'Don't you have nothing like Pink Floyd, or Procol Harum?'
'How 'bout The Ink Spots?' Hawk said.
Vinnie shook his head and settled back to look out the window.
We drove down the horsy green Shenandoah Valley with the Alleghenies to the west and Blue Ridge to the east. We hit Knoxville that evening. We crossed the Mississippi at Memphis a day later. Fort Smith, Little Rock, Oklahoma City. I felt like Bobby Troup. Shoney's, Shakey's, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC. I felt my arteries clogging. Gulf, Mobile, Esso, Pilot. Truck stops with buffet tables where you could overeat vastly for maybe six bucks. Hawk and I had a running bet as to who could count the most desirable women. By the time we crossed the Texas panhandle I had already spotted two. Hawk said it wasn't fair, that my standards were too low.
'You have to adjust,' I said, 'to your environment.'
We went through Amarillo. Big John's Steak House. Tucumcari. Uphill to Albuquerque. We slept in Holiday Inns, and Quality Courts, and Hampton Courts, and. Motel Sixes. We drank coffee and Coke and bottled water. We pulled into rest stops and mingled with fat people who wore pink shorts and plastic baseball caps. I was leading the desirable women contest two to one. Sometimes the people wore plaid shorts and plastic baseball caps. They were of both genders, I think. Motor homes got in our way. They moved like odd beetles, slowly, hugging the edge of the highway, driven uneasily by aging people, many of whom were almost certainly wearing pink shorts. Big rigs with fifteen gears slowed us down on the upgrades, and tore past us on the downgrades, trying to make time, which as we know, is money. Small sub sandwiches, biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and sausage. Biscuits and sausage with gravy. Chicken fried steak with cream gravy.
'Used to sleep with a woman was a professor at Harvard,' Hawk said. 'Red-headed woman. Taught literature.'
I was driving. Hawk was in the passenger seat. Vinnie was in the back seat gazing out the window.
'She felt I was,' and his voice deepened and his accent disappeared, 'the perfect embodiment of untrammeled sensuality. Unrestrained by the stale ethics or conventions of the state.'
'I thought that was you,' I said.
'What the fuck she talking about?' Vinnie said.
'Meant she liked a lot of unusual ways to do it,' Hawk said.
'Nothing wrong with that,' Vinnie said.
'Nuthin',' Hawk said.
The next morning we came down out of the mountains west of Albuquerque, and by evening were in the desert.
Chapter 36
THE HOUSE WAS on the east edge of town, with a good view out the back windows of the Sawtooths to the east. It was a big sprawling place with a wide front porch. Bernard J. Fortunato was on the front porch when we pulled up. He was wearing a redchecked shirt and blue jeans and a cowboy hat and boots. A blue bandanna was knotted around his throat.
Who the fuck is that,' Vinnie said, 'Roy Rogers?'
'It's that tough little dude from Vegas,' Hawk said.
'Bernard J. Fortunato,' I said. 'We're all gathering. It'll be like The Big Chill.'
'Just like,' Hawk said.
'About time you got here,' Bernard said. 'I been cooling my heels in this burg for a couple days now.'
'Been shopping some,' Hawk said.
'Yeah. Hawk, how ya doing. Good to see ya again.'
I introduced Vinnie, who already had the rear lid of the Explorer open and was starting to unload. And we carried everything into the house. It was sort of shabby inside, but big. Six bedrooms and two baths upstairs, and a big study downstairs that would convert to a bedroom. There was also a living room, a dining room, a large kitchen, another full bath, and central air.
'Furnished,' Bernard said. 'Six bills a month, large.'
'Six grand a month?' I said. 'We better clean this up quick.'
'Hey that's with the furniture, all the pots and pans, all we got to do is pay the fucking utilities.'
'Anybody else show up yet?' I said.
'The hard case from Atlanta pulled in yesterday,' Bernard said. 'Where do you find these guys?'
'I pick them up at Tony Robbins Seminars,' I said.
'Where's Sapp?'
'Out running,' Bernard said.
'It's a hundred and ten thousand fucking degrees,' Vinnie said.
Bernard shrugged.
'What have we got for bedrooms?' I said.
'Sapp's upstairs, front,' Bernard said. 'I took the couch in the den. I'm compact, and I don't sleep much anyway.'
