The Bette Davis Club (24 page)

I was trying not to cry. I looked down and fidgeted with my coffee cup. “The poem or our . . . friendship,” I said. “I don’t know how to end either one.”

“Margo,” Finn said gently. “I’m not devoid of passion—”

“As far as the poem goes,” I said, “it should rhyme. Also, it should conclude in a way that conveys how miserable I’ve been these last three weeks. Three weeks in which you never called. Not once.”

Finn reached out and took my hand. When he touched me, I swear the room gave a lurch. The planet had tilted, for all I knew people were falling off the face of it. No matter. The only event of importance was Finn’s hand on mine. His grip was warm and real.

Don’t give in to him
, I thought.
Don’t.

I never knew a man to make such intense eye contact as Finn. His blue eyes pulled you in until you slid over some sort of exquisite cliff. He was looking directly at me, and I could feel myself going over.

“I’m capable of passion, Margo. But I’m—”

“Please don’t tell me you’re complicated.”

“I would never tell you that,” Finn said. “I don’t think I’m the least complicated. But I am . . . isolated. I’m not an easy person to get close to. I know that, I’ve known it all my life.”

He watched me with those blue questioning eyes. Little boy lost. “I’ve been thinking about you the last few days,” Finn said. He went on holding my hand. “Quite a lot.”

In spite of myself, a thrill went through me.
He thinks about me. I exist for him.

“I’m thirty-nine years old,” he said in that crisp, soothing voice of his. “Almost forty. And so busy with life and work that I never . . . well, I never committed to a relationship. But maybe
commitment
is what I need. I don’t know, maybe it’s exactly what I need to get my life on track.” He straightened. “Margo, I’ve been wanting to tell you that I think you and I should get married.”

If Finn had told me he was about to give birth to kittens, I could not have been more amazed.

“Married?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do. For both of us.” He pointed a finger at me and shook it, like he was my dad or something. “I’ve seen your apartment. You need a decent place to live. And I have a home, but I need someone to share it with. And we . . . we should do it. That’s all. We should get married and live our lives the way they ought to be lived. So what about it? Will you marry me?”

I sat there, stunned. Finn was watching me, waiting for a reaction. But before I could speak or even move, alarm came over his face, as if he had just remembered something. “Oh! I suppose I should go down on one knee. And I should get you a ring. Do you want me to do that?”

Moments before, my eyes had been moist with tears I was holding back. Now they brimmed over with waterworks of another type altogether. I was so startled, yet so happy. A woman at the next table stole a glance at Finn and me. She had probably heard every word we’d said. I didn’t care. In fact, I started laughing. Laughing with relief and happiness.

Finn laughed too. He inhaled deeply and looked round the café, at all the people in it, as though he’d woken from a dream. In a funny way, he seemed as surprised as I was by what had just happened.

Without even trying, I memorized everything Finn and I said that day in the café. Years later, I can tell you that was our exact exchange. Yet here’s the thing: I didn’t really hear large parts of what Finn said. Somehow I filtered out several very important words. Words such as:

I don’t know.

Maybe.

Should.

What I heard—all I heard—was a proposal of marriage. The man I loved and looked up to had asked me to marry him. With my heart in my hands, I accepted. Through tears and laughter, I accepted.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

GRIPS LIKE A LIMPET

A
fter our visit to Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, Tully and I walk out of the Museum of Science and Industry. Tully carries his shopping bag filled with books and souvenirs.

“You mind if we put the top down?” Tully says when we reach the car.

“Now?” I say. “It’s not that much warmer than yesterday.”

“Yeah, I know.” He looks round at the other automobiles. “But Chicago traffic is intense, and the visibility sucks when the top’s up. Anyway, the sun’s out.”

So we lower the soft top and tuck it away. We leave the side windows in place because they cut down on the chill. Still, when we drive off, headed to our hotel, the air feels cold. I wrap myself up in my coat and the wool blanket.

We merge onto South Lake Shore Drive, which is nothing like the deserted country roads of Route 66. We’re surrounded by eighteen-wheelers, delivery vans, SUVs—any one of which could squash us like a bug.

I’m gazing out the side window, thinking about
An Innocent Lamb
, which is still in my tote bag, along with the other items I took. I’m wondering just how much that script is worth—a lot, I reckon—when a huge vehicle, a massive yellow pickup truck with whacking big tires, appears beside us in the right lane. Like anything on the road larger than a motor scooter, it towers over us.

The pickup runs neck and neck with our car, not varying its pace. Some part of my brain registers this as odd, and I glance up—way up—at the driver. He looks down at me, his blank face giving forth a spooky, sharklike smile. Boone.

“Oh, fuck,” I say, turning away and staring straight ahead through the windshield.

“What?” Tully says.

The misery of this, of being pursued by some sort of import-export gangster person who can only be in league with Georgia, causes me to clench my jaw and close my eyes.

“What?” Tully repeats.

Eyes closed, I point at the pickup beside us.

“Oh, fuck,” I hear Tully say.

I open my eyes and observe Tully looking past me at Boone.

“How did he find us?” I say.

“Somebody at Kelsey’s place must have seen the car,” Tully says. “The janitor, a neighbor, whatever.” His eyes flit back and forth between the highway and Boone. “We’re not hard to find in this sportster, are we? We stand out like blood on a white shirt.”

“Please don’t use the word ‘blood,’” I say.

The two vehicles—our tiny red one, Boone’s enormous yellow one—speed along side by side, like very fast ketchup and mustard. Boone signals to Tully to take an upcoming exit. Tully ignores him and we keep going.

I catch sight of Kelsey, in the passenger seat next to Boone. She has a phone pressed to her ear, and she’s leaning past Boone, craning her neck to look over at Tully and me. My own phone rings and I answer.

“Hi,” Kelsey says in her infantile voice. “This is fun.”

Come to think of it, perhaps I got that wrong. Perhaps she’s saying, “This is dumb.” Hard to tell.

“Boone says get off at the next exit,” Kelsey announces. “Please,” she adds, remembering her manners.

“How did you get this number?” I say.

She laughs. “Tully gave it to me when you were . . . you know, sick. He made me promise to have Georgia call you if I saw her. Also, he told me he was going to the museum today.”

“You need to turn round and go home,” I say.

“SWEETIE, I CAN’T DO THAT!”

There’s an outburst of swearing in the background. “BECAUSE I CAN’T SAY THAT. IT ISN’T NICE. SHE’S OLDER THAN MY MOM!”

I hear a sound like water rushing as Kelsey covers her phone. Then she’s back. “Boone says get off at the next exit or he’ll bust Tully’s, umm, love spuds. You better believe him. He broke this guy’s thumb once, and all the guy did was wave at me.”

“Violence is never the answer,” I say. “Gandhi taught—”

“WHAT? WHAT? OH! Boone wants to talk to you.”

There’s the shuffle of the phone being handed over, and then Boone is on the other end, shouting at me. “You took something from my home, and I want it returned! Do you understand?”

“No,” I say. “The connection’s bad.”

“You violated my domicile.”

“Sorry? Pedophile?”

“Listen to me! Pull over and give me that goddamned script! I will do serious harm to the both of you if you don’t.”

“He wants that script I took from Georgia’s room,” I say to Tully. “
An Innocent Lamb
. He’s threatening us if we don’t pull over.”

“Don’t believe me?” Boone yells. He swerves the pickup toward us, narrowly missing our front fender.

“Tell Boone,” Tully says, “his own mother doesn’t like him.” Boone swerves at us again.

“I think he heard that,” I say.

“Good. Now hang up and call the cops.”

I hang up. My heart is pounding with panic and fear. I try to conceive of something, anything, that might help us. “Use the horn!” I say to Tully.

Tully blinks down at the steering wheel. “There’s a horn?”

“Yes! Under the scuttle!”

“Right,” he says. “Under the scuttle—whatever bright-eyed little British notion that is.” He speaks in an exaggerated English accent: “Hullo, chaps, here’s a thought. Don’t let’s put the horn in the ruddy steering wheel, like the Yanks do. Let’s hide the bugger under the scuttle!”

“It isn’t hidden!” I say. I point at a black button on the left. “It’s there!”

“Yeah, well, I hate to tell you this, Margo, but it doesn’t matter because it won’t help.” Tully’s voice is calm, but he’s gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles are white. “We’re in a kind of a situation here, you know? It’s not easy finding stuff out at fifty miles an hour, while being chased by a psychopath. Besides the horn, does this sportster have any useful features? Ejector seats? Machine guns? What were you saying the other night at that diner? In Missouri. You read me something from a brochure.”

“It grips the road like a limpet,” I say.

“Limpet, right. That’s a kind of clingy sea mollusk, like a snail. I’m not sure why that’s good.”

“A limpet never lets go,” I say. “The MG TF was designed to hug the road the same way.”

“Anything else?”

“It has a low center of gravity; it’s extremely maneuverable. These cars are famous for their maneuverability.”

“Okay.” Tully straightens. “That might help.”

Boone’s giant pickup again veers dangerously close to our little car. This time, Tully pounds on the horn. But when he does that his steering wavers, and for an instant we stray into the next lane. A sedan coming up on our left honks and goes round us.

I look at the cell phone in my hand. “Even if we call the authorities, I don’t see how they could get here in time,” I say.

“All right,” Tully says. “It’s up to you.”

“We don’t have seat belts or air bags or . . .”

“Just tell me what you want to do.”

I draw my blanket up to my chin.

“The good news is, it would all be over real quick,” Tully says. “Let’s face it, maybe that’s what you and I have both been looking for from the get-go.” He takes his eyes off the road long enough to observe me clutching my blanket. “Then again, maybe not.”

He brushes his hair back from his forehead. “So you want to give them the script?” he says. “After all you’ve been through? After all your dad and Orson Welles must have gone through to write it?”

“No,” I say. “I’m scared—but I don’t want to do that.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. I’m damned if I’ll give in to these hoodlums.”

“And you’re telling me this car is really maneuverable?”

“Extremely.”

“How fast can it go?”

“I don’t know, about eighty.”

Boone swings his yellow truck behind us, into our lane. He’s on our bumper now, so close we’re nearly touching. My phone rings again.

“Let me talk to the man of the house,” Boone says.

“Sorry,” I say. “He’s occupied.”

“Put him on the goddamned phone!”

“I can’t,” I say. “It’s dangerous to talk on a cell phone while you’re driving. They’ve done studies.”

“I’ll give you dangerous,” Boone says. “I’m gonna roll up over your car and crush it like scrap metal. You and the geek can converse with me from the hospital.”

“Could you hold a moment?” I say. I turn to Tully. “Boone’s going to crush our car.”

“No,” Tully says. “He’s not.”

I turn round and look at the pickup nipping at our heels. Boone glares down at us with the fury of Zeus atop Mount Olympus. But instead of brandishing one of Zeus’s thunderbolts, Boone grips a cell phone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. Kelsey, sitting next to him, wears a vapid, eager expression, like a princess on a parade float.

“I want you to give Boone a message,” Tully says. He’s adjusting the rearview mirror and hunkering down in his seat. “Will you do that?”

“Yes,” I say. At this point, there are quite a few things I’d do for Tully.

“Tell Boone we’re not giving him the script. Tell him he’s a brainless bastard. And tell him”—Tully shoots me a look—“we’ve got a sports car.”

With that, he floors it.

The MG takes off like a shot. I’m thrown back in my seat. I shout, “Sports car! Bye-bye!” into the phone, then hang up. I toss my wool blanket to the floor of the car. With my right hand, I hold tight to the grab bar. Tully races us among the automobiles, weaving in and out of lines of vehicles. We’re like those mad motorcyclists you see in Los Angeles, the ones who shoot along the freeway traveling
between
the lanes of traffic.

I ought to be afraid, but I’m not. I’ve never seen anyone operate a motorcar with such confidence. Tully’s jaw is set and his face displays perfect concentration, as though he has complete awareness of everything around him. He handles the MG like he was born to it.

I glance at the speedometer. The needle hovers near eighty.

Tully’s eyes are focused on the highway ahead, taking in his next move. “You okay, baby?” he asks, without looking over at me.

You bet I’m okay, I—baby? Did he just call me
baby
? I twist round and for one glorious moment watch Boone’s pickup receding behind us. It’s working! We’re getting away!

I turn back to Tully. “You’re brilliant!” I say. I clap my hands together. “You’re Stirling Moss! You’re Jackie Stewart! Wherever did you learn to drive like this?”

“Go-karts, dune buggies, drag races,” Tully says. “When I was a kid.”

“God bless California car culture,” I say.

But then something changes. The pickup moves to the far right and goes off road, knocking through barriers and bushes. It comes roaring up on the shoulder. The shoulder! They’re using the bloody shoulder!

For all its maneuverability, in a flat-out road race a 1955 MG cannot possibly outrun Boone’s twenty-first-century vehicle. The pickup rapidly gains ground. Soon, Boone and Kelsey are again parallel with us. The cell phone rings.

“Final chance,” Boone says. “Pull over, or I swear to God I will ram you. In ten seconds, you will be roadkill.”

“You’re a terrible driver,” I say. “You should be ticketed!”

Tully and I are in the middle lane. Boone moves from the shoulder to the right lane, next to us. Like some sort of demented mission control, he begins counting backward in my ear. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

Up ahead, traffic slows for no apparent reason. Automobiles hit their brakes and reduce speed. But Boone’s not paying attention. He continues squinting over at us, ticking off numbers into the phone. “Seven . . . six . . . five . . .”

The highway is becoming a sea of brake lights. “Four . . . three . . . two—”

Unlike Boone, Tully sees what’s happening. He downshifts, abruptly decelerating. Boone—for a split second, before he can react—goes tearing on past us, into the abyss. A terrible noise comes through the cell phone. It’s the shattering sound of Boone’s pickup rear-ending the silver SUV in front of him.

The SUV spins round and caroms into another car, which bounces off a minibus. In front and all around us, automobiles begin smashing into each other. Finally, a tractor-trailer jackknifes, blocking the road entirely. Tully stomps on the brakes, and we barely miss the tractor-trailer. Amid a mad symphony of colliding, crunching, and horn honking, traffic screeches to a halt.