Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Page A

while she wrote and she tipped forward so they would fall onto the page.
    “Please take care of my baby,” she read aloud as she wrote. Signed, “Unemployed and unwed.”
    She sighed, tore the page out and folded it. She saw me looking at her. She smiled a weak smile. Her glove came out and rubbed my smooth head.
    “I signed it that way so the people who find him will think that is the reason he was left. I said 'unemployed' rather than 'out of work' to give people the idea that his parents weren't illiterate, anyway. Maybe if they think he came from educated people they'll assume he's got good genetic stock. It might give him a better chance.”
    I put my nose into the palm of her glove. I liked her for thinking about that. I liked her for grieving over this regular baby. It made me feel important and loved. I thought she would have really cried if she'd had to give me up.
     
    Later, at the breakfast table, Al told it as though it had occurred to him without outside help.
    “We could go into a big supermarket and wait in an aisle until there was no one else in sight and push the cans of beans aside-you know how deep those shelves are-and lay him on the shelf at the back and then stack cans in front of him again and walk away. When he started to cry it would just take them a few minutes to find him.”
    Lil was intrigued, of course, but insisted on stowing her babe not behind plebeian beans but behind artichoke hearts, escargots, some comestible expensive and erudite enough to guarantee that the customer who shoved the cans aside and discovered this sweet morsel would have a certain cachet of worldliness and money.
    Then Al remembered the surveillance cameras and other security hardware and discarded the idea. But I knew it had come from Arty originally. It smacked of him.
     
    So, we were doing what Al referred to as “the sensible thing.” The elderly thin flannel blanket and the kid's unremarkable underwear had all been checked for identifying labels, or floating sequins, that might pin the job on us. Even the cardboard box, an ex-cradle for canned pumpkin, had been checked. Al phoned a grocery from a booth in our last pit stop to make sure they had the brand in the area. Standard brown-paper insulation, layered and crumpled for warmth. Nothing so foolish as a newspaper from anywhere along the route.
    And the red gloves, the long suede arms reaching past the elbows, with three cunning buttons at the slit wrist to close them and the fingers so supple her nails and knuckles showed through. And the mid-page of the writing pad wiped of fingerprints. These minor dodges my parents performed as automatically as the swallowing of spit. The thinking part came in avoiding too much thought, in the spontaneous flare of not scouting ahead-not speeding-and in the care that Al had taken with the van's checkup back there in Whore Meadow, Idaho, where he made sure we would not break down, run out of fuel, or blow a tire before we were well away from the last sight of our own castoff perfection. The Binewskis weren't crooks, but we had a sense of timing.
     
    The morning before, while the plans were still forming, Al had checked out the van. Arty crawled underneath and talked to Al while he cranked the wrenches around. I tried to get close enough to hear but couldn't.
    I was rustling in the drawer next to the sink for tape. Mama wanted tape to fasten the note on the baby. It was dark and I could see Al's head and shoulders against the bright windshield when the van slowed. I grabbed the sink edge to balance as we pulled off into popping gravel. Al doused the lights.
    “Oly, is your mama ready?” His voice was close to me.
    “Just about, Papa.”
    “Tell her to be quick. We don't want to stop for more than one minute and I'm going to make just one pass through town, so we've got to spot the place and decide fast. Tell her.”
    I had the roll of tape in my fist. I shut the drawer and headed for the crack of light showing at the