Invisible Monsters

CHAPTER FOUR

Jump to the Canadian border.

Jump to the three of us in a rented Lincoln Town Car, waiting to drive south from Vancouver, British Columbia, into the United States, waiting, with Signore Romeo in the driver's seat, waiting with Brandy next to him in the front, waiting, with me alone in the back.

"The police have microphones," Brandy tells us.

The plan is if we make it through the border, we'll drive south to Seattle where there are nightclubs and dance clubs where go- go boys and go-go girls will line up to buy the pockets of my purse clean. We have to be quiet because the police, they have microphones on both sides of the border, United States and Canadian. This way, they

can listen in on people waiting to cross. We could have Cuban cigars. Fresh fruit. Diamonds. Diseases. Drugs, Brandy says. Brandy, she tells us to shut up a mile before the border, and we wait in line, quiet.

Brandy unwinds the yards and yards of brocade scarf around her head. Brandy, she shakes her hair down her back and ties the scarf over her shoulders to hide her torpedo cleavage. Brandy switches to simple gold earrings. She takes off her pearls and puts on a little chain with a gold cross. This is a moment before the border guard.

"Your nationalities?" the border-guard guy sitting inside his little window, behind his computer terminal with his clipboard and his blue suit behind his mirrored sunglasses, and behind his gold badge says.

"Sir," Brandy says, and her new voice is as bland and drawled out as grits without salt or butter. She says, "Sir, we are citizens of the United States of America, what used to be called the greatest country on earth until the homosexuals and child pornographers—

"Your names?" says the border guy.

Brandy leans across Alfa to look up at the border guy, "My husband," she says, "is an innocent man."

"Your name, please," he says, no doubt looking up our license plate, finding it's a rental car, rented in Billings, Montana, three weeks ago, maybe even finding the truth about who we really are. Maybe finding bulletin after bulletin from all over western Canada about three nut cases stealing drugs at big houses up for sale. Maybe all this is spooling onto his computer screen, maybe none of it. You never know.

"I am married," Brandy is almost yelling to get his attention. "I am the wife of the Reverend Scooter Alexander," she says, still half laid across Alfa's lap.

"And this," she says and draws the invisible line from her smile to Alfa, "this is my son-in-law, Seth Thomas." Her big hand flies toward me in the backseat. "This," she says, "is my daughter, Bubba-Joan."

Some days, I hate it when Brandy changes our lives without warning. Sometimes, twice in one day, you have to live up to a new identity. A new name. New relationships. Handicaps. It's hard to remember who I started this road trip being.

No doubt, this is the kind of stress the constantly mutating AIDS virus must feel.

"Sir?" the border guy says to Seth, formerly Alfa Romeo, formerly Chase Manhattan, formerly Nash Rambler, formerly Wells Fargo, formerly Eberhard Faber. The guard says, "Sir, are you bringing any purchases back with you into the United States?"

My pointed little toe of my shoe reaches under the front seat and gooses my new husband. The details of everything have us surrounded. The mud flats left by low tide are just over there, with little waves arriving one after another. The flower beds on our other side are planted to spell out words you can only read from a long ways off. Up close, it's just so many red and yellow wax begonias.

"Don't tell me you've never watched our Christian Healing Network'?" Brandy says. She fiddles with the little gold cross at her throat. "If you just watched one show, you'd know that God in his wisdom has made my son-in-law a mute, and he cannot speak."

The border guy keyboards some quick strokes. This could be "CRIME" he's typed. Or "DRUGS." Or SHOOT. It could be SMUGGLERS. Or ARREST.

"Not a word," Brandy whispers next to Seth's ear, "You talk and in Seattle, I'll change you into Harvey Wallbanger."

The border guy says, "To admit you to the United States, I'm going to have to see your passports, please."

Brandy licks her lips wet and shining, her eyes moist and bright. Her brocade scarf slips low to reveal her cleavage as she looks up at the border guy and says, "Would you excuse us a moment."

Brandy sits back in her own seat, and Seth's window hums all the way up.

Brandy's big torpedoes inhale big and then exhale. "Don't anybody panic," she says, and pops her lipstick open. She makes a kiss in the rearview mirror and pokes the lipstick around the edge of her big Plumbago mouth, trembling so much that her one big hand has to hold her lipstick hand steady.

"I can get us back into the States," she says, "but I'm going to need a condom and a breath mint."

Around her lipstick she says, "Bubba-Joan, be a sweetheart and hand me up one of those Estraderms, will you?"

Seth gives her the mint and a condom.

She says, "Let's guess how long it takes him to find a week's supply of girl juice soaking into his ass."

She pops the lipstick shut and says, "Blot me, please."

I hand her up a tissue and an estrogen patch.