Макс Коллинз: Shoot the Moon (and more)

“I was going to say something about my car.”

“Yeah?”

“I was going to say I hoped nobody steals it while we’re streaking. I mean, we’re leaving the keys in it and the engine’s running and all.”

“We won’t be in there that long. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, but I hope nobody steals it, because if they do, my mom’ll kill me.”

And we were off and running.

We burst through the lobby doors and immediately ran into a wall of people, which was not a good beginning. Streaking is supposed to be fast, as I think I mentioned before, and running into a wall of people, all of whom were wearing clothes which of course tended to make Wheat and me feel out of place, didn’t improve our speed a whole lot.

As a matter of fact, Wheat fell down.

I lifted him up by the elbows and we pushed through the people and light flashed brightly in our eyes. We were in the midst of what was apparently some sort of wedding picture being taken, the family of the bride or groom I supposed. Anyway there was a whole bunch of them, lined up across the lobby, blocking the entrance. At least that’s what they were doing until we entered the picture and plowed our way through.

Then we were weaving and shoving our way through a mob of formally dressed wedding guests, who’d been crowded around watching the picture taking, including the old people and the five-year-olds, too, and boy, were they a noisy lot: hoots of laughter and outbursts of indignation and everything in between filled the room in one combined, overwhelming blast of bad, boozy breath.

But we managed to keep moving, clearing the mob of people and cutting off to the left, down a short hall with coin machines on one side and rest rooms on the other. Wheat was out front, bony limbs and cold-air-reddened rear flailing in front of me. Wheat ran with all the precision and grace of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz . I was the Cowardly Lion bringing up the literal rear, covering myself. (I guess I was the world’s first and only shy streaker. Not that anybody seemed to notice.)

The cold air was a relief, after the boozy, stale air of the lobby. It splashed us and felt like diving into a swimming pool. Soon we were across the court (which was fairly empty of people, as hardly anybody was swimming on this unseasonably cold summer night) and then we were both jumping in the pool, and the sensation was somehow reminiscent of running outside into cold air.

If I hadn’t had “somethin’ to hide” before, as Shaker had put it, I certainly didn’t have now. Between the chilly air and the chillier water I was shriveled up like Count Dracula the morning after. I climbed out of the pool, covered myself again, with one hand (which was no trick) and ran.

I was now in the lead.

I was running fast as humanly possible, but at the same time listening for the sound of something falling behind me, namely Wheat. As slippery wet as he was, and being awkward as a paraplegic penguin to begin with, Wheaty seemed doomed to hit the deck before reaching the Volks.

And then Wheat streaked by me, like a track star getting his second wind, and with the gas torch lighting of the pool area reflecting on our bare backs, we were like a two-man nude Olympics, cutting a naked swath through the dark blue cloth of the night.

Up by Wheat’s car some dark blue cloth was cutting its own swath.

Cops.

I didn’t know where they’d come from, or how they could’ve gotten here so fast, nor did I feel now was the proper time to ask.

Wheat didn’t see them.

He was running with his eyes closed.

“Wheat!” I yelled, as I turned and headed back toward the pool.

And then finally, Wheat opened his eyes and saw them.

Too late.

He said, “Ooooooooooh shhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” and ran over one of the cops, knocking the cop down, and both of them lay on the pavement, spreadeagled. And of course Wheat had somehow managed to land on his back, so he lay there with arms outstretched with his baby-skin turning baby-blue in the cold air.

I was still running, watching over my shoulder as Wheat did his naked pratfall, and when I looked where I was going I saw the pool dead ahead. I swerved and almost slipped on the wet paving around the pool’s edge, but kept my footing somehow and headed for the juncture of two buildings, buildings that housed motel rooms, figuring there would be some sort of exit there. I scrambled through a door and found myself inside one of those buildings, with an endless hall of motel room doorways stretching out before me.

I paused, just a moment.

And kept running.

Now, it’s very smug of you to sit there and say, “Wasn’t it foolish of him to run through that building!” All I can say in my defense is, it seemed like the thing to do at the time, and when the endless hall came to an end, I took a right and bumped into something.

I pushed up from the floor and looked into a very pretty, young face. Blond hair, dark blue eyes. She was wearing a bikini the same color blue as her eyes. She had very nice eyes. She had very nice everything.

I covered myself.

“Oh,” she smiled. She was younger than me, eighteen maybe. “You must be going swimming, too.”

“Er,” I said.

“What happened to your suit?”

“Uh,” I said.

“You don’t have any suit on.” She just seemed puzzled about it, nothing more. I wondered when her fresh, innocent look would dissolve into a bloodcurdling scream.

“Hide me,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Police are chasing me. I’m a streaker.”

“Oh! A streaker! Do people still do that?”

“Can I hide in your room?”

“I wouldn’t mind it, but what would my mom say?”

“Are you sure you aren’t Wheat in drag?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I said, and glanced at her barely covered breasts and thought, No, that isn’t Wheat , and suddenly it was getting hard to cover myself.

So I said, “Goodbye,” and started running again.

“Goodbye!” she said. “Hey! What’s your name?”

“Fred!”

“Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime!”

“I hope so!” I said, smiling back at her, and kept running.

I didn’t run into anyone else, and down one other hall I found an exit.

And a cop.

And then, pretty soon, I was riding in the back seat of a police car, sitting next to Wheaty. Both of us were still naked. Our clothes were stacked in the front seat, between the two cops. Neither of them was very old, the cops I mean. One was about thirty, the other in his mid-twenties. The guy in his mid-twenties turned around and grinned at us and said, “I got to hand it to you dudes. You got guts.”

And the guy driving said, “Not brains... just guts.” He was the cop Wheat had knocked over. He seemed a little gruff and slightly humiliated, where his younger partner seemed only to be mildly amused.

“Does he mean anything special by that, Wheat?” I whispered.

“What’s going to happen to us,” Wheat said. “What’s going to happen to us.”

“Wheat... is something going on I don’t know about?” And all of a sudden Wheat’s hands were moving. “You know what wedding that was? You know what wedding that was?”

“Wheat, please don’t say everything twice.”

“You know what wedding that was?”

That made three times, but forget it. “No,” I said. “What wedding was that?”

“Nobody’s. Nobody’s. Just the police chief’s daughter’s, that’s all.”

“Oh,” I said.

Suddenly I felt naked.

The cop behind the desk looked up at us, noted what we weren’t wearing, then looked at the two cops who’d brought us in and raised an unimpressed eyebrow.