its protective plastic, and cracks it open. He throws away the cup that came taped to the top—the suggested dose became insufficient about a year ago—and opens up another drawer, this one containing highball glasses and paper napkins. He takes one glass and fills it to the brim with the thick, pink fluid, and then, without a moment of hesitation, he downs the entire thing. He sighs a little as he sets the glass down, its sides now coated with milky pink residue. Perhaps this will mollify the ocean of acid currently swirling around his esophagus, or perhaps not. Bolan then picks up the now-empty bottle of Pepto, gauges the distance between the desk and the trash can beside the liquor cabinet, leans back in his chair, and shoots. The bottle twirls through the air and bounces off the lip of the can to fall clattering to the floor. Bolan lets out another irritated grunt and stands to walk over to it.
As he stands he glances out the window again, and stops. The ponderosas are still dancing outside, and the parking lot is still mostly empty.
Will they call tonight? he wonders. They would have to. Too much has happened for them not to drop in. But then, they might not. They have been getting harder to predict and understand recently. Which is saying something, for them.
Bolan is not actually a resident of Wink, nor is the Roadhouse part of the town. His proximity to it is entirely coincidental: Bolan was told ten years ago that this highway route would soon be open to more trucking, and so would be a prime spot for a roadhouse, but the people who told him this were quite wrong: all the traffic to Santa Fe chose a very different route, one that bypassed him entirely. Bolan, desperate, wondered then if any of the nearby towns could possibly sustain the Roadhouse, yet all of them were too far away. Except, of course, for Wink.
For the first few years of his time at the Roadhouse, Bolan was not sure that Wink still existed. He had been told about it by several locals—something about government work decades ago—but he never met anyone from Wink, and he sure as hell didn’t sell anything to them. The signposts to Wink never even seemed to lead anywhere. But one morning as he was cruising through the mountains, wondering what to do with his crumbling business, he looked down and spotted the prettiest little town square he’d ever seen, nestled at the bottom of the valley.
It stunned him. He’d had no idea it was there. It took several hours to find the way down. Perhaps, he wondered, this was why he never saw anyone from Wink—it was too hard to decipher the goddamn roads in or out. But as he drove along the town’s streets, marveling at this quaint little burg he’d been living right next door to for God knew how long, he began to get a different idea.
Wink seemed to be a singularly pleasant place. The sunlight felt different here, and the trees were so big and the sidewalks so pristine and white… he actually parked his car and watched a group of boys play baseball. Bolan had no memory of something so blissfully pleasant as that short little game of three innings, but he wished he did.
Maybe no one left Wink because you’d be crazy to leave. It certainly wasn’t a boomtown by any stretch of the imagination, but everyone here seemed so content.
He eventually noticed a few suspicious glances coming his way, mostly from parents. He realized what an odd figure he must cut, sitting in his bright red Camaro, watching the children play. Some residents, coming in from some errands, actually stopped on their lawns to look at him. No one said anything, but the message was clear: We’ll tolerate you for now, but that doesn’t mean you’re welcome here.
Small towns, Bolan thought. Always so damn hostile to outsiders. He started the car, pulled away, and watched in the rearview mirror as the town disappeared in the hills. It’d seemed an interesting discovery, but a useless one—none of those people seemed like the kind to visit the Roadhouse.
Yet one day, about three years ago, he had a visitor from Wink. And the damnedest thing about it is, he cannot now remember what this visitor looked like. Bolan remembers the bright light shining down from his office lamps, and there was a man with a briefcase in