“I’m getting a pack of smokes,” Eddie said.“Any preference for beer?”
“I’m a white wine girl, thanks,” I said.
“Noted,” Eddie said and walked away.
I walked away from the van and towards Nagi.He was trotting, aimlessly, towards the white stucco wall of the convenience store.Next door was an old liquor store.Every now and then, he would squat, taking a picture of something on the ground, or bending at the knees in a plier of sorts before he snapped another photo.
“Hey you,” I said.“What are you doing?”
He paused.The radio was within hearing distance from here.
“I’m listening to the radio, and trying to hear what they’re saying,” Nagi said.Without pointing, I knew he meant the old men against the wall.“I have not heard some of this language in a very long time.I’m not even Vietnamese.”
“Back to the van we go,” I said, grabbing his sleeve.
There was someone on the other side of the gas pump from us.A white SUV.A smiling Dad, a Mom, and their two young kids.One of them—a little girl—had gotten out and was standing next to our green van, staring up into the window.
“Mommy,” she was saying.“Why is there an old dead man in that car?”
“Honey, what did I tell you?”her Dad asked.“The correct term is van when they’re big like that.”
“But what about the dead man?”she asked.
Nagi and I tried to hurry.
“Honey, there’s no such—” her Dad began, picking his daughter up, but he straightened up and stared in the window.He blinked.“What the fu?—”
“Excuse us,” I said loudly.I pushed Nagi in front of me.He seemed perturbed by my jabbing fingers.I was conscientious that I was moving a black-clad creature in a woman’s pantsuit into the van.“We’re on a roadtrip and taking our grandfather to get some sun.”
“I’m not your grandfather,” Brother Al moaned, muffled through the window.“I’m a creature of the night!The dread that lurks beneath your bed!The sun will kill me!They’re trying to put me to pasture and lock me in a closet!”
“Stacey, you’re hurting me,” Nagi said, as I stuffed him in the backseat.
“Just get in the fucking van and close the curtains,” I whispered.“We cannot have eyes on us.”
“What’s wrong with him?”the Dad asked when I came back around the other side.
“Dementia,” I said.
“Fuck you!”Brother Al roared through the window.
A woman with a blonde bowl-cut—the Mom—poked her head near the pump and grabbed her husband.
“Honey, come on.This woman doesn’t need fifty questions.”
“Just making conversation,” the Dad said.
“Yeah, well, you’re being incredibly rude,” the Mom said.She held her hand out to me, and we shook.“I’m so sorry about my husband.Listen, my grandmother, when she got that age, she had dementia and alzheimer’s.Terrible combination.I can only imagine how much you put up with.”
“She’s not my granddaughter,” Brother Al howled.“I had sex with her beneath the ocean!In a palace attended by Mermen!”
I banged on the side of the van.Nagi’s face appeared in view, his black veil dangling, and then he shut the curtains again.
“Must be so hard,” she said again.
“That’s what she said,” Brother Al said, and then there were muffled noises.
“What’s your name, hon?”the woman asked.
