The night was long. Graveyard and Ambience fell asleep. Then they woke up. The TV was still on. Tuned to who knew what. Did it even matter? As far as Ambience was concerned, all contemporary flicks were pretty much the same. Bombs, boobs, and bamboozlement. She had to admit, though, to an incurable fondness for Last Girl cinema. You know, the flawed B-variety type where a group of terrified young people is besieged by a scary gang of monsters, vampires, zombies, gangsters, terrorists, or just plain bad guys who systematically pick them off one by one in as original or unoriginal and grotesque a manner as possible until only one potential victim is left, the sole survivor, the Last Girl, who then proceeds to kick major ass in a shitstorm of gory carnage, wreaking total vengeance on all those clowns who dared to inflict harm on her and her friends. At the end our heroine staggers off, bruised, battered, and bleeding, into a beautifully grim sunrise. Could there be a more satisfying finale in all of cursed moviedom? Thank you. She didn’t think so, either.
She and Graveyard broke out a box of DaffyDingles. Toasted grain product stuffed with smart chocolate, chunky nutjob butter, and vilified jelly. They washed those goodies down with a couple of bottles of NothingCola. It had no calories, no vitamins, no nutrients. It tasted real good. Ambience suggested that the media fever be dampened a degree or two. Put on something quieter for a change. It was almost dawn, for Christ’s sake. So Graveyard did. Some ridiculous confection about a hundred and fifty years old. And in black and white yet. Ambience hated black and white. She liked all things bright and sparkly. Black and white reminded her too much of death. But she sat and she watched, and after a while, strangely enough, this odd little antiquity began working its old-timey charm upon her captivated brain. She wanted in. She wanted to walk around in that lost land for a day or two. See what it would be like to have not only money but also manners and wit. Imagine that. The picture, of course, was All the Diamonds in the Lode, starring TangledWeb and LimitedQuantity. It was about a beautiful young woman in a shiny, tighty gown who wakes up one night in a creepy back-lot alley and finds herself in the middle of a big strange metropolis with no memory, no ID, and no money. What to do? How about suss out some super-rich folks and hang on for dear life? Lucky for her, every man she meets from then on is both rich and handsome. Some are nice. Some are not so nice. Problem: how to tell the difference and still get some beans into your jar. Ambience was mesmerized. The film’s message seemed to be: good looks and cash go together. Niceness doesn’t go with anything. Was that true? Ambience didn’t know. What she did know was that most movies seemed to be about smokin’ people you’d like to fuck who were locked in a thrill ride to nowhere that didn’t require you to think about much of anything at all. The picture satisfied those requirements. There were a couple of suave creatures of the night here whose tuxedos she wouldn’t mind getting inside. And just about the time our curiously undistressed heroine had wormed her way into the welcoming embrace of an aristocratic family of zany millionaires, Ambience thought she heard a weird sound coming from outside their door.
“Did you hear something?” she said.
“No,” said Graveyard.
“Kill the volume.”
He did. They listened. Then they did hear something. Was it an actual knock? They couldn’t really be sure. It sounded like someone gingerly tapping a pencil on the wood. The eraser end. Who could possibly be calling at this hour?
Graveyard went to the peephole and peeped out. “Warranty,” he said.
“Let her in,” said Ambience. Warranty was Ambience’s best friend. She lived with her boyfriend, Herringbone, in the same building as Graveyard and Ambience. Second floor. Apt. 6. Graveyard unlocked the three locks and undid the chain. He opened the door. Warranty was standing alone out in the hallway. She didn’t look good. Her cheeks were red and wet. Her face seemed all blown out. She looked like she’d been crying for hours. “I saw the light under the door,” she said. “I was hoping you guys’d be here and that you’d still be awake.”
“Well, we are,” said Graveyard, “and we are. C’mon in.”
“You’re not answering your phone. What’s going on?”
“The cells are off. The landline’s on mute. We’re on telephonic hiatus.”
“I’ve been up here a couple times in the last few days. No one’s ever home.”
“We’ve been busy.”
“What’s wrong?” said Ambience, rolling herself as best she could out of the sticky embrace of the puffy chair.
“It’s Herringbone,” Warranty said. Then she stopped. She’d just gotten a long, hard take at her friends’ transformed apartment. It looked like backstage at a fantastically popular game show. “What the—”
“I’ll explain later,” said Ambience. She removed a pile of fancy Pothole&Paradigm boxes from their second-best brand new couch, an authentic HighPlainsSofa personally autographed by DustyTroubles. “Here, sit down,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Oh, you know, the usual.” But Warranty couldn’t stop looking around the room. “This is absolutely amazing. What’d you guys do, win the lottery?”
“Something like that,” said Ambience. She’d been dreading this moment.
“Ambience’s Uncle Parsnips died,” said Graveyard.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“He was a big hedge fund manager at Whatnot&Turnstile. He left Ambience everything.”
“I didn’t know you had an Uncle Parsnips.”
“I didn’t, either.”
“Until he died,” said Graveyard.
“Apparently,” said Ambience, “I was his favorite.”
“Had you ever even met him?” said Warranty.
“Yeah, I guess, but I was very little. I don’t remember.”
Warranty looked at both of them. She looked at one. Then she looked at the other. She squinted. She looked again. “All right,” she said. “What’d you really do? Rob a bank or something?”
“You’ve got a suspicious heart, Warranty,” said Graveyard.
“It’s a fibbing world, Graveyard.”
Ambience removed a pile of glossy black RegalRegalia boxes from the other end of the couch and sat down next to Warranty. “Okay, so tell me.”
“No, no. No off-topic bullshit. What’s going on with Herringbone and me is just the same old, same old. But this”—she made a grand sweeping motion with her arm that took in the entire cluttered room—“this is crazy sick.” In the mess atop the brand new BurningWillowCollection mirrored coffee table her startled eye settled instinctively on a familiar leopard-skin design. “Is that really a bottle of MaybeAraby?”
Ambience reached over, picked up the box, and handed it to her. “It’s yours.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Of course, silly.”
“No, really, I couldn’t. This stuff costs…well, a lot.”
“But I want you to have it. Really.” She pressed the perfume into Warranty’s hand. “It’s a gift.”
Warranty studied the box, ran her fingers over the embossed gold label. “No one’s ever given me something this nice since—uh, never.”
“Well, now someone has,” said Ambience.
Graveyard knelt down in front of Warranty. He spread a fan of bills between his hands. “Pick a card, any card.”
Warranty hesitated. “I’m not used to touching this shit without my gloves on.” She worked as a toll booth clerk on the Conundrum Bridge over the ReadyToWear River. Choking on vehicle exhaust, blowing off drivers’ insults, fondling all that filthy, filthy lucre. The stuff was practically alive, crawling with germs, bugs, cooties, all manner of vile nastiness. She might as well be spending her days scrubbing toilets in a roll-and-groan motel. Or, better yet, how about pulling an eight that didn’t require suiting up in a pair of tight latex gloves? Happiness now would be a high-end situation that did not require the handling of any legal tender whatsoever. Probably she’d developed a disorder of some kind. Fundage Phobia.
“C’mon,” said Graveyard. He kept flashing the bills in front of her face. “Whaddya want, whaddya need?”
Her hand came forward. Her hand went back. “I don’t know, Graveyard, I’d like to, but—”
“It’s brand new, Warranty. Farm fresh. Untouched by human hands—except for yours truly, of course. And we all know how squeaky I am.”
She looked dubious, but she reached out, plucked a crisp one hundred from the pack as if drawing a lot for an execution. “Now what?” she said. “Do I memorize the denomination and then put it back?”
“No, what you do now is, you take that pretty piece of paper in your hot little fist and you rush down to that fancy store you’ve always wanted to go in but were afraid to and you give it to a clerk in exchange for something you would never even have dreamed of buying until now.”
“She needs more,” said Ambience.
“Right. Here, take another.” Graveyard quickly peeled off a second bill. “In fact, take three, four, five more.” He counted them out. He handed them over to Warranty.
She stared at the notes in her hand as if they were a newly discovered collection of alien artifacts from outer space. “Thanks, Graveyard. God, your generosity. It’s kinda overwhelming, and I really appreciate it, but, please, I can’t accept this.”
“Why not?” said Ambience.
“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Neither did we.”
“And we don’t deserve it,” said Graveyard. He didn’t actually mean this. Frankly, he felt he deserved everything. And more. Why not?
“Don’t go girly on us now,” said Ambience. “Don’t erase yourself. Woman up.”
“Think of it as a special offering from the universe to you,” said Graveyard. “No strings attached. Simply for being you. That’s how we look at it.”
“And we want to share our good fortune as much as possible,” said Ambience. “It’s fun.”
“Well, all right,” said Warranty. She managed a faint smile. “You’ve talked me into it.” She looked at the money one more time. As if it were barely real. Then she carefully folded the bills and stuffed them into her jeans pocket.
“There,” said Ambience. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Wait till you work up the grit to actually spend some of it,” said Graveyard. “See how that feels.”
A cat’s paw darted out from under the couch, slapped at a crumpled ball of wrapping paper, then disappeared back under the couch.
“PumpkinClaws thinks all this stuff is just for her,” said Ambience.
“Maybe it is,” said Graveyard.
Warranty couldn’t stop staring. Everywhere she turned there was something new to stare at. “Looks like the party’s been going on for quite a while now. So how long have you guys been rich, anyway?”
“That’s just what we’ve been trying to figure out,” said Ambience. “Your time sense gets so whacked when something like this happens.”
“We’re guessing about a week,” said Graveyard.
“A week?” said Warranty. She looked at Ambience. “A week? Why didn’t you tell me? You could’ve called, at least.” She picked up an unopened box from StressCode. She looked at it. She put it down. With measured deliberation. As if it might explode if handled improperly.
“Sorry,” said Ambience.
“So I don’t get it. Still your best friend, right?”
“How can you even ask that? Of course you are. But you don’t understand. You don’t know what we’ve been through. This whole week has been so fucking sketchy.”
“We’ve told no one,” said Graveyard. “No one. Not a single soul.”
“Not even our families,” said Ambience.
“You know how, when somebody wins the lottery, no one knows who it is cause the winners don’t reveal themselves for days sometimes. They’re too freaked out. They don’t know what to do. They’re searching for the best face to put on to the world. Well, that’s us.”
“And we’re not exactly the most stable people,” said Ambience.
“Here, have another party favor.” Graveyard pulled a bill out of the roll in his hand.
“No, thanks,” said Warranty. “I’ve got more than enough.”
“You say that now…”
“You’re looking better than when you first came in,” said Ambience.
“What?” said Warranty. Her head had apparently drifted off to someplace else for a second. “Yeah. Oh, that. That was me and Herringbone at it again. You know how we do.”
“What was it this time?”
“Oh, the usual routine. He’s restless. He can’t sleep. He wants company. So he wakes me up to listen to him rag on and on about QuipsJulienne, the new head honcho at BeginTheCuisine. He’s apparently none too happy with Herringbone’s folding style. Makes you wonder just what sort of skill set is required to be a stupid napkin technician. Then it’s on to the fifty TamperProof owes him that he’s never gonna see again. Or the shocking levels of sodium in HastyTreats, which he wolfs down by the pound bag anyway. Whatever it is, I’m nodding off. I gotta be up by six. He knows that. Does he care? Hardly. So then he wants his back massaged but says my hands are too cold. Then he wants soup, hot beetle snooze soup. No got. Then how about some dopa dusted down meal? No got that, either. Then the whining. Then the moaning. Then the screaming. I lasted about a minute and a half. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder just what the fuck is wrong with him.”
“He’s a guy,” said Ambience.
“Herringbone being Herringbone,” said Graveyard. He regretted the words about one second after they left his mouth, but it was too late.
“You wanna get cut with a brand new heirloom-quality piece of EternalEdge flatware?” Ambience retrieved said item from an open box at her feet. She waved the ornamental knife around the way everyone does who’s been to the movies a time or two. “And don’t think I’m kidding. Cause I don’t know if I am or not.”
Graveyard leaned over and calmly lifted the blade from her hand. “You need sleep,” he said.
“And you need some sense.”
“Guys, please,” said Warranty. “Let’s not have a replay of what I just left downstairs.”
“Have another hundred,” said Graveyard. He passed her a fresh bill.
She hesitated, she hesitated, she hesitated, but she took it. Into the jeans pocket stuffed.
“Oh, yeah,” said Ambience. “That solves everything.”
“Prove me wrong.”
Then came a series of knocks at the door that sounded like actual knocks. Bone on wood. Rat-a-tat-tat.
“I wonder who that could be,” said Warranty.
“Let him in,” said Ambience.
Graveyard did.
“Sorry to bother you guys at this hour,” said Herringbone, “but did Warranty happen to—” Then he saw his girlfriend sitting calmly on the couch. Then he saw the rest of the room. “Holy fuck,” he said. “What the hell happened in here? Looks like a mall exploded or something.”
“We won the lottery,” said Ambience.
“Ambience’s rich Uncle Parsnips died,” said Graveyard.
“And left you his lottery ticket?” said Herringbone.
“Something like that,” said Graveyard. “Anyway, come in. Sit down.” He patted a clear space on the big leather couch.
“You okay?” said Herringbone.
“Yeah,” said Warranty.
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“I went off my meds.”
“You’re not on any meds.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Anyone care for a drink?” said Graveyard.
“Why not?” said Warranty. In two hours she had to leave for work. What a day this was turning out to be.
“Come in the kitchen,” said Ambience. “See the new toys.”
So they did. They gathered first around the brand new fridge, the don’t-even-ask-the-price NorthernLightsCoolerator.
“It’s got a glass window you can look in,” said Warranty. She looked in. “Cool.”
“LED interior lighting, too,” said Graveyard. “Exterior temperature display, push-button shelves and storage bins, and built-in bacterial filters. Those spigots in the door. One’s for GlacialEuphoriaReserve bottled water. The other’s for limited-edition AllHailAle.” He opened the door. There was nothing inside but champagne and chocolate. The champagne was vintage BlackAndWhiteImperialConsortium, and the chocolate was, of course, TaprootAndJester’s PremiumFlavanolIngots. He opened the freezer. It was full of brand new jewelry. Ambience’s little joke. Ice on ice.
They sampled the champagne. They sampled the chocolate. They sampled the one. They sampled the other. Then they sampled again.
Next, drinks in hand (in the individually crafted Mandarin flutes from AzimuthHouse), they admired the brand new EnchantedScullery toaster with automatically adjustable bread cages, a one-slice option, and twelve brownness settings.
“I love the smell of toast,” said Warranty.
“It has a tiny fan underneath,” said Graveyard. “To waft the intoxicating aroma throughout your bedchambers.”
“Really?”
“With a voice-activated control system that responds to instructions in fourteen different languages and then, at the end, butters your toast.”
Warranty nudged Graveyard with her hip. Of course, there was a charge back and forth. There’d been a charge back and forth for years now. It was what made knowing each other so much fun for all this time. “You are such a weasel,” she said. “But I want one anyway.”
They looked at the GammaHosanna microwave. They looked at the WhirlyBurly blender. They looked at the BurntOfferings stove. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
“Wanna see my new clothes?” said Ambience.
“Twist my arm, girl,” said Warranty.
They left the kitchen. Edging sideways down the narrow hallway to the bedroom. Narrower than usual because the hallway was lined with stacked boxes of LaughFrogg, an aged single malt whiskey (cask strength) from an aged double-damned land. Graveyard’s favorite. He didn’t want to run out of that particular spirit ever again.
Graveyard and Herringbone refilled their flutes. They toasted each other. “Here’s to your head, your heart, your glass, and your wallet,” said Graveyard. “May they all be ever overflowing.” They wandered back out into the living room. The BlackAndWhiteImperialConsortium bottle clutched firmly in Graveyard’s hand.
“A HootchieCootchie,” said Herringbone, staring at the huge mounted TV. “Impressive. What’d that set you back?”
“Oh, a kopeck or two, I think.”
“You don’t know?”
“Frankly, Herringbone, if you’d have scattered as many notes as we have across the past howevermany days of the week, you’d have discovered, as we have, that numbers plus or minus tend to achieve a kind of hazy delirium in which everything blends with everything else to produce a pleasing rush you don’t necessarily want to question. You know, the way it should be.”
“Whatcha watching?”
“Oh, just some Stone Age crap Ambience wanted to see. Here, let me really show you something.” He replaced Diamonds with Eschatology Force II. Hit the clicker a couple of times. Scene: two big guys in a little room, knocking the holy crap outta each other. One gets on top of the other. Close-up: a pair of stubby thumbs pressing down hard into the grimacing bottom guy’s eyeballs. The thumbs keep pressing. The bottom guy screams. Suddenly the eyeballs pop into the air like a couple of bloody grapes.
“Whoa!” said Herringbone.
“And not a single detail lost on our exclusive all-encompassing MannaVision. But here, something even better.” Graveyard bent down, rooted around in a plain brown box on the floor for a few seconds, then stood up, triumphantly displaying in his hand a pricey Better Day copy of the rare Pork in Your Purse.
“Is that the one with MelodyAssets?”
“The very same.” He removed Eschatology Force from the player and inserted the legendary porn disc. “Now let’s get right to it by jumping ahead to chapter three.”
They stood there and watched in silence. For quite a while.
“Fuck,” said Herringbone. “I think I can see the taste buds on her tongue.”
“Multiple angles,” said Graveyard. He hit a button on the clicker once, twice, thrice. And indeed there were multiple angles—one, two, three.
“They should have that on regular movies,” said Herringbone.
“And in real life,” said Graveyard.
They watched for a while.
“I didn’t know that was physically possible,” said Herringbone.
“Look—you can see her toe prints on the guy’s skin.”
The naked people did what naked people do when a camera is placed in front of them. The guys made the comments guys make when looking at naked people.
Then Graveyard said, “Wanna go look at some guns?”
“Aw,” said Herringbone, “do I have to? Didn’t I look at guns the last time I was up here? And the time before that, and et cetera, et cetera?”
“These are new guns. Some still in the box.”
“What are those? Collectibles?”
“C’mon, man, you know you want to.”
Graveyard liked guns. He wasn’t supposed to. Not with his education, his politics, his assigned peer group. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did. He couldn’t help it. He liked looking at them. He liked holding them. He liked shooting them.
“Tell you what: give me a double shot of LaughFrogg and I’ll go look at a howitzer with you. Provided you got one.”
“Done.”
“And, uh, oh, yeah, one other thing,”
“What’s that?”
“Believe me when I say this. I hate to even bring it up.”
“Yeah?”
“Hokum’s vet bill was six hundred bucks.” Hokum was their dog. She had heartworm disease.
Graveyard waited.
“That was a healthy chunk of our rent money. The size of the chunk that it’s a chunk of, you don’t want to know. Warranty and I, well, we’re behind.” He was smiling as well as he could.
“I knew you had balls,” said Graveyard. “I didn’t know how big. You and Warranty are the first and the only breathing souls we’ve even told about this eruption of freakin’ luck into our lives, and not ten minutes after getting the news you’re hitting on me. Unfuckingbelievable.”
“What can I say?”
“How about, ‘Could you spread those cheeks a little wider, please?’”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s fairness got to do with anything on this planet?”
“I’m sorry. I was desperate. I’m not myself these days.”
“Who is?”
“You’re a good friend. You’ve always been a good friend. I don’t want to fuck that up. I just don’t know anybody else who’s got any excess cash lying around.”
“You see any excess cash lying around here?”
“Uh, no, but I see plenty of the stuff that that cash gets you.”
“What’s the rent?”
Herringbone named a figure.
“You’re kidding me. For that cramped shoe box? Worse than the extortion pried out of Ambience and me for the privilege of residing in our palatial digs.”
“You’ve been here longer. You came in on a lower rate.”
“Hold out your hand.”
Herringbone did. Graveyard pulled the thick wad of hundreds from his pocket and counted them out, one at a time, into Herringbone’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” said Herringbone. “The words can’t begin to express the actual sentiment. Thank you very much. I don’t think you know how deeply I appreciate this.”
“On the contrary,” said Graveyard. “I think I know most certainly exactly how you feel. Now, can we go look at some guns, please?”
“I’m right behind you.”
They went down the hallway to the walk-in closet. The door was locked. Of course. Graveyard fiddled with his ring of keys. He opened the door. They walked in.
Graveyard pulled down a box.
“Look,” he said. “A MadderRose114 with moonscape sights and an insect-shell finish. Very light, very portable, yet packs a very severe punch.”
“Should I be impressed?”
“Yeah, most definitely. They only made fifteen hundred of ’em to start with. I’ve got one. The Mystery Whispery Teams got the rest.”
“Okay, nice, what else?”
Graveyard opened a cabinet. Pulled out one heavy meany weapon. “It’s a HyperSniperM98 bolt action with a CosmicHiBeam scope and adjustable cheek piece, of course. Shoots emerald bullets, which, as you might imagine, are not exactly cheap. One just like this was used to kill BigBurden himself a couple of years back.”
“What’s that?” Herringbone pointed to an ugly mess of tubing that looked like some wacko plumber’s failed art project.
“A GoldenShowerStreetWiper. On automatic, shoots five rounds a second. Supposedly can take out around twenty-five hundred people in about two minutes.”
“Now you’re really scaring me.”
But wait, there was more. Lots more. The Humiliator. An over-and-under versatile platform highly effective at close ranges. The PocketDrillM180 with a secret reserve chamber containing five extra emergency rounds for those tight moments in tight places. And the LastJudgment, its silver-plated barrel engraved with lifelike drawings of couples engaged in sexual positions most people couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“That’s pretty direct,” said Herringbone.
“Yeah, and the gun’s language is pretty blunt.”
“What’d that cost ya?”
“I’m too embarrassed to say.”
“I think if I didn’t know you so well,” said Herringbone, “I’d probably take you for one of those nutso skyfallers.”
“Hell, who wouldn’t? But don’t forget, over this country the sky is always falling.”
“That’s why I don’t go out much.”
“And it’s all just one big monster goof anyway. I’ve got the money. I’ve got the time. Why not indulge my goofiness? Isn’t that what you’d do in my place? I mean, really.”
“I suppose.”
“So what is it?”
“What?”
“Your goof?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re not used to thinking about flushing away mad money.”
“I’ve never had any mad money to flush.”
“Ah, but what if you did?”
“Well, if I really let myself go, I guess I’d probably travel somewhere. Sky off to one of those orange-tiled-roof countries. They look nice. Quiet and clean. Good-looking light. The asshole ratio among the inhabitants probably lower than here. I would think everything moves along at a slower pace than it does here. Much slower. Pleasantly slower. Probably they even move through time differently.”
“Is this place real?”
“In my head it is. And when I got there, I betcha it’d be real in person, too.”
“And that’s where you’d write your book. Your great novel.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Herringbone’s not-so-secret secret. He’d always wanted to be a writer. Not quite as far-fetched a scheme as being a tinker or a tailor or a soldier or, yes, a rock star. But what do you want? He was an inmate of his times. Anyway, none of those earlier fantasies, he’d regretfully concluded, was ever going to pass over into experience. He supposed in some way that all he really wanted to do was just to make a mark of some kind, no matter how small, just one tiny scratch upon the great stone face of the world that said simply: I was here. He had a ratty folder in his desk at home filled with all the stories he’d ever written. He hated all of them. He’d twice tried writing something longer, but both times the tank had run dry in the same place, around page 50. Recently, though, he’d been gifted with a new idea: how about a book about an author writing a book about how to write a book? His own frustrations, blockages, and dejections would be the very stuff of the novel. The idea excited him. This I can make something of, he often said to himself. And, of course, he had before him the example of his favorite writer, OutOfPocket. OutOfPocket was one of the big-tent fictioneers of the day. His first novel, Absorption!, had won the ultra you’re-the-top Pound Cake Prize and was zooming through multiple printings too numerous to count; his second, the wonderfully overwrought Hope and Redemption Diet Cookbook, a narrative in verse and recipes, had been, remarkably, baked into a steamy cinematic concoction starring both HotsieTotsie and SeldomAlone—box office bingo. And then, of course, there was the magisterial Writers in Love, which contained dozens of lifelike characters you could not only identify with but also want to invite to dinner. Today, OutOfPocket lived in a moated castle high atop Mount ShoeHorn. No visitors.
“We gotta get you out to the BulletBoutique and cut loose with these bad boys,” said Graveyard. “Whaddya say?”
“You’ve been trying to get me to that range for years.”
“And you always come up with some lame excuse.”
“I’m a busy man.”
“Doing what?”
“Folding napkins and fighting with my girlfriend.”
“That doesn’t even meet the criteria for ‘lame.’”
Herringbone was studying the StreetWiper as if there were one particular way of looking at the gun that would suddenly reveal it for exactly what it was.
“C’mon, you know you want to. And listen, it might actually be fun.”
“I’m not a gun guy.”
“How do you know? I didn’t think I was, either, until my roommate at Porcupine dragged me out once to this quarry in the country where we busted up a bunch of melons and empty vodka bottles. Turned out, amazingly enough, I wasn’t half bad at target shooting. And that roommate’s now—wait for it—Secretary of Rashes&Eruptions in the MadeForYou administration. So you never know.”
“All right, you’re getting to me.”
“Tell you what: you don’t find our little excursion into the wicked realm of glitzy weaponry the best crazy-ass time you’ve had since the last Gizmo and the BlowingChunks concert, I’ll treat you to the BlueStar dinner at ForeignSubstancesOnTheSquare.”
“I was high as a silkbird during that thing.”
“So? Here’s a chance to get off on propelling tiny bits of metal at three thousand feet per second into menacing paper people with numbered kill zones printed on their bodies.”
“Peachy.”
“You wait. You’ll get over there, get locked in behind one of them state-of-the-art Tagged&Bagged variable power sights, FormaCushion stock hugging your shoulder like a contour pillow, tons of bangbang ready to be unleashed at the slightest twitch of your pointy finger, and you’ll wonder where this mad dog experience has been all your life.”
“I don’t know. Where has it been? Let me guess. Hidden behind the target?”
“Beans and brie,” said Graveyard. “Hidden behind the target.”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, behind the closed bedroom door, the women were talking clothes. Turned out the bed was piled seriously high with ’em.
“But where do you sleep?” said Warranty.
“Right here,” said Ambience. “That’s just stuff I bought yesterday. We haven’t even been to bed yet. Actually, we don’t sleep all that much anymore. It’s like money is speed, you know.”
“Gotcha,” said Warranty. She was fingering the unworldly sheen of the dresses. “ResidualWear, LiquoricePop, CausticCollective, even MemoriesOf. This place looks like the dressing room at Beggar&Peasant’s.”
“I did pretty well, didn’t I?” said Ambience.
“I’ve never seen so much off-the-rack girly power gathered together in any one place. Ever. I suppose this is what they mean by the Bomb.”
“Yeah. I plan on taking out major cities with this stuff.”
“Complete annihilation.”
“Totally,” said Ambience. “Look, we’re the same size. See anything you like?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Take whatever you want. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
“Well…”
She didn’t need much encouragement. She picked out a MeowMeow and a La-di-dah. Maybe having money wasn’t so bad. She was one of those people who felt they weren’t supposed to, in this life, at least, have all that much of it. When she was done, Ambience gave her a big hug. They said they loved each other. Then they moved on to the shoe closet. The mother lode. Name a brand and Ambience had it. She had Atchoos and Bustershanks. She had OhNoNos.
“Same thing,” said Ambience. “If the shoe fits, wear it.”
“No, I can’t. You’ve given me too much already.”
“Not even close. Look, I see this as a share-the-wealth sort of deal, okay? Don’t stress about money. Worry about what you like, what you don’t like. Isn’t that all that really matters, anyway?”
“God, how’d you get to be so smart, Ambience?”
“Dumb luck, I guess. Now, pick out some rockin’ pumps.”
So Warranty did. Right. Maybe having money wasn’t so bad. If she said it often enough, she just might believe it. In fact, hooray for money. She needed plenty more of the fresh green in her life, that was for sure. She put on the SassyStomps. The ones with the famous amazing checkerboard soles. She paraded back and forth in front of the closet-door mirror, carefully eyeing her strut. She was definitely too fat, but still, she liked what she saw.
“You look good in those,” said Ambience. “Real spankin’. They’re yours.”
Warranty started to say something.
“Don’t say anything,” said Ambience. “Don’t spoil it.”
“I was going to say I think you look good, too. Even without the pricey duds. Actually, it’s kinda incredible. You look, I don’t know, absolutely amazing. Like you swallowed a lightbulb or something. You are positively illuminated.”
“Well, there is this.” Ambience gestured helplessly at the ridiculous heaps of consumer goods.
“Yes, yes, but there’s something else, too.” She grabbed hold of Ambience’s hand. She peered intently into Ambience’s eyes. “Oh, my God,” she said. The burned-circles look was gone. “You and Graveyard are having sex again, aren’t you? C’mon, admit it. Can’t fool me. You are, aren’t you?”
“Like bunnies. We can’t stop.”
Warranty busted out a big smile. “Congratulations,” she said.
“It’s all this fucking dough,” said Ambience. “It’s like chocolate, oysters, and poppers all in one.”
“Does everyone know this but me?”
“Look, I didn’t know, either, till I was on the far side of the money moon.”
“Sounds like a serious burn. How long you think it’ll last?”
“I honestly don’t care. I’m riding it to the end.”
“You’re my hero.”
“But what about you, Warranty? You just got a bunch of new stuff. How do you feel right now?”
“I don’t know. Good?”
“But you’d like to feel gooder, right?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Well.”
“Thing is, I’m not feeling so kindly about Mr. Herringbone right now.”
Ambience picked up a CoolHand skirt from off the bed. She handed it to Warranty. “How about now?”
“I don’t know.”
Ambience handed her a flashy pair of SweetAndHighUp slingbacks.
“Okay, I get it. I’ll give you a full report later.”
“Of course, this is all well and good,” said Ambience. “But isn’t there something else, something you’ve always wanted really, really badly, but so badly you were afraid to ask because you always knew deep down you were never going to get it anyway?”
“Well, there is one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t. You’ll think it’s silly or stupid.”
“No, I won’t. Promise. And the evidence of my own silly and stupid desires lies pretty plainly all around us.”
“Well…”
“Go ahead.”
“Something I’ve always wanted ever since I was a little girl.”
“Yeah?”
“And I still want it.”
“Yeah?”
“A pony.”
Warranty looked at Ambience. Ambience looked at Warranty. One laughed. The other laughed. They both laughed. Then they couldn’t stop laughing.