“Where you going?” said Ambience.
“Out,” said Graveyard. He had his keys in his hand. He was headed toward the door.
“Unacceptable.”
“I don’t know where I’m going. All right?” Sometimes, lately, he had so much energy knocking up against his walls he just had to get out and walk. Just go. Go anywhere. Burn off the excess. “Wanna come?” Sometimes Ambience came with him. Sometimes she didn’t.
“How long you gonna be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bring me something.”
“What?”
“Surprise me.”
“Don’t I always?”
Graveyard and Ambience lived in a part of town that started the weekend on Wednesday night. Okay by Graveyard. Fine with him if every day was a weekend day. Without clocks, without demands, especially without bosses. He wanted to go to bed when he wanted. He wanted to get up when he wanted. In between he wanted to do what he wanted. An attitude not notably congruent with the demands of the corporate plantation everyone was now happily born into. You can’t say he hadn’t tried to pull his weight. A distinguished graduate of Porcupine University, he applied for and was typically granted a slot within every position for which his degree in Advanced Marketing Me had more than adequately prepared him. A partial résumé: apprentice weed puller for WeedsAin’tYou; professional desktop arranger for the harried executive who, frankly, couldn’t be bothered; bottle turner at the BetterThanVinegar wine company; official counter at the trials of the GuessTheNumberOfJellyBeansInTheJar Contest world championships; toupee handler for ImmaNoFool of LearnToBeAsFilthyRichAsMe Enterprises; happy cup chemist; living sculpture to brighten up a spartan business office; ticket taker at FreaksOnTheBeach; and, his best job so far, assistant to the personal assistant to BrazenRodentCheeks (before the disgracement), the controlling owner of every scrap of that valuable strip of suburban lawn located between the sidewalk and the street from coast to coast and there’s nothing you can do about it. And, of course, there was also the fab tentacled world of the computer godhead, where he served variously as a compubandageroller, a compupageturner, a compub.s.artist, a compupipejockey, a compucaddy, a compupolesitter, a compubottlewasher, a compugroomer, a compuhandmodel, and, his favorite, a computrashcollector, a gig that allowed him to keep whatever valuables he happened to find in pursuit of his duties. Curiously enough, not one of these golden opportunities had ever blossomed into full-time permanent employment. Maybe he was still trying to find himself. That’s what people said. He tended to agree. Though whoever was running this show had managed to hide him away from himself so thoroughly he was still searching after more than twenty years on the hunt and could report little success. The only occupation he had discovered so far that he actually enjoyed was the one he presently held: good-for-nothing idler. A leisure style requiring, of course, a comfy cushion of coin. Like maybe having a bag of the good stuff fall out of the sky onto your head. The moment kept going round and round in his skull. Like a tune he couldn’t shake. In the city you often heard about the dangers of falling objects: bricks, tiles, pieces of scaffolding, flowerpots, air conditioners. And when a pedestrian took a direct hit, the resulting splat was not usually very pretty. And look how close he himself had come to being reduced to little more than a stain on the sidewalk. Actually, factually, dead. Miracle number one: he was still above ground. Miracle number two: what had nearly flattened him had made him impossibly rich. Was there a meaning in all this? Damned if he knew. Of one thing he was certain: his gain was someone else’s loss and that someone was probably quite agitated by now and that what was in the bag was no doubt dirty and now he was dirty, too. Why not? People who had sacks of loot lying around their apartments were probably not “nice” people. They had probably acquired their “proceeds” in not very “nice” ways. And when they lost their acquisitions, particularly large sums of acquisition, they tended to get less nice. He had gone over the ground dozens of times. So far he didn’t see any way he could possibly be traced. Anonymity was the best disguise. Just another innocuous number in a teeming hive of numbers. Money? What money? I don’t got no money.
Everyone outside today looked bright and vivid. Everyone looked new, as if they had just been freshly minted. All their edges had been enhanced. A remarkable sight he’d never really experienced before. He didn’t know it was possible for skin and hair to appear so well packaged. Today everyone looked famous. Even the well-scrubbed hipsters stuffing their faces at fenced-in sidewalk tables outside the Colloidium appeared to be actually enjoying their lives. Graveyard’d sit down and join them, order something obscenely pricey, like the cup of a half dozen handpicked duffelberries for $17.95 or the Standing Water Consommé for twenty-five dollars, but he was in no mood for sitting or eating. He needed to get out of his neighborhood, where everything reminded him of something in his life he didn’t want to be reminded of.
He needed to travel to another country. He hailed a cab—he could afford it—and hopped uptown to the exotic TooGoodForYou district. Formerly the Forbidden Zone, now his favorite twenty blocks. Except for the occasional flash of fine tailoring, folks here looked pretty much like folks anywhere. They just had fatter wallets. And skinnier bodies. And noses expertly tuned for grace and comfort. Even the streets seemed air-conditioned. Veteran residents of these consecrated blocks had always known what Graveyard had just learned: happiness is a warm coat of money. A thick, a doubly thick coat. To live here, which admittedly might be fun, he’d still need another bag or two or three of the long green. Wait—what was he saying? He’d need a virtual bombardment of bags. An intense carpet bombing. What he could do now, though, was wander around the antechambers of the wealthy, soaking up the gravid atmosphere where everyone who was rich and well tended was looking at everyone else who was rich and well tended and disapproving of what they saw. Graveyard fit right in. He looked in a window. I can buy this, he said to himself. He looked in that window. I can buy that, he said to himself. And sometimes, just to prove he could, he rushed into a store and bought something he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about simply because it was priced beyond all limits of reason. What pleasure that gave him.
And there were real famous people, too, all over the place. On just this one afternoon he saw Cartwheel and FancyPants. They were holding hands. Must’ve patched things up since that very public brawl last spring on the island of Boolaboola. Graveyard had seen the full story on the celeb-besotted InYourEar cable channel. He liked to pretend otherwise, but to be embarrassingly candid, that’s where he got most of his news. He saw OverAge. He was wearing white shorts. He had a rally-red tattoo on his right calf depicting a devil nun with horns and a tail giving the finger with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other. Who would’ve thunk? And he saw NasalBags. All alone and in disguise. The phony beard looked so phony it couldn’t possibly be fooling anyone. With his dough you’d think he could afford to have a makeup artist on staff who could do him up in a professional camera-ready manner.
All around him hard-charging exceptionals babbled away to one another in a medley of foreign tongues. Graveyard was lucky to even recognize the accents, let alone understand the words themselves. This was a space where money in all its wondrous incarnations came to mingle with other monies.
Graveyard went into I$Me. A leather-scented store for the privileged that sold pricey stuff the privileged couldn’t get anywhere else. Graveyard bought a set of sterling silver corn holders and a platinum pen that wrote upside down and under water and a liquid clock, an assemblage of glass cylinders containing varying amounts of different colored fluids Graveyard hadn’t a clue how to read. Very chic. And who said the exceptionals had no taste?
Rounding a corner, Graveyard was abruptly confronted by a camera crew, a mob, a story in progress, lights and microphones trained on a hapless uniformed doorman. He recognized the luxury building everyone was gathered in front of. It was the famous MontMont, which, Graveyard happened to know—he was a treasury of pop trivia—housed the palatial quarters of both SprinkledCupcake and LowToleranceComponent. What’s going on? he asked a bystander. Turned out this particular building also contained the three-story digs of super financier AluminumCliff. Apparently, he’d been pretty bad lately. Another one of those tedious scandals the megarich were always getting wrapped up in. It was either sex or it was money or it was sex and money combined in salaciously inventive ways. Graveyard moved on.
Ambience was on his mind. He was worried. He didn’t like the direction she seemed to be going in. The dollar high was fading much too quickly. Too much talk about not being worthy of all this good luck. It was starting to bring him down, too. Now she wanted something. She wanted to be surprised. But by what? What could she possibly want that she hadn’t gotten for herself in the last two weeks?
Bang, zoom. It hit him out of the blue. A car. A brand new car. Like right now. He wanted a car. She wanted a car. They both needed a car. He flagged a cab and rode right on over to the classy showrooms on the far west West Side, which were full of obscenely priced engineering marvels designed just for people-like-you. The sales staff took him for a messenger or a delivery guy. What with the long unwashed hair, the torn jeans, the scuffed hip-hop sneakers and all. He hadn’t yet converted his wardrobe to suit his present circumstances. But he asked to see the best, and, reluctantly, they showed him the best. I’ll take this one, he said. I’ll pay in cash, he said. All four of his pockets were stuffed with the sweet green that puts a smile on everyone’s face. He signed the paperwork. He drove the car off the lot. What was he feeling? A sensation beyond words. Chicken feet and razor clams, Graveyard said to himself.
Now he needed a drink. He headed downtown and ended, as on some level he always knew he would, back in his own hood, headed inexorably toward Why?, his favorite bar. And even here in his (relatively) low-rent pretend “ghetto” the day’s good fortune continued dispensing its welcome smiles. There was, astonishingly, an open parking space waiting just for him three blocks from the bar, directly in front of the WiltedLettuce grocery store. And perched atop a trash can in his usual spot was the store’s unofficial greeter, an apparently homeless man whose name, even after exchanging hellos with him for more than six or seven years, Graveyard still did not know. “All we ask is a penny,” the man said. “No one should go hungry.” Graveyard always gave him something, dutifully emptying his pockets of whatever change he happened to be carrying that day. This day, though, was this day. He gave him paper. One whole pocket’s worth of paper. “Thank you, kind sir,” the man said. Which is what he always said. But the startled expression on his face was not what his face usually expressed. “Bless you,” he said. “You’re welcome,” Graveyard said. Immediately saying to himself, this guy probably lives in a fine apartment better than mine and takes a monthlong vacation to BurnishMe Island every winter. Graveyard couldn’t help it. He was as human as everyone else passing by, running the same thoughts through his overloaded noggin.
Why? was a second home to Graveyard, the adult equivalent of a kids’ backyard clubhouse. He knew the owners and everyone who worked there, including the kitchen crew, and most of the regulars. He knew both bartenders, MasterPlaster and EndZone. MasterPlaster was writing a screenplay about a zombie hospital where damaged zombies went to have other zombies put them back together again. She was also a serious ballroom dancer. EndZone was a wannabe actress when she wasn’t an actual pourer of drinks. She was currently appearing in the infamous Panties in a Bunch at the Crumpled Door, a hundred-seat theater a couple of blocks away. She was topless through most of the second act for reasons no one quite comprehended but could still appreciate. Sometimes MasterPlaster and EndZone went home together after work. Sometimes they didn’t. Graveyard also knew most of the rest of the waitstaff—P, Q, and R. They were all just marking time.
And wouldn’t you know it, the first people he saw coming through the door were the very rub-a-dub-dub LimitedEdition and the reliably “as is” PocketPool.
“Hey,” said LimitedEdition. “There he is, the Man Who Wasn’t Here. Long time no see.”
“Yeah? I been around.”
“Haven’t seen you in days.”
“I been busy.”
“Busy? Doing what?”
“Shopping,” said Graveyard.
“Shopping? You kidding me?”
“It’s my new hobby.”
“I think what we probably got here is a case of the ol’ Mr. Pussywhipped,” said PocketPool.
“You should be so lucky,” said Graveyard.
“So what’d you buy, shopping?” said LimitedEdition.
“Odds and ends.”
“Anything you care to share with your good buds?”
“Ends and odds.”
“Thought you were having trouble meeting the monthly nut,” said PocketPool.
“I was, but, lucky for us, Ambience has come into a little unexpected legacy.”
“How little?” said PocketPool.
“Ambience and money are like oil and water,” said LimitedEdition. “How’d she manage to get her fingers on a dollar without it getting away?”
“Well, you’re not gonna believe this, but a rich uncle died.”
Everyone laughed.
“Really? Like in the movies?”
“Just like.”
“So how much?”
“That’s her business. Ask her.”
“Where is that girl, anyway? Haven’t seen her around much, either.”
“She’s been out buying neon beer signs and antique medical equipment. She wants to redecorate the apartment.”
“Into what—Dr. Ygor’s underground med lab?”
“She likes to entertain her eye.”
“Why not a whole new apartment?” said PocketPool.
“We’re considering.”
“Then this must be more than a little little money.”
“A little more.”
“Substantially more.”
“In that general area.”
“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”
“Don’t believe I am, no.”
“Well, then, the least you could do is buy all us luckless deadbeats a round of drinks.”
“My pleasure,” said Graveyard.
So he did. A shot of BlackPeat and a beer back for all. Then he did it again. Then he lost count. Everyone got drunk, and those who were already drunk got drunker.
“Why couldn’t this happen to me?” said PocketPool. “Nothing ever happens to me.”
Not true. Stuff had been happening to PocketPool his whole life. Only problem: hardly any of it was good.
“What are you talking about?” said LimitedEdition. “You won the lottery.”
“Yeah. Once.”
“Still, a win’s a win.”
“Yeah. Fifty dollars of win.”
“Well, that’s fifty you didn’t have before.”
“And by the next day, fifty I’d never see again.”
“Don’t blame us if you’re so careless with your dough.”
“You ever think about how much money there is in the whole wide world?” said PocketPool.
“No.”
“Well, think about it sometime. It’s a lot.”
“So?”
“So why isn’t more of it flowing in my general direction?”
“Cause you just haven’t lived the right and just life. Only those who deserve the money get the money. You know that. The foundation of the culture.”
“So I’m not worthy?”
“Apparently not.”
“And I am,” said Graveyard.
“Apparently, yes.”
“Well, what a crappy way to divvy up the goods.”
“You got a better way?”
“Yeah,” said PocketPool. “Everyone gets what they need. Not what they want, what they need. There’s plenty to go around.”
“And who would be in charge of this magical redistribution?”
“Benevolent souls who dress in rags and live in caves on faraway mountains.”
“There you go. Problem solved.”
“And how much would you expect to take home under this new regime?” said Graveyard.
“Oh, only a couple million or three.”
Everyone laughed again. Loudly.
“Well,” said PocketPool. “It’s what I need.”
You never heard such laughter.
PocketPool had a few issues. Drug issues, mostly. He’d experimented, dabbled, and indulged from the eighth grade on. He’d never met a drug he didn’t like. He didn’t know why. His favorites were Luridonin and OverEasy. Luridonin made his head feel as if it were packed in gunpowder. OverEasy made him feel like an egg. They were his real friends. They’d never let him down. In fact, he wished that at least one of them was with him right now.
“Anyone seen Five Wet Rats on a Log?” said LimitedEdition.
“Is that the one about the plot to corner the world market in pandemonium?” said Graveyard.
“Yeah.”
“What’s pandemonium?” said PocketPool.
“It’s some kind of sacred mineral that’s inside every cell phone, every computer, every electronic device.”
“Corner that and you control everything.”
“That’s why the evil Dr. Vitus and his hunchbacked minions are busy kidnapping, torturing, and assassinating every Quasiland government official whose face they don’t like. Quasiland’s the place where this pandemonium is dug out of the ground by the oppressed masses.”
“Who are the wet rats?”
“They’re the elite force of do-gooder ex-cons sent into Quasiland to liberate our pandemonium. We want our pandemonium, and we want it now. Get the fuck out of our way.”
“Don’t tell me. The leader of the pack is none other than BurlyMuffins.”
“Fresh from saving the world in Interstitial.”
“Isn’t he getting a bit old for the muscle-and-gun routine?”
“It’s called experience.”
“Have you checked out his face lately? He looks like a practice dummy for plastic surgery students.”
“Who’s the babe?” said PocketPool.
“VernalMist,” said LimitedEdition.
Everyone groaned in unison. Which is what everyone was supposed to do whenever this particular actress was mentioned.
“You haven’t lived till you’ve seen her suck the poison out of BurlyMuffins’s trigger finger. Dr. Vitus, see, shoots a dart from his badass helmet gun. Happens to hit our hero right on that delicate spot. And boy, does she know how to work a finger. Disappointment is, there’s been some obvious editing.”
“Maybe we’ll get to see the whole thing on the DVD extras,” said PocketPool.
“One can only hope,” said Graveyard.
“Oh, no,” said LimitedEdition. “Don’t try and pretend you’re above it all. You’ll be drooling over that scene same as the rest of us.”
Graveyard looked at LimitedEdition. Then he smiled with his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Got me.”
Graveyard and LimitedEdition had known each other since their fabled-in-their-own-minds brew-and-smoke days back at old Tip O’ The Wedge High. They never got in any actual trouble anyone ever found out about. Well, except for that time they pranked the school. Snuck in one night and proceeded to glue about two hundred in nickels, dimes, and quarters to the floor of the main hallway and another two hundred in dollar bills to the ceiling. With a scattering of tens and twenties at strategic intervals just to make it interesting. When school opened in the morning, the ensuing melee resulted in multiple bruises and contusions and a couple of torn fingernails and one broken arm. Everyone involved was suspended and barred from attending the prom. They held their own prom in the back room of WoeIsMe’s BakeShack. Superior refreshments for all. And everyone in attendance had sex of one kind or another before the night was through. School-day memories.
LimitedEdition worked at StandUpAndCheer in computer cubicle Q5872Y. They were the gold standard in wealth management. They took your money, rubbed it up against other people’s money, and ringadingding, the stuff multiplied like bacteria. More sugar for everybody. LimitedEdition’s job was to sit and stare at a screen for ten, eleven, twelve hours a day. When the majority of numbers on the screen had a little + sign in front of them, LimitedEdition could go home. You can imagine how many days a year he got home early. Graveyard worked there once, too. He lasted about a week. His head always felt as if there were a thick, tight belt wrapped around it and as if at the end of each hour the belt were systematically tightened a notch. Graveyard felt that way on a lot of jobs.
“Shouldn’t you guys be at work or something?” said Graveyard.
“It’s Saturday,” said PocketPool.
“Oh.”
“How could you possibly not know that?”
“Men of leisure don’t have to know the day of the week. In fact, men of leisure don’t want to know the day of the week.”
“One less aggravation,” said LimitedEdition.
“Yes, and isn’t it interesting that how much dough you have or don’t have affects your perception of time?”
“So how does time look to you now, Mr. Aristocrat?”
“It goes slower and I’ve got more of it.”
“Money in the bank.”
“Bingo.”
“Effigy’s getting fat,” said PocketPool, just to say something, let everyone know he was still there, still in the game. He pointed to the television screen up behind the bar. “Fat and old. Look at her.” It was the video for “Cat In A Box.” She was dressed in body-tight snakeskin and writhing around on a metal grate suspended over the CGI flames of an impressively phony CGI hell. Every male gaze in the bar zeroed in on the dancing screen in the way testosterone-flooded eyes everywhere tended to do whenever Effigy’s image, in any medium, was placed directly before them.
“I’d tap that,” said LimitedEdition.
“She’s already spoken for,” said Graveyard. “Devil’s already got her under his management. Look, here he comes now.”
Some skinny half-naked guy painted candy-apple red and wearing horns and batwings and a rubber tail flew up out of the pit, seized the popster in his long shredded arms, and dragged her, still warbling, down into his infernal throne room, where she was crowned queen of the underworld as all the denizens of hell broke out into a mad, krumpin’ frenzy.
“How ridiculous,” said LimitedEdition.
“It’s supposed to be ridiculous,” said Graveyard. “You remember it better.”
“Who’s gonna forget that body?” said PocketPool.
“I’ve seen better,” said LimitedEdition.
“Yeah, where?”
“At work.”
“Oh, yeah, who?” said Graveyard. He wondered if he’d known anybody LimitedEdition was talking about during his brief stint at StandUpAndCheer.
“Well, LoadedDice for one. Once she even got a personal wardrobe warning from NoWaivers himself.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Stacked, packed, and whacked. She eventually got fired for putting xenofoam into the break-room coffeepot.”
“Never met her.”
“And PrivateIssue, down in Disinformation and Insecurities. She had half the entire Human Capital team. I mean, she literally had them.”
“You actually make the corporate life sound busy and fun.”
“Yeah, well, what do I know?”
“How’s that Resolve of yours?”
“Oh, good. Real good, as a matter of fact. You know her, she’s always good.” He paused. He paused again. “I think we might be coming apart,” he said. The line just popped out. On its own. Big surprise for both him and his friends.
“Oh, shit,” said PocketPool.
“You can’t come apart,” said Graveyard. “You’re a team.”
“How do you know you’re coming apart?” said PocketPool.
“Her girlfriends look at me funny,” said LimitedEdition.
“Uh-oh,” said Graveyard.
“It’s never anything terribly overt. More like I’ve got some terrible disease and they’re sorry, but they can’t do anything about it. Sometimes I feel like I’m being attended to by nurses. Nurses who’re studying me for further symptoms.”
“So how’d you come to be the patient in all this?”
“Beats me. If you ever get a good read on Resolve, let me know, cause you’d be a better detective than I am. I think this was probably a long time coming, but you know how she is. What’s the message? What’s the static? I can’t tell the difference anymore. I’m too this, I’m too that. I talk too much, I’m too quiet. I’m too close, I’m too far away. I make strange birdlike noises when I eat. Hyenalike barks when I come. I don’t make enough money.”
“Sounds pretty much like your normal relationship to me,” said PocketPool.
“And just in the last month, she’s begun developing allergies to things I’ve never even heard of.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Castaway seeds and bitterheart and crisscross grain. And, oh, yeah, yobodia. Apparently that’s something really bad found in all gingum flour.”
“Sunchokes and adzuki beans,” said Graveyard.
“I’d hate to have to give up gingum cookies for life,” said PocketPool.
“She’s making her own meals now. Separate from mine.”
“Maybe she just needs a brief vacay or something,” said PocketPool.
LimitedEdition waited a moment, then he said, “I think she might be seeing someone else.”
“Here we go,” said Graveyard.
“What makes you think that?” said PocketPool.
“She goes out at night. She doesn’t get back till dawn. She’s all ellipsised up. She won’t tell me where she’s been.”
“Okay,” said Graveyard, “but what else? Where’s the smoking gun?”
“It’s not funny.”
“I know it’s not. Sorry.”
“I keep waiting for that ‘we have to talk’ moment.”
“Maybe she took on another job without telling you,” said PocketPool.
“Yeah. The horizontal kind.”
“I think we need more drinks,” said Graveyard. He called over Q. He decided they required an urgent upgrade in alcohol percentage. A round of Brainpoppers. Hold the Tabasco.
“Sorry, guys,” said LimitedEdition. “I didn’t mean to dump all this crap on you two. I don’t know what happened.”
“Who else you gonna dump it on?” said Graveyard.
“You’ve got problems of your own.”
“Not as bad as yours,” said PocketPool.
“Thanks,” said LimitedEdition.
They sat in silence for a while. No one knew what to say. Graveyard was thinking about Ambience. Where she was. What she was doing.
“Sorry,” LimitedEdition said again.
“Forget it,” said Graveyard.
“Make her jealous,” said PocketPool. “Your time to party.”
“Does that work?”
“Who knows? But at least you’ll be getting some fun out of this mess.”
“I don’t know anyone who’s getting any fun out of anything.”
Next thing Graveyard knew he was staring out the front window and gradually realizing it was getting dark outside. What? How’d that happen?
“What time is it?” he said.
“I don’t wear a watch on the weekend,” said LimitedEdition. “This is when I pretend I don’t work for a living.” PocketPool never wore a watch.
Graveyard caught Q on her way by. She wasn’t wearing a watch, either. She didn’t like to be reminded how slowly time was passing on this shitty scumbag job of hers. Thanks, Q.
“Well, no matter what the time is,” said Graveyard, “I think I’ve got to be shoving off.”
“You know what she wanted?” said LimitedEdition. “What she’s always wanted real bad? A pair of those Lance&Fester shoes. I always said they were too expensive. If only I’d gotten her those shoes, maybe none of this would be happening.”
“How much are they?” said Graveyard, reaching into his pocket.
“I don’t know. A lot. Five hundred or so.”
Graveyard counted it off the roll in his hand. He passed the bills over to LimitedEdition. “Pick her up a pair on your way home.”
“I couldn’t.” He tried handing the money back.
“Yes, you can.” Graveyard pushed the bills away.
LimitedEdition looked at the new green notes in his hand. Then he folded them and put them in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said.
Graveyard turned to PocketPool. “That boyfriend of yours need anything?” he said. “Before he leaves?”
PocketPool was an alternating-current kind of dater. He’d take up with a woman for a while and whenever that ended he’d find himself with a man until he left and it was back to a woman. He was obviously looking for something. He didn’t know what it was. At the moment he was on the male half of the cycle.
PocketPool looked at the money in Graveyard’s hand. “We’re good,” he said.
“Have a party favor anyway.” Graveyard crumpled up a few bills, stuffed them into PocketPool’s shirt pocket. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that I must now take my leave. Got to get back to the hacienda to prepare for the evening’s repast.”
“And what do rich bastards like you eat, anyway?” said PocketPool.
“What all rich bastards eat: barbecued angel wings and unicorn steaks.”
He gave a mock salute and he was gone.
Out on the street he suddenly remembered. I bought a brand new car today. Amaranth and watermelon, he said to himself. Hard to believe that monstrous contraption parked halfway up the next block was actually his. He coulda bragged about it to the guys. Given them an up-close view of what an exceptional’s ride looks like. But then he realized he hadn’t really wanted to show off before his friends. He hadn’t wanted to feel what they’d be feeling when they salivated over the priceless machinery. He hadn’t wanted to feel what he’d be feeling watching them. He popped the locks with the remote and got in behind the wheel. That heady new-car smell. Leather and money. He drove the dozen blocks home with studied care, worrying the whole time about getting even a single scratch on the car before Ambience could take a look. He wanted her to get the full, unadulterated impact. Then, miracle of miracles, there, before his disbelieving eyes, was an empty space right in front of his brownstone. He didn’t know how much more parking luck he could stand in one day. He carefully maneuvered the massive vehicle into the spot (a smooth, easy fit), raced up the stairs, calling for Ambience as he rushed through the door. She was in the bedroom, trying on jewelry before the mirror.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said.
Graveyard grabbed her hand. “Don’t say another word. Just come with me.” He hurriedly dragged her down the stairs and out the door and posed her in front of the new car.
“What?” she said in blinking disbelief. “You bought that?”
He nodded.
“You bought that.”
He nodded again.
“We own that?”
“Incredible, isn’t it?”
“It’s a HomoDebonaire.”
“The HomoDebonaire3000. Top of the line. Runs on sunshine and fresh breezes. It’s greenly green.”
“No,” she said. “No.” She walked around, examining the bright, shiny thing in an apparent daze. “I never thought I’d own a car this expensive, this nice, in my entire life.”
“Well, now you do.”
“Can we go for a ride?”
“Certainly.” He stepped forward, opened the passenger-side door for her. “After you, miss. Step into the Homo, please.”
They took the LookyLou Drive up along the ReadyToWear River, over the Conundrum Bridge, and in half an hour they were out of the city. The normal, ludicrously heavy traffic seemed to move aside at their approach.
“Didn’t this insane purchase take quite a hefty chunk out of our assets?”
“You’d think.”
“Why I asked.”
“But no matter how much I take out of the bag, the amount left behind in the bag seems to remain pretty much the same.”
“Like in a fairy tale?”
“Exactly.”
“How is that possible?”
“Maybe this is a fairy tale. A real fairy tale.”
“As opposed to a made-up fairy tale?”
“You need to get with the program, Ambience.”
“I am with the program. I just don’t know why.”
“Give me a kiss.”
“You’re driving.”
“A kiss so deep I might even lose control of the car.”
She leaned over and planted a major tongue sucker right on him. The car swerved to the left. The car swerved to the right. It settled back into its proper lane. Everything about the moment was thrillingly otherworldly. After it was over, they pretended as if nothing had happened.
“At least the traffic’s not too bad,” said Ambience.
“They knew we were coming. They cleared out.”
“I can’t even hear the engine.”
“Acoustical baffling. Standard issue on this model.”
“And the ride. So smooth. If you didn’t look out the window, you wouldn’t even know we were moving.”
“Mattress-quality engineering. Standard issue on this model.”
“Well, whatever the standard issue is, the whole experience is making me standardly horny.”
“There’s plenty of motels around here. Look, there’s a Highway Hideaway, and on the right a Bogus Inn. Vacancies at both.”
“I’m not talking about motels, you simp, I’m talking about the car. Fucking in the fucking car.”
He pulled off the interstate at the first opportunity. The Governor RoundAbout Memorial Rest Area. Parked in the shadows, away from the all-illuminating sodium vapor lights. They climbed into the spacious leather back seat and went to work. This time there was more oral than there had ever been before. And Graveyard felt he could do what he was doing for hours, or so he liked to imagine.
“What’s that?” Ambience said, squirming around on the tip of his tongue.
“Don’t know,” he said. “Invented the move just this instant.”
“Me like,” she said. “Keep doing that.”
So he did.
She tasted like something primeval, something you kept tasting and tasting yet still couldn’t quite get.
“You know what’s wrong with the world?” she said. “I just realized.”
“Tell me,” said Graveyard, trying to keep up.
“Pleasure,” she said in a strange voice, half groan, half grunt. She was obviously somewhere far beyond the stupid rational world. “Pleasure deficits…all of us…too damn many.” She got quiet. Then she said, “Could you do that thing you just did?”
“I don’t know what I just did.”
“Let me help you remember.” She shifted her hips.
“It’s coming back to me.” He felt that right now, in this momentary moment, he was making up for years of deficits.
“Could you go a bit lower, please?”
He went lower.
“Little to the right.”
He went right.
“There,” she said. “Now, don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
Okay by Graveyard. He wanted to go and go and go until he was spent.