A little smoother than usual, I think. Maybe not. Meh. But I think this is the new hook, Chapter One. If anyone's in a mood to comment, drop me a line.

Thirtyfive.

My watch calls it two o'clock, a.m., and the sky is nothing but giant black from horizon to horizon. There's no stars here, and sometimes I miss them.

Then again, there's no sun here, either, but I've gotten used to that. It's like being in one of the neon cities, in Vegas or NYC, once the sun's gone down but the streets have been turned on and there's so much light that you don't even cast a shadow and you don't notice when it's gone from day to night until you look up and see dark sky overhead.

And that's comfortable at least, because that's something you can hang out there as reasonable, make it into something you can relate to. This is a party town, right? Sure, sure. And the good parties happen at night, so it's got to be night around here 24/7. So, yeah, so long as you can keep from staring up at the starless sky, it's easy enough to believe that you've stumbled into Saturday night on Broadway, July 4^th weekend on the Strip, something like that.

I'm just strolling through tonight, half an eye out for Sheik Europa, sipping a beer I got off one of the carts near Little Gate. The beer here is always good, smooth and cold and filled with tiny amber bubbles. I sip and I stroll and watch the show.

'Cause the street's always good for a show. Whenever Little Gate opens, which is every couple of seconds, and some battered old soul comes stumbling through, yeah, and the strippers and gigolos and the pushers and the gamblers descend on them, yeah, there's the show.

Put yourself into it, if you can. You just died, right? You were in a hospital bed and you heard your heartbeat monitor go flatline as the dark came in from the edges, or you heard skidding tires when you jaywalked across what you thought was an empty street or you were reloading your rifle when you heard the scuff of a boot coming around a corner and turned just as whoever you were trying to kill rat-tat-tatted you with a third-world copy of a Kalashnikov, right, and you're still screaming and clutching at your chest and trying to pray to the JC or Allah or Buddha or whatever to save your sorry ass and then suddenly there's all this light, and every sin you've been denying yourself comes running up to you, ready to party and give you anything you ever dreamed of.

Yeah, 'cause, near as I can tell, you only get through Little Gate if you were a devout whatever and followed all the rules and didn't spend a lot of time asking questions about the more contradictory sections of your religious text. The people who didn't believe in anything, were agnostic or secular humanists or whatever, they don't come in through Little Gate. I dunno where the hell they go. I'm figuring there's a place, but I really couldn't tell you. Everybody I've met here says this is it, the City and the Wilderness, but I don't buy it. If you don't buy into the game, maybe you get the option of not playing it. Of course, if you believed in something but didn't do all the shit your were supposed to do, ate meat on Fridays or cheated on your wife or whatever, you end up out in the Wilderness, and that's some rough shit, brother. Bet your ass.

And the funny thing is, most of those fractured old souls don't realize that they've haven't actually made it to whatever afterlife they thought they were headed to. Then again, you're an 80-year-old man who just kicked off from renal failure in a charity hospital somewhere and a Playboy-quality chick suddenly appears and lifts her skirt to offer you her shaved pussy, maybe you've found all the Heaven you figure you need.

Yeah, it's the sex that takes most of them down. The chicks are all smooth curves and naughty smiles, the guys are muscled shoulders and six-pack abs, and any of them are happy to indulge in whatever fucked-up fantasy you might have been harboring for the last couple of decades of your life. There's a more or less permanent open-air orgy going on about a dozen steps from the Gate. If, like me, you've got some other options to slake your lust the sight is less than appealing. And the squishing noises are enough to flip your stomach over.

It's not all fucking, although, yeah, there's more of that than anything else. There's the druggers, stumbling around all fucked up on something heavier and cleaner than the best dope they ever scored back home. Drooling, telling you about the amazing epiphanies they're having. Y'know, honestly, I hated that shit before and I still hate it. These are the ones that I'll occasionally pop in the jaw, send crashing down to the golden cobblestones, watch the blood flow from around their shattered teeth, kick in the ribs a couple of times. No real good reason for it, I guess. Just job stress and your basic Scorpio disdain for idiots.

What else. Right, there's the gamblers, the gluttons, the thieves, the wife-beaters, the husband-stabbers, the pedophile rapists and secret poisoners, the compulsive liars, the treasonists, the animal abusers, the, well, the whatever the hell awful vicious things people kept themselves from being when they were alive that they've given full reign to now that they've died, the most disgusting, base, disturbing crap you can imagine, all in full swing in the market, the bars, the gambling dens and whorehouse, the fetish warehouses were anything goes all night long.

Yeah, it's a show, always, and I'm just wandering through it, wondering where the fuck Sheik Europa's gotten off to, and thinking, as always, about Mags Verbosa and eyeing the wall next to Little Gate with a thought towards jumping over it and heading into the wasteland to see if I can find my girl at home in her little cottage.

Thirtyfour.

It's tough to drive all night. Driving all day's okay, but all night is a grind. You're peering off into a dark highway with a corridor of light from your headlights showing you constantly refreshing blacktop appearing over and over and over through the windshield. I think that's what kills you, really. Having to endlessly reassess just what the fuck the road is doing in front of you 'cause you can't get the longview of it. We feel comfortable when we can take in a whole vista and plan our route points through it. Pick out what's safe and what's dangerous, slow down or speed up or just plain ol' stop if nothing makes sense up ahead. But in the dark, with that spray of white fanned out just in front of us, shit, there could be a goddamned hurricane floating around out there and you wouldn't know until the bastard picked you up and threw your ass halfway to Oz.

I'm figuring it's about how we're wired, y'know? We're daylight creatures, whatever the opposite of nocturnal is. Our eyes work great in daylight, like shit in the dark. So we just learned to go to sleep when the big yellow lightbulb in the sky sank into the ground every night. Smart, right? Sure, super smart. Good work, God.

And then Edison goes and fucks up nighttime for everyone by making it easy to light up the night like a weak-ass daytime. Okay, sure, there were lights before that – firelight, torchlight, gaslight – but not any kind of really portable light, right? I mean, sure, you could walk around with a torch or a lantern, but that only gave you light in a little circle directly around yourself. They couldn't throw light worth a tinker's damn. You went traipsing through the woods with a lantern and whatever you were looking for would see you coming a mile away and scamper off. Or, y'know, shoot you with an arrow, if it was that kind of thing.

So, yeah, for the vast majority of humanity's time on the planet we did the majority of our work between sunup and sundown and then had weak little firelights to screw around with after the chores were done. Of course, the screwing around time after the chores were done was pretty damned short 'cause you had to be up at dawn to get on with tomorrow's chores and, let's face it, today's chores just about wiped you out. So, yeah, figure that you'd light whatever little lights you had for dinner and then maybe a little light reading from the Bible or some charades with the family and then everybody into bed and sawing wood by like eight o'clock. Very healthy, very happy. Or, well, okay, with all the diseases floating around in ye olden times and the grind of subsistence-level farming and getting overtaxed and some wandering army stealing all your crops and killing all your animals when they stumbled across you, not so very much healthy or happy, but, y'know, at least you were working with your circadian rhythms and your body was in harmony with the sun. Probably in the process of getting ravaged by smallpox and syphilis as well, but, y'know, getting enough sleep.

But again with Edison, once humanity figured out that you could light up the dark pretty easily they didn't see any real reason to not do it. And once you extended your day by hours and hours, we started looking for something to fill up all that empty time. And, damned Edison, we ended up with the phonograph and moving pictures, vaudeville got arc lamps to pick out the jugglers and comedians on the stage, the wireless turned into radio and electricity to every home brought us seemingly endless entertainment and we suddenly found ourselves, collectively, with so much shit to do every night that we stayed up later and later, and that eight o'clock bedtime went right out the window. Television came onto the scene and we stayed up later, 'cause we were already at home, so why not stay up to watch the 11 o'clock news? And, hell, so long as you're up, why not watch the Tonight Show at 11:30? Shit, since the world is running on its own time by now, you don't have to be in the office until 9:00, right? Which means that you can crash at midnight or one, get some zzz's in, wake up at 8:00 and still have time for a shave and breakfast before you zip downtown in your shiny new car.

Except, of course, you've gotta be seriously whitecollar to be in at nine a.m. We bluecollar schmoes are clocking in at six or seven and working our eight hours at a drill press or an assembly line or behind the wheel of some kind of transport vehicle. But, y'know, all that fun late-night stuff is still out there, movies and clubs and bars and that old perennial television, so, hell, we don't want to go to bed early, right?

And, man, in your 20's, do you really need to go to bed early? Hell's no. Youthful stamina lets you get by on five, six hours. Two or three if there's a really good party that you don't want to leave. And you get used to that, start thinking that sleep is actually kind of optional, and that if you need to skip a night or two, sure, that's not a problem. Of course, if you discover the wonderment of speed, then, really, sleep stops even being optional and staying up for a few days at a time is pretty much mandatory. And that's all totally cool, really. You know why? Because we beat the sun, motherfucker. Yeah, truly, the sun has stopped dictating when we're sleeping and when we're a'waking. Because we can make our own light, and we can keep working and partying and watching tv until someone flips a switch and tells us it's time to fucking go to bed.

But the night driving, we can't beat that. Oh, sure, if you're on some nicely kept up superhighway with giant orange sodium-arc lamps lighting up every inch of tarmac, you're doing just fine. You've got that easy route right in front of you and you can just track along it with one finger on the seek button of the radio and another twitching the wheel when you come to a curve in the road. But if, like me, you find yourself on some rural Ohio backroad somewhere near the Kentucky border and the moon is waning to the new and you can just about make out the ditch to the side of the lane and the faded white line to the other, shit, man, it's an endurance test right up there with the Boston Marathon and the Tour de France.

Let me catch you up here, fast-forward you through my day. Okay, so, sure Bobby's dad shows up with that pretty blue BMW and fresh maps for Pennsylvania and Ohio. Sweet guy, really. And the job's starting to look okay, really. Youngstown is just over the border from Pennsylvania so it's a drive, but it's straight, it's less than a day and I'm looking to have the package in the right hands by mid-afternoon and crashed out in the cheapest hotel shortly thereafter.

Nah.

Okay, so the address in Youngstown, it turns out, doesn't actually exist. The base gets ahold of the customer, the customer apologizes, says that they meant to say Akron, not Youngstown. Okay, sure, whatever. Honest mistake, right? I mean, c'mon, they may not sound alike, but they're both in the same state, right? Sure, sure. But, what the fuck, Akron's only an hour or so up the road. It's about 2:30, I've got plenty of time.

Except that base calls me up when I'm about halfway there to let me know that Akron's wrong, too, and that what they meant to say was Columbus. Ah, well, that's different, isn't it?

'Cause Columbus is another couple hours south, which means that I'm bumping into office staff quitting time, and I'd rather not find myself stuck in the middle of Ohio rattling the doors of a locked office building and thinking about going back to Connecticut with a loaded shotgun and a stick up my ass.

But, okay, okay, the base, they beg, they threaten, they mention the money, again, and I start calculating what 24 hours worth of this gig is gonna be worth. And I go for it. Really, this isn't the weirdest thing I've ever done, not by a long shot. Although it's about the strangest delivery I've yet to deal with.

(Fuck it. It's midnight and I'm bushed. Pick it up tomorrow. Have fun, y'all)

As always, very first draft, very rough, but at least I'm getting our boy on the road. Sure has taken a while, huh?

Thirtythree

“Dead car?”

“Yeah, base, dead car, and these guys aren’t at the address I’ve got. Whole building’s shut down, dusty, like abandoned.”

“Huh. Okay, lemme check it out. I’ll call you back.”

And the phone goes dead in my hand. Fine. You guys check it out and call me back. Fuckers. At least Mac’s back on the phones and it’s not that asshole Jack. Small favors.

The wagon is dead like roadkill, just sitting on the blacktop in front of the garage. A grizzled Grandpa of a mechanic took about two minutes of fucking with the shifter and tinkering under the hood to figure out enough to tell me that the transmission had eaten pretty much all of its forward gears at some point last night and was now only capable of moving in reverse under its own power. At which point he chuckled and lit a Lucky Strike and commented that it would be a helluva ride back to Connecticut going twenty miles an hour and craning around to look out the back window. And then he asked me when I was gonna get the car off his lot.

Real sweethearts, these not-quite-Midwesterners.

The menu in a diner across the street from the garage indicated that my last five bucks was just enough for a cup of coffee, two eggs and hash browns and I smoked down my third-to-last cigarette while I ordered this fine repast from a geriatric in sky blue nylon uniform open to an inch above the navel.

I’ve noticed this kind of thing in small town diners. You’ll get this old hag of a waitress who’s been working the counter since the joint opened in the fifties, who seems to think that she’s still the hot number that she was back in the day. So, yeah, she’ll be wearing bright red lipstick that’s migrating into the wrinkles that march around her lips, she’ll have a big teased-up blonde dyejob hovering around her head, and she’ll be wearing this uniform with the plunging neckline and a hem short enough to reveal white cotton granny-panties if she so much as leans over the counter to wipe up a spill.

And okay, great, she’s a feisty old lady, reveling in her free spirited life and all that, but, really, the days when truckers and construction workers were trying to talk her into a quickie in the alley out back are at least a couple decades in the past. But that doesn’t stop her from flirting at me, calling me ‘hon’ in a rockcrusher coo that I’m sure is meant to be bedroom-seductive and shooting me a come-hither denture smile, leaning down when I ask for my two scrambled and hash browns, giving me a helluva view of two giant tits that lost the fight against gravity probably about the time I was born. “I’m Bertha,” she coughed out, tapping the stitching over her left swaying breast, “if you need anything, hon, you just call me.” I smiled and nodded and she shuffled off to deal with a middle-aged suit that sat down at the other side of the counter.

So, yeah, ordering breakfast while waiting for Mac to take me off hold was as far as my planning had gone. I figured killing my car to get to a closed-up building after sitting around in NYC until the middle of night had pretty much absolved me of having to think about, or give a shit about, the rest of this job. Messengers don’t have a helluva lot of reason to go above and beyond and getting this far put me, I figured, in line for whatever Ready had in the way of the Congressional medal of honor. Or, if nothing else, a loan against future paychecks so I could get a new car and have some future paychecks.

Bertha shuffled on back with a mug of coffee and tipped me a wink as she set it down. I smiled again and then busied myself with cream and sugar. She leaned on the counter, ragged nails painted fire-engine red, big veins chasing themselves across the back of her hand. “So, not from around here, huh?”

I stirred my coffee. “What makes you say that?”

She reached out and pressed her finger into the Ready Messenger logo stitched into my polo. “I know all the businesses in town, and that ain’t one of him.” She dragged her finger across my chest as she pulled it back.

I smiled. “Smart girl.” She revealed her dentures in a grin. “Yeah, just passing through on the way to a delivery.” I slurped my coffee, which turned out to be both weak and burned. Yeah, really not the Midwest.

“Figgered.” She leaned back and pushed her breasts at me. “You going to Philly?”

“Uh, I’m not really sure yet.” I tapped the phone on the counter. “Waiting for my boss to call me back on that one.”

“So, might be here a little while today, huh?” She pulled back her lips and showed my more of her dentures.

“Uh…probably not too long.” I took another sip of the coffee, which had managed to take on a bitter aftertaste. “Y’know, the messenger thing is all about rush, rush, rush.”

“Hmm, well, hon...” the cook stuck a plate up on the sill of his little window and dinged a bell. Bertha looked over her shoulder. “That’s you.” She shuffled across to the window and returned with a plate of watery eggs and mostly raw potato. Perfect. “Well, now, hon...”

And the phone rang. I snapped it up, smiling at Bertha, saw a 203 number on the display and hit accept.

“Yeah?”

“Davey, it’s Mac.”

“Hey, man, what’s the word?” I pointed at the phone and mouthed gotta take this at Bertha, who tipped me another wink and shuffled off to the suit at the other end of the counter.

“Uh, yeah, the customer sent an email over last night, but I guess nobody got it when it came in…”

“That reminds me, who the fuck’s Jack?”

“Huh?”

“Jack, the guy answering the phones last night. Real dickhead, you’ll pardon me saying.” I scooped up a bite of the eggs. They squished when I bit into them.

“Ahhhh…don’t know him. Phones go up to the corporate office at night, so, yeah, he’d be someone up in Albany.”

I swallowed the eggs and washed them down with the tiniest sip of the coffee I could manage. “Yeah, well, he’s a fucking waste of space, man.”

“Okay, well, you can file a report on him when you get back if you want, but he’s probably someone’s cousin or kid or something. Dunno that it would do any good.”

“Okay, whatever. What about the customer?” I separated a few of the hash browns that looked like they’d actually come into contact with a hot part of the grill and forked them into my mouth. They tasted almost exactly like the dirt they’d been grown in.

“Right, yeah, they, uh, sent over a note saying that someone screwed up and they gave you the wrong address.”

“Jesus Christ…am I even in the right fucking town?” I peppered the eggs and tried another bite. The pepper caught a ride on the egg water and slid into the back of my throat. I tried not to choke.

A dry little chuckle. “Yeah, well, hate to tell you this but you’re not even in the right state, Davey.”

“Jesus, base.” And I’m kinda laughing at this point too, ‘cause, really, c’mon. “Lemme guess…Alaska, right? Japan? France?”

“Not quite that bad, but they need this thing in Ohio by end of business today.” Bertha sauntered back up and slid the bill across the counter at me.

“Ohio? Well, shit man, why the hell didn’t they just FedEx the fucking thing?”

“Yeah, well, they don’t sound like the most organized guys in the world. But you’re still on time, Davey. I talked to Bobby and he’s telling me that they’re good for it and that he’s gonna bill ‘em for your return time, plus per diem for meals and a hotel.”

Jesus. Thirty-eight fifty for, what, fifteen hours now? Okay, admittedly, be a nice paycheck this week, but still… “That’s great, man, but I’m off the clock at this point. Dead car, remember?”

“Yeah, well, weird luck there. You’re in East Stroudsburg right now, right? You made it into town?”

“Yeah, why?” I pushed my plate away and picked up the bill. $4.38. And Bertha had written her phone number along the bottom. My stomach clenched around the bites of egg and potato.

“’Cause Bobby’s folks live there and he keeps a car at their place.”

“Which helps me how?”

“Well it helps you ‘cause it’s registered as a Ready vehicle so you’re automatically on the insurance and he’s cool with you driving it to Ohio and then back to Connecticut.”

“Jeez…he must really want this account.” I dug out my wallet and looked inside, hoping that somehow there was something in there besides the one five-spot I knew I had. Not that I had any reason to believe there was.

“Yeah, well, they’re pretty big.”

“Okay, hell. Why not. Where do his folks live?”

“Uhh…” the white noise of Mac’s meaty palm covering the mouthpiece, “he says to tell me where you’re at and his dad’ll bring down the car for you.”

“Okay, uh…” I waved my hand and Bertha glided on over. “S’cuse me, but what’s the name of this place?”

She smiles like my grandmother. “This is Mags’, hon. Everybody knows that.”

“Right, thanks. I’m at Mags’, Mac. Bobby know it?”

The white noise again, and then a chuckle. “Yeah, he knows it. Says to stay clear of Bertha.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for the advice, but it’s a bit too late.”

Laughter on the other end of the line. “Okay, Davey. Bobby’s dad’ll be there in a minute. And, hey, I know this one’s a pain in the ass, but just think of that paycheck.”

“Sure, Mac. Only thing on my mind right now. Seeya.” I kill the connection, grab my shit and hop off the stool, tossing down that last five on top of the bill. Bertha smiles and blows me a kiss and I notice that her nylons are rolled down at the knee. My balls crawl up into my abdomen and I head for the door.

Thirtytwo

For a state trooper, he’s not a bad guy. It’s that it’s nighttime, I think. No sunglasses, y’know? That’s the big cop thing, really. They come up to like they’re going to walk right through you, like they’re going to shoulder-bump you and then wait for you to object. The bully thing that cops swagger around with. But the sunglasses are what makes it, ‘cause if you can’t see someone’s eyes, there’s already that tension between you. That they’ve gone out of their way to disguise themselves from you. Like in Cool Hand Luke, that one hardass screw with the mirrored shades that makes your balls crawl up ‘cause all you can see is a grim mouth and your own fear reflected back at you. Sunglasses hide all those facial cues that we need to figure out if we’re dealing with friend or foe. Sunglasses make liars out of people, let’s them make their face a secret from you.

But it’s nighttime, and even the hardest of state cop hardasses isn’t gonna find a reason to be sporting shades after sundown. So instead of just a grim mouth and your own reflected fear, there’s actually a face deal with, a head stuck on top of a uniform and all that secretive bullshit just goes away. So, yeah, there’s the badge and the moustache and the buzzcut flattop to deal with, but he’s got eyes so I’m feeling okay dealing with him.

He still sticks me in the backseat, though, which I don’t quite get. Okay, there’s a shotgun bolted to the dashboard and some kinda minimalist cop laptop mounted on a swingarm over the glove compartment, but c’mon. Do I really look like the kinda guy who would fuck with the ordnance? I’m covered in road grime blasted up by passing semis, sweating from walking through the sticky warm of the evening, still shaking from when our boy here came screeching up behind me and hit the siren. I’m, really, in no shape whatsoever to pull a GTA on Trooper Bob here.

But, whatever, the backseat is okay, I suppose. No cuffs, which surprises me a little. I mean, sure, I haven’t done anything more wrong than pilot a shitty car into the state, but I guess I figured there was some kind of rule about cuffing anyone that got stuck in the backseat. So, yeah, I’m unbound and he’s got both of the back windows open so if worse comes to worse I can always let myself out. But for now, barreling down the highway at 70 mph with a nice cool breeze vortexing around the cabin and the radio babbling to itself, I’m content.

Trooper Bob starts throwing comments over his shoulder, like “You really shouldn’t have been walking out there. Real dangerous.” To which I agree, but then explain, again, that the wagon broke down and my phone wasn’t getting any reception. “Well, it’s always better to wait with your vehicle until a cruiser comes along.” To which, again, I agree, but then explain that in Connecticut, you could wait on the side of the road for hours without seeing a cop. Which is complete shit, of course, as state cops in CT run as thick as molasses, but he seems to buy it, nodding sagely into the rearview. Cop pride, maybe, that PA staties are more on the stick than their brethren in CT. Whatever. He stops talking about it.

Of course, that leads to the next obvious question: “So, what brings you into Pennsylvania in the middle of the night?” So I hold up the package and explain that I’ve got a crazy rush job, super-ultra-priority, blah, blah, blah. Playing up the poor beleaguered working stiff angle. Yeah, they’re paying me crazy money to get this thing there as soon as humanly possible. He asks for the address and I read it off the label on the package. “Huh. Yeah, that’s right downtown. They there now?” I shrug. So far as I know, I tell him. They handed it off at midnight, told me to get it in motion.

“Well, listen, I’ve got a tow truck coming for your car, but the garage it’s getting towed to doesn’t open until seven. If your, uh, addressee is ready for you now, I could drop you off there, give you directions to the garage. S’only about three blocks away.” He tips his head back to look at me in the rearview. “Sound all right?”

Sure, man. Sounds great.

“Good enough.” And then he’s quiet for the couple of miles it takes us to get to the exit, and there’s just the radio burbling and the rush of fast highway air tumbling in through the windows and tall black fir trees rushing by on the side of the road. At the exit he peels off without bothering to use his blinker and I end up sliding along the slick plastic seats until I’m pressed up against the inside of the door. In the rearview, I’m pretty sure I can see him grinning. Dick.

And an easy roll through a few block of shutdown Pennsylvania town, the lights all blinking red and yellow, not a single other car in sight. It’s quiet like I always figured the Midwest would be in the middle of the night, even though, yeah, as I said before, this probably isn’t really the Midwest. Trooper Bob pulls up in front of a kinda biggish brick and steel number. “Here ya go.” Hey, cool, man, thanks, and I’m reaching backwards out the window, trying to find the handle. He watches in the rearview, and I know I can see him grinning. But I find it a little before eventually and get out onto the sidewalk. As I’m shutting the door, he calls out, “Your car’ll be at a place called Wilson’s. It’s three blocks north, okay?” I don’t have the slightest fucking idea which way is north, but I guess it doesn’t matter ‘cause he peels out pretty much as soon as he says it. Thanks, fella. If I bothered to pay taxes, I’d be pretty pissed.

So, yeah, I’m there in front of the address, the biggish brick and steel number, and fuck me if it isn’t the most shut-down, locked-up building I’ve ever seen. The lobby is pitch black, not even the red glow of battery-backup EXIT signs hovering in the background. I toy with the idea of going around back, thinking that if I get called in as a prowler, it’ll probably be Trooper Bob who shows up to arrest me and he and I seem to be pretty square at this point, but since I don’t have the flashlight I keep telling myself I should carry in the car with me, I don’t much feel like screwing around in some dark alley, rattling doors. I figure even little Pennsylvania towns gotta have bums, and bums everywhere like to hang out in alleys. And fuck that noise.

I pull out the phone and as I looking at it, I see one, two, three antenna bars pop up. Nice timing. I speed-dial the office.

“Ready.”

“This Jack?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“S’Davey, Jack. How many guys you got out right now, anyway?”

“A few. How’s the run going, Davey?”

“Kinda fucked-up, Jack. My car crapped out on I-80, I got picked up by the cops and I’m at the drop off point and it’s locked up tight.”

“Huh. Lemme check something…”

Tippity-tappity in the background.

“Yeah, okay, they actually called in about an hour ago, said there was gonna be a delay.”

“What kinda delay?”

“Don’t know. I didn’t take the message.”

“You didn’t? How many guys are down there in the middle of the night?”

“There’s a couple us. Look, Davey, just sit tight. Place’ll open up at seven or eight, you can get in, leave the tag with a receptionist or something, get yourself home.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, my car crapped out so, I’m gonna need some help getting home, man.”

“Huh. Not sure what I can do for you, Davey. I doubt we’ll have anybody out there that could pick you up.”

“Okay, fine, what about getting some kind of advance or something? I mean, I making sick money on this job, right? How about getting some of that so I can get my car fixed and get the hell outta here?”

“I’m sorry, Davey, but I’ve got nothing to do with money. I can leave a message for the morning dispatch, but all the checks come out of the main office in Cleveland, so, uh, I’m not sure what to tell you there.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Mmmmm…nope. Sorry, Davey. I can leave a message, but that’s about it.”

“….”

“Still there, Davey?”

“Yeah. Well, fuck. This is just wonderful, man.”

“Sorry, Davey.”

“Sure. All right, gonna go, see if I can find a park bench to sleep on or something.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

And I hung up.

Great night, really.

A bit more for you tonight. Rougher than the previous, but I like this old guy and he'll show up at least once more, mebbe a couple of times. Right. Read on. Try not to laugh too loud. It's rude.

Thirtyone

The old guy started talking, but it wasn’t like he was talking to me. He was doing the crazy homeless thing, just suddenly talking to nobody, having an elaborate conversation with the dead air a foot in front of him.

“So, yeah, like, you want to get to, y’know, there, you need some, like, some substances, see?”

I lit a cigarette and leaned up against the back wall of the MobilMart and felt the sun beating down on my head. It was going an easy hundred out here and I was sweating bullets, but the old guy was all cool and easy in the kind of shiny tan leather jacket you’d see in Starsky&Hutch. Not a drop of sweat rolling down his scarred old face, no puddle forming in the hollow of his throat between the stringy chicken skin tendons that flexed every time he turned his head. Just this crazy little bird looking as dry as the dunes around us.

“So, yeah, you get your substances,” a quick side to side, like he was worried that a cop might walk by and think he was getting ready to make a deal, “and once you’ve got ‘em, you take a ride out into the desert.”

I tapped ash and cleared my throat. The old guy looked away from me, his thin shoulders drawing back under the shiny tan leather. He peered in every direction but mine, trying to pin down his observer. I puffed my smoke and stared at the steel wool hair on the back of his neck. He relaxed in stages, his shoulders slumping back down, that misdirected, piercing gaze settling back into an unfocused thousand yard stare aimed, apparently, at the boarded up antique store across the street.

“See, the trick is that you don’t be thinking of anything when you take your ride. Just get down your,” the quick side-to-side again, “substances and then just let your eyes close and let everything come together in your belly.”

I tapped ash and wiped sweat out of my eyes. I could feel the skin on my forehead starting to blister. And it was fucking October. What was this place like in high summer?

“Yeah, let everything come together like in a blender. Like your belly’s a blender.”

“Okay.” It came out as a croak and I realized just how dust-dry my mouth was. And there were hundreds of bottles of cold water in the MobilMart I was currently leaning against.

The old guy went into his staring-at-nothing routine again and I sighed and smoked my smoke. Still hunched inside his jacket, he went on.

“So after everything comes together, you just close your eyes and think about nothing, right? Like you just think about black, about black and some light, just a little light in the black.”

“Gotcha.” I dropped my smoke and crushed it out. I could feel sweat popping out on my forearms, my chest, could feel little rivers dripping off the end of my chin.

He puffed out his chest, balled his hands into fists, still staring straight ahead. The sun kept climbing higher, shot rays into my eyes. The sky was clear and blue and as big as the world, the sun tracking straight up the center. My feet were burning inside the black vinyl of my oxfords.

“And then when you stop thinking about anything, when you’re not even thinking about black and light and all that, then you open your eyes.”

“And then what?”

He spun sideways and jammed his face into mine. I scuttled back up against the wall. Fast old bastard. He bared his teeth and stared at me with eyes the color of deep ocean. His balled fists hung at his sides, trembling. I felt my stomach flop over. He glared. I cleared my throat again and croaked. “And then what?”

He pressed closer, his nose a hair’s breadth from my chin. “And then you stop fucking asking me stupid Goddamned questions, Goddammit.”

I put my hand on chest and gently pressed. He held himself against it for a moment, feeling like nothing but rock-hard muscle, and then stepped back.

“Gotcha.” I wiped the sweat off my forehead and shook another cigarette from the pack, offered it to him. He snatched it away fast as lightning. I pulled out my lighter for him, but it was already lit, held tight between his thin lips, streams of smoke drifting from his nostrils.

“So, as I was Goddamned saying,” he shot me a little glare, “when you open your eyes again, if you haven’t fucked it up by asking Goddamned questions every two seconds, you’re there.”

“Where?” I couldn’t help myself.

“Guy, Jesus, c’mon.” He plucked the cigarette from his lips with famine-thin fingers. “I just told you not to ask any Goddamned stupid questions.”

“All right, okay. Sorry.” I pulled out a cigarette for myself and lit up. The old guy leaned back against the wall and took a long, slow drag off his smoke. I puffed at mine and we just stood there, the sun hammering down on us.

“Right, anyway, once you’re there you’ll need something for cab fare. You could walk but, Christ, you’d be dead way ‘fore you got anywhere. Not so much that the place is big, though it is, just that it’s easier to get lost than it is to find the right path. You understand what I’m saying?”

Why not? “Sure, I gotcha.”

He nodded and something like a smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, so something for the cab fare.” He gave me a sideways glance, a lingering up-and-down that made me kind of wish I was wearing a heavy coat. “You ain’t that good-looking, you know that?”

“Yeah, I figured that out a while back.”

“So, yeah, that kinda leaves out fucking I guess.”

“Cabbie’s a chick?”

He furrowed his brows at me. “Nope, big fat guy. Why you ask?”

Good question. “Never mind. Okay, so I can’t fuck my way down the road. What else? Or is that a stupid question?”

He flapped his hand. “Halfway stupid.”

“Okay. So, what, then?”

“Eh. Uh.” He snapped his fingers. “Beer.”

“Beer?”

“Yeah, beer and cigarettes. Or candy bars. Big fat fucker like him, candy bars’d probably work. And fuck, everybody wants beer and cigarettes.”

“Look, I’ve got cash. Cash work?”

He pitched his smoke out into the street. A passing pickup truck that I hadn’t heard coming rolled by and squashed it. “See, now you’re being stupid again.”

“Right, sorry.”

He shrugged. “No need to apologize. Some fuckers, they’re just stupid.” He turned and grinned at me. “Luckily they’re usually too stupid to notice.”

Uh-huh. “Okay, fine, give him a sixpack and a carton of Marlboros…”

“Nah, don’t waste your money. Get something cheap. Those generics. Good enough for a big fat bastard like him. Yeah, and a sixpack of Bud. He’ll be okay with that. And some Hershey bars.” He grinned again. “Yeah, so when he shits himself it’ll be actual, y’know, Hershey squirts.” He laughed with an old man’s cracked pipes.

“Guy’s got bladder control problems?”

The laugh cut off mid-crack. “Jesus, more with the stupid questions.” He shot me a glare. “You think if he could get outta the fucking car he’d do the fucking job?”

“Right, sure. Hadn’t thought of that.”

“’Course not.”

“Right. The stupid thing again.”

“Right.”

“And luckily I’m too stupid to notice.”

He squinted up at me. “You giving me shit, man? I got other fucking things I could be doing, y’know.”

I ducked my head in apology. “No, sorry, not giving you any shit. Just a bit confused, s’all.”

He clucked his tongue. “Sure you are. Poor little stupid bastard man. Dunno why I’m telling you all this. No way you’re gonna be able to do all this.”

“Why not?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, man, how easy do you think this is? Christ almighty, this is jumping across worlds, sliding through the dimensional barriers…fuck, man. It’s not like you’re driving to the mall and heading into Sears.”

I took a dollar out of my pocket and stuffed it under the flap of the jacket’s breast pocket. “Thanks, man. You’ve been a great help. I highly suggest you get the hell out of the sun.”

I tossed my smoke out into the street and headed back to the hotel to find a phone to call the base, and then maybe smack the shit out of that fucking concierge.

Okay, this is outta sequence (right, like there's a sequence, jackass), but I'm having some technical problems getting my hands on the stuff in between, so, yeah, here it is. If nothing else, it's new, and a couple of you have been asking me if there's anything new going on. So, yeah, there is. Just remember, you asked for it.

And, as always, if you're new here, just go ahead and start reading. It all comes together, kinda, if you've got some patience.

Enjoy!

Twentynine

When I’m stuck in traffic going across, say, the Whitestone Bridge, I have these daydreams about the vast open roads of the American Midwest. Endless highways stretching from horizon to horizon, smooth blacktop painted with vibrant yellow lane markers, fresh white paint straight-arrowing along the shoulder. I picture these roads as pristine temples to the gods of transport and travel, hallowed ground where a dedicated young man, with nothing but the most noble of intentions, could lay down the hammer on a finely tuned automobile and blast straightaway to his destination without the distractions of slow civilian traffic, frost heaves, construction zones, poorly marked road signs or tollbooths built so close together that you can see the flashing lights of the next before the last has left your rearview mirror. This is a simple dream, really, reinforced by the mythical qualities of Midwestern folk have been awarded by the peoples of the East and West Coasts. Folk that are meticulous and hardworking and very serious about things like roads and signage, about making sure that everything is safe and clean, that every box that could be checked has a tick in it, that everything is as perfect and five-by as mere mortals can make it.

Which may well be true. I’m not well traveled enough to know. But this little jaunt was making me realize that Pennsylvania isn’t technically in the Midwest, really. The East Coast, up in the Northeast corner of the country, you get this perspective that everything west of Jersey and east of LA is one big lump of Middle America, and that all those millions of square miles are working with the same mindset. And then you actually get out there, and Jesus fuck, brother, you get a big heaping wad of realization shoved in your face.

This I-80 thing that’s winding its way through Pennsylvania, it’s like what roads in Europe must’ve looked like after WWII was done with, but before everybody blinked the dust out of their eyes and got everything fixed so that BMW’s and Porsches could fly around the continent at a hundred miles an hour. This road is nothing but ripped-up blacktop, endless lanes of naked dirt and oily gravel paralleling a single passable roadway that’s made up of nothing but fresh asphalt patches laid over old asphalt patches. This shit goes on for twenty, thirty miles, running along a corridor of concrete barricades and giant LED arrows warning you about sudden curves in the road ahead. And this I-80 thing, it’s the major highway going from NYC to Philadelphia, so if you’re stupid enough to be traversing it in the middle of the night, you’re just a mouse trying to run in a herd of tractor-trailers, packed in tight between a Freightliner in front and a Mack in back, and those guys are just barreling along, kicking up dust and gravel and making it impossible for you to see anything and every time you hear a tok on the windshield from a pebble kicked out from under a monster retread you wonder if you’re about to lose a windshield. So you slow down, but then the Mack behind you crawls up on your bumper, ‘cause, y’know, that long-haul motherfucker’s got a load of Ikea furniture or Old Navy jeans that’s gotta get to where-goddamned-ever right fucking now, fer Christ’s sake, and you’re holding up the whole parade.

But, really, it’s not my fault, this whole slowing-down-midnight-commerce thing. It really isn’t. The wagon’s dying, and I’m somewhere between the Jersey border and East Stroudsburg, hoping that it’ll galump along for another twenty or thirty or fifty miles, until I find the dropoff spot and dump the package and start to find my way home. But I’m not really counting on it.

Which is bad, really, ‘cause I haven’t got more than fifty bucks in my checking account, and that’s not even going to begin to cover getting my soon-to-be-smoking-heap towed from wherever it breaks down in one of Pennsylvania’s endless construction zones to whatever shitty little garage out there waits for out of staters to break down so they can gouge them for new transmissions and rebuilt engines.

That fifty bucks is maybe enough to get a bus to the dropoff point, and there’s an ever so slight possibility that I could convince someone back at the base to break me out an early paycheck, run it over to the bank for me, get me some accessible cash. Which still leaves me kinda broke and stuck three states from home with a busted car and no immediate options for work.

Which, of course, is nobody’s fault but mine, right? I mean, really, on my massive salary of half-a-g a week I should have hundreds, thousands sitting in a savings account, accruing interest and just waiting for some kind of accident. At thirty I shouldn’t be hovering on the razor’s edge of financial destruction, just waiting for one major wrong thing to tip me into a chasm of bankruptcy and destitution. I hear my father’s voice Godding down at me from upon high.

Don’t mind me. This is the kind of whiny self-reflection you’re bound to run while barreling down a packed interstate in the middle of the night with a slipping transmission and the smell of overheated coolant wafting in through the window. Because, of course, nothing’s actually my fault, right? I can inflict all the Catholic guilt on myself that I want, but I’ve been behind the 8-ball since I was born, since mom and pops decided to get it on and boogie out a little boy named Davey, a little boy who never did anything but smile and try to please and somehow still found himself with the world stacking the chips against him. It’s not my fault, goddamn it, that I’ve got this shitty job where I need to buy shitty cars and then depend on them not shatter into a thousand pieces when I push them too hard. It’s not my fault that I fucked off in college and ended up barely employable. It’s not my fault that everything wrong in the world is finding its nexus in my weak little body.

Which doesn’t change the fact that I’m currently watching my speedometer drop down from ninety to seventy to fifty and that the front left tire is beginning to squeal in a way that means the bearings have begun to spin free in their housing and that I’ve got maybe another hour or two on the road before something locks up, falls out or just grinds to halt and I’m gonna go from a motorized messenger to a walking civilian with little money, no friends and big mean dark world ready to eat me alive.

How wonderous.