“This one isn’t on the market. It’s been rolling under the bed too long with the dust bunnies.”

Alice turns to Barbie. “Hon, what you need is a cold washcloth and ten minutes in the ladies’ room. Why don’t you take my hankie and put yourself together before the pancakes come.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Barbie says, taking Alice’s handkerchief and rising as if there’s a book on her head.

Taylor puts up her hand, knowing what’s coming. “Mama, I know I wasn’t nice, but she’s a kook.” She glances at Turtle, who is using Alice’s ballpoint carefully to blacken the entire state of Nevada.

“A kook in need of kindness.”

“She’s thirty years old!”

“Well, you will be too here in a minute. And I guess you’ve never been caught with your head stuck out on a limb.”

Taylor drinks her coffee. “I don’t see what we can do for her.”

“What are we going to do for any of us?” Alice asks. “Get out of here, to start with. This town feels like poison.

Everybody’s so busy looking out for number one they’ll run over you in the crosswalk. We ought to head for California or Yellowstone Park. Someplace wholesome.”

“You think we should offer her a ride out of town?”

“I do. If she’s ready to give up on meeting a movie star producer in the Delta Queen.”

“That’s a big If, Mama. We’d have to try to deprogram her like they did those Moonies.”

“If she stops being perky for ten seconds, we’ll know we’re making headway.”

“What’s Moonies?” Turtle asks. “Moon people?”

“No, earth people,” Taylor says. “People that got stuck thinking too much about one thing.”

“Oh,” Turtle responds. “Like Barbie.”

The pancakes arrive, along with Barbie, surprisingly repaired except for the crumpled uniform. They eat in silence.

Alice wonders how much makeup this woman carries on her person at any given time. She decides to let Taylor make the move, if she wants to take on an extra passenger. It’s her car, after all, and her life that’s gone to hell in a handbasket.

“Drink your milk, please, Turtle,” Taylor says.

Turtle’s dark eyes go to her grandmother’s, then back to Taylor. She picks up the big white glass like some unwanted child of her own.

After several minutes Taylor asks, “So um, what are your plans now?”

“I could really use a shower,” Barbie says. “Sheesh. But here’s the thing, I live in the Delta Queen, and I’m just like totally not interested in going back in there at this moment in time.”

“I meant, for the longer term.”

“You mean later today? Or tomorrow? Holy smokes, I don’t know. Get another job, I guess.”

“Do you have any other prospects? Because if you ask me, this whole city looks like more of the same.”

Barbie looks out the window and narrows her eyes, mo-mentarily making a face unlike any ever seen on a teenage fashion doll. “Shit,” she says, “I hate this town.”
or cuts Turtle’s pancakes into small triangles, and smiles at her mother.

After breakfast they find the car where Taylor has hidden it, in the alley behind the Delta Queen.

“I’ll just run upstairs and get my stuff and be down in ten seconds,” Barbie says.

“Don’t tell the manager you’re with us,” Alice warns.

“I’m not telling him poop,” she replies.

“Mama, this is crazy,” Taylor says when she’s gone. “We don’t know one thing about her except she’s an obvious nut case. She could be a serial killer.”

“You reckon she’ll stab us with her eyebrow pencil?”

Taylor smiles, though she’s trying to be serious. “The next town, that’s all, Mama. I know you’re the world’s number-one soft heart, but you’ve been in Pittman all these years, and the world’s changed. Don’t you watch ‘America’s Most Wanted’? It’s not safe to pick up hitchhikers.”

“We’re kind of responsible, though,” Alice says. “She got fired for talking to us.”

“I’m sure she talks to everybody about Barbie till their ears drop off.”

“Yeah, but you and Turtle were a special case. She’d seen you on an Oprah Winfrey show devoted almost entirely to Barbie.” Alice blinks her eyes twice.