Smoke

'It's not a truck, or a hearse, or a school bus.'

'Come on, Freddie, I'm not going to get you anything stupid. It's a car, okay?'

Did you ever have that feeling, even though you can't see anybody, you know eyes are watching you?

'What is it?'

'It's called a Hornet. An American Motors Hornet. It's eighteen years old, and in perfect mechanical condition, except the right window doesn't roll down.'

'It's green, Peg.'

'So?'

'The green Hornet, Peg?'

'You worry too much, Freddie,' she told him.

This was Saturday morning, around eleven o'clock. Yesterday, when they'd gotten home, Freddie had taken a long hot tub, he'd had two big cheeseburgers and two ears of corn on the cob and two bottles of beer from Pennsylvania, and then he had slept until eight that evening, and woke up just in time to eat his way through a complete dinner, after which he'd announced he was beginning to feel a little better.

This morning, Peg had called the dealer over in Putkin to be sure the car was ready, which it was. Freddie, in Dick Tracy mode, then rode in the van with Peg to Putkin, left her there outside the used-car lot, and drove on back to the house. Half an hour later — even when the dealer says it's ready, it isn't ready — Peg showed up in this thing.

The green Hornet was very low, about elbow height, and small, with two doors and a backseat just big enough for two bags of groceries and one — not two — six-pack. The front and rear windows were both so steeply slanted they almost looked straight up. The rear and side windows were covered with smoky film, and even the windshield had a faint coppery gray tinge to it. The interior was very hard to see. Freddie said, 'What's with the windshield?'

'It's bulletproof. All the windows are.'

'Who owned this thing? Al Capone?'

'It's not that old, Freddie. I've got the car's whole history, and it only ever had one owner, and she was a little old lady—'

'Who only drove the car once a week.'

'Well, yes,' Peg agreed.

'To go to church on Sunday.'

'Well, no,' Peg said. 'Actually, to go visit her son the ax murderer in the state penitentiary.'

'That's what the dealer told you.'

'He showed me the newspaper clippings,' Peg said. 'There's a law, there's a lemon law, if a car has anything unusual in its history that you oughta know about, like a bad accident or a dead body stuffed in the trunk for a couple months, anything like that, the dealer has to tell you.'

'I've heard of a lot of laws,' Freddie said, 'and none of them have ever made a hell of a lot of sense, if you want my personal opinion, but that one there is just about the dumbest yet. You're makin a law that mice can fly.'

'Nevertheless,' Peg said, 'he had to tell me the history, and that's why the car was so cheap. Three hundred bucks. With a one-year guarantee on everything except tires.'

'Peg,' Freddie said, 'there's bumps all over this car, dents and bumps.'

'Well, according to the news clippings,' Peg said, 'the ones the dealer showed me, the people in the neighborhood hated the family, especially because the mother always kept saying her son was a good boy—'

'They always do.'

'So people would throw rocks at the car every time she went by. That's why the bulletproof glass, too. And that isn't the original paint.'

'No, I could see that,' Freddie said. 'You don't usually get brush marks on a factory job. Peg, when I drive this thing around, people are gonna throw rocks at me?'

'No, no, this all happened in Maryland. They had to move the car far away to a different state so they could sell it at all. When they auctioned it.'

'Who auctioned it?'

'It was a consignment from the state of Maryland. Apparently, this dealer in Putkin is the only one even put in a bid.'

'How come it was up for auction? What happened?'

'Well, the son's prison time was up, so they let him go.'

'Yeah? And?'

'And he went home.'

'And?'

Peg shrugged, looked away, looked back. 'And,' she said, 'he took the ax to his mother, so now he's back inside forever, no parole, and the car came on the market.'

'The car came on the market,' Freddie echoed, looking at the lumpy green Hornet.

'It's a very hard sell, all in all,' Peg said. 'But I figured, a guy like you, a story like that wouldn't bother you.'

'Oh,' Freddie said. 'Right. Not a bit.'

Peg smiled fondly on the little green monster. 'And if you don't think about its history,' she said, 'it's perfect, right?'

'Right,' Freddie said. The Dick Tracy head nodded and nodded. 'Perfect,' he said.

47

The worst thing was knowing they'd never be invited back.

Well, was that the worst thing? Wasn't the worst thing losing Freddie, the invisible man, twice? This time, no doubt, for good? Wasn't that the worst thing? And if not that, then wasn't the worst thing losing their funding for their melanoma research and having to do the bidding of a monomaniac out of James Bond, who wanted to genetically alter the human race so he could sell cigarettes? Wouldn't that be the worst thing on a whole lot of lists?

Well, yes, of course. And both of those are extremely bad and terrible and horrendous and unfortunate. But nevertheless, when you come right on down to the nitty-gritty, the worst thing was knowing they'd never be invited back.

Not that Robert and Martin displayed by the merest iota of a scintilla that anything was even the teeniest weeniest bit wrong. They were as polite and civilized as ever, or almost; the destruction of their landscape had necessarily dimmed their sparkle somewhat.

And there had been an extra moment of trouble, unfortunately, when Peter — and then David, just a few seconds later — had tried to limit the damage by insisting that none of the thirty-four guests soon to arrive for the dinner party should be told about the invisible man. 'And just what,' demanded Robert, waving a hand that quivered over the moonscape of his former lawns, 'am I supposed to say happened here? A remake of All Quiet on the Western Front?'

'You can say,' Peter suggested, 'you're redoing the exterior.'

'And that wouldn't be a lie.'

But there was no hope for it. Even if the physical evidence hadn't been so extreme, there was the fact that the eleven people already present were absolutely bursting with the story, bubbling over with it, half-wanting to end the weekend now so they could go away and regale someone who hadn't been here. If gossip is the fuel of social interchange, this was rocket fuel, and no power on earth would keep it from going off.

'All I ask, then,' Peter said, when everything else he'd asked for had been refused, 'is to make the announcement. At dinner, let me tell the story.'

'When at dinner?' Robert asked, suspicious. 'Over coffee? Believe me, everybody will know by then.'

'No no no, before dinner is served.'

Dinner would be buffet-style, and announced, so people could get on line. Peter said, 'They'll be waiting for you to announce dinner, so announce me instead, and I'll tell them what happened, and then we'll have dinner, and