American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,103

a banshee with his skin cracked like parched earth and oozing something yellow), Bolan’s cared less and less about keeping an eye on his product, which has allowed several people—well, only Dord, really—to go about self-applying that product with a zeal usually only seen in infants eating pudding.

They give you an inch, you take a fucking hemisphere, Dord thinks. Because after all, this shit ain’t lasting. He knows that whatever’s happening in Wink, things won’t stay put for long. Bolan and his crew are holding on to the wolf’s ears with their goddamn fingernails, though Dord seems the only one to have cheerfully accepted this.

“What road was it again?” asks Zimmerman.

Dord pulls out a shred of paper and squints at it. He has to shut one eye to get the words to stop hopping around. “Copper Valley.”

“Fuck,” says Zimmerman. “That’s right over near Weringer’s.”

“So?”

“So I don’t much care for revisiting that place.”

“Why? Ain’t he dead? You’re the guy who did him in, I thought.”

“Something like that.”

“Is that not the case? Did you fib to the big man?”

“Shut the fuck up, Dord.”

Dord chuckles, rolls down the window, and sticks his head out into the night. The lights of the town turn to brilliant streaks along the cliffs.

“Don’t do that!” hisses Zimmerman.

“Why not?” asks Dord.

“It’ll attract attention,” says Zimmerman. He grabs Dord and hauls him inside. “Roll it up.”

“Aw, come on.”

“Roll it up, damn it.”

Groaning, Dord obeys. “You’re no fun, you know that, Mike?”

Zimmerman eyes the side of the road. “You don’t come to Wink often, do you, Dave?”

“I come a tolerable amount.”

Zimmerman laughs. “Horseshit, you do.”

“I do. I swear I do.”

“What’d Bolan last send you out here for, then?”

Dord crosses his arms sulkily and mutters something.

“What’s that?” asks Zimmerman.

“Box,” says Dord.

“Box? Box what?”

“Had to deliver a box,” says Dord angrily.

Zimmerman caws laughter. “A box? He had you deliver a box? And when was this, a year ago? More?”

“It was a goddamn important box, I’ll have you know.”

Zimmerman is so tickled by this that he starts pounding the steering wheel.

“Fuck you, Mike,” says Dord. “It ain’t funny. He just… he just don’t appreciate my talents.”

“I guess he should have you test the coke,” says Zimmerman. He looks Dord over. “Though I guess he wouldn’t want to have you bathing in it. What the fuck, Dord, you try and take it in by osmosis?”

“This is a lifestyle choice, Mike,” says Dord.

“And what lifestyle would you be choosing, exactly?”

“I’m living it. Living the dream. I’m living like a fucking rock star, Mike, one hundred percent. Fucking Def Leppard, that kind of shit. You ever lived like that, Mike?”

“No,” says Zimmerman.

“You’re missing out, then. You ought to give it a shot.” Dord ruminates on this for a moment. “You ever hear about how Def Leppard, like, at this one party at a hotel, they got this chick to put a baby tiger shark up her cooter?”

“Did you really just say the word cooter, Dave?” asks Zimmerman.

“Chick had nine orgasms,” says Dord. “Nine fucking orgasms. Can you believe it? Nine.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Well. That’s some crazy shit right there. I can dig that shit, though. Living loud’s the only way to live, I say.”

Zimmerman gives a noncommittal grunt as they drive by the town library. It’s a white limestone, space-age-looking structure that looks like it could take off and zip through the stratosphere at any moment. It stays lit up at night, which makes it a vaguely disconcerting sight in the darkness. Dord can just make out someone standing motionless in the window, and he turns to see, wondering who’d be at the library in the middle of the night.

“Don’t look,” says Zimmerman softly.

“Why not?”

“Just don’t, all right? People don’t live loud around here, Dave. Take that as a word of advice.”

“Fuck that.”

Zimmerman sighs and points the truck into the hills.

They come to the spot after about twenty minutes. Zimmerman’s been cruising at five or ten miles an hour, murmuring to Dord to keep his eyes open, when they spot the glitter of something lying in the road. He immediately brakes and throws the car in park. Then he hops out and flicks on a flashlight.

“Looky,” he says, and points it at the road.

A string of tire spikes runs across the asphalt. There’s a big gap in the middle, and some thick tire tracks just beyond.

“They got something,” says Zimmerman. He follows the tire tracks with his flashlight, but the beam fades before it can find the end.

“What the fuck are these?” says Dord.