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IT'S GETTING CLOSER, CLEARER, HOTTER, WETTER
My new job as an embalmer, preparing the dead in a pop, glittery way, was working like a charm. Families of the deceased would order the characters they wanted to see their loved ones in one last time. I was allowed to prepare people as Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Homer Simpson or simply as an anonymous cheerleader or soccer player.
Rosie, the boss, paid me minimum wage, but fortunately I did it with such gusto that I received good tips from the families who deposited their cash under the string of my thong (I had taken to wearing panties and a t-shirt to receive people and thus play down the situation).
After a week on American soil, I'd managed to save nearly two thousand dollars thanks to my improvised make-up skills. This was enough to continue my search for Miles. The day before my departure, the firefighters organized a farewell party for me at the firehouse. It was great fun, with all the locals, even if they didn't know me, turning up with plenty to eat and drink. To liven up the evening, I spent most of it pole-dancing on the ramp. The more Budweiser I drank, the more I discovered my unsuspected agility sliding down the ramp like an oyster down Gérard Larcher's throat. We partied until dawn, after which I left for the bus station for California, where I was supposed to be heading initially. But Travis insisted on driving me wherever I wanted to go. He didn't want to let me wander around on my own.
We climbed into his orange Pontiac, still a little tipsy with the sun on our backs and a lot of grief in our hearts. We hadn't known each other very long, and if i hadn't had Miles under my skin, i don't think it would have been the gearshift i'd have been fiddling with all the way to Riverside, a town a few miles over the Nevada border. It was also the last known address from which I'd received his last letter twenty years ago. Travis dropped me off, opened my door, took me in his arms, lifted me a good eight inches off the ground, and made out with me for at least a good ten minutes, leaving me in a state akin to Ohio (even though technically it wasn't).
Behind the door, a stunted old lady with round red glasses missing part of the right branch. She was smoking her ass off a pungent-smelling cigar, chewing on it as she went. She greeted me by asking me what the hell I wanted from her. It took me a while to get over the look of her, but she was Miles' mother, who'd certainly had to overindulge in tobacco, sun and bad local tequilas in recent years. He'd introduced me to his parents back then, and I remember them thinking I was a snob because I was from Paris, whereas they were from the fourth world, from that forgotten America that lives in slums, on credit and without any social security coverage whatsoever. She didn't put me up at all, but let me in for a Coke while her husband watched some idiocy on TV, screwed into a beat-up armchair at the feet of which lay corpses of beer cans and cigarettes. The air was so stale that I was afraid to breathe it. After a few polite sentences, I asked her if she'd heard from Miles?
- Not a word," she replied.
- The son of a bitch ran off with his father's disability pension money. No wonder he's hanging out with a girl like you. He's brought us nothing but trouble anyway, always.
She finally let me in on the fact that, last she heard, he'd gone to Palm Springs to pick up some old ladies and live off them, in other words, be a gigolo. She went on complaining about her son and life for a long time, and when she realized that her cigar had gone out, she asked me for a hundred dollars to buy a box and some alcohol for her old husband, who was waiting for a lung transplant, she told me. In view of her distress, and because these were surely their last pleasures, I gave her five hundred, enough to see her through for a while. Before I left, she handed me a photo of the two of them posing with Miles, telling me that if he ever wanted to drop by and say hello, he wouldn't be shot. Then she ran off to the grocery store without looking back to say good-bye.
