The Undertaker

“Well, it was rusty,” I argued. “And I didn't have one of those Swiss Army tool kits like you've got.” I pointed toward her key ring.

“No whining, Talbott.” she said as she screwed the Firebird's license plate into place. “I'll give you a cookie later, now get in. I'll drive,” she said. When I looked at her and frowned, she quickly added, “After what you did to that poor Lincoln, don't you dare look at me like that. Besides, I can get us past that Bozo and out of here, and all you'll accomplish is to get us thrown in jail.”

Before she put the car in gear, she reached behind her back, unfastened her bra, did some contortions inside her lime-green top, and pulled the bra out the neck opening. She pulled on the collar and stretched even more. “Relax. This show isn't for you,” she said as she put the car in gear and drove down the long aisle to the exit. When she stopped next to the ticket booth, she leaned forward and looked up at the attendant so he could see right down the neck opening at her breasts.

“Hey,” she smiled helplessly up at him. “I've looked everywhere, but I can't find that damned ticket,”

“Sorry, Miss,” he said, looking down, gawking. “Uh, it's a two-day minimum.” He tapped the sign under the window. “That's thirty bucks.”

“Thirty bucks! That's a rip, man,” she said as she fumbled in her purse and reluctantly handed over the money.

“Sure is, but better you get ripped than me. If I give a ticket out, I gotta turn one in or they take the thirty bucks out of my pay. But you have a nice day now, you hear.”

We drove out on the street and turned right. “It ain't what you got, Talbott, it's knowing how to use it.”

“I suppose you learned that at “Infant Jesus of Prague too?”

“No, tenth grade at Pius the 12th, Sister Mary Boniface, English Lit.”

I turned and looked at her. “All you did was flash the guy.”

“Some people just don't understand art.” She shook her head with a wistful smile. “The guard would remember you, but when I stopped, he never looked at my face, the car, you, or anything else. You may not appreciate them, but he sure did.”

I smiled and looked at my watch. It was almost 2:00. “Let's find the signs for I-80,” I told her as I opened the glove compartment. I pawed through the trash inside. At the bottom, I found a couple of battered road maps and pulled them out.

We had reached an empty stretch of road and she pulled over to the curb. “Turn around,” she told me. I started to turn toward her only to get a slap on the shoulder. “The other way, you moron! I want to put my bra back on.” I turned away as she pulled the lime green top up over her head. “And don't you dare watch me in the window glass, or I'll slap you silly.” She stopped to untangle the bra before she put it back on and I smiled as I watched her in the window glass, then turned my eyes to the Michigan road map. She slapped me on the back. “You turkey! You were watching. I saw that!”

“I was controlling myself just fine until you told me not to look.”

“Talbott, you have more self control in your little finger than all the other guys I've ever met put together,” she said as she pulled the top back over her head. “So suffer!”

The Michigan road map showed the northern tier of Ohio, too. On the back, I found a table with mileage between US cities. “It's nine hundred miles to Boston.”

“There's always Washington DC. We need to call Timmy Hardin tomorrow. We could go there.”

“Maybe, but Boston first.”

Up ahead we saw the first sign for I-80. Sandy pointed. “Isn't the toll road the first place they'll look if they think we're heading east?”

I looked fondly at the sign, but she was right.

“It's going to take us all night to get that far anyway,” she said. “And that's too many hours in a stolen car.”

“Yeah, I know.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the Amtrak brochures. “There's a train from Chicago to Boston.” I looked at the schedule. “We can catch it in Toledo. No one would be looking for us there.”

“Toledo? You got that right. And the train? Sneaky.”

“It doesn't leave there until 1:30 in the morning and it doesn't get to Boston until 6:30 tomorrow evening.”

“Not exactly like flying, is it?”

“No, but slow and meandering might keep us under Tinkerton's radar.”

“It won't take us six hours to get to Toledo, so we have a lot of time to kill.”

“We'll take the back roads,” I said as I looked down at the map. “You drive for a while and I'll navigate.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said as she reached for the radio. “Just one little problem, I can't go six hours without a big dose of Merle Haggard.”

I wanted to gag, but I didn't want another bruise so I let it go.

Route 12 ran up along the Lake Michigan shore for twenty miles and then cut across the rolling farmland of southern Michigan through the small towns of Niles, Sturgis, Summerset, and Coldwater, until we dropped south to Toledo. For the first hour, we drove in silence, enjoying the calm and the quiet. The road was flat, boring, and empty.