Bud Smith - F 250

Mike sat on the edge of his computer chair, hypnotized by K and June. Where had they materialized from?

They’d been chased out of their little cave, the house on the ocean occupied once again by true blue honest to God adults. The horror.

No-one noticed the missing painting yet. That was the least of my worries.

I’d been paid; my pockets were full of money. It was temporary, and it would go away, but I couldn’t resist the urge. I decided to take the girls out into the wilds of New Jersey. Dinners. Drinks. Amusements. We packed into my truck and braved the back roads till my gas tank was only fumes. We looked at weird shit on the side of random weird shit roads. West. Then north. Then back home. I took them away from the ocean, through the pines, into the farmlands. “Holy shit! There really are farms!”

“The Garden State,” I said. “We call people down in South Jersey, tomato pickers.”

“Ha! what do they call you?”

“Clam diggers,” I said.

It was drag racing day out at the speedway. Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! at R-R-Raceway Park! We sat in the bright aluminum stands as we ate sausage and pepper sandwiches and sipped orange sodas spiked with June’s signature gin dumped in as cars exploded down the track below. The pleasant stink of exhaust. The sweet smell of fuel. Tires squealing. June sat beneath a yellow umbrella.

“I’m a Victorian era vampire, it’ll vaporize me.”

We shrugged.

At the swap meet, we walked around aimlessly, pointing at the strange mechanical guts of automobiles disassembled in the dust.

“What’s that?” June asked.

“Its heart,” I said.

“That’s a carburetor for a 1973 Dodge Charger,” K Neon said.

“Oh, go fuck yourself, K,” I said.

We stumbled off, laughing. And she was probably right about the carburetor, but who the hell cares? I bought the last cherry slushy from a kid packing up his cart. The three of us shared it as we walked through the blazing sun back towards the truck.

I worked the pedal. June shifted. K Neon laughed at the cassette deck devouring reels of thin magnetic tape — mixtapes of the love songs of all our nectar-soaked youths. I kept looking down at June’s leg, instinctively wanting to put my hand on her thigh, but I fought the urge. We were strangers still. She was distant and secretive. I was wayward and run-down.

The sun was going away like a flashlight with a dying battery.

Coming back, round trip. Last leg. We wanted hamburgers and just one beer each. Little sips. There was a row of red wine bottles beside the pullout couch back ‘home’. Mike would be done with his recording session at about 10 p.m.: some girl with a violin making a Christmas album. We had a few hours to kill. So I pulled into a random strip mall with a new bar inside. New bars gotta be inspected.

Inside, I was greeted by more darkness: a dimly lit cave with Lou Reed singing low and wounded on the jukebox, “Linger on your pale blue eyes …” I took a spot at the bar, and K dug her hand in my pocket looking for quarters to put into the jukebox. Her bleached hair was down, straight and long. Her eyes seemed to glow in there, small coals hovering as she left.

June Doom said, “I know from experience that you should have sent me to that jukebox. K cannot be trusted with a jukebox.”

I nearly thought that June said, “K Neon cannot be trusted at all.”

It wasn’t 30 seconds before I felt a clasp on my left shoulder. It was Costa. I had no idea that the bar was his. He was an old, wealthy Greek. I’d built a waterfall for him a while back.

“My friend! I’ve been looking for you,” he exclaimed. “I have a job. I want you to make waterfall for my partner.”

“I’m retired,” I said.

“Retired! What are you, 22?”

“I was supposed to go out west,” I said. “Maybe I still will.”

“Out west? What, like Clint Eastwood and horses? Tumbleweeds?”

He asked me again to do the waterfall job for his partner. I said I would.

“Um-fahh!”

Well, after that, Costa kept bringing us free beers. The food never came, just beer after beer after beer. We raised glasses! He was just so happy to see us in his brand new place. I stumbled into the bathroom then pissed for forty-five minutes, laughing at nothing. It felt good to feel wanted.

Sideways. Blurry. Things were spinning. I materialized in a booth with the girls in the farthest shadow of the bar.

Our beers were almost gone.

K Neon spoke, “So, me and June have been talking.”

June looked down into her beer, hiding in there. She wouldn’t look up.

“We wanted to ask you a question,” K continued.

I already knew the question. This was political posturing for June Doom.

“Ask away,” I said, knowing in my gut what was coming.

“So … would you be into a three way?”

I knocked back the rest of my beer, stood up.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

They looked at me like I was from another planet.

We left ripped. We couldn’t make sense of life underneath the streetlights. We stumbled into my pickup truck. June and K held hands while singing two different songs — all the wrong lyrics anyway. I turned the key. Things rumbled. K whispered something in June’s ear. June laughed low and nervous. I shouldn’t have been driving, but I was. I pulled out onto route 70, very much aware of how bad the cops were on that quiet two-lane stretch of highway.

It was the kind of town where they drink your blood, gulp after gulp. No sympathy. It wasn’t a minute before I saw the red and blue lights flashing behind me. Whoop Whoop. I pulled over onto the grass.

The storm trooper came lumbering out of his squad car. He was a young guy. Baby faced. I was done for. K Neon rolled down her window and started really talking it up with the officer. Lovey Dovey. Almost pillow talk.

“Hello officer,” she said seductively, “I like your hat, that’s trés sexy. Can I wear it?”

She was a saint, but he wasn’t distracted. The cop leaned in the window and glared at me.

“License and registration,” he demanded sharply.

Jesus — I started digging around but couldn’t find any of that stuff. I mean, I dug in the glove box. K had her legs spread on either side of it as I dug around, but my paperwork just wasn’t there.

“I have it somewhere, but I can’t find it now, pal.”

“Step out of the vehicle,” he said darkly.

Now he had me out on the side of the road. All the tests. Follow this penlight. Touch your nose. Walk the line. All the tests. I was done. This was it. They had me. The police had me right where they wanted me.

I silently prayed for some kind of inspiration from the great line of lucky losers who’d come before me, the spirits that haunt the destitute roadside night. Back where I was facing, I watched the neon sign of Costa’s bar flick out.

“Alright, I know somebody’s been drinking tonight. I smelled it when I came to the window.”

“Officer, she’s wasted,” I said.

He just glared at me. “Which one?”

“Both of them,” I said. “I go to the bar at the end of the night to pick up the drunk girls to bring them home. It’s easier that way.”

The cop started laughing. His bottom lip bobbed up and down as it hung open as he just laughed and laughed. It was like he hadn’t laughed in twenty years.

“I’m gonna try that one,” he said. “You know why I pulled you over?”

“No.”

“I saw a bunch of garbage come streaming out of the passenger-side window.”

“She’s a drunk and a litterbug,” I said as if me and the cop were friends.

That littering bitch. I’d have to kill her. I glared at K Neon’s head in the rear window. Before the cop could handcuff me and drag me to the station, I’d have to slip away and quickly butcher her in the truck. She had a pretty head. Too bad I’d have to take it off with my bare hands.