The guy stares at him for a second, and I’m afraid it’s going to get ugly.
“Hey, man,” he says. “Think we could make a stop? I gotta take a leak.”
The only place that looks like it might have a bathroom is a roadside gift shop. It’s one of those places full of useless junk—state spoons, frosted pecans with a half-life of about two hundred years, tea towels decorated with grandmas making cranky observations about life, novelty cookbooks, and trivets shaped like lighthouses because apparently the world is clamoring for cute things they can place piping hot casserole dishes on. It’s hard to believe people buy this shit, and even harder to believe they give it to other people as mementos, like, “Hey, we went on this awesome vacation but we brought you back some pickled peppers in a festive, dancing jalapeño jar. Thanks for feeding our cat!” The frat guys have agreed to buy snacks in gratitude for the ride. They troll the aisles scooping up weird chip selections. Gonzo’s got Balder on his shoulder. They’re checking out a pen of a woman in a bathing suit and when you turn it upside down, she loses her top.
The lady behind the cash register isn’t overflowing with gratitude that we’re there. She reminds us that if we break something, we buy it, and goes back to reading her tabloid while occasionally flicking a suspicious glance in our direction.
When I round a corner, Dulcie’s standing in the aisle pointing a potato gun at me.
“Come quietly. Don’t act like a spud and we’ll have no trouble.”
“Hey, Dulcie. Where’ve you been?”
She puts the gun back, picks up a prank lollipop with a “fossil” of a baby alligator inside. “Trying to get info.”
“Find out anything?”
She shakes her head. “You?”
I tell her about Putopia, the scientists and parallel universes, the Infinity Collider, seeing Dr. X, and what Ed said.
“So that’s great,” Dulcie says, but she doesn’t sound happy.
“Yeah. I don’t know. Disney? That seems like a stretch. And he was just a kid.”
“You could always check for signs.” Dulcie jerks her head toward the cash register up front.
I peer over the display of ceramic dog paper-towel holders at the big-haired lady sitting there. She licks her finger and turns the pages of her paper. Briefly, she looks up and squints disapprovingly at the Gold Coast U guys.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” I say to Dulcie.
“Come on,” she prompts.
We inch closer, past shelves displaying various curiosities—crocodile eggs, hot-sauce meat sticks, pecan logs, salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like the president and first lady—and round the corner into an entire aisle devoted to snow globes. Suddenly, Dulcie stops. I’ve never seen this expression on her face before. She seems sad. Her wings droop.
“Dulcie?”
She lifts one of the snow globes, puts her face up to it so I can see her eye through the warped glass, huge, blinking.
“Dulcie? You okay?”
“I hate these things. They’re depressing.” She turns it over. UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS is stamped on the bottom.
“What are you talking about?”
Her head snaps up. It’s like she’s back all of a sudden, but her eyes are still pained. “It’s just that … you can’t freeze life behind glass, you know? And … and take this one, for instance.”
She swipes it from the shelf, turns it over in her hands. Smiling lobsters break-dance in front of a ship’s wheel under a glitter-confetti rain. An empty bottle resting in the fake sand makes it seem like they got drunk and decided to cut loose.
“‘Party Time,’” Dulcie says. “What a stupid thing to write on a snow globe.”
“Maybe they like it there,” I say.
“Poor lobsters. You should not be trapped in a glitter-water hell.”
“Definitely. A fake-snow-pellet hell is better,” I joke.
Dulcie ignores me. I’m used to being ignored. So why does it bother me when she does it? Why do I feel the need to try with her?
She turns away. “You should see if you can snag that paper.”
“All right,” I say, not sure what I did to piss her off. I go up to the counter and pretend to be very interested in the gum and mints selection. I put some Fruity Time Chews on the counter.
“Just this?” the lady asks. Her name is HELLO, MY NAME IS EMPLOYEE #3. In the corner, four rows of boxes marked UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS are stacked eight high. Man, people like their snow globes here.