his own car, staying in touch by radio? Or was he centrally headquartered like a general, perhaps in Nebraska, ordering other people to find Candy and bring her to him? I glanced at her in the back. She had given up even looking outward. Her eyes were closed.

Near a muddy canal that couldn’t possibly have been the Missouri River, we found a shining, neon-blinking casino, the Argosy, more colorful and trashy, if such a thing were possible, than even the Isle of Capri. The only room they had for us was a penthouse suite for six hundred dollars a night. Politely we declined, and cursed like sailors out in the parking lot.

Gina said we might as well go inside and play a bit. Exhaustion and anger were gone from her face. I looked at her as if she had two heads. “You were in bed two hours ago telling me you were too tired to be a passenger in a car. Now you want to go play a bit?” I was incredulous.

Shrugging, she said, “I got my second wind. Is that a yes or no?”

“Uh, that’d be a no from me, Gina,” I said.

Even Candy, who was up so high at the Bar n’ Grill, shook her head. “Count me out, no pun intended.”

“What? Is tomorrow going to be any better?”

“There is always that hope, yes,” said Candy, “plus tomorrow I will have slept.”

Will have slept. Sometimes she spoke as if she read Henry James. I wanted to cry. All that driving, and no bed, no pillow for my head, no sheets on which to stretch my sore and aching limbs. I was all day behind the wheel, and now had to sleep behind it, too.

“God, sing me a Psalm, Candy,” I muttered. “I need something to fall asleep to.”

Gina, upset with us before, was upset again for denying her the only fun since the last bit of fun she had. With her huffy arms crossed, she sat and complained, while we sat with our eyes closed.

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