He wondered, quietly, as he looked out at the banks of sleazy neon that advertised the peepshow across the way, what they would have thought of their precious God driving around in a blood red, stolen, Pontiac Bonneville with golden licks of flame scorched along its door panels and a horn that whistled Dixie.
It was loud, and crude, and of course unnecessary, but they were giving him so much to live up to, so many standards to meet, that he had to at least make the effort.
Not that spending between ten and twelve hours a night living inside a cramped ’87 Bonneville was a good deal, or worth even half the pain. She guzzled juice like a bar-propping lush chasing away the blues on a bad day, reeked with the attar of octane and oil and lived her life among the red-lined sectors of the gauges.
He was stiff, sore; aches and pains nagging away around the base of his spine and along the length of his shoulders.
Irritating little nothings.
It was all a case of patience and picking the moment.
He smiled into the rear-view mirror. This was his moment. Written in the stars.
Gunning the engine, he moved on, the Pontiac crawling along the length of the curb like a grubbing snail, and turned a corner. This part of the city seemed to be filled with boarded up shops and abandoned lots, as if the lifeblood of the entire neighbourhood had been drained away and its corpse left out to rot under the glare of the bitter moon.
The idea had a certain something.
The sheets of plywood boarding up the shop fronts were covered with stickers for touring rock bands, the stickers over-sprayed with colourful layers of inventive graffiti.
The Unfortunate stood alone, her eyes stains of ink on her midnight face. Behind her, an oversized banner was plastered across the window of an out-of-fashion carpet warehouse. This grubby little back alley, with its festering garbage and forgotten shops could have been a slip road onto Interstate 101, a road to nowhere.
Puddles of dull sodium mottled the damp flagstones, highlighting the tumbling food wrappers and sheets of yesterday’s news, where unbroken streetlights still cast their own shine, creating darkness within the mouths of doorways and blackness around corners. The streetlights were few, and very far between.
The Unfortunate shifted her gaze away from the Middle Distance as the dipped headlights of the Pontiac rolled gradually closer.
Coming level, he reached across and rolled the window down halfway, stubbing the wet-lipped dog-end of his cigarette out in the flip-front ashtray. The Unfortunate stooped and peered in through the tight opening, her eyes alert and on guard.
A wry little smile played on his lips as he put on his face for her.
Close to, the Unfortunate was nothing more than a sad-faced young girl masquerading as a dark-skinned honey with her hair braided into strings of black pearls and lipstick smudged lips the vivid red of sex. It didn’t matter; an artist had carved her face with a delicate chisel, working miracles that make-up couldn’t hide.
“You looking for another date, sweetie?” she asked, parting those lipstick smeared lips to tease her tongue slowly along the gloss. “I’ve kept that rose you gave me last time.”
Reaching across to the glove compartment he lifted out a handful of dog-eared dollar bills, the faces of dead presidents crumpling in his hand. “Thought we could go for a ride,” he answered.
“So, where’re we going?” She laughed, moving around the hood towards the passenger door and climbing in.
“Straight to heaven, I think…” his smile spread into the toothy rictus of a door-to-door salesman closing in for the kill, lips splitting his face neater than the edge of any knife could.
He touched the soft curve of her left cheek, tracing the outline of a picture that had been waiting for the canvas of her body before it could be drawn.