At least, in that moment.
Later it would catch Bea, and catch her hard. And she knew it.
But this was not later. And Bea had no intention of hurrying trouble along. So she only gunned the engine and tore away.
Chapter Six
Why Do You Have So Much, and Why Do I Have So Little?
Bea parked the van at something like ten a.m., and turned off the engine. She listened to the ticking of metal as it cooled.
She might have been in Ventura, or it might have been Oxnard. Bottom line, she had made it to the Pacific Ocean. And she had found a BuyMart parking lot where she could park under a light and a security camera.
For three weeks?
Maybe. BuyMart was vocal about welcoming RVers to park overnight. And wasn’t Bea just an RVer but with a smaller rig?
It had been a long drive, and the gas gauge hovered frighteningly under one-quarter. But she felt it had been worth it to get to the coast. It was always cooler by day and warmer by night at the coast.
Her first thought had been the mountains, but she was afraid. Towns were few and far between up there. What if she ran out of gas in exactly nowhere? What if there were no support services? She needed more than just a restroom. She needed access to water, and the safety of other people in case of emergency. She couldn’t just park in a wilderness setting. So she had aimed for the comfort of the beach climate, not at all sure the gas would last.
She saw a woman walking through the parking lot between cars, not far away. She powered down the driver’s window and called to her.
“Excuse me.”
The woman looked around. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Do you live around here?”
The woman’s face twisted into a mask of defense and suspicion.
“Why?”
“I just wondered what the weather’s been like here. Does it get hot in the day?”
“Midseventies,” the woman said, her face and body language relaxing some.
“What about night? Is it cold at night?”
“No. Not cold. Fifties, maybe.”
Bea waved her thanks and put the window back up. Removed her key from the ignition. She stepped into the back of the van and pulled the curtain closed behind her. Then she moved to the rear doors and pulled those curtains closed as well.
She lifted the box of cat from her easy chair and sat.
The plan had been to let Phyllis out immediately. And Bea had. But the cat had nearly caused an accident by hunkering down under the brake pedal, then throwing her full weight on the gas when Bea tried to move her with one foot. So she’d gone back in the box until the van was holding still. Until Phyllis could look around and get comfortable without causing trouble.
Bea opened the box, and Phyllis stuck her head out like a soldier daring to rise out of a foxhole on the front lines. As if missiles might whiz between her ears at any second. Then she leapt out of the box all at once and ducked under the curtain, disappearing into the van’s cab.
Bea sat back and sighed.
Well, here I am, she thought.
What followed qualified as her second moment of abject panic.
Here she was. For weeks. Now what? What was she supposed to do?
Bea felt overwhelmed with a sense of claustrophobia. The inside of the van felt close and dank. How could there be no more to her world than this? How was that even possible? What was she supposed to do to make these hours, these days, pass?
Breathe, Bea, she thought. Books. You brought books. And you can have a little something to eat.
But her stomach felt tight and chancy, and she read page after page without any absorption of the words and their meanings.
In time she abandoned the book and pushed her easy chair closer to the rear doors of the van, where she sat, holding one corner of the curtain back. Watching the people go by. Thinking.
She would need money for food. She didn’t have enough food to last until next month. She would need money for gas if the BuyMart people asked her to move.
She needed so much money. And these people had so much money.
She couldn’t stop staring at them. They had shopping carts full of food and toys, but they looked bored and unhappy. How could a person go to the store, buy everything she needed—and wanted, from the look of some of those carts—and still seem dissatisfied? What more did they need to be happy, then? If all this wouldn’t do it?
And there was something else about them. They had these devices in their hands. Bea knew they were phones, but couldn’t quite imagine how a person would make a call on such a thing. The more she watched, the more she became obsessed with people’s phones.
Bea had seen cell phones. Little phones you flip open, with regular keypads for making a call. But these electronic gadgets in people’s hands—they were nothing like a simple flip phone. They were all screen, with no buttons, and people stared at these devices as they walked by, tapping out some kind of communication with both thumbs. Bea watched more than one person nearly run down by a car, so complete was their attention to the screen.
It seemed as though everyone had one of these gizmos with them wherever they went—that no one could so much as go shopping at the BuyMart without keeping their eyes glued to the things.
After an hour or more of staring, Bea needed to use the restroom. She let herself out of the van, careful that Phyllis didn’t dart out the open door, and walked stiffly into the store.
She used the ladies’ room and washed her hands, then stared at her own face in the mirror. She looked tired. Ragged and unkempt. Lost.
In her third moment of abject panic, it struck Bea that soon people might know she was homeless just by looking at her.
No.
It wasn’t going to be like that. She could take washcloth baths anytime the bathroom was private—not multistalled. She could wash her hair in the sink, and keep it nicely combed. She had that little kit she’d made up . . . but, she realized, she’d left it in the van.
No matter. She would get better at this as time went by.
She let herself out of the ladies’ room. At an angle across the crowded store Bea saw an electronics counter. In its glass case she could see dozens of those computer phones.
They drew her in their direction.
She didn’t want one. Not at all. In fact, she found the idea of walking down the street staring at those little devices repugnant. But she wanted to know what they did for their owners. Even more than that, she wanted to know what they cost.
She expected a salesperson to come along and try to talk her into buying one. But there was no one behind the counter. Bea felt invisible. She walked up and down in front of the glass case, eyeing the baffling devices. They were packaged in boxes that sported colorful photos of the phones at work. On their screens Bea saw weather reports, and sports images. She saw them playing videos, like a small TV set hooked up to nothing.
They cost as much as $700!
These people walking back and forth by her van were paying almost as much for these ridiculous little toys as the Social Security Administration expected her to live on every month of her life.
Bea walked back to her van in the bracing ocean breeze, but forgot to enjoy it. Something was changing inside her, and changing fast. Bea would not have been able to quantify the feeling, or wrap words around it. But there was a definite sense that all bets were off now. The line she had so carefully toed all her life was just a smudge in the dirt behind her. Bea did not feel inclined to look back.