We stopped at the Wawa to get gas. It's not the Sheetz, but Wawa's okay. Personally, I like it better than the fancy shit anyway. It's very Linden Valley. Very 2007. It reminds me of my childhood. The good parts of it, at least.
I set the gas pump in my Jeep. It'd been unseasonably warm for October this year, and I'm a lazy son of a bitch, so I hadn't put up the soft top yet. I was surprised Stevie wasn't complaining. Then again, we were coming off the biggest, stupidest fight we've ever had. Give it a couple more days, and you can set your clocks to the 'I'm cold, the wind hurts my ears' moaning. I'm positive.
"So you got the Wrangler back for good?" Stevie leaned across the driver's seat.
"I'm on probation." That was what Mom termed it. I fished in my jacket's big interior pocket. I pulled my debit card out from underneath the blue rubber band which it kept snug against my driver's license and school ID. "If I make one mistake," I ran my debit card across my neck and slurped on my spit, "it's done and over. Gone for the rest of the year."
"What would you drive then?" Stevie asked, and the full tank sensors kicked off the gas pump.
"Gus, I guess?" I stuck my debit card in the reader.
"You'd probably need to replace his battery before that happens," Stevie said as I hung up the gas pump.
"Yeah, or," I indulged an impulse to run my hand along my Jeep's hood, "not make more mistakes." Now that I had my baby back, I didn't want to drive Gus any longer. Sure, he's cute, but my Jeep is mine. Not having her for an entire month made me miss her. I hopped up into the driver's seat. "So," I squeezed my leather steering wheel, "free Friday night. Where to next?"
"I dunno," Stevie looked dead straight into the Wawa's front windows. "I'm hungry."
***
Ladies and gentlemen, dearly beloved, my sweet babies:
Satan better put his big coat on, because hell has officially frozen over. Stevie Corrigan O'Shaughnessy sat in the front passenger side of my Jeep and ate gas station food. A cheese quesadilla, with salsa and sour cream, to be one hundred percent accurate. Hand-made by intrepid Wawa customer service associates.
"Not bad?" I watched a glob of sour cream dangle from the tortilla.
Stevie nodded. Her mouth was full. I set a napkin on her lap. The glob of sour cream fell, but Stevie didn't notice. I felt proud, in a weird way, that I protected her yoga pants from a dairy splatter. Laundering yoga pants is a pain. It's better to hand wash them, because machines can ruin the nylon. Valerie DiPaolo, defender of the Lululemons. I smiled about that as I finished my meatball sub.
"Jesse wants to be a doctor," Stevie licked sour cream off her fingers.
"Yeah?" I was apprehensive about talking about Jesse. Stevie seemed fine about it, but she probably wasn't completely. Though she should be, because Jesse's a doofus. I wondered what the kid saw in me over her. Don't misquote me, I got some nice features, but my thighs are chunky and my nose is my dad's. It's Roman. I mean, I don't mind. It gets the job done, but it doesn't look all that pretty while it's doing it.
"Doctors are dickheads," I said. Partially because I believed it and partially because I wanted to give Stevie an opportunity to talk about something other than Jesse.
She didn't take it.
"Jesse's not," Stevie set the more toasted bits of her quesadilla in its cardboard box, "he saw me kneel and vom," she over-enunciated that phrase, "and tried to give me his water. He'd be a great doctor."
Stevie didn't look like she was gonna break down crying. I was impressed.
"Yeah well." The commercials on the radio started to annoy me. I didn't want to wait to hear the BIG ALADDIN one, so I changed the station. "Most of 'em are dickheads. They think they know everything."
"They saved your life, though," she said, and then sucked in her lips. She got this look on her face, like she wanted to take her words back. I used to see that look a lot on people, when I was sick. I hate it more than anything in the world.
"I mean," she added, "you're totally healthy now."
Stupid Billy Joel came on the classic rock station. I considered flicking it back to the Top 40 one, even though it was still on commercial. Steve must have expected some kind of response from me, because then she goes: "Right?"
"This asshole doesn't even know where Allentown is, you know?" I crumpled up my sub's wrapper. "There wasn't ever a damn steel mill in Allentown. You think he could get the geography right."
"Val?" Stevie picked at the cardboard quesadilla box on the dashboard.
"Sure," I said. I didn't know how to answer her question. I was healthy, but totally? That wasn't something I'd be able to say for certain. I didn't know what condition my heart was in, or what all of my cells were up to. One of them might have been mucking shit up somewhere- my stomach, maybe? That area got enough radiation to leave some kinda damage.
"That's reassuring," Stevie's voice got kinda loud. I think I was making her upset.
"I mean," I said, "I hope so. I'm hitting the nine year mark, so I'm probably not gonna get a secondary leukemia or something like that, but there's other risks as time goes on."
Stevie was quiet. I was worried she'd make me explain myself.
"How do you live like that?" she asked instead. "Like, not knowing?"
"I just don't think about it." I said.
"Is that why you never told me?" Something in Stevie's voiced sounded hurt. Like I had a sleepover I didn't invite her to or I ate her piece of ice cream cake. I wouldn't have guessed she'd even care to know about my cancer. It was over and no big deal. Or maybe that's just what I told myself. "You just don't think about it?" she asked.
"I guess not talking about things allows you to keep thinking they're not real," I surprised myself with that answer. "It's not the healthiest strategy in the world."
"It's probably better than what I do," Stevie admitted. "You give yourself hope."
Very profound, Stevie O'Shaughnessy.
I didn't know what to say that wouldn't come across as pointless or preachy, so I sucked the last of my fountain drink Mountain Dew out of its paper cup. I almost switched the radio station then, but Billy Joel's dopey song reminded me of something I'd forgot. I thought of Jan's devotion to John Mulaney and I turned my key in ignition.
***
There's a bunch of parking lots around the old Linden Steel plant. Most of them are for the music venues, a few are for the PBS station and the arts center and the rest are for the adjacent casino-resort complex. We didn't have tickets for the Gaelic Lightning concert, but that didn't mean we couldn't creep around the venue and catch a glimpse of Stevie's latest celebrity crush. After all, in the immortal words of Jan De La Rosa: "It's perfectly normal to stalk around places that you celebrity idols are going to be. Everybody does it." It wasn't like Stevie would have another chance to see Gaelic Lightning any time soon. They're from Ireland. That's a ways from PA. So, I drove around those lots and tried to pick out the best parking spot. And that's when I saw it.
"They have this enzyme that repairs their DNA, so they don't age," Stevie took her phone from her pocket and googled something. "It's called biological immortality. I'm not into the vegan shit, but I don't think people shouldn't eat them, it's wrong, ethically. I mean if something could live forever, should we boil it to-"
"Steve!" I punched her shoulder. "Look!"
Parked across several spots was a black bus. Tinted windows. There was no logo painted on the body. It couldn't have been for public transport. "That has to be it!"
"Has to be what?" she squinted.
"A tour bus!" I couldn't believe she was so oblivious. "I bet that's their tour bus."
"Why would it be parked here?" Stevie's an idiot.
"Because it's a parking lot," I pulled into a space a good distance away from the bus, so that we could observe without arousing suspicion. "You wanna parallel park that baby?"
"Yeah, alright," Stevie said. One look at her and you could tell she wasn't gonna accept that. "But how do you even know whether it's Gaelic Lightning's bus?"
See, I told you.
"I don't," I put the Jeep into park. "But if it is, they'll either get in or out of it at some point tonight."
"So we're going to sit here and stare at what we think is a tour bus but might actually be a regular bus?" Stevie watched me lean back my seat.
"Like a stake out," I nodded.
"But when the cops do a stake out, they at least know whom they're observing."
"Like a badly-planned stake out." I corrected myself.
"Vaaaallll," Stevie groaned.
"You got any better ideas?" I folded my arms behind my head, kicked off my heels, and rested my feet up on the dashboard.
Stevie set her chin on top her rolled-down window and draped her arms out and over the side of the Jeep, like a dog on a joyride. "Hey, can you tell-" she interrupted herself, "it looks like the door is open?"
***
I've created a monster. And it is, by far, the best thing I've ever done.
I tip-toed barefoot on the black top, behind Stevie. Sunset was about a half an hour ago and the street lights had turned on, but we made a point to keep to the dimly-lit patches of the parking lot. Shit could get real, real quick. When we reached the rear of the bus, Stevie pressed her ear against it. I waited a half a minute or so, and whispered:
"Well?"
"Nothing," Stevie shook her head. "If somebody were in there, I think we would be able to hear them. Plus, shouldn't the show be on now?"
"Good point," I wondered why we didn't consider that before we jumped out of my Jeep. Poor impulse control? I took my cell phone out of my pocket and pulled up the Steel Stage's concert schedule on Safari. "Starts at 9:00." I checked my iPhone clock. 8:32.
"They've got less than an half hour to curtain," Stevie said, like a stage manager. "They should be inside the venue by now, warming up or whatever."
"Why's the bus door open then?" I wondered aloud.
"Maybe the driver's in?" Stevie hypothesized. "He would totally know whether this is actually Gaelic Lightning's tour bus."
"No shit," I chuckled. "Wanna go ask him who he's been driving around?" In case you couldn't tell, I proposed this as a joke. I don't think Stevie took it as one, though, because she widened her eyes and said:
"Sure. There's no such thing as a stupid question."
And she walked, only a little bit hesitantly, down the right side of the bus.
***
"HEEELLLOO?" Stevie actually STOOD on the bus's top step. "Anybody home?"
"Dude," I said. I wasn't sure what else to say. "Maybe he's in the bathroom?"
"He'd have heard me by now," Stevie examined the bus's ceiling, and then its floor. "We could totally walk around in here, you know?"
"Maybe we shouldn't?" I watched Stevie disappear behind the black tinted windows.
Okay, I thought, I guess we're going in.
***
A/N: Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting! Next update, Friday!