Page 92 of In a Far-Off Land
The ticket sellers gave us the bum’s rush. “A week ago? Do you know how many pretty girls come through here every day, fella?”
Oscar had better luck with a janitor at Central Station. “Sí, I saw her. The one in the papers.” He described her clothes, right down to her suede shoes, and told us she’d gotten on the 72 bus, a route that went through Salt Lake to Cheyenne.
“She could be anywhere between here and Wyoming,” Oscar said, looking at the map covering an entire wall. From Cheyenne, the bus spurs branched east like an octopus stretching its tentacles over these United States. “Or farther. Chicago. New York.”
My heart fell clear to the floor.
Mina had given up her dream, just when she had gotten everything she wanted. Because of me. Here I’d told her I’d never give up on her, and wasn’t that just what I was doing? I might have beena real heel at the beach house—I know I was—but I wasn’t about to run away from my responsibility. I wasn’t my father. But how could I track her across the country?
“Let’s go back to Lana’s,” I told Oscar. She had to know something.
We must have scared the living daylights out of her—me and a big Mexican pounding on the door and pushing into her room—but I’m not sorry for it.
“Max,” Lana said, backing away from Oscar. “I didn’t mean no harm. Like I told you, she came and got her things. I even gave her some money when she asked for it.”
That was hard to believe but I let it lie.
Lana was going on. “I figured she was going back home, wherever that is. She asked me to put you off for a few days—to tell you she was sick—until she was gone for good.”
Gone for good.Whose good? Not mine. Not our child’s.
Oscar grabbed my arm. “You don’t think she... ?”
From the look on his face, I knew what he meant, and the thought made my legs turn to rubber. It was easy enough to do in this town, but...Dear God, please no.
I got right up in Lana’s face so I could see if she was lying. “Did she tell you about the baby? Did she go to... ?” My voice broke and I couldn’t go on, but Lana got the idea. Her eyes got wide and her mouth fell open. She wasn’t a good enough actress to fake that kind of surprise. She hadn’t known.
I sank down on the bed and put my head in my hands.
Please,I prayed. To God, the saints, whoever would listen to a man like me.Please don’t let her think that’s the only way.
“I know I wasn’t the greatest friend to her, b-but... I did the best I could,” Lana stuttered. “I swear, I didn’t mean any—”
“Let’s go,” I said to Oscar. I didn’t want to hear any more of her excuses.
“Wait,” Lana called before we got out the door. “There was something...” She rooted around in the closet and came up with a hatbox. It looked like it had been kicked around a bit. “She left this.” Lana put it in my hands like a peace offering. “Maybe it will help.”
Oscar and I went outside. He lit a cigarette, and I sat down on the stoop with the box in my lap. The air was cool, and the birds chirped in the trees. I took off the lid. Letters, maybe a dozen or so, sealed and addressed to somebody named Penny Zimmerman in Mina’s rounded handwriting.
I don’t know where Oscar got to and I didn’t care. For the next half hour, it was just me and Mina. I read every letter, then I put them in order—from the day she stepped off the bus in Los Angeles to a short note penned right before Roy Lester’s party—and read them again. It was a part of her story she’d never told me. I read the last words of her last letter.
Maybe my luck is changing, Penny. Maybe this story will have a happy ending after all. Even if I don’t deserve it.
You do deserve a happy ending, Mina. I’ll tell you that when I find you.
“I’m going after her,” I told Oscar when he drove me back to the Garden.
“You don’t even know if that’s where she went,” he said. It was a reasonable argument, but I didn’t need Oscar to tell me that.
“It’s a start.”
“You’re going to need some cash,” Oscar said when he parked in front of the bungalow. “What did your father leave you?”
I told Oscar to mind his own potatoes and set about getting my business in order.
Good old Dusty had left me plenty: Debt. Bad memories. I’d sold off everything I could over the past few years. The houses and cars went to pay his mountain of IOUs. I’d been living off the sale of his furniture for the past few months, and that was precious little. Norb at the Derby and Al at the Montmartre—solid friends of Dusty’s even after he turned ugly—never let me pay for a meal. I’d sold the beach house, something I’d waited to do until I didn’t have a choice, and paid off the rest of what Dusty owed. I’d cleared a few hundred dollars but that dwindled fast. I was close to broke, except for the roadster... and I’d need that to find Mina.
I packed up my few belongings at the bungalow and said goodbye to the neighbors. Then I made the rounds, saying goodbye to Norb and Al, some of the rest of the people who had helped me out over the years. When I’d tied up all my loose ends, I went to thecolonia.
