Our new car is a black Mercedes S-Class with heated leather bucket seats that are as warm and welcoming as a lover’s embrace. “Hot damn,” says Wendy as she starts up the car and pulls away from the curb, her tone chipper as ever. “I wonder who belongs to this beauty.” Wendy loves luxury cars. She told me this early on in our ride, by way of excusing her “dependable but dull-as-a-post” Camry. She’s got a Mercedes of her own at home—a 1963 300 SL she tinkers with every weekend but loves too much to subject to the road. “This must be your dream assignment,” I tell her.
She grins. “You bet your ass.” There’s a noise at the back of the car—a loud thud that makes me jump.
“Shit,” Wendy says.
“You think we ran something over?”
She inhales sharply. “I hope not. Jesus. I hit a raccoon once. Wrecked my whole week.”
“I’m sure it was just—”
Another thud.
“Shit.”
It sounds as though it’s coming from within the trunk—something heavy, thumping around in there—and I tell Wendy as much.
“Yeah?” She actually sounds relieved.
“What do you think it is?”
She shrugs. “Equipment for the assignment?”
“That makes sense, I guess.” I open up the envelope. There is a folded-up piece of printer paper inside, and when I smooth it out, I see the instructions typed out in twelve-point Calibri. I shine my phone on it and read it out loud.
Make a U-turn. Right on Chestnut. Drive 3.1 miles to Crestwood Ave. in Hollandville. Make a right. Two miles down is the Hollandville Village Green. At the center of the green, next to the flagpole, you will see a free library. Pull out A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. You will find another envelope inside. Follow the instructions within.
Wendy lets out a theatrical yawn. “And, ladies and gentlemen, we still don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.” She screeches into a U-turn, the thing in the trunk clanging again. Neither one of us mentions it. “Talk to me some more, Camille,” she says. “I need to stay awake.”
BY THE TIME we reach Hollandville, we’re back to The Bachelor. I really do enjoy discussing the show, especially now that it’s close to three a.m. and I’m sleep-deprived and edgy. When you’re in a place you’ve never been with a person you’ve just met, following a long list of instructions sent by someone whose name you don’t even know, there’s something uniquely comforting in talking about a reality show that’s been on the air for more than twenty seasons.
Wendy says, “You know what my favorite thing about the show is? None of the girls give a damn about Pilot Pete.”
“Why?”
“Well, would you give a damn about him?”
“No, I mean why is that your favorite thing about the show? It’s pretty obvious they all just want fame—but that’s the part that makes me ashamed for watching.”
Wendy smiles. “Ah, but you see, it’s not fame they’re after,” she says. “It’s winning.”
“Winning what?”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s the genius of it. Poor Pete’s just a maypole they all dance around, and all each of them wants is to be the last one standing. He could be anybody. Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yep.”
“Anything. Like . . . say the Bachelor was a bowl of chili.”
She snorts. “They’d fight just as hard to be the future Mrs. Hormel.”