Molly was up in the seat, jamming her head out the half-open passenger window.
“John . . .”
“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF!!!”
A filthy gray cat zipped across the trailer park, across the front of the car and off into the distance. Molly pulled her head inside and tromped over to the driver’s-side window, stomping on my crotch and shouting “CAT!!!” the whole way. It took ten minutes to get the dog calmed down, at which point she promptly curled up and went to sleep in the passenger seat.
“John?”
The dog farted. I got nothing else out of her the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 5
I DROVE TO a convenience store and bought a road atlas. Back in my car I unfolded it in my lap and drew out the path to Las Vegas with an ink pen. Was I actually doing this?
I knew I would need cash for gas and to replace the several vital parts of the Hyundai’s drivetrain that would likely shatter over the course of the long drive. I had nothing in the bank. This seemed to be a rather major problem, but within a few seconds of watching the sunset in the convenience store’s parking lot, a plan popped into my head, fully formed and alien. I had learned to accept such things in the last few hours.
This wasn’t Dave thinking.
This was soy sauce thinking.
I drove downtown, scanning the alleys until I saw a rail-thin Mexican kid standing by a Dumpster wearing a St. Louis Rams jacket. The kid was wearing the jacket, not the Dumpster. I calmly stepped out of my Hyundai, smiled broadly at him.
I had never met him before.
I had no idea what I was doing.
Without hesitation, I heard myself say, “Yo. Mikey said you got a package for me.”
The kid squinted at me, didn’t move. “Who the fuck are you?”
The kid moved slightly, the bottom of his Ram’s jacket sliding up his skeletal frame. The gun sticking out of the kid’s jeans was black and sleek, looking like something that could shoot lasers. The irony that he was able to afford a nicer gun than the Undisclosed Police Department gave Detective Freeman would have amused me if I wasn’t busy picturing the kid pumping six bullets into my forehead with it.
Again, I heard myself speaking. A single word that to me, had no meaning.
“Creech.”
My soy sauced brain had officially taken off without me. I was operating on autopilot, phrases and words scrolling up into my mind as if fed to me on a teleprompter.
The kid said nothing.
He reached into his jacket . . .
And pulled out an envelope.
He stepped up and gave me a hug, slipping the envelope to me in one smooth, practiced motion.
As the kid turned away, I slowly let out the breath I had been holding.
Back in the car, I pulled the envelope out, opened it, saw it was stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills. I had no idea what any of that was, only that speaking those words to that person would get me cash, like a complicated PIN at an ATM machine.
I counted six thousand dollars.
Alrighty.
Without knowing my destination, I drove directly to the Merry Nation Bar and Grill, six blocks away. I went to the parking lot and glanced around, still without any real idea of what I was looking for.
I went right to a cobalt-blue Dodge pickup that I had never seen in my life. I found it unlocked, reached in, felt around under the seat.
I pulled out a satin-finish steel automatic handgun.
Fully loaded.
I stuck the gun in the back of my pants, felt strangely comforted by its gouge into the small of my back as I sat back down in the Hyundai. Evening had set in now, on one of the longest, most retarded days of my life.
I was about to point the car west, then realized I didn’t want to drive for over 1,500 miles—
—in these shit-stained pants and bloodstained shirt.
I drove home to change, proving that even on the soy sauce, part of me was still a dumbass.
I THREW THE clothes in the trash and showered, paranoid the whole time,
thinking I was hearing opening doors and floor creaks and murderous things bumping around outside the shower curtain. It had been that kind of a day.
I dressed and put on Band-Aids, collected my toothbrush and a comb and contact lens fluid and dumped it into my leather duffel bag.
I flung myself down the hall—
I stopped cold.
My bag fell from my hand with a soft thud.
A teenager stood there. Right in the middle of my living room, a space that had been proudly teenager-free for years.
Braces.
Black Limp Bizkit T-shirt.
I said, “Justin?”
Standing there with a shit-eating grin on its face, the thing that had been Justin opened its mouth and emitted a rumbling sound, like something boiling up from his lungs. After a moment he closed it again.
He gathered himself and said brightly, “Why you frontin’ here? You know what time it is. Stop callin’ me Justin like nothin’s changed, yo.”
I pictured swarms of white worms twitching through his bloodstream and suddenly had to fight the impulse to run away screaming like a toddler.
I took a step back.
Justin took a step forward.
Buying time, I asked, “What should I call you?”
I shifted my feet, felt the nudge of the gun against my lower back. I had never fired a gun before, and certainly never fired one at a man. The thought brought cool sweat to my forehead and a hot, jittery anticipation. Not entirely unpleasant. I had felt it before.
Justin’s mouth opened again, struggling to speak words completely foreign to itself.
“Shitload. Know why? It’s because there’s a shitload of us in here. Now here’s what’s gonna happen—”
The left side of Justin’s scalp disappeared in a spray of pink brain matter. He was thrown backward, my finger squeezing the trigger as fast as it could twitch, the sound shattering the air. Little sprays of blood flicked out from Justin’s chest and thighs and gut, shots landing and backing him across the room.
I had drawn the gun in a mindless reflex, like slapping at a mosquito bite. I tasted blood where I had bit through my lip. I felt electricity inside, the buzz of the violence, sparks raining down inside my skull as if from a blown fuse.
Too familiar.
Shitload stumbled backward one last time and fell against a wall, but kept his feet.
