Ambience had made this appointment with herself more than a week ago, about a half hour after learning that Graveyard planned on spending much of the weekend backpacking along the BurningThigh Trail in the Bric-A-Bracs with CancelledStamp, an old buddy of his from Tip O’ The Wedge, for no convincing reason she could see other than a futile attempt to recapture high school glories she did not share and had no interest in. Graveyard and CancelledStamp had both been expelled for painting, on Senior Day, the statue of the school’s founder, Old White Guy, a remarkably lifelike shade of black. They also planned on concluding their vigorous weekend with a Sunday visit to the ArmsAhoy GunGala in picturesque UpperDingervale. Ambience’s reaction to these two days of action-packed fun: bring me back a tasty piece of bullet.
Thirty minutes after Graveyard left Saturday morning she lit her first sweet cigarette of the day. Inside. Let the air-conditioning deal with the effluvia. Then she began her telephoning. First call to Mom. Rub the tender guilt spot for a couple of therapeutic minutes.
“Amby,” Mom said when she finally picked up after about a dozen rings. “I was up in the attic going through the old picture books. Remember how cute you were when you were six and your father was still with us?”
“Some people think I’m still cute, Mom.”
“Oh, no, dear, I certainly didn’t mean to imply anything any different. It’s just that you were the best-looking child anyone had ever seen. It was commented upon everywhere.”
“Yeah, I remember, and you used to drag me into town to show me off to everyone you met.”
“Well, I was proud of you.”
“That’s not what a little kid feels when old coots she doesn’t know bend down to drool over her.”
“Amby, I’m surprised at you. Those were my friends.”
“They weren’t mine.”
“Well, I can see you’re in one of your snits now. You know I don’t like to talk to you when you’re so knotted up like this.”
“I’m not in a snit.”
“I can hear it in your voice.”
She became acutely aware of the volumes of air that lay between them, that had always been between them. “What’s that noise in the background? I keep hearing this metallic rattling.”
“My blender.”
“Well, it sounds like it’s coming apart.”
“It’s always sounded like that.”
“What are you making?”
“My health drink. It’s a refreshing combo of flowering mangletops, bilge nuts, moonfruit sections, pared canker root, ahoya extract, and jasper buds.”
“Sounds absolutely awful.”
“I’ve never felt so full of energy in my entire life. I’ve spent the morning tidying the living room and the den. I’m finishing up the attic this afternoon. And tonight I’m taking in my first play in years, maybe ever. It’s called Marbles in the Batter.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m going with AllocatedDraft. You remember AllocatedDraft?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. I used to drop you off there every morning on my way to BonusBrands.”
“The crazy lady. The house smelled of celery.”
“And she hated celery. Never touched a stick of it.”
“Her rosterchip cookies were great, though.”
“You’d spoil your dinner filling up on those.”
“She had a funny dog, too. With only one eye. And it always came no matter what name you called it.”
“It’s a TorsoWhisk.”
“What? What is?”
“My drink. That’s what it’s called. A TorsoWhisk.”
“I suppose I should try one, too.”
“I’ll send you the recipe. How’s Graveyard?”
“Getting along.”
“He found a job yet?’
“That’s one of the reasons I’m calling you. His uncle died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Uncle Parsnips.”
“Was he sick?’
“Not so far as we know. Graveyard didn’t even know him. It was all rather sudden. And he left Graveyard some money.”
“Gosh, nothing like that ever happened in our family.”
“And not just some money. I mean a lot of money. A substantial amount of money.”
“Is it enough to make me nervous?”
“Yes. Graveyard’s not too concerned about finding a job right now.”
“My goodness.”
“Yes. A life-changing amount of money. So what I was wondering was, how you doing right now? Need any help?”
“I’m flattered he’d even think of me, but no, things are good here. The flies are still selling real well, my government check comes every month, and I go into BonusBrands when I can, a couple days each week. I’m fine.”
“I’m sending you a few bucks tomorrow.”
“Amby, really, that’s not necessary.”
“But I want to, Mom.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, Mom. Listen, Graveyard’s just come in and he’s making strange signs at me. Better go see what he wants.”
“You do that, honey.”
“Talk to you later, Mom. Bye.”
“Bye.”
And she hung up. And she wanted a cigarette. Badly. So she had one. She sat on the hard, uncomfortable motel chair, staring blankly into space for several minutes, processing that call. It was like shuffling through a deck of playing cards without any suits. No winning at that game. Then she picked up her phone again. She called Warranty.
“Hi,” Warranty said. “So how’s it going up there in Peckerwood?”
“It’s shadowland here, kid. This is where the country goes to die. Everything’s about twenty years behind the rest of us. The women are still wearing puntpushers.”
“That’s so junior high.”
“And the kids are all trading flip rings.”
“Nooooo!”
“The other day I actually had a squelchburger. Deluxe.”
“Gosh. Haven’t had one of those since the last BeefBar place in town shut down, about a millennium ago.”
“Like I said, it’s a real living history museum up here.”
“How’s Graveyard?”
“You know him. As long as there’s a TV to watch and a gun to shoot, preferably at the same time, he’s happy.”
“And have you watched TV and shot a gun?”
“Does the president pick his nose when no one’s looking? Only thing, all the TVs around here are too small for Graveyard’s taste. But we went to a range the other day.”
“How’d you do?”
“Like riding a bike. It all came back. I killed the rest of them, including the owner of the place.”
“Well, a girl, too.”
“Shit, yeah.”
“What’s the family like?”
“You know, a family. Dumb and fucked up. His sister’s kinda cool, though.”
“Aren’t the sisters usually cool?”
“One hopes. How’s things in the big metro?”
“Bangin’ and boomin’. We had a water main on the street blow last week. Flooded the whole basement. You got anything stored down there?”
“Not that I know of. I’ll check with Grave. How’s Herringbone?”
Warranty blew out some air. “Into full-on Herringboney. He’s given up all pretense of being a quote, nice, unquote person. I haven’t really seen him in a week. We’re on different schedules now. He’s got some kind of phony-baloney job at some kind of phony-baloney night operation he won’t tell me about. He’s hardly ever even here anymore. I can smell the other women on his clothes. There’s always a strange pair of panties in his pocket. I think he must be collecting them or something. The other night I caught him with his face buried in a pair of leopard-skin Ultra-Slims that were definitely not mine. Like he was doing a bump of ellipsis.”
“When’s the story ever going to change?”
“Beats me. How’re the skies?”
“Nothing. Dishwater gray.”
Besides collecting tolls at the entrance to the Conundrum Bridge, Warranty was a ninja fangirl of clouds. Yeah, those fluffy white things hanging spookily over all of us. She loved them. She wanted to live in them. She wanted to be one. She took pictures of them. She drew pictures of them. She made models of them out of cotton balls. She collected books about them. But most of all she simply liked lying in a quiet field and staring up at them. She could do that for hours. And often did. The world’s beauty. The world’s peace. The world’s violence. The world’s terror. All bound up within these mysterious concoctions formed out of nothing more substantial than air and water. Contemplate that. She had occasionally dragged Ambience out with her on her cloud excursions to WoodenSandal Park, north of the city, where there were several infrequently traveled meadows relatively free of picnickers and dog poop and offering almost unlimited sky vistas for prime atmospheric observation. So far, despite all her efforts, Warranty had failed to win Ambience over to her own level of enthusiasm for these adventures in cloudlarking. But still Ambience was coming along quite nicely. On their last outing she had even surprised Warranty by blurting out the proposition (stale copy to veteran sky scryers but a revelation to noobs) that clouds were like thoughts passing through the mind of God or whatever that thing was that had thoughts that big. “Or maybe it’s you,” Warranty said. “Maybe those are visible manifestations of your inner reveries.”
“Cool,” Ambience said. “I can ride with that.” The real fun, though, lay in regressing into that childhood favorite, picking out recognizable shapes in the burgeoning aerial cavalcade. Once Warranty claimed to have spotted a winged dragon emerging from a nondescript lump of white vapor. And in one productive day Ambience saw both an old-timey western locomotive coming round the bend, dark smoke spouting from its stack, and an arrangement of raggedy cumuli that reminded her of the grouping of the Neverquesas in South Agenda, after she had visited the big island, Toodleloo, the previous spring as a location scout for Paradise on Hold, or so she said.
“How’re celestials down there?”
“Good and clear yesterday,” said Warranty, “but I had to work. Aside from today, any luck at all up there?”
“Pretty much a nephophile’s holiday. A couple rainy afternoons, but mostly one cloud extravaganza after another passing in formation everywhere you look.”
“Nephophile. I’m impressed with your vocabulary.”
“You taught me the word.”
“Listen, Ambience, how about a favor? Shoot some pix for me. As many as you can stand. Text them when you get a chance.”
“No problem, Warranty. I’m out practically every day. And clouds love to pose for me.”
“They like you. They’re your fans.”
“Cloud groupies. Great. Maybe I should throw in a couple extra selfies for good luck.”
“Do, Ambience. I especially want to see those.”
“Okay, Warranty. Look, it’s been great talking to you. I’ll try and call again at least once before we leave.”
“I love you, Ambience.”
“Love you, too, Warranty. Bye.”
She tried calling CarnyDoll but, typically, no answer. And Ambience hated leaving messages. She hated talking to machines and didn’t believe anyone else should talk to them, either. CarnyDoll didn’t especially like talking to people. Ambience understood.
Then she called FurryFarm. She wished she could talk to Nippers. She wished he could talk to her. But it was good to know he was doing well and eating well.
She loved her cat. She wished he was with her now.
Now she was tired of holding the phone to her ear. And her hand was sweaty. She put the phone down on the bedside bureau. She lit another cigarette. She pulled the half bottle of LaughFrogg from their rented cupboard. She took a slug. She took another. She ran a poorly edited montage of half-baked notions and video snippets from her life through her mind. Nothing made any more sense than it had the last time she paused to rewatch this review. She needed a new edit.
She went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, took out the brown plastic vial of prescription zephyr, unscrewed the cap, and shook out a tablet into her hand. It wasn’t zephyr, it was ellipsis. Tab clutched in the palm of her hand, she walked into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.
She dropped the ell.
Probably she fell asleep for a while.
Then she was outside in the parking lot. She was searching for the car. It was missing from its spot. Then she remembered. Graveyard had taken it.
Then she was folding her clothes and placing them neatly in the drawer.
Then she was sitting in the living room, watching TV. What was going on? She never watched TV when she was alone. Especially not during the day. She stared uncomprehendingly at the screen. She was trying to figure out the name of the show. She was trying to figure out what the show was about. It was all nonsense.
Then she was down on the grotty floor, engaged in a vigorous set of sit-up reps. She was getting so fat. She’d done zero exercise the whole of this wasted trip.
Then there was a row of real people lined up behind a white picket fence with only their heads visible and their faces all rubbery and unreal and in constant spastic motion running through a strained series of grotesque expressions never before seen on any real human faces. Had she been able to she might have screamed.
Then she was across the street, seated at a window table in the WaffleGym. She was staring at the tiny holes in her pancakes. So many holes. There wasn’t enough syrup to fill them all.
Then she was scrolling through the photos she had taken on her cell since they’d left Mammoth City. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. A couple of okay snaps but little else. What was the point, exactly, of a vacay escape if all you had to show for it was little more than a measly handful of stupid pictures? What was the point?
Then she was in the motel office, chatting with the nice lady in charge. She had comforting russet hair. Ambience didn’t know what they were talking about.
Then she was studying her left hand with scientific intensity. All these stubby fingers. What the fuck was that all about?
Then she was folding her clothes and placing them neatly in the drawer.
Then she was cleaning the kitchenette with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of Xall she found in a cupboard under the sink. There was a stubborn red stain on the counter that no matter how hard she tried could not be rubbed away. What was going on? She hated cleaning house.
Then she was running through the corn in a white peignoir. It was night. The corn crackled all around her. She was being chased. By whom? By what? Her eyes came open. The jagged network of fine lines revealing the botched paint job on the ceiling overhead popped sharply into view. She was drenched in sweat.
Then she was bending over, pulling a tray of hot brownies from the oven. What was going on? She hated baking.
Then she was folding her clothes and placing them neatly in the drawer.
Then she was lying on the bed, her pants pulled down to her knees. She was caressing her pubic hair. Her pubic hair felt so nice. So slippery smooth. So beautiful. Then she was touching the button. She began caressing the button. The button liked being caressed. Beneath her a deep rumbling began. It grew and grew until the earth split. She smiled then and she couldn’t stop smiling. We need more catastrophes like that, she said to herself.
Then she fell asleep and dreamed she was holding Graveyard’s hand.