He saw it then: the funnel in the sky. Big and black and getting closer. Soon it was going to touch down and carry him away.
Not to Oz, though.
A cab pulled over to the curb. They got in. The driver asked them where they wanted to go.
'Oz,' Gardener muttered.
Ron cackled. 'What he means is someplace where they drink fast and dance faster. Think you can manage that?'
'Oh, I think so,' the driver said, and pulled out.
Gardener draped an arm around Ron's shoulders and cried: 'Let the wild rumpus start!'
'I'll drink to that,' Ron said.
2
Gardener awoke the next morning fully dressed in a tubful of cold water. His best set of clothes - which he'd had the misfortune to be wearing when he and Ron Cummings set sail the day before - were bonding themselves slowly to his skin. He looked at his fingers and saw they were very white and very pruney. Fishfingers. He'd been here for a while, apparently. The water might even have been hot when he climbed in. He didn't remember.
He opened the tub's drain. Saw a bottle of bourbon standing on the toilet seat. It was half-full, its surface bleary with some sort of grease. He picked it up. The grease smelled vaguely of fried chicken. Gardener was more interested in the aroma coming from inside the bottle. Don't do this, he thought, but the neck of the bottle was rapping against his teeth before the thought was even half-finished. He had a drink. Blacked out again.
When he came to, he was standing naked in his bedroom with the phone to his ear and the vague idea that he had just finished dialing a number. Whose? He had no idea until Cummings answered. Cummings sounded even worse than Gardener felt. Gardener would have sworn this was impossible.
'How bad was it?' Gardener heard himself ask. It was always this way when he was in the grip of the cyclone; even when he was conscious, everything seemed to have the gray grainy texture of a tabloid photograph, and he never seemed to exactly be inside of himself. A lot of the time he seemed to be floating above his own head, like a kid's silvery Puffer balloon. 'How much trouble did we get into?'
'Trouble?' Cummings repeated, and then fell silent. At least Gardener thought he was thinking. Hoped he was thinking. Or maybe dreaded the idea. He waited, his hands very cold. 'No trouble,' Cummings said at last, and Gard relaxed a little. 'Except for my head, that is. I got my head in plenty of trouble. Jee-zus!'
'You sure? Nothing? Nothing at all?'
He was thinking of Nora.
Shot your wife, uh? a voice spoke up suddenly in his mind - the voice of the deputy with the comic book. Good fucking deal.
'We-ell . . .' Cummings said reflectively, and then stopped.
Gardener's hand clenched tight on the phone again.
'Well what?' Suddenly the lights in the room were too bright. Like the sun when they had stepped out of the hotel late yesterday afternoon.
You did something. You had another fucking blackout and did another stupid thing. Or crazy thing. Or horrible thing. When are you going to learn to leave it alone? Or can you learn?
An exchange from an old movie clanged stupidly into his mind.
Evil El Comandante: Tomorrow before daybreak, senor, you will be dead! You have seen the sun for the last time!
Brave Americano: Yeah, but you'll be bald for the rest of your life.
'What was it?' he asked Ron. 'What did I do?'
'You got into an argument with some guys at a place called The Stone Country Bar and Grille,' Cummings said. He laughed a little. 'Ow! Christ, when it hurts to laugh, you know you abused yourself. You remember The Stone Country Bar and Grille and them thar good ole boys, James, my dear?'
He said he didn't. By really straining, he could remember a place called Smith Brothers. The sun had just been going down in a kettle of blood, and this being late June, that meant it had been ... what? eight-thirty? quarter of nine? about five hours after he and Ron had gotten started, give or take. He could remember the sign outside bore the likeness of the famous cough-drop siblings. He could remember arguing furiously about Wallace Stevens with Cummings, shouting to be heard over the juke, which had been thundering out something by John Fogarty. It was where the last jagged edges of memory came to a halt.