Lurkers Page 21

‘George isn’t too old,’ I said, ‘He’s gotta be sixty.’

  ‘He’s crazy,’ Chuck said, ‘In the first week without sleep, he wouldn’t even know about it.’

  A car pulled into the lot, including a bumpersticker reading Blessed Be. ‘Oh hell,’ I said, ‘Stupid people; run.’

  Chuck looked up at the moon. ‘Full moon on a summer night; wiccans at five in the morning: this can only mean one thing.’

  ‘That the hippies are no longer alone,’ I said.

  There were four of them in the Subaru: a guy with a couple feet of blackdyed hair and something of a sandlot Van Dyke—not black, and too sparse to work correctly; the three chicks were even from this distance bothersome freespirit twats gypsied up in flowing black polyester dresses and fishnet, like the cast of Little House on the Prairie at a Def Leppard concert.

  ‘Blessed be,’ one of the chicks told me, passing me and walking into the building.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I already read your car.’

  ‘Merry meet,’ the next said.

  ‘I can’t marry meat in this state,’ I told Chuck, who grinned.

  The last chick, and Anton Szandor Custer, simply walked past us into the restaurant.

  I looked at my cigarette. ‘This may be one of those times when I stay out here and have a few of these.’

  ‘They’ll probably sit in the old non section,’ Chuck said.

  ‘Jessica just finished clearing seventy-four,’ I told him, ‘Whaddaya wanna bet.’

  ‘Good point. Think they’ll like Hutch?’

  ‘On second thought,’ I said, ‘maybe I’ll just finish this one real quick.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘One hour and two minutes!’

  I sat down and went back to eating chips, which were getting cold now. ‘Miss anything?’ I asked.

  Leslie looked at me. ‘Here be wiccans.’

  ‘Fluffbunnies,’ I said, ‘They advertise: they’ve got a bumpersticker.’

  It should be mentioned I suppose that, until about two minutes after meeting me, Leslie had been something of a wiccan; three minutes after meeting me, she understood how silly it all was and got over it.

  It should be further mentioned—reiterated, really—that I don’t actually go around looking for theists to heckle, inasmuch as wiccans are even theistic. But my ethics don’t really apply to Leslie.

  ‘I feel cleansed,’ one of the wicchicks announced, causing Leslie to laugh mercilessly for a few seconds.

  ‘Full moon,’ Leslie said, smiling almost sadly, and nodding, ‘They just got back from that Circle shit.’

  Jessica came out to see what the wiccans wanted to drink.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with these people,’ Leslie said.

  ‘You’re the one who used to be one,’ I told her.

  ‘And you were right,’ she said, ‘It’s stupid.’

  Leslie was being loud enough that the wiccans could hear her. And of course wiccans can’t say anything without being onstage at the time, whether there’s a stage or not; they’ll makebelieve one. So:

  ‘Normals!’ Colonel von Sanders announced in a sadly manufactured rasp, choleric and overimportant. Worf, from Star Trek.

  ‘Why do they plague us so,’ one of the wicchicks whimpered in meretricious bombast.

  ‘Are you plaguing anyone?’ I asked Leslie.

  ‘Um...not that I can tell,’ she said, ‘Unless I’m astralprojecting without noticing.’

  ‘So that’s probably it,’ I said.

  The wiccans started shuddering something like the pirates reacting to Jack Sparrow’s black spot, trying to, like, shake off the normalcy, which arguably worked instantly: no question they were abnormal once again.

  ‘What do you want to drink,’ Jessica said again, slowly; when she’d asked before, while Leslie was laughing, the abnormals had evaded the question in favour of makebelieving the plague; probably just to make Leslie cackle again, which happened to work pretty well; Jessica added, ‘You can’t drink normals.’

  ‘I could drink their blood,’ Worf declared.

  ‘No blood,’ Jessica told him, ‘Tomato juice?’

  ‘One hour and one minute!’

  ‘Oh god I hope the world doesn’t end in an hour,’ Leslie said, laughing herself to tears, ‘I want to laugh at these idiots all day.’

  ‘That figures,’ HippyGuy said, ‘Anyone who thinks different than you gets laughed at.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Leslie told HippyGuy, still laughing.

  ‘A kindred spirit!’ a wicchick yelped, actually and literally pointing at HippyGuy.

  ‘You have no idea,’ I muttered.

  The pointersister scowled at me. I think she wanted to look something like Tina Fey, which might mean she wanted to look something like Sarah Palin; ultimately, she looked something like Sybil Trelawney, from Harry Potter.

  ‘So, are you getting tomato juice?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Coffee!’ Worf barked, ‘With lots of cream!’ It has to be mentioned that this guy could append an exclamation mark to the end of a shrug; to be more accurate, he actually said Coffee! With! Lots! Of! Cream! but I’m not gonna write that way.

  ‘Can I just get hot water?’ Sybil asked, ‘I brought my own tea.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Jessica said, ‘We can’t do that anymore: people were making tea out of marijuana. Orange pekoe okay?’

  ‘I guess,’ Sybil said, magically losing seventy percent of her volume as she deflated, dejected, into her seat.

  ‘Do you have Coke?’ asked Mary Meat.

  ‘We have CocaCola,’ Jessica said, ‘We don’t have anything Bolivian.’

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ Mary said, disappointed about something anyway.

  ‘And you?’ Jessica asked, turning to Blessed Be.

  ‘You wouldn’t have mead here, huh.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have mead here,’ Jessica said, ‘even if I was allowed to have mead here. Coke, diet, cherry, Pibb, Sprite; coffee, tea, milk, chocolate; orange, tomato, grapefruit; lemonade; and there’s always water.’

  ‘Do you have Hershey’s Syrup?’

  ‘Yeah? Something like it, anyway. You want to drink that?’

  ‘No; if...could I get a Coke, without any ice, with Hershey’s Syrup in it?’

  ‘A Chocolate Coke,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Right!’ Blessed Be screamed orgasmically.

  ‘I’m not really sure we can do refills on that,’ Jessica said.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jessica said, ‘You’ve got your menus; I’ll go get all that while you look them over.’

  ‘Blessed be!’ Blessed Be called after her.

  ‘Not in this place,’ Jessica muttered at me.

  ‘At least she didn’t say “marinated meat”,’ I told her, ‘That would be the other one.’

  ‘Dinner ended at midnight,’ Jessica said, going back into the kitchen.

  ‘One hour!’ George announced.

  ‘Good Sir!’ Worf screamed, ‘Why do you count the time so!’

  ‘Naturally,’ I said, ‘this idiot wouldn’t know what a crier was.’

  ‘You see me!’ George said.

  ‘Oh not this again,’ I told Leslie.

  ‘Only an hour till the end of the world,’ she let me know.

  ‘Of course I see you, Strange Person! For you are right here!’

  ‘I’ve returned!’ George said, ‘They let me go! It was so terrifying up there! And it was up there. I was on a ship. I think. With the ducks and the watermelons and boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk.’

  ‘A village idiot, perhaps!’ Worf said to...I dunno; he just said it.

  ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Velociraptors smell weird.’

  Now, I think I should explain something real quick about writing a book, since I ordinarily write fiction and, of course, this isn’t fiction. So...actually: c’mere a sec....

  To the extent that this is too weird a story to appear as anything but fiction, it’s really not; that said, I�
�m not much personally for writing nonfiction, which a lot of people find a bit ironic, since I put all this effort into writing fiction lacking batshit plotholes and impossibilities. Naturally, now that I’ve got this nonfiction thing to write, it’s weirder than anything I’ve ever just thought up and written down.

  So, granting that, as this book reads to date—Page 188—it could be fiction but wouldn’t really have to be, what happened in the next instant will probably push that over the edge. I think, anyway. If I hadn’t seen it myself—if someone else had written it down and told me it wasn’t fiction—I wouldn’t believe it; it’s too perfect, and yet completely weird.

  Maybe it’s not that weird; maybe it’s just weird compared to how I’m used to seeing the world work. But, if it is that weird, I wanted you to know that I know how weird it is, and to assert nonetheless that it really did happen, exactly this way, to the best of my ability to remember it. Not that it’s something I’d forget. You know: ever.

  ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Velociraptors smell weird,’ George said, whatever velociraptors had to do with anything. Maybe his lizardpeople. There was no telling.

  Then, the wigger returned. The same little moron from before. He walked directly up to the wiccans and started screaming at them.

  ‘I want my money back!’ he screamed.

  And, because it’s a weird world, Worf replied in his usual conversational manner: ‘I! Haven’t! Seen! Your! Money!’

  So the wigger screamed more screamingly. ‘Oh, you wanna piece of me! Huh, Bitch! Let’s go! Check it! Gots mad skills! Bring it!’

  So, Worf did. And, by did, I mean that he stood up, flung his goofy cloak off his hip, and had a fucking broadsword. Which of course he pulled out and brandished proudly, twisting it in the light and probably hypnotising himself. ‘This is live steel!’ he bellowed, then bellowed nothing further.

  ‘What the fuck is “live steel”!’ Wigger counterbellowed, backing away.

  ‘I’m thinking that thing in the second “Terminator” film was live steel,’ I offered, ‘Or, you know, a sword you can buy at the mall.’

  ‘Just,’ Leslie began, then shook her head in something like pain, then added, ‘Don’t even bother.’

  ‘The hell is “live steel”,’ I asked her.

  ‘A sharpened edge,’ she said.

  ‘So, it’s sharp steel, not live steel.’

  ‘It’s like live bullets,’ she said.

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘That’s wicca.’

  ‘Fifty-nine minutes!’

  ‘I’ll crush your bones into powder!’ Worf bellowed, raising the sword.

  ‘Oh good,’ I said, ‘He thinks his tapestry is Mjolnir.’

  ‘Tapestry?’ Leslie asked.

  ‘Wallhangings,’ I said, ‘Like cheap, aluminium swords from Hot Topic.’

  ‘I just want my fucking money!’ Wigger screamed, losing the blaccent again.

  ‘I have no money!’ Worf bellowed, paused, possibly thought about what he’d bellowed, then added: ‘Of yours!’

  ‘Dude!’ Wigger shrieked, ‘Just—put the sword down!’

  Jessica appeared with a tray of drinks. ‘Okay: what in the blue fuck is going on—why is there a sword—what the hell are you doing back here—I was back there for thirty seconds—what the fuck.’

  ‘You really wanna know?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh, yeah?’

  ‘Right. So, the beastmaster was talking to George about being an idiot; the wigger rushed in and demanded money from the beastmaster; the beastmaster got up and pulled out—yeah—a fucking sword at him; wigger stopped sounding like Jimmie Walker; you came out and know about as much as I do now.’

  ‘Fifty-eight minutes!’

  ‘What money,’ Jessica said to the wigger, ‘You had thousands an hour or two ago.’

  Wigger hunched. ‘My dad says I wasn’t supposed to spend any of it.’

  ‘Ah! You see!’ Worf bellowed, ‘A child who listens to his elders!’

  ‘Zip it,’ Jessica told Worf; to Wigger: ‘It wasn’t your money?’

  ‘Not...technically,’ Wigger said, ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Jessica said, ‘Did you leave it here somehow?’

  ‘I must have,’ Wigger said, almost crying now, still watching Worf’s sword, ‘We left here and I got home and I didn’t have it anymore.’

  ‘How much,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Twelve thousand,’ Wigger said, ‘Dad gave me money to buy a car today.’

  ‘He gave you cash,’ Jessica said.

  ‘The whole family’s retarded,’ I said.

  ‘You laugh at the youth’s misfortune!’ Worf bellowed at me.

  ‘Hey, Olaf: si’down,’ I said; to wigger: ‘This was the cash—the twelve thousand—you had in your pocket. In the jeans you never pull up past your knees. And you’re surprised it fell out somewhere?’

  ‘It’s never happened before,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone as stupid as you before,’ I said, ‘Things can change.’

  ‘Fifty-seven minutes!’

  ‘Did you actually have it with you when you left here?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘I thought so,’ Wigger said, ‘But now I can’t find it.’

  ‘Twelve thousand?’ I asked, ‘Hell: I’ll give you the money.’

  ‘Really?’ Wigger asked.

  ‘No. See? You’re stupid. Endlessly stupid. You can kill’im now, Worf.’

  ‘Uh...what?!?’

  ‘So it’s probably not sharp steel,’ I said.

  ‘Not live steel,’ Leslie said.

  ‘It might be alive,’ I told her, ‘It might be smarter than he is.’

  ‘Too much negative energy!’ Sybil whimpered, sliding out of the booth through the opening Worf had left and starting to dance around the room, shedding frontier clothes.

  ‘She’s gonna be furry under there,’ I told Leslie.

  ‘Sick is that you’re probably not wrong,’ she said.

  Mary and BB started chanting; Worf danced around with Sybil, still holding the sword, swinging it a bit now. Yo Ho and a Bottle of Rum or something; something Irish, maybe; probably something about placing bombs in churches; who knows.

  ‘Fifty-six minutes!’

  ‘I just want my money!’ Wigger screamed, producing a cheap gun from...somewhere; I really can’t guess where the hell he’d been keeping it, if he couldn’t keep bills in his pockets.

  ‘A boomstick!’ Worf bellowed.

  Jessica backed up into the kitchen.

  ‘Just gi’me the money!’ Wigger screamed.

  ‘Violence is never the answer!’ HippyGuy shrieked.

  Leslie punched him in the head.

  ‘Ow!’ he shrieked.

  ‘Fire away!’ Worf said, ‘I shall deflect thy bullets!’ Seriously. He actually said thy. I didn’t mishear that.

  I looked at Chuck. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, ‘So, probably.’

  My lawyers won’t like this next bit. But there’s really no way to get around it. I opened my backpack.

  ‘If you strike me down! I shall become More! Powerful!’ Worf lied.

  ‘Just shut the fuck up!’ Wigger said, flinging the gun around wildly.

  ‘Hey, Stoopid,’ I said, ‘How many bullets have you got.’

  He flung the pistol, which incidentally contained eight rounds, in my direction. Then he froze, and set it carefully on the table next to him. ‘I’m cool,’ he said.

  I lowered the Uzi slightly. Like I really need a fucking bodyguard.

  ‘Now go away,’ I told him.

  He looked at the pistol on the table.

  ‘The gun stays,’ I said, ‘You leave.’

  He glowered at me.

  ‘This thing fires eleven rounds per second,’ I said, ‘It’ll cut you in half faster than a sword will.’

  Worf looked at the Uzi, and put his sword away.

  ‘Of course he’s got an Isra
eli submachinegun,’ HippyGuy said, ‘The fucking zionazis are everywhere.’

  ‘This is not a good time to remind me that you exist,’ I told HippyGuy, ‘you boring, smelly moron.’

  ‘Fifty-five minutes!’

  Wigger blinked once, then bolted, running for the door and barely slowing to push through it.

  I switched hands on the Uzi, holding it by the foregrip with my left hand; with my right, I grabbed a napkin and dropped it over the wigger’s pistol, then picked up the whole thing.

  Jessica came out of the kitchen. ‘So, you have got a gun,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t suppose I have,’ I said, setting the pistol on 71 before ejecting the magazine from the Uzi and yanking back the bolt to eject the chambered round; I put the bullet back in with the other forty-nine, reinserted the magazine, and slid the thing back into my backpack. Taking the napkin off the pistol, I looked at Jessica. ‘You want one?’

  ‘Why have you got an Uzi,’ she asked.

  ‘Because I can,’ I said, ‘And because it’s really cool. And because it irks the shit outta the sorta people who wish I didn’t have an Uzi.’

  ‘Why do you have it in here, though.’

  ‘Because, if I didn’t, the wigger would still be waving this little thing around.’

  ‘That’s how you solve the gun problem,’ HippyGuy said sarcastically, ‘More guns.’

  ‘Apparently so,’ I said.

  ‘How bout if neither of you had a gun.’

  ‘It seems less likely.

  ‘Fifty-four minutes!’

  The Uzi in my backpack, and the wigger’s pistol harmlessly on the table, Sybil and Worf went back to dancing to purge the evil cold pricklies from the restaurant. Mary and BB were still chanting Irish shit. George was still mumbling things between announcing the time.

  ‘So, I wasn’t thinking what you were thinking,’ Chuck said.

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t know you had an Uzi,’ he said, ‘I thought you were just gonna go punch the guy out, or something.’

  ‘Then he’d still be here,’ I said, ‘And who wants that.’

  Jessica finally set down the tray of drinks and disappeared into the kitchen for a few seconds, then came back out with a bus tub, held it beneath the edge of 71, and wiped the pistol into it with a rag.

  ‘Are those our drinks?’ BB asked.