she reached the fountain, she stared up at the statue of the woman on horseback. She was beautiful and had long hair partially covering her nude body. Jandy realized she was looking at the statue of Lady Godiva that Sam had told her about. She took a photo.
“If you throw a coin in the fountain, your wish will come true,” a girl said as she paused next to Jandy.
“I don’t believe in making wishes,” Jandy said, but smiled so her words wouldn’t sound harsh.
The girl reached down to scratch her dog’s ears—a trim greyhound, nothing like the lumbering giant that Sam had rescued—and said, “I believe in making wishes. I’ll make one for you.”
Jandy shook her head as the girl tossed a coin into the water. “What did you wish for me?”
“I’ll let you know when it comes true. Come on, Rip.”
Jandy watched as the girl led the dog away. She felt the strangest yearning. She wanted to be a tourist like the woman with the stroller, sure of a room at the inn. She wanted to look like she belonged to the town like the girl with the greyhound named Rip. She didn’t want Sam to drive her to Fort Worth or Dallas, which were probably just concrete-and-steel cities like L.A. She didn’t want to worry about the truck or the wedding or where her next job would come from.
She wanted to just be for a while.
She looked up at Lady Godiva, thinking of the story Sam had told her, and suddenly she realized her arms were covered in goose bumps. She remembered why the city’s name had seemed familiar. The year before, she’d read an article on the Internet about Yoko Ono. John Lennon’s widow had dedicated two Japanese oak trees in Coventry, England, in memory of acorns she and John had planted in that city in the 1960s during one of their first peace protests.
“Imagine,” Jandy said and laughed nervously. She glanced around. Seeing no one, she dug inside her fake Fendi until she came up with a fistful of coins to throw in the fountain.
She strolled back across the square to the other corner so she could examine the quaint First Coventry Church building. The sun glinted off its windows. She walked around it and took more pictures. She was sure that the pews and floors would be bathed in the colors of the stained glass. Even though in a town this small the church was probably never locked, she decided not to go inside.
Looking back in the direction she’d come, she noticed a library and a post office. Instead of retracing her steps, she went down Dresden Street in the general direction of Revere Auto. The boxy lines of the office buildings she passed were softened by trees and flower beds bursting with color. The town hall was a stately red brick building. In Southern California, brick was impractical because of earthquakes. Since she almost never saw it, it struck her as prestigious.
Reaching the end of the block, she paused in front of the Godiva Inn, wondering if she should ask about a room there, even though she already knew the answer. She glanced around and saw gold lettering on the window of a shop across the street: MOLLY’S BEAUTY SHOP.
Her hair, which she thought of as her best feature, was tightly French-braided and tucked under a clean navy bandanna. She’d now gone three days without washing it, something she never did. The prospect of having someone else shampoo it, massaging her scalp and the back of her neck, letting her sit still with her eyes closed while it was dried for her, was ridiculously tempting. Anyone who didn’t have thick, curly, waist-length hair could never know what a pain it was just to dry, much less straighten and style.
She had no idea how many hours she would be in Coventry or how long it might take to find a motel room outside town, and she couldn’t bear having dirty hair another second.
She crossed the street. When she opened the door, she again felt like she’d stepped onto a movie set. Two women were under retro hair dryers with hard, clear plastic hoods that lowered over their heads. Their hair was set in the kind of rollers that she vaguely remembered Aunt Ruby using many years before. The two women were speaking loudly about chili recipes until they spotted her. They broke off to regard her with friendly interest. When she smiled at them, they smiled back.
“Hi, there,” a woman said, and Jandy turned to look at her. She was wearing a black apron. Her hair was dyed jet black and teased to impossible proportions, and her eyes were outlined with black eye pencil and tons of mascara. She’d paused in the middle of a foil wrap, and she and her customer were both watching Jandy with pleasant, expectant expressions. “I’m Phylura. Could I help you?”
Jandy felt a tremor of anxiety. She didn’t have 1960s hair. Beatle girlfriends might have felt right at home, but all the rollers and dryers and teased hair made her nervous.
“I don’t have an appointment,” she said. “I just need a shampoo and blow dry.”
Phylura nodded and yelled, “Evan! Can you take a walk-in?”
A tall man came from a room at the back of the shop, and Jandy relaxed. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said NEVER THOUGHT I’D MISS NIXON. His blond hair was cut short and only the front part was pushed up a little. It was a style that was currently popular among some of Hud’s more meticulously groomed friends. He was proof that at least one person in Molly’s Beauty Shop was living in 2006.
He smiled at Jandy and said, “Hi, there. Are you in a hurry?”
“No,” she said, dismissing Sam and Grandpa’s pickup from her thoughts. She needed salon time, and she sensed that Evan was exactly the kind of stylist she needed it from. “I just want my hair shampooed and dried.”
“I have to finish a cut and a comb-out, then I can take you. Sorry for the wait. We’re not usually this busy on a weekday.”
“And Tryphena is usually here. Tryphena is my sister,” Phylura added for Jandy’s benefit. “She works here, too.”
“You have very unusual names,” Jandy said as Evan walked away. She hastened to add, “They’re pretty. Just different.”
“Hon, just wacky is what they are. They suit Phena and me, I guess. They’re Wicks family names that seem to skip a couple of generations, then come back. It was my luck to be born this go-round.” She efficiently foil-wrapped another strand of her customer’s hair while Jandy sat down to wait for Evan.
“I’m just plain Lois,” the customer said with a smile at Jandy. Then she looked at Phylura’s reflection in the mirror and said, “Where is Phena?”
“You haven’t heard? Jay Jay—that’s my brother,” she explained with a quick glance at Jandy, “got Fiji—that’s Tryphena’s son, his real name is Fred Junior—in trouble again. See, they’re uncle and nephew, but they’re only two years apart. Even though Jay Jay should be setting an example, he’s usually the one who starts everything.”
“What did he do this time?” Lois asked.
“I can’t believe Clay didn’t tell you.”
“You know Clay never tells me anything,” Lois said.
“Well, after Mayor Murray said no fireworks from now until the official city fireworks on the Fourth, Jay Jay just had to buy some. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you can’t hide fireworks. You set them off, you either get noise or a light show. Jay Jay decided he could get away with it as long as he didn’t shoot them off from his own place. So he and Fiji went behind Christ Church, and the first bottle rocket? Shot right into the top of the mayor’s oak tree and set it on fire. Jay Jay started running around in a panic with Mayor Murray’s garden hose. He did nothing except spray water inside her open dining room window, knocking a bunch of crystal off a china cabinet and soaking her rug. Our mayor is a woman,” she explained to Jandy.
Jandy nodded, eager to hear the rest of the story.
“Fiji ran inside the church kitchen, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and jammed it down his pants before he climbed the tree. Got halfway up and the fire extinguisher went off, filling his pants with foam and scaring the hell out of him. Jay Jay said Fiji hit every