by Dick Wybrow
Cars drifted down a few of the streets.
There was the store where I'd bought day-old bread and cans of beans. Two blocks over was my place. It looked better from up there. I'd never felt it was really home. Cassie wasn't there. I'd been living the last few months just sort of waiting. Waiting for something to happen.
Currently, that something was standing next to me, peering down at the long, long drop in front of us.
Time to go.
"What do we do now?"
Sally's voice was getting closer. "God-blameit, mother-of-pearl! I ain't built for climbing, you slippery bastard!"
Looking back, I saw the top of the ladder leading to the third floor shaking and banging against the side of the building. "There," I said, pointing to what looked like a huge dryer tube, snaking its way from the top floor to the bottom.
It was a bad idea.
"What?" He walked over to it and looked down. "You want to take that down? We'll break our necks. No way! Aren't there ladders on this side somewhere?"
"No, are you crazy? We're not taking that down. Too dangerous," I said. "But I think I saw something inside it we can use."
"Like what?" he asked, peering down the tube.
Then I pushed him.
The Actor's cursing was far more impressive than Sally's, echoing as he tumbled and rolled and bounced from floor to floor to floor. When I caught sight of the cowboy hat, I closed my eyes and jumped in behind him.
It was like falling into a dream. Brilliant sunlight turned to suffocating deep orange, and I tried my best to slow the fall, putting my hands out, but that only hurt more, so I just pulled my arms in and hoped I didn't land on anything pointy.
Briefly, I got caught up in a bend then wiggled, broke free, and fell the remaining few feet.
"Oof!" the Actor said and growled again. "Stop landing on me!"
"You're fine," I said scrambling to my feet. We were in a dumpster filled with construction debris. I hopped out.
The Actor looked over the edge, unsure, but when he shifted his gaze skyward, he turned pale. Sally was staring down at us, aiming her six-shooters our way.
He leaped at me, knocking me off my feet as he tumbled out of the huge iron container.
I said, "See, that worked."
He held up his hand. "I have a fucking nail in my palm!"
A shot pinged off the dumpster, and we both ducked.
I reached up and yanked the nail out. "You're fine!" I shouted, and we ran toward the street. "You're under contract. The only thing that'll really kill you is up there on the third floor!"
"I should never have come here," he said, huffing as he trailed behind me.
We heard the pop-pop-pop of shots above us.
"You're more of a danger to me than she is!"
"Me?" I shouted back. "Before today, I had zero people shooting at me. Zero!"
More shots.
"Run in a random pattern, man!" I said, going left, going right, going left. "Serpentine, serpentine!"
There we were, running for our lives, zigging and zagging away from a gunslinger hired by hell to kill my friend.
For the life of me, I didn't know why, but that made me smile.
We got to the street, and I looked back. Sally was gripping a horizontal bar on the scaffolding, eyeballing the chute.
Of course, we needed to run, but we both hesitated for a moment at the curbside to get our bearings. There were only two vehicles nearby—the foreman's shiny Ford pickup and the gunslinger's motorcycle. The truck had dualies in the back, badass sure, but it also had an owner that had already taken a disliking to me and the Actor.
The Actor had his phone out, scanning it. He said, "Okay, fine. That was horrible, but for the moment, I'm not dead. Do you have an Uber app? Never really needed it…"
"You want to wait for a taxi?"
"We can't run. Look at that thing," he said, pointing toward her gorgeous black bike. "She'll run us down in less than a minute."
Looking over at the pipes and leather and flexing muscle of the woman's motorcycle, I walked next to it like a starving man eyeballing a rib eye steak.
The Actor jabbered away behind me, and I waved his voice down so I could just take in the machine.
"Look at this," I said, my words slow and reverent. My mouth hanging slack, I ran my hand over and down its chassis. I snapped my hand back after I dragged it across something pointy. A tiny dot of blood spotted my finger.
Looking just below the tank, I saw a small metal ring with a tiny black skull hanging off it and just one key. It was still in the ignition. I clicked it forward then stood and hit the start button, but it refused to engage.
"Let's go!" he said, turning away.
"Give me a moment," I said, casting my hands over its handlebars, tank, and seat but not touching it. "She's the most beautiful creature I have ever seen." Unable to stop myself, I again lay a hand on its sweeping black body.
The bike came to life.
"What did you do?" the Actor asked.
I shook my head, turned to him, and said, "Get on!" Steeling myself, I threw one leg over the seat of Sally's motorcycle and gripped the handles.
The gunslinger hadn't yet seen us, now halfway down the garbage chute.
The Actor looked at me blankly. "You've got to be kidding."
"Come on. This'll be fun," I said and revved the engine. "And it'll damn sure slow her down."
He nodded quickly. "Let me drive."
"Okay, you are instantly excluded from that task once you say you want to drive a motorcycle," I said and patted the seat behind me. "Let's ride, baby."
The Actor shook his head and climbed on.
"And you're right, we suck at planning," I said. "We gotta go find someone, someone who's good at planning."
"Where are we going?"
"Hold on!" I shouted back. "We're going to Atlanta!"
"Why?"
I took a deep breath, gunned the engine, and smiled again. "We need a plan. Smartest person I know lives there."
"Who?"
I said, "Anza."
Chapter Six
It was nice to be back on the road.
Sure, it was a road where we had a homicidal gunslinger behind us trying to kill the Actor, and of course, in front of us, wanting to kill me, was an Atlanta-based Honduran drug lord born in Bakersfield—who, despite his claims, had zero ties to Honduras.
But that long strip of blacktop held the promise of something new ahead, or maybe it was the promise that whatever was behind us was literally behind us. We couldn't put everything onto a stolen motorcycle, gun the engine, and leave all our troubles behind. They were still in there, in the folds of our clothes, in the dirt under our nails, and in the sweat on our skin. That said, it felt so damn good to have the wind in my hair.
"Get your goddamn hair out of my face!"
The Actor didn't seem to be enjoying it as much as I was.
After we crossed the Mississippi, I pulled the hell bike off into a rest area somewhere outside of Vicksburg. I'd moved all over the United States back in my radio days, when I was a disc jockey at various stations. Rock, alternative rock, AC, hot AC, album rock, country, and even once on a gospel AM station in Missouri. I'd never spent much time in Mississippi, but it was a beautiful state.
"Christ, I can't stand the South."
"Is there anything you do like, man?" I asked, climbing off the bike. "I'm sorry things aren't working out how you planned, but you're the one who screwed up. That's why we're here."
"Hey, when we were flying all over the planet"—he kicked one leg over the seat, slid, and landed with both feet on the dusty concrete—"looking for some stupid lamp to save your sick wife, I never rubbed your nose in it."
"You did. Constantly."
"Well, maybe a bit," he said, "but you know, not constantly."
"There're probably some snacks at the vending machine. You want a soda or something?"
"Christ, can't we stop at a restaurant or diner or so
mething?"
We'd parked in the "Cars" section of the rest area. On the other side of a strip of lush green lawn were a handful of caravans and RVs. Lining the road to get back onto the interstate were a succession of eighteen-wheelers.
The inside of the pavilion was a step into the past. The walls had various pictures of a Civil War battle and replicated newspaper clippings from the time. In the center of the room was a model boat, and a tiny sign on it said it was a one-sixteenth scale of something called the USS Cairo, a gunboat.
I sat on a plastic seat to rest my legs for a minute. It had been a while since I'd ridden a motorcycle, and my undercarriage wasn't happy with me at all.
The Actor said, "My taint feels like a freshly clubbed baby seal."
An older couple with a young girl turned and scowled at him. The little girl dropped a red sucker she'd been enjoying. She then bent to pick it up, licked it off, and put it back in her mouth. They left.
"We should rent a car," he said, standing in front of the offerings of one of the four vending machines. "There's gotta be som—"
"No, man, let's stay on the road and get there. Do you think Sally's going to just go, 'Oh well, they stole my bike. Might as well give up'?"
"All the more reason to ditch the thing!"
"Are you kidding? You do know we've gone about four hundred miles and that beautiful machine hasn't needed to stop once to fill up?"
The Actor slowly turned to me. "I'm running from eternal damnation, and you're worried about gas money? Shit, I'll pay the bill."
"You can't solve all your problems by throwing money at them, man."
He shrugged, staring through the glass again. "Most of them."
"We're not getting a rental. We got wheels," I said, stretching my legs. "Besides you know that most of the service industry is in some way hell run or hell affiliated. A rental car agency? You might as well dial up the Devil himself, and say 'hey, here I am!'"
The Actor pulled out a credit card and swiped it over a tiny black pad in front of the machine. He punched in a few numbers. The big box came to life. The corkscrew metal bar twisted until his bag of chips moved forward. The turning stopped, and the chips dipped forward, then dangled there, balancing on the edge of the shelf.
"Is the whole world working against me?"
"You do it to yourself," I said. We needed to get back on the road, but I wanted to wait until my balls stopped buzzing. That said, it wasn't wholly unpleasant. "So what happened? Why the hell would you get involved with this shit after last time?"
The Actor thumped the glass of the vending machine, trying to get the bag to move. "You have no idea how hard the entertainment industry is."
"I was in radio for more than a decade. I know how tough media can be."
"Really? Radio? It's not the same."
"Well, if you mean that I never had someone to write my scripts, fix my hair, provide me free lunch, tell me where to stand, where to walk, and how to say the words someone else wrote, then no, it's not the same."
He began to walk away then turned back and kicked the machine by the coin return. The chips held fast. However, a long white package fell from the third row. The Actor reached into the slot, pulled it out, and inspected the sugar-coated rainbow-colored strands.
Stripping it open, he put one end of a blue rope in his mouth and chomped. The end of the limp spaghetti-like candy wiggled as if he were eating it alive.
"This is going to make me fat."
"It's not going to make you fat," I said. "Okay, so you were all sad clown because you got fired."
"The show ended, Raz," he said and sat at one of the cheap plastic tables. "My agent said it was supposed to be my 'vehicle' to stardom."
"Is that the one who showed up on my buddy's front door looking to kill me?"
"The demon agent? No, no. After he burst into flames, I had to get another."
"Good call."
He sighed and sucked the remainder of the blue rope into his mouth. With his mouth covered in the shards of sugar left behind, he put another between his lips, red this time.
"They added all these younger actors in that final season, trying to sex it up or something, waifish dudes that looked like chicks and girls that acted like guys. My role was getting smaller and smaller."
"That's gotta be common."
"Yeah, and the common path is suddenly I find myself in an ultra-violent dual and some two-headed monster decides it wants three. Mine." He chomped, and the red worm shuddered. "My agent was focusing on some of his bigger fish while I was getting offered Italian commercials to sell energy drinks."
"It's work."
"Next step is infomercials where I'm selling monthly subscriptions to a service that provides pillows stuffed with baby hair in New Zealand."
"They have those?" Baby hair. So soft. Except for the angry, meeting-taking babies.
"I was desperate, Raz," he said, and the skin around his eyes reddened. "I went and found your crossroads. Met a guy there that gave me the chills."
I remembered. "Yeah. His name might be Roland."
"His name isn't Roland. It's Satan. Or Beelzebub. Whatever," he said and slurped the rope in whole. He fumbled in the pack, and a green string replaced it. "I told him I wanted to be king of Hollywood. All those fuckers that had laughed at me. The looks they gave me at the craft services table, like I was some homeless guy who'd snuck in and was there for the crepes."
Listening, I glanced outside and saw a couple of guys checking out the bike. We would have to go soon.
He said, "I wanted the big roles, star-making stuff, maybe some cozy series like a fighting treasure hunter, or a spy. A bunch of movies, one after the other, and I could travel the world. Hell, maybe I'd even meet a girl."
My mouth dropped open. "You meet tons of girls."
"You know what I mean. Not some, you know, actor. I'm lonely, man," he said. The sugar-sprinkled green string quivered for a moment. "Anyway, I signed on the evil dude's dotted line, and within a week, I was getting more scenes, more lines. It was like a dream."
"Or a nightmare."
He nodded. "We had another season on the schedule with the network, but somehow that got… instead, we played out the rest of the season. Four episodes. At the end of it, nearly every principal character had been stabbed, burned, bludgeoned, or eaten by dragons."
"And you were king."
"King of the realm!" he said and punched the air. "My character had back-stabbed and manipulated and weaseled and betrayed. Every time a favorite died, the viewers, the public, hated me more."
"It was just a show."
"The little people, Raz, they don't see it that way. They hated me."
"Maybe it's because you call them 'the little people.'"
"After that, I became a pariah," he said. "The show ended, and I became the most hated dwarf king in the world. For months, I got nothing. And these productions are years in the making. If I don't have anything now, I don't get anything next year and maybe the year after."
"What'd you do?"
He looked at the pack and grabbed three strands this time, shoving their tips into his mouth. "I went back to the crossroads to find that prick. Lying sack of shit," he mumbled, chomping. He looked like he was eating a tiny rainbow mop. "Instead, I found Sally waiting for me. She's been chasing me ever since."
Undoubtedly, he was one of the most unlikable people I'd ever met, but by some strange definition, he was also a friend. He'd risked his life to help me when my "real" friends ran for cover.
I stood and walked over, snapping a yellow stand from his mouth, and put it between my lips.
"We'll do it, man," I said, chewing. "We'll find your contract, steal it, and tear it up."
His eyes got damp. "Raz. You know how impossible that sounds?"
Nodding, I said, "Ah, we've done impossible before."
He followed me outside, and for a moment, we walked in silence. As we got closer to the bike, I could see two other men eyeballing it. Not act
ually touching it, just looking at it, as some guys do. The skinny guy with long hair held at bay by a John Deere hat was down on his haunches, elbows on each knee.
When we got close, the other, a short guy dressed head to toe in denim, was saying something to him, and the man with his nose to our motorcycle let out a low whistle.
I asked, "What's up?"
"This is a hell of a ride, sir," the smaller one said. "Hell of a ride."
"You have no idea."
"What is it?"
I shrugged. "A motorcycle."
The denim guy chuckled, and the skinny one pointed to something near the back tire without looking. His friend laughed low again.
"Looks like you got a slight leak."
"Oh?"
"Oil I reckon, but that damn stuff's red. Your ride use coolant?" he asked, and I shrugged again. He added, "Some kinda antifreeze?"
"Nah," I said, stepping up to the bike, and out of deference, his friend stood and took a few steps away. The unspoken dance of dudes. "It's probably the blood of the damned."
The man scratched his round beard and nodded. "I go with synthetics myself. Lasts longer, and the viscosity don't break down so fast."
The Actor grabbed his helmet off the back of the small metal carrier. After leaving Texas, we'd picked up two of them.
My friend said, "You didn't touch anything, did you? We just had it cleaned."
The tall, skinny guy crossed his arms. He spit at a spot by his feet. However, he hadn't gotten the clean shot he'd wanted and made a bit of a production wiping off his chin.
"You don't touch no man's hog," the big guy said then grinned with a perfect set of teeth. "Or his motorcycle."
The tall guy laughed, but no sound came out.
Grabbing my helmet off the bars, I waited a moment before putting it on. "It's not a hog. That's a Harley, right?"
"What is it, then?"
"It's… foreign."
"Rice burner?" he asked and scowled.
"Nah," I said and leaned against the bike. "Unleaded, mostly."
The two men looked at each other.
I was done chatting, so after the Actor climbed up, trying to look all nonchalant, I threw a leg over the seat.
I knocked the Actor off the bike.