Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Among those crippled and killed by syphilis was England's King Henry VIII, as well as France's Charles VIII and Francis I. Artists include Benvenuto Cellini, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the writer Guy de Maupassant.

In the Paris of 1500, a third of the citizens carried syphilis. Among the French nobility, those who were not infected, Erasmus reported, were condemned by their peers as being ignorant and crude. By 1579, the surgeon William Clowes reported that three-quarters of Londoners carried the disease.

Vivica Brawley: Weird what you remember, but I looked at my foot, and I see wire sticking out. Silver wire and pink plastic. And for one crazy second I think, I'm a robot, some kind of an android. And I'm only just finding out…But not really. I'm stoned on the boosted effect, and I'm bleeding and in shock. But I'm no android.

The wire is, the bald guy wore a partial upper, a partial upper denture, and the two teeth of it are still stuck in my foot. His real teeth are dug into Bernie's throat.

Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: As with bubonic plague, the transmission rate of syphilis exploded due to a change in the nature of the causative organism. Rather than being imported from the New World, it's more likely the disease was originally the African skin infection known as yaws, which was primarily spread by body contact among children playing nude. Bacteriologically, the two diseases are identical, although yaws is spread by any physical contact involving skin eruptions. Because of the clothing needed in the colder climate of Europe, yaws emerged as a disease spread through the predominant method of greeting: a mouth-to- mouth kiss. Only as syphilis became epidemic did Europeans abandon the kiss for the handshake, and the disease assumed its current venereal form.

Carlo Tiengo: It's the sight of blood or something, but every Drooler and perv in the club piles on top of Bernie. Viv and the other girls lock themselves backstage. The bartender and me, we're locked in the office, calling to get the cops. The door is solid oak, thick as a telephone book, and we can still hear Bernie bellowing for help.

Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: It would not be unrealistic to assume that—like bubonic plague and syphilis—the current rabies epidemic is due to casual contact, becoming a zymotic disease common to crowded cities. Like syphilis, the disease brings the subject to an agitated state where he is more likely to seek out and infect others. Additionally, the damage caused by the Lyssavirus to the central nervous system prevents the sufferer from «boosting» or otherwise enjoying the solitary entertainment of neural transcripts. This inability increases the likelihood the infected individual will seek amusement outside his home, indulging in risky social interaction such as 'Party Crashing' and casual sex.

Vivica Brawley: Poor Bernie. After the cops shot everybody, they had to autopsy their stomachs to find all the bites people took. Bernie's ears and nose and his lips. The surgeons at the hospital showed me some toes in a pan of salt water and offered to reattach them. The toenails still had their nice white- tipped French pedicure.

But I just looked at those toes all chewed up by a Teamster and half digested, and I told the doctors, 'Don't bother.'

25–The Patsy

Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): Depends on if you believe that deformed girl or you believe the police, but their first night together was the same night Buddy was supposed to have killed that lady. The one owned the little pet store, that Libby woman.

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): What's to love most about Party Crashing is how close it matches real life. I mean, a drunk driver doesn't care that you've been painting for years and your first gallery show opens next week. How bogus is that? The fifteen-hundred-pound elk, the one standing in the shadows at the edge of the road, ready to jump, it has no idea that your baby is due next week.

The greasy brake lining or the cell-phone talker…

The loose lug nuts or drowsy truck driver…

It doesn't matter for crap that you've got three years of sobriety or that you finally look good in a two-piece bathing suit or you've met that perfect someone and you've fallen deeply, wildly, passionately in love. Today, as you pick up your dry cleaning, fax those reports, fold your laundry, or wash the dinner dishes, something you'd never expect is already stalking you.

Officer Romie Mills (Homicide Detective): Edith Libby, the victim, was five-foot-eight, 128 pounds. Her body was discovered during the morning curfew sweep in an area bordering on both Nighttimer and Daytimer districts. The cause of death wasn't readily apparent. Nor were any injuries evident. The location in question was not surveyed by the existing system of street cameras.

Shot Dunyun: That bullet or drunk driver or tumor with your name on it, the way I tolerate that fact is by Party Crashing. Here's one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can't control. I'm dancing with the inevitable, and I survive.

My regular little dress rehearsal.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Any idea of Progress depends on not looking at the past too closely. It's undeniable that the streets are less crowded than they were before the inception of the I-SEE-U curfews, but society will always have to manage a certain amount of resentment among people who feel short-changed by their immediate circumstances.

Lynn Coffey (Journalist): You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote. Nighttimers had become that—an effective and efficient method to sweep the slave class out of sight.

Forgive me, but after two decades of reporting on local politics, I guess I've earned the right to finally tell the truth. And the truth is, no Nighttimer has ever been elected President.

Officer Romie Mills: Wade Morrison was another story. Age: twenty-four. A born Nighttimer. Middle of one night, he collapsed, just as dead as the Libby victim. Granted, we weren't treating these deaths as homicides per se, not until they began to form a pattern.

Lynn Coffey: It's still segregation, only not by space—the backseat of a bus or the balcony of a movie theater. It's segregation by time. Go ahead, call it a social contract, like speed limits or building codes, but it's still living on the graveyard shift. One clock tick past that curfew, and you'll find out just how equal you are.

The fallback argument is that Nighttimers can always leave an urban area and live in a rural district not subject to the I-SEE-U Act. But that takes money. Plus, the majority of jobs and education opportunities are in cities.

Officer Romie Mills: With the Morrison killing, we had testimony that the victim had been