Trips looks like he wants to say no, but he holds his tongue as everyone else agrees that it would fix one problem. “Can you reach out to her, RJ?”
“Won’t she freak out about you leaving?” Jansen asks.
“I told her. In a code we set up, but yeah. She knows we’re in the wind.”
RJ stands, reaching for the laptop he left at the front of the RV. “I’ll find her. Any code words to get her to open my email? To verify it’s you?”
“Include Ramblin’ Moxie in the subject and tell her that the jasmine tea is working for now.”
He gets to work, leaving me with the rest of their attention. “That takes care of the ID problem. What about your hand, Trips? How much do you think surgery would be?” I ask.
Trips shakes his head. “More than we have.”
“What about in Mexico?”
“Still a ton. Probably everything we’ll have left. And we need to eat.”
“What can we do to make cash quick? Or should we pawn our shit and then see where we’re at?”
Walker pulls me into his lap, cozying us into the dinette. “Planning on fixing all our problems at once?”
“If I can, why wouldn’t I?”
“How about we finish showers and take it from there?”
Jansen holds up his gauze-covered hand. “I’m going to have to stay dry for a day or two until this scabs over. So, I nominate Trips or Clara for the next shower.”
Trips looks at me, and while his face is blank, there’s something there, some question that has nothing about who gets the next shower. Something about how he fits into this group, fits with me, and I don’t have an answer. Not to that. Not right now. Instead, I bob my head toward the bathroom, telling him without words that he’s up next.
And he listens. Without complaint or question, grabbing his bag and squeezing into the tiny room.
Compliant Trips scares me more than barely-contained rage Trips ever has. At least then I could see what was going on in his head. Right now, he’s a mystery that I’m unqualified to solve.
It’s not my job. Even if I seem to be leading this escape by default, I can’t fix whatever is wrong with Archibald Clarence Westerhouse the Third. Those problems are deep-rooted. Tragic. Unresolved. And began long before we got to this point.
Walker rests his chin on my shoulder, staring blankly out the window at the campground, a group of campers walking to a car with what look like brightly colored mini mattresses on their backs, laughing as they shove them into the back end of their vehicle, beers pulled out soon after, a guitar appearing in one girl’s hands. “That’s something we could do for cash.”
“What? Drink?”
He laughs. “Maybe competitive drinking would get us some cash. But we could set Jay to work busking. His voice and a guitar, he’d make bank.”
“You could sell your art, too.”
“Take up caricature?”
“Maybe. But I was thinking about your actual art.”
“You want naked pictures of you sold on street corners? I thought that was what RJ was working on fixing?”
RJ’s eyes shift our way, his attention at least partially on our conversation.
“Maybe not those. Or maybe, yeah, those, only without my face. You’re good, Walker. I bet you could set up a stand on a random street corner and come away with hundreds from random pedestrians. Sexy drawings or not.”
Jansen joins us at the table. “I’d play if you drew, Walker. I don’t want to, but if it helps, I’d do it.”
“We don’t even have a guitar, man.”
“That’s not a huge problem, not for me. You know that. I probably wouldn’t even have to steal one. One in ten chance that there’s a guitar in the lost and found of this place right now.”
