The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [119]
“Hey, Evey?” Corwin’s teeth flashed. “You and me are supposed to marry. We’re supposed to love unto death, until death do us part.” His face was serious and exciting with the light creeping in a blaze up his throat and mouth. His eyes were masked in a slash of shadow.
“We’ll go to Paris,” he said. “We’ll visit Joseph at the U and take a plane from there. Paris, just like you always wanted. We’ll fuck in the street, fuck in the cathedral, fuck in the fucking coffee shops, you know?”
“Which cathedral?” I asked.
“The most beautiful one,” said Corwin, “the one with the best statues.”
“All right,” I said. “Which coffee shop?”
“An all-night one with very tall booths. It could happen.”
“How about the street? Which street?”
“All streets. We’ll take a map.”
I had studied the map on the endpapers of my book—an astonishing maze.
“We’d better get there soon,” said Corwin. “They’re probably building new streets in Paris right this minute.”
“What if I don’t want to, being a lesbian?”
Corwin fell silent; after a while he spoke.
“So you think it might be permanent?”
Driving slowly home, we passed an old man shambling along, coat flapping, hair streaming. It was Mooshum. We stopped the car just ahead, then turned around on the empty highway and cruised up beside him. He continued to stumble eagerly forward, so I jumped out and pulled him over to the car.
“Hey, get in!”
He looked at me, distracted.
“Oh, it’s Evey.”
“Get in the car, Mooshum, where are you going?”
“Visiting around.”
He let me put him in the car and, once he was in, he said in a grand voice, “Take me to lovey!”
“Okay.” I looked at Corwin wearily. He was staring straight ahead. “It’s my aunt, Neve. He wants to go and see her.”
“Why not?” said Corwin, shifting gears with a gesture of resignation.
As we were driving to Pluto, I realized that by now my mother was probably talking to the tribal police. She would be frantic over Mooshum. So as soon as Aunt Neve answered the door—wearing a bathrobe, no makeup, hair matted flat—I told her that I needed to use her telephone. Mooshum and Corwin sat down on Aunt Neve’s springy golden couch and waited while she left the room to brew some coffee. Mooshum flapped his hands at Corwin and hissed at him to leave. I turned away from them with the phone and put my hand over one ear.
“Mama? I’ve got Mooshum and we’re at Aunt Neve’s.”
Mama said a few explosive things, but was mostly relieved. She said something to Dad, then said, “Here, your dad needs to talk to you.”
“Evey? Are you at—”
“Aunt Harp’s.”
“Oh!”
His voice was strained, tense, more excited than I’d ever heard. “Look,” he said, “is there any way you can take a look at her mail?”
“What?”
My father told me that Mooshum raided his stamp collection when Mama refused to send one of his letters, and he glued several valuable, extremely valuable (my father’s voice shook a little), stamps on an envelope he sneaked into the mail two days before. I opened my mouth to say that I’d mailed the letter for Mooshum, but thought better of it.
“I got a little upset last night,” said Dad. “This morning he decided to take off…”
Just then the doorbell rang.
“Will you get that, dear?” Aunt Neve called from the bedroom, her voice a melodious trill. I was pretty sure that when she came out she would look perfectly groomed.
I set the phone down and answered the door. It was the postman with a postage-due letter among the other mail. I paid the postage with coins from