“Man, I know. I’m just trying not to think about it right now. Dude scared the shit outta me last night too.”
“No shit.” Eddie spoke in the short, clipped manner of a man holding his breath. “I couldn’t believe it.” He shook his head and exhaled, setting the pipe on the coffee table among the crumpled beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, used paper plates, empty pizza boxes, cigarettes, lighters, matches, baggies of pot, and the large ceramic bong shaped like a mermaid—Eli’s one prized possession.
“Did you look at his eyes, man?” Eddie continued. “Nothing. Just blank. He’s an animal. How the hell can we deal with a guy like this?”
“We’ll come up with something.” Eli smiled and swung his arm around behind the couch, feeling low between the back of the couch and the wall, finding it, and then pulling his Fender Stratocaster up and onto his lap. “Just relax, man. We got time to figure shit out.” Eli reached out and turned the four hundred watt Marshall on and plugged the guitar in. A sonic hiss filled the room.
Eddie let out a sigh and said, “I think we gotta go to the cops.”
Eli stared at him and shook his head, flabbergasted. “Are you insane? What the hell are we gonna tell them? They’ll be poking around, asking all kinds of questions. No cops. No fucking way.”
“But shit man, we can’t just leave that guy out there.”
“Why the hell not? Nothing we can do for him now.” Eli strummed a power chord and the room erupted with warbling, discordant sound.
“Will you put that thing away? I can’t think with that noise.”
“C’mon, it’ll relax you.” Eli sat forward on the edge of the couch and held the Fender in position, like he was really going to play. “Here, I’ve been working on something new. It’s sweet, man, check this out—”
Eli tore into a rapid fire succession of poorly fingered chords until he held on a distorted C sharp—strumming hard and fast—jugga-jugga-jugga-jugga—and then screamed again in his heavy metal shriek:
“When I,
Comb my ass hair,
I think about you!
I think about you!
And when I,
Find a nugget back there,
I think about you!
I think about you!”
He continued strumming with abandon for several seconds until feedback wailed from the speaker and threatened to shatter the windows. Eli let go of the guitar’s neck and the last chord resonated through the room like the final squawks of a dying cat.
Eli smiled. “So?”
“So?”
“The song. I mean, it’s only one verse but I think I’m onto something. It’s kind of a proto-post-punk ballad for the new millennium, you know, about the politics of love in a world gone to hell. I think it’ll speak to all the kids out there who don’t really have a chance.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie took a long drink from his warm beer and shook his head.
“Art, man.” Eli switched off the amp and leaned the Fender against the coffee table. “Jeez, don’t forget why we’re involved in this. We get enough cash together we’ll be able to pack our shit and get down to LA and make something happen.”
“Man, why don’t we just pack up and get out now? I mean, what the hell is Ron gonna do? He can’t run things by himself. He doesn’t know a damned thing about the oil business. Who the hell is this guy anyway?”
“Man, I don’t know.” Eli was back to running his fingers through his hair. He took a drink from his watery whiskey and Coke and said, “I’ll tell you one thing though, he ain’t no forklift operator from Houston, that’s for damned sure.”
Eddie laughed and let out a sigh. “Right, so why don’t we just take the money we got and leave? I mean, we could live for a while on what we’ve got already.”
“Where the hell would we go? And if we took the twenty-five grand, shit, Ron would sure as hell come looking for us.” Eli shook his head. “No way man, we can’t just run from this guy. Like you said, we don’t know who the hell he is.”
They both stared at the walls. After several minutes Eli picked up the pipe and took another hit. He spoke while he held the smoke deep in his lungs. “Besides, they’d find all the equipment and shit eventually and they’d trace it back to us, not Ron. I mean, dude’s totally clean.” Eli let out his breath and there was almost no smoke. “Look at that shit. Talk about the iron