Hassan clapped his hands together. “I am hungry.”
“Close her down, Linds.” Lindsey rolled her eyes and walked slowly out from behind the register. “You drive with Colin in case he gets lost,” Hollis told Lindsey. “I’ll take—what did you say your name was?”
“I’m not a terrorist,” Hassan said by way of answering.
“Well. That’s a relief.” Hollis smiled.
• • •
Hollis drove a new and impressively pink pickup truck, and Colin followed in the Hearse with Lindsey riding shotgun. “Nice car,” she said sarcastically.
Colin didn’t respond. He liked Lindsey Lee Wells, but sometimes it felt like she was trying to get his goat.27 He had the same problem with Hassan. “Thanks for not saying anything when I was Pierre and Hassan was Salinger.”
“Yeah, well. It was pretty funny. And plus Colin was being sort of a dick and needed to be taken down a peg.”
“I see,” said Colin, which is what he had learned to say when he had nothing to say.
“So,” she said. “You’re a genius?”
“I’m a washed-up child prodigy,” Colin said.
“What are you good at, other than just already knowing everything?”
“Um, languages. Word games. Trivia. Nothing useful.”
He felt her glance at him. “Languages are useful. What do you speak?”
“I’m pretty good in eleven. German, French, Latin, Greek, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Russian—”
“I get the picture,” she said, cutting him off. “I think that meine Mutter denkt, daβ sie gut für mich sind”28 she said. “That’s why we’re in this car together.”
“Warum denkt sie das?”29
“Okay, we’ve both proven we speak German. She’s been on my ass like crazy to go to college and become, I don’t know, a doctor or something. Only I’m not going. I’m staying here. I already made up my mind about that. So I’m thinking maybe she wants you to inspire me or something.”
“Doctors make more money than paramedics-in-training,” Colin pointed out.
“Right, but I don’t need money.” She paused, and the car rumbled beneath them. Finally, he glanced over at her. “I need my life,” she explained, “which is good and which is here. Anyway, I might go to the community college in Bradford to shut Hollis up, but that’s it.” The road took a sharp, banked turn to the right and, past a stand of trees, a town emerged. Small but well-kept houses lined the road. They all had porches, it seemed, and a lot of people were sitting out on them, even though it was hotter than hell in summertime. On the main road, Colin noted a newish combination gas station and Taco Bell, a hair salon, and the Gutshot, TN, Post Office, which appeared from the road to be the size of a spacious walk-in closet. Lindsey pointed out Colin’s window. “Out there’s the factory,” she said, and in the middle distance Colin saw a complex of low-lying buildings. It didn’t look much like a factory—no towering steel silos or smokestacks billowing carbon monoxide, just a few buildings that vaguely reminded him of airplane hangars.
“What does it make?” Colin asked.
“It makes jobs. It makes all the good jobs this town has. My great-grandfather started the plant in 1917.” Colin slowed down, pulling to the shoulder so that a speeding SUV could pass him while he looked out at the factory with Lindsey.
“Right, but what gets made there?” he asked.
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t laugh.”
“Swear not to laugh,” she said.
“I swear.”
“It’s a textile mill. These days we mostly make, uh, tampon strings.”
Colin did not laugh. Instead, he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries—God, the nature of the universe, etc.—he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he’d never seen one in the wild, and didn’t really care to.
In lieu of Colin’s laugh came a period of unbreachable silence. He followed Hollis’s pink truck down a newly paved side street that sloped up precipitously, causing the Hearse’s worn-out engine to rev for its very life. As they climbed the hill, it became clear that the street was actually a long driveway, which dead-ended into the largest single-family residence that Colin had ever personally laid eyes upon. Also, it was glaringly, bubble-gummingly, Pepto-Bismolly pink. He pulled into the driveway. Colin was staring at it somewhat slack-jawed when Lindsey poked him softly on the arm. Lindsey shrugged, as if embarrassed. “It ain’t much,” she said. “But it’s home.”