Daphne, who had never been asleep, was ready for a task, and was ready to empty her overfull bladder.
“Be careful,” he said when he felt her shift. “I live in fear ofmoving my ankle.” How funny that he said it like that, exactly the truth, exactly what he was thinking. His ankle had a consistent throb, but he knew beneath that throb was a truly terrifying pain.
Daphne had been lying with her back against the driver-side door, her legs over Eddie’s lap, her head on Eddie’s chest, completely covered by the silver blanket. She knew the Chevrolet like she knew the bedroom she shared with her sister. She knew where the extra cup was, the one without the ice. She knew how to stand up without jiggling Eddie’s leg. She had shed her corporeal self and now was free to be a butterfly, disturbing nothing. She closed her eyes so as not to waste her energy straining to see. She couldn’t see, she didn’t need to. She put her hand around the cup. “Got it.”
“Okay, good job. Now you go in the backseat and pee.”
“In thecup?”
“It’s been done before.”
Daphne thought about this. She tried to work out the logistics in her mind. “What about toilet paper?”
“Napkins,” he said.
She knew where the leftover napkins from the chicken were. For that matter, she knew where the chicken was, though neither she nor Eddie wanted anything to do with it.
Carefully, carefully, Daphne flipped herself into the backseat, and, finding the most stable place to squat was on the left-hand backseat window, pulled down her navy tights with one hand andpositioned the cup with the other. “Sing something,” she said. Now that she was ready, she could barely hold it.
“We are poor little lambs who have lost our way.” Eddie belted it out like a Broadway audition, and she laughed.
They sang the chorus together. “Baa, baa, baa.”
“We are little black sheep who have gone astraaay ...”
Again, they baaed. The chicken place had upsized their drinks to extra large, standard practice when two drinks were purchased with the large bucket of chicken tenders, and thank heavens for it because Daphne almost needed the whole cup. “Wow,” she said, pulling up her tights.
“Finished?”
“Now what?”
“Now you’ve got to empty the cup and give it to me. That part’s up to you. Just be quick.”
Daphne put the full cup at her feet, then raised both hands. She wasn’t tall enough to reach the crank and so she stopped to assess the situation. She needed to be taller. She pulled out the armrest between the seats and climbed up, then located the crank of the right-side back window directly above her head. Then she began to turn.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Eddie said.
The weather inside the car shifted as even colder air rushed in.
“I got it!” Daphne said. She could smell the trees.
“Now what?”
“Now I have the cup. Now I’m back on the armrest.” Andthen—pop!—Daphne’s bloodied head was out of the car. She tipped up her chin and saw the stars beyond the crosshatch of black branches. Oh, great and glorious night! Nothing had ever been as beautiful as this. Her hands were shaking and so she tipped her urine as far past the roof of the car as she could reach. At the last possible second, she remembered to hold on to the cup. In her excitement, she had nearly let it go.
She stepped back down and handed the cup and some napkins over the seat to Eddie. His fingers were nearly too frozen to manage his fly.
“You’re going to have to sing,” he said.
There was no doubt about her choice. “See the US-Ain your Chev-ro-let,” Daphne sang with gusto. “America is asking you to call. Drive your Chevrolet through the USA. America’s the greatest land of all.” It was the girls’ favorite jingle—no one knew why. They sang it every morning when they got in the car to go to school.
“One more verse,” Eddie called out.
Which, of course, she knew, the last line beingLife is completer in a Chevy.
Eddie laughed so hard he was lucky that nothing spilled. When he was done, she took the cup. She was brave about it and neither of them made a joke. She climbed back out in the night and poured it away.
“I feel like a completely new person,” Eddie said once she was settled back into her spot against him.
