Not So Different

36. Odd Couple Pecking Order

Sonny turned down Trent's invitation to accompany Mystik Spiral on their trip to Fremont for a gig, just as he had turned down Jane's invitation earlier, because he'd told his parents he'd keep Quinn from turning the place into a modelling agency while they went away for the weekend. Anyway, he'd been to Fremont with his father, and it was even deader than Lawndale. He'd only dropped by the Lanes' place—driven by the Lanes' place—to let Jane know that he'd passed the test for his licence, complete (as Jane said) with grotesque picture to make it official.

The examiner had almost wept over the final release from his protracted relationship with Sonny. Sonny figured that if the man couldn't hack a life working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and everything that went with that, his career choice wasn't Sonny's fault.

Jane hadn't made the same sort of display as the examiner, but she had invited Sonny inside for a celebration, and he'd decided he could spare just a few minutes. The plan for the celebration involved a large frosted cake. Really frosted. It had been in the Lanes' freezer waiting since the first time Sonny took the test, back when the examiner had not yet seemed like an old man. Sonny eventually decided he couldn't wait for the cake to thaw. Anyway, there was no point hanging round because Jane and Trent couldn't stay. The band were ready to leave for the gig, and they were paying Jane twenty dollars to drive The Tank.

Sonny had been over-cautious in estimating the time he needed to budget to make sure he was home before his parents left. Even at his driving speed, he still got back soon enough to witness all the squabbling over the packing. And when they'd finally gone, he had only about a minute to enjoy the solitude before it was ruptured by the Fashion Club. Stacy gave him a tiny wave, concealed from the vision of the others, and Sandi barely perceptibly gave him what could have been a nod of recognition, but Quinn just said, 'Good, they're gone. We're all alone.'

'Uh, excuse me', Sonny said to her (giving no acknowledgement to Stacy or Sandi), 'but I'm still here.'

Quinn magnanimously extended permission for him to stay, but asked him to be very, very quiet. Then the phone rang, and Sonny picked it up to find it was not for Quinn but from Jane, making her one phone call from custody. She had been given a ticket for a moving violation, and the officer who issued it had told her that, because she was from out of State, the hundred-dollar fine had to be paid at the sheriff's office right away. Neither she nor Mystik Spiral had the money, and so they were being held at the county jail.

To Sonny, as an attorney's son, the story didn't sound quite right, but he decided this was no time to play barrack-room lawyer, or to encourage Jane to. He didn't have a hundred bucks, though.

'Obviously', said Jane, when he pointed this out. 'Look, go over to my house. Use the door with the broken lock. There's some money in the living room table, in the drawer with the missing handle. Oh, and while you're there, Trent wants you to pick up his song notebook. It's under his bed in the burnt shoebox.'

'How am I supposed to get it to you?'

'You have a licence, don't you? And listen, hurry up. I'm a survivor, but I'm not so sure about the other guys.'

When he got off the phone, Sonny found that Quinn wouldn't let him escape the house without explaining why. He puzzled over it on the way to the Lanes'. She should have been happy to get rid of him, no questions asked. He decided it was her innate curiosity getting the better of the sense she didn't have anyway.

He found the way into the Lane house, the location of the money, and Trent's notebook without any difficulty. He hesitated for only a moment before deciding that it would be better not to look in the notebook, given what he knew about Mystik Spiral's lyrics. Then he went home to collect his backpack and a few things to put in it for the journey. Inside the house he noticed the absence of Quinn's cohorts, but saw no point in asking her where they had gone. Better they weren't there, and opening the mouth and wagging the tongue unnecessarily was Quinn's style, not his. Ready as he'd ever be, he went to the car, and as he prepared himself to drive he said, 'Okay, car, this is strictly between us. Don't ask, don't tell.'

He was still a little unnerved when the car started for him. He was a lot unnerved when Quinn hopped into the passenger's seat. She wasn't going to let him go alone in case something unexpected happened.

'You're worried about me?' he said.

'Let me rephrase that: what if something cool happens?'

'Well', Sonny said, 'I suppose it would be smart in case there's some emergency.' Looking back later, he decided that he must have been a lot more rattled than he realised at the time.

It didn't help when Quinn assumed control of the radio, on the grounds that there was only one kind of music she could listen to. He couldn't even get her to turn it down.

Still, if he'd had music he liked he might have started paying attention to it. He needed all the attention he had and then some for the driving. Slowly, cautiously, but legally, he got them out on the freeway without being killed.

There he was surrounded by a flood of traffic constantly overtaking him on both sides, but that had to be better than the alternatives: traffic banked up behind him with the drivers' hostility to him mounting, or driving at the same speed as the freeway traffic—that wasn't going to happen.

What was going to happen was that Quinn was going to criticise his driving. What would she know about it? Arguing with her distracted him, and he was taken by surprise when a giant truck passed them. Quinn told him to pull over and he was too shaken to resist, even though her intention was too appalling for him to have guessed at it, even from her. He was still too shaken to resist when she got him to change seats with her, and then drove off.

When he found his voice, he said, 'I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe I'm letting you do this. I can't believe we're doing this. Hey, when did you learn to drive?'

'God, Sonny, what do you think people do on dates?'

Practice on dates or no practice on dates, Sonny couldn't believe how relaxed Quinn was. She just told him he was too timid and then showed off her attitude by taking one hand off the wheel and resting that arm on the door with her elbow out the open window. 'I could do this all day', she said.

Sonny was on the verge of deciding that might not be such a bad idea—better than having to do the driving himself, anyway—when Quinn pulled over again so that they could change seats again. He had just started on his protest when he saw in his wing mirror what Quinn must have already spotted in the rear vision mirror—a hitchhiker, wearing a cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt and with a guitar slung over his back. Sonny was appalled at Quinn's recklessness in stopping for him. Quinn lied about recognising him as a cousin of one of her friends. Sonny tried to bring up the big gun, probable parental reaction, but Quinn spiked it, by referring to how their parents would feel about the car being taken on a hundred-mile joyride. She even used sarcasm. While he was still adjusting to being hoist with his own petard, she told him to drive 'and I'll keep him from murdering us'. Then, when the hitchhiker reached them and gave them his thanks, she said to him, 'You're not going to murder us, are you?'

'Shoot, no.'

'See?' Quinn said to Sonny, as she followed the hitchhiker's example and climbed into the back seat. 'All you have to do is ask.'

How could anybody argue with logic like that?

As they drove along, the hitchhiker, who introduced himself as Travis, achieved the easy feat of impressing Quinn, by retelling stories from Little House On The Prairie as incidents from his own life. When Sonny let his scepticism show, Travis offered to take them to the spot to prove his veracity.

'We have to get to Fremont and bail out the band', Sonny explained.

This set off another round of bickering between the siblings about timidity and recklessness, but Travis cut it short by saying, 'Band? Hey, what a coincidence! I'm a musician too.'

'And not a travelling guitar salesman carrying a demonstration model?' said Sonny. 'Well, bust my legs and call me Shorty.'

When Quinn asked Travis to play, and he offered her some country music, she said, 'It's practically the only music I can listen to.'

Remembering Quinn's earlier insistence on control of the radio dial, Sonny said, 'But before you said …'

'Shut up, Shorty.' Quinn renewed her request for Travis to play, and he started in on a 'little' Conway Twitty. It was just the beginning for Sonny of two unfortunately unforgettable hours of country music.

When Quinn had finished eating up the performance with a spoon, Travis said, 'Man, you don't know how nice it is to meet some real classic country fans.'

'Well, give us a call when you do', said Sonny, who had just pulled up in front of a bar inconsiderately named 'Mad Dawg's'. This was Travis's destination: he had told them that he had an audition there. After a farewell still not brief enough for Sonny's taste, they had only a short drive to the sheriff's office.

'We made it', Sonny said. 'I did it. I got us here in one piece.'

'Slowly', said Quinn.

'But surely.' Sonny remembered that moment, because it was his last good one for a long time. The money was missing. It wasn't in his backpack. It wasn't in the glove compartment either. There was only one place it could be: with Travis.

This revelation proved to be the prologue to another installment of that long-running program, 'Confessions! with Quinn Morgendorffer'.

'Remember when we stopped at that little town so you could unclench your hands? Travis and I kind of went shopping.' For some reason Quinn thought it was a good idea to expand on this explanation by telling Sonny that she thought the outfit—the one Quinn had allowed Travis to 'buy' for her with Jane's money—was real gingham. It hadn't taken all the money, though. Oh, no. Travis had needed money for a bus ticket home. And he was going to pay it back …

Sarcasm failed Sonny. 'You moron. How are we supposed to get Jane and Trent out of jail?'

'Oh … see, I told you something unexpected would happen.'

That was pretty weak, thought Sonny, watching her nervous grin. Even for Quinn.

And that means I'm going to make her go back to that bar and get that cowboy to return the money. Because she may have seized control of the radio and she may have trapped me into picking that character up in the first place, but when the chips are down I am not getting beaten by Quinn.

Sonny's resolution carried them through the trip back to 'Mad Dawg's' and overrode Quinn's objections to his plan, but started to falter when they got inside the place. Sonny wasn't used to being in a bar. Quinn was, though—like driving, it was something she'd learned on dates. Her experience didn't help when they faced the bartender, though. Sonny looked at a man who would probably be one of his teammates if they ever made impassivity an Olympic event, and asked the man whether he'd seen a cowboy come in recently.

The bartender blinked once and continued wiping a glass.

Sonny looked round the room at all the cowboys.

'Um, he was kind of, you know, rugged looking.'

The bartender kept looking at them. Sonny looked round the room again.

His brain finally moved up one gear.

'He was here to audition for a job singing.'

The bartender looked at them and kept wiping, but allowed, 'We've had a few people in here like that.'

'This guy sings country music.'

'Like I said.'

Sonny capitulated to the inevitable and led Quinn back out of the bar, but now it was Quinn's turn to get them back on track. Cowboys, she said, were like all guys, and guys, Sonny knew, were a subject on which Quinn considered herself the undisputed expert. He wasn't sure what her plan was, but it had to be worth a try. She changed into the new outfit she'd just bought—cowboy hat, cowboy boots, gingham top, and long skirt—and they braved 'Mad Dawg's' again. This time Quinn not only marched right up to the bar but right up on top of it, and started to spin every man there a story about how she was a city girl who'd come out to Fremont with the bail money for some friends who'd been pulled over by the sheriff, 'and now some mean old cowboy's stolen it. Now, I'm not saying all cowboys are mean or old or thieves, but it does make me think twice about ever considering a cowboy for a boyfriend.'

It was a good reminder to Sonny that Quinn did know a thing or two about men. They started lining up to put money in a jar Quinn was holding. Unfortunately, one thing or two seemed Quinn's literal limit. When the third man up suggested she might be trying to flimflam them because she thought they were just dumb hicks and didn't really know cowboys at all, Quinn's line of patter sputtered to a halt.

Under the succession of events, Sonny was no longer normal. He stepped up to the man. 'I may live in the suburbs now', he said, 'but I reckon I still know a thing or two. My folks raised me out in Texas, and they raised me right. My Pa always said to me', he continued, still with strict accuracy, 'Sonny—that's how they call me, Sonny' and, he thought, I've never been more grateful for it, 'Sonny, he always said to me, you look out for your sister. That's what I'm here to do now. And I can tell you this', and he made use of the excellent verbal memory that Quinn could never appreciate the value of, 'I don't call 'em cowboys until I see 'em ride, 'cause a Stetson hat and them fancy boots don't tell me what's inside.'

'Hey, that's Conway Twitty. You like Conway Twitty music?'

'You bet your lonesome prairie campfire I do, partner.' Sonny stopped short of 'pardner'.

And with that, the patrons resumed filling the jar with cash.

Quinn congratulated Sonny on his good thinking. Sonny said, 'Shut up, Shorty.' Quinn frowned. The natural order was, for the moment, restored.

Sonny was still feeling on top of his game when they got back to the sheriff's office with the money they'd raised at Mad Dawg's. But Jane, Trent, and the band were no longer there. They'd been taken out of the jail to see the sheriff. Happily the deputy on duty made no difficulties about giving them directions to the sheriff, who was to be found at the local VFW hall.

Sonny and Quinn could hear shrill cries inside as they approached, and Sonny had to resolve a disagreement about who should go in first by having them go in together. The ruckus was only a large children's birthday party, at which, after a minute, they were able to locate Jane drawing temporary tattoos on the children's arms.

'Finally', Jane said.

'Sorry', said Sonny. 'It's been a long day.'

'Tell me about it', said Jane, but instead she told them about it. The birthday girl was the sheriff's daughter, and the sheriff was letting them work off their 'debt to society'. It helped, Jane continued to explain, that the sheriff himself was a big Picasso fan. She nodded towards a bare-chested man (still wearing his sheriff's hat, though) with a Cubist design on his torso, enjoying the admiration of his adult guests.

Mystik Spiral was also making a contribution, in the next room. When Sonny walked through the door, he saw a ringer performing with them, a large sloppy man who was singing the traditional words of 'I've Been Working On the Railroad' as the band played. (Sonny found out from Jane later that the man was a random poser who'd latched on to them in jail.) Trent was interspersing his own original lines in alternation, in a more typical Mystik Spiral style ('Shatter my dreams in the morn', 'Wish I was never born').

They finished just as Sonny came up to hand Trent his song notebook. The kids loved the performance. You can never tell with kids, Sonny thought, and felt validated when the audience showed the same appreciation for the next number, a Mystik Spiral original.

When the party was over and they were all free to go, Sonny and Jane exchanged stories while the band loaded their gear into The Tank.

When Jane had heard everything she said, 'So, it appears you two can actually get along, hmm?'

Sonny looked at her. 'If you're thinking of repeating that remark, I suggest you ask yourself which of us is likely to have access to better legal representation if I have to sue you for defamation.'

Quinn said, 'We did make a pretty good team.'

'Quinn', said Sonny, 'I suggest you think about the implications of a possible future in which, over every family meal, in front of our parents, I ask you to tell us about what you've been doing lately andabout what you're planning to do next.'

Having elicited satisfactory reactions from both Jane and Quinn, Sonny made his farewells to Trent and the band, and then the two vehicles set out on the return trip to Lawndale.

When they were out on the freeway again, Sonny asked Quinn, 'Did you really mean that nice thing you said about us making a good team?' Before Quinn could answer, he said, 'Because in a team, strategic decisions should be made by the best strategist, and that means no more hitchhikers.'

'But look!' Quinn said, gesturing at a figure visible by the road ahead of them. 'It's Travis!'

'In his case, I'll make an exception', said Sonny, starting to slow down. 'Because if he's still hitchhiking, he hasn't spent that money he got from you on bus fare, so he should still have it, and you're going to get it back from him.'

'But … but how? What should I say to him?'

'One of us is good at strategising, and the other one is good at figuring out what to say to men to get them to do what you want. You know, you were right. So long as we both stick to our strengths, we do make a pretty good team.'

Some dialogue from 'Speedtrapped' by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil