“Traffic’s starting to move, hon,” she says. “In or out.”
I open the passenger door and hop in. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She lets her foot off the brake, and creeps slowly through the heavy traffic.
We pass a derelict white building on the right. Off-white, really. The offest white there ever was.
“You traveling for Labor Day?” she asks.
I set my JanSport between my feet. “Something like that.”
“You and everybody else.” She points through the windshield. “Long weekends, people really come out of the woodwork, you know?”
I nod politely. From the back seat, her kid grunts, mutters something about how dying is lame. I’ll assume he means a video-game death.
“So,” she says, “where’re you from?”
“Cleveland,” I answer, wondering how many questions this ride is going to cost. I reach into my pocket for the comfort of my war paint.
“Nice town. We love Cleveland, don’t we, Charles?” She continues talking, but I’m no longer listening.
I am no longer anything at all.
The lipstick is gone.
“. . . to an Indians game for his father’s birthday. Didn’t you, Charles?”
I reach down, unzip my bag—the box, the coffee can, a water bottle, shirts and socks . . . no lipstick. “Pull over,” I mutter.
“I’m sorry?”
Where did I see it last? I definitely had it when I left the bus. I had it when that stupid girl offered me cigarettes. I had it . . . in my hands when I fell asleep. “Can you pull over, please? I have to get out.”
“Are you sure?”
Let it be under the bridge. “Yes, I’m sure. Pull over.”
The woman, forever nameless, pulls the Subaru to the side of the highway. I grab my bag, give a halfhearted “Thanks,” and hoof it back to the bridge.
Please let it be there.
Due to the crawling traffic, we’d only gone about a hundred yards or so. I arrive under the bridge breathless and search every square inch near the spot where I’d fallen asleep. To make up for my lack of vision, I quadruple-check, but it’s no use. The lipstick isn’t here. I stare at the ground, unable to move, unable to think, just . . . thoroughly not able. And just as this reality sets in—of arriving at my mother’s sickbed without one of my primary Reasons—I see it.
Not the lipstick.
Kneeling, I rub the cracks in the pavement: the nose, the tail, the feet . . . such a specific shape, my Pavement Rabbit.
Do you like shiny things? I have lots of shiny there.
I see an image on the horizon: every step is intentional, quick-footed, as if it’s late for something.
I put my head down and sprint.
“DO YOU LIKE the Cubs?” asks Walt.
All inquiries related to the lost lipstick have been stonewalled with questions like this. Do I like the color yellow? Do I like sausage? Do I like dinosaurs? It’s a preference marathon, and I’m slowly wearing down.
“I don’t know, Walt. Sure.”
Sports is a thing, and I recognize that—but it is not my thing. Football, basketball, soccer, and yes, hockey, all seem beyond pointless. Baseball, however, I get. Or at least, I don’t not get. Back before the BREAKING NEWS, it was one of the few things Mom and Dad and I all enjoyed. Something about the narrative of the sport, I think, is what we found appealing: the unique personality of each player and team; the intricate strategies based on who’s at bat, who’s on base, and who’s pitching; the minutiae, the inches, the history. Plus, it’s relaxing. Three hours a day on a well-manicured field—I guess my family idealized that kind of idle recreation, as we rarely encountered anything like it within our own home. I never had a favorite team, but I know enough about baseball to know that the Cubs have pretty much the worst luck of any team in all of professional sports. Like, in the history of History, no team has ever been as unlucky as the Chicago Cubs.
“You wanna go to a game?” asks Walt, a look of pure excitement on his face. “We should eat first, but then we could go to a game. If we can get tickets.” He raises his index finger in the air like he’s had a profound idea. “We have to have tickets, though. Tickets.”
As the hour passes, traffic thins to an occasional car or semi careening into the sinking sun. We follow in kind, on the margins of the highway, the oddest of couples.
“So, Walt—I wouldn’t be mad or anything, you know? If you took the lipstick. I just need it back. It’s really important.”
“The shiny lipstick?” he says.
I glance sideways at him, wondering if he knows he just gave himself away. “Yeah, Walt. It’s got some shiny on it.”
He nods. “No, I don’t have it.”
Just as I wonder what it would take to physically search the kid, he hops over the nearby guardrail and disappears into the adjacent woods. “This way, Mim!”
Back under the bridge, for just a moment, the option to continue my trip sans war paint had been just that—an option. But no longer. The thought of moving on without it, when I know exactly where it is . . .
Ahead, the pink sun becomes a dingy crimson, and soon, it will fade entirely. I sigh and turn back toward the shadowy woods. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I whisper. And with the daring temperament of Alice herself, I climb the guardrail and follow my white rabbit into the trees.
17
Firework Thoughts