immediately as
“Why’d you turn it off?” he asked.
A grin stretched the corners of Pete’s mouth.
Fourteen
“How about a little excursion?” Pete said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sagebrush Flat.”
“You’re kidding,” Larry said.
“Who’s gonna stop us?”
“I don’t want to go out there.”
Pete clapped a hand down on Larry’s knee. His eyes gleamed with mischief, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked like a kid, a kid with a mustache and some gray in his hair and with big plans to pull off a caper. “We take the van. We drive out there, pick up the jukebox, and we’ll be back in two, three hours. Barb’s zonked. She’ll never know.”
“She’ll know when she finds the thing in your garage.”
“Okay, so we’ll leave it over at your place. What do you say, Lar?”
“I think it’s crazy.”
“Hey, man, an adventure. It’ll be great. You can use it in your book. You know, tell all about how the two guys sneak off in the middle of the night to bring the thing back. You can write it the way it happens, you know? Won’t have to tax the ol‘ imagination.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Don’t you want the box?”
“Not that badly.”
“What about a photo for the cover of your book?”
“Well, that’d be neat, but...”
“So we’ll take my camera. Maybe we won’t bring the thing back, you know? Maybe we can’t even lift it. But at least we’ll have some pictures.”
“We could do that during the day.”
“You know the kind of heat I’d get from Barbara. She’d give me all kinds of shit. How about it?”
“You really want to go
“No time like the present. A midnight mission.”
The idea frightened Larry. It also excited him. He felt a vibration that seemed to hum through his nerves.
When was the last time, he wondered, that you did something really daring?
If you chicken out, you’ll regret it. And Pete’ll think you’re a pussy.
A real adventure.
“Just like Tom and Huck,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Tom Sawyer climbed out his window in the middle of the night and went with Huck to a graveyard to cure their warts. I always wished I could do something like that.”
“You got warts, man?”
“Let’s go for it.”
Grinning, Pete refilled the glasses. “Fun and games,” he toasted. They clinked their glasses and drank.
Pete took his glass with him. He turned on a lamp at the end of the sofa. Then he removed the tape from the VCR, flicked off the television and left the room. Larry sipped whiskey while he waited. It warmed him but didn’t ease the thrumming vibrations.
When Pete returned he wore a gunbelt. His .357 hung in the holster against his right leg. Dangling by a strap around his neck was a camera with a flash attachment. “I checked the bedroom,” he said in a low voice. “Barb’s out like a light.”
Pete set his empty glass down. He capped the whiskey bottle and handed it to Larry. “You be the keeper of the hooch.”
“We shouldn’t take it with us.”
“Fuck that. Who’s gonna know?”
“If we get stopped...”
“We won’t. Calm down, you’ll live longer.”
They went to the door. Pete turned off the lamp.
They stepped outside. Standing under the porch light, Pete locked the front door with his key.
Larry, shivering, hugged his chest as he hurried toward the van at the curb. A chilly wind pushed at him. He thought about stopping by his house for a jacket. But Pete wasn’t bundled up. Pete still wore his short-sleeved knit shirt and blue jeans.
If he can take it, I can, Larry told himself.
Besides, it’ll be all right once we’re in the van.
The van felt warm. It must’ve been like an oven before the sun went down, and it still retained a lot of heat. Larry settled into the passenger seat and sighed.
“Pass it over.”
He handed the bottle to Pete, who took a swig and gave it back. Larry took a drink. “Are you all right to drive?” he asked.
“You kidding? I don’t hardly even have a good buzz on.”
I do, Larry thought. I’m buzzing, all right. But it isn’t the booze. Just good old-fashioned excitement. And maybe fear.
Pete started the van. He kept the headlights off for a while. After turning the first corner, he put them on. They drilled into the night. “Hey, this is something, you know that?”
“You think you can find the town?”
“No sweat.”
“We stay away from the hotel, though, right?”
“If you say so.” Pete drove in silence for several minutes. They were on Riverfront Drive before he looked at Larry and said, “You know what I don’t understand? How come you want to write about the jukebox instead of the vampire?”
“Vampire books are a dime a dozen.”
“Not true ones. Don’t get me wrong, I think your jukebox story sounds pretty neat. But I’d think the true story of how you found a vampire in a ghost town would be... different, you know?”
“Different, all right.”
“Remember that movie,
“It was supposed to be,” Larry said. “But I’ve heard the whole thing was made up.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The thing, is, they
“Right.”
“It was based on a book, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. And the book was pushed as nonfiction.”
“Did the book sell okay?”
“Are you kidding? It sold a ton.”
“So what’s to keep you from writing up this vampire thing as nonfiction? Have a big best-seller, they make
