The second thing they do upon moving in is root around inside the dropped ceiling. It’s not as good as last year’s porn and stuffed animals, but they do find a pair of socks, three envelopes and a bong: yellow rubber tubing, different lengths, some duct-taped to a couple of spigoted Erlenmyer flasks. Chem lab merchandise.
“That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Tybalt, in awe.
Ewan’s never seen anything quite like it, but he feels nostalgic anyway. The bong is like a determined holdover from tenth grade, a dinosaur, determined to exist even with head shops down the street.
“Cliff!” shrieks Carey, still cradling his arm. Thom sees Slone’s eyebrows pop up above the dark glasses, then descend. One hand leaps to the emergency brake.
The car turns around within a space barely wider than it is long, back wheels ending up perched on a fifty-foot precipice. The Hell’s Angels are five hundred feet away, hooting and whirling chains.
“We can ram them,” Slone says conversationally. “They’ll still kill us.”
“No,” Thom whispers. “Go it.”
For the first time, Slone grins.
This time the whip-round clips one tailfin, which flaps brokenly behind them as they soar out into suburban sky.
This is how it is. Write. Search. Latch onto anything: faces at bus stops, textbook questions, sun on fog. Learn to kill your darlings. Learn to quilt from scrap.
There’s no one who can make you do this but yourself, and if it’s ever anyone else you’ll stop. Don’t stop. Press the grindstone with the hand behind your head. There’s an art to this: find it.
Sieve, filter, grasp. You have a thousand ideas every day–try to remember three. Hang on. Don’t stop. If you stop, nothing will ever change again.
This is how it is. Write. Search. Write again.
Mex stops at the fourth house and uses the hose to refill his HydroMaster 4010, then seals the cap and looks around. It’s getting late; this looted suburb will throw the advantage to his opposition in a night fight.
At the end of a hedge, he spots one of them. She’s low, using a long tree shadow for concealment.
The rock he throws glances off that tree. She realizes it’s a distraction quickly, swings her own squirtgun around–too late. With a hiss, the 4010 pumps four rounds through her neck: fine sand in hyperpressurized water. She falls without a sound.
Edgar never liked the way of most shops, papering the walls with collector-grade books. He said it damaged the binding, and put them on the ceiling instead.
Fox hefts yet another white box and threads between fat, grieving men in Daredevil t-shirts. Nobody wants to believe the Purple Hippo’s closing, but they’re here anyway, helping pack up. Edgar himself is boxing miniatures, claiming anyone else would bend the lead. They’ll get bulk-eBayed to offset the debt, Fox knows. He just wants to say goodbye.
Outside, they’re taking the big sign down. Another empty shopfront, Fox thinks. One more shut-down funnybook store.
Maddy pulls it in and holds it in her mouth, swirling thick as water, something she could swallow. Its taste is exactly the same as its color, rich red-brown and warm to the touch.
They got stoned a while ago and now it seems to Maddy that she must keep very still: her head is hollow, filling with the taste and color of this cigar. It’s the dark subtlety of oiled oak paneling, the tang of woodsmoke from the fireplace where her father, the great writer of letters, would sit and hold curling vellum and say nothing for hours on end.
The morning’s warm and flat as summer soda, and Whit’s pants are stiff. He should have realized the black slacks were the only pair left last night, should have done some laundry. Now his legs are hot. He looks like he forgot his jacket at a funeral.
The phone jerks his pocket and he pulls it out, thumbing the voicemail button, expecting a dentist’s reminder. Instead, Lottie sings to him.
Her voice is sleepy, untrained, quiet and perfect. Whit’s hand drops away from the car door; he’s suddenly happy, then giddy, then smiling helplessly, so hard his face hurts. Smiling aloud.
He’s incredible inside her, long legs strong, deep moans and afterwards he holds her, blue eyes compassionate. She told him that after Eric she just wanted to feel alive again, and he believed her. He understood.
It was a lie. She can’t grieve for Eric; she doesn’t even believe he’s dead, really. But she wanted to fuck Dominic the day Eric died, wanted to fuck him at the funeral, had wanted him for months, long before the end.
And now Kelly has what she wanted. She’s horribly happy, satisfied and nauseous, her stomach burning with almost all the guilt she deserves.
“Want some more?” Summer asks, but Gil shakes his head. The house is yellow. There are real lemons in his lemonade.
“I’m glad you came!” She turns to the oven. “We’ll eat when Kevan gets home, and then discuss after that. You like tetrazini?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Ma’am.” Kevan? His English teacher has a first name?
Summer smiles. “Maybe if you like this, you can host a meeting sometime.”
He shakes his head. He’ll be fine in the book club, but not at home. How could he bring them there, to the dark walls, the smell of human, ketchup and dog?
When the four of them came up with The Swap over Jägerbombs at Jillian’s, Vic was so excited that even drunk, he had to conceal a stiffie. They were all excited. Scandalized. Titillated.
But now he’s in bed with Elise, and all they’ve done all night is talk and touch hands.
He likes it.
“I never really trusted myself to hang out with you,” says Elise. “I wanted to.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I thought Toni would get weird, or Carl would.”
“This has been really good.” She smiles.
“Yeah,” he repeats, “yeah,” and their naked fingers lock just like a zipper.