The Road Trip Dialogues (opening)
She pulled on the door to the auto shop from the outside, and he pulled from the inside. Thus demonstrating the law of reality that says when two or more people do exactly the same thing, it has no effect whatsoever on the world at large.
“Dylan?” she then said through the glass. Amazed.
“Rev?” he said back. Equally amazed.
They tried again. As people who want to change the world at large do. Only this time they both pushed. Demonstrating exactly the kind of teamwork they’d perfected back in teacher’s college. They eventually coordinated their actions and were face to face.
She was so not a hugger and he just kind of was, so you know how that part went.
“Well,” she said. And then didn’t say anything else.
So that hadn’t changed, he thought. Happily, he realized. Her capacity for small talk had always approached nonexistent.
“What are you doing here?” she said next. Okay, that sounded wrong, she thought, fully aware of her arrested social development, but not really giving a damn.
She took in the well-worn jeans, the lime green t-shirt, and the second-hand suit coat he managed to make so very his own. Still loose and lean. The pink rat’s tail was gone though.
“I thought you were teaching up in, what was it—Nelson?”
“Yeah…”
“You were all excited about it. Small community, informal school. I was a bit surprised, actually. Thought you’d go for the action of some inner city school.”
“Yeah, well, that must’ve been Monday.”
She waited.
“Tuesday I joined a bunch of drunken Indians,” he smiled cheerfully, the Irish lilt still in his voice, “and we formed a band.”
She broke into a grin. Typical Dylan, really.
“What’d you call yourselves?”
“A Bunch of Drunken Indians.”
She burst out laughing.
“I didn’t know you played an instrument,” she said in the ensuing silence.
He hesitated. She waited again, sure it would be good.
“Tambourine.”
This time she snort-laughed.
“Still haven’t lost the laugh, I see.” He started giggling then.
“Nor you.”
They stood there grinning at each other. And then just sort of picked up where they’d left off some twenty years ago.
“Hang on—” Rev went to the counter, paid for her new brakes, then joined Dylan standing outside.
He’d gotten a couple cans from the nearby vending machine and handed her one.
“Thanks,” she said. She noticed then the knapsack slung over his shoulder, a larger bag at his feet. “So. You need a ride?”
He looked around, as if he were considering what to do next with his life. “Okay,” he said.
She led the way to her car. It was a black Saturn, polka-dotted with—
He studied it. “What in god’s name did you do—” he walked around it, “to piss off an armada of pigeons?”
“It’s globs of pine tar.”
“Oh.” He leaned forward to take a better look. “So it is. Doesn’t this place clean your car before they give it back?”
“I asked them not to.”
“Right. And you did that because…”
“It’s my anti-theft device.”
“Ah.” He considered that. “Good idea.”
She unlocked the back door for him to throw his bags in. “Besides, in the summer, it’s all sticky and a real bitch to get off. Better to do it in the winter when it gets all hard and you can just flick it off.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“I’m not standing in twenty-below to clean my car,” she said. But what she meant was, I’m not an idiot.
“Cars are not meant to be clean,” she continued. “They stay outside all the time. Where it’s dirty. Where there’s gravel roads. And mud puddles. Which they go right through without a moment’s hesitation. Most of the time.”
She got in and reached over to unlock the passenger door. “You’re going to want me to cut my grass and sweep my driveway next.”
“You have grass and a driveway?” He got in.
“Well, not exactly. But if I did.” She pulled out of the lot and onto the highway.
“So what, exactly, do you have?”
She looked over and just—beamed. “A cabin on a lake in a forest.”
“No,” he said. “What you always wanted!” He smiled broadly, happy for her.
She nodded. “My dream come true. Been there for over ten years now. And you?”
“I’m sort of between dreams.”
“But what about—”
“It’s in storage.”
“What—your dreams?” She grinned.
“No, my stuff.” He grinned back.
“You got stuff?”
“Everybody’s got stuff.”
*
“My god, last time I saw you,” she glanced over and thought back, “you were—blurry.”
“That’s because we were drinking tequila under the table.” He took a slug of his pop.
“Riiiight,” she drew the word out, remembering. The cafeteria had been pathetically made over for a graduation party of all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new teachers. He was a History and Psych major, she a Philosophy and Lit major. He was going to make history a hands-on course, an experience! His students would not fail to learn from the past! They would not be compelled to repeat it! And she was going to make philosophy not just a new course, for high school, but a mandatory one. What could be more important than learning how to think? Logically, critically. And what could be more relevant than learning how to figure out right and wrong? They were both taking ‘Society, Challenge, and Change’ as one of their teaching subjects. And they couldn’t wait to get into the classroom.
“Did you ever finish your History thesis?” she asked. “Didn’t you get into the B.Ed. program on the condition that you finish your Honour’s thesis and get your B.A.?”
“And I got the Nelson job on the condition that I get the B.Ed.,” he said proudly.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You never finished it.” She glanced over. Then waited.
“I forgot what it was about.”
She snort-laughed again. He giggled.
They’d left the town and were on an empty stretch of highway, nothing but forest and rock.
“And what about the getting married and having kids thing? I remember you were so in love with this girl….” Rev thought back. “Wasn’t she Japanese? That’s right, you were learning to speak Japanese! And you insisted on being faithful…” she trailed off, eyes on the road ahead.
He looked over and smiled, then looked back out the window.
“Yeah, well. She wanted to move to Japan.”
“And you wanted to move to Manitoba.”
“Actually, I went to Japan. About a year or so later.”
“And?”
“Turns out I hadn’t learned to speak Japanese.”
She glanced over again.
“Hm. And there’s been no one else?”
“Oh there was, from time to time. But women have these—” he gestured vaguely, “expectations—”
“What, that you have a steady job and support them?”
“Yes!”
“And—”
“And I much prefer unsteady jobs.”
She grinned.
“And you?” he asked. “You weren’t going to get married and have kids.” He had a horrible thought. “You didn’t, did you?” He looked over in alarm.
“No,” she said. With ‘absolutely not’ in her tone. “Men have these—” she gestured vaguely, “expectations—”
“What, that they’d have a steady job and support you?”
“Yes!”
“And—”
“And I could never be a kept woman.”
“No. You have trouble enough being a woman,” he grinned out the window.
“What’s that supposed—well, yeah,” she conceded cheerfully. “Remember—”
“Remember—” he said at the same time. They grinned at each other. “Professor Bixby’s report, right?” Dylan pursed his lips. “‘Miss Reveille needs to work on her professional appearance. A bit of make-up and some jewelry would help.’”
“I still can’t believe he said that,” she said.
“Hey, I offered to lend you my earring—”
She looked over. “You’ve stopped wearing it.”
“Yeah, well, for a while there it sort of got appropriated as a symbol—and now—”
“Things don’t mean what they used to,” she said.
He nodded.
*
“Though I have to say,” she continued after a comfortable bit of silence, “I look around and all the women my age have these nice homes, and they drive those expensive stupid mini-van things, which they keep in a garage, and they have furniture—”
“You don’t have furniture?”
“I have stuff that functions as furniture.”
“Well then,” he said conclusively.
“Okay, yeah, but, what gets me is they all act so—entitled. And I just want to shake them and say hey, if it weren’t for your husband, you wouldn’t have any of this!” She stopped talking for a moment as she changed lanes to pass an expensive stupid mini-van thing. “I hate these things,” she muttered. “Can’t see around them to the road ahead. It’s like driving behind a truck.” She zipped back out of the oncoming lane, then continued. “And yet I don’t know where I went wrong. Because if I haven’t been home raising kids for twenty years, I should be the man. I mean I should be able to afford that nice house, that garage—”
“Not that you’d want a garage.”
“No, but.”
“Or real furniture.”
“Well—” she wasn’t so sure about that. “But how do they do it? How is it that all these men have all that stuff and money left over to totally support someone else? I’ve been barely able to support myself.”
“What do you mean? All these years I’ve been taking comfort in the knowledge that at least one of us—you haven’t been teaching? All these years? You never answered my letter.”
“You sent a letter?”
“Yeah, telling you about the band.”
“I never got it. ’Course I moved a lot the first few years—well, until the cabin, actually. I thought maybe you’d written—so I sent another letter.”
“I only got the first one. ’Course we went on tour—”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“You’re telling me there are people who wanted to hear A Bunch of Drunken Indians?”
“Well, when you put it that way—” he paused. “But it must have happened. Otherwise—never mind.”
She glanced over, grinned again, then resumed her update. “I did get a teaching job. It was just part-time though. But that was exactly what I wanted. Because, as you recall, I was working on my first novel. I was going to be a writer,” she said with mock enthusiasm. Mocking enthusiasm. “Yes I was.”
“What happened?”
“Well you know what it was like back then. We were lucky if we got any kind of teaching job. Unless we wanted to teach English overseas. End of my first year, I was declared redundant.”
“There were two of you?” He giggled. Then said, “I meant what happened to the ‘going to be a writer’ part.”
“Oh, I am a writer.”
He waited.
“I write the questions that go on the LSAT.”
“You became a lawyer?”
“No, I don’t know anything about the law. Well, I do, but—”
“Ah-hah! I thought so!” He seemed so—pleased. “Misdemeanour?”
“Yeah—how did—” She glanced in the rear-view mirror before making a lane change to pass another stupid mini-van thing.
“The principal—” she sighed as she started the explanation. “I’d become a sub and after a few months of a day here and there, I got a long-term placement at one school—the principal caught me teaching my grade ten boys how to put on a condom.”
“All of them at once?”
“Yes—no!” She reached over and cuffed him one. “It was a late and lazy Friday afternoon, and some of them were hubba-hubba-ing about their hot dates for the weekend, and I said something like ’You guys do know how to use a condom, right? ‘Cuz if you put it on wrong, it’ll bust, and you’ll end up a daddy.’”
“Bet that got their attention.”
“It did indeed.”
“So the principal laid charges?”
“I was ‘corrupting minors.’”
“Socrates would be proud. Still, it seems a bit over-reacting.”
“Well—”
“It wasn’t the first time.” He waited.
“I refused to stand for the anthem,” she said. “Every goddamned morning they wanted us to proclaim our allegiance. You’d think we were in the Soviet Union. Or the States. ’Nationalism is—”
“—an infantile disease,’” he finished the quote. “And the next time?”
“Well, the long-term placement got turned into a short-term placement—”
“Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
“Smart ass. At the next school,” she continued then, “I started a discussion club. I chose abortion as the opening topic.”
“Well, you can’t do that at St. Mary’s of the Eternally Blessed Virgin Who Never Goes To First Base Not Even If She Really Really Wants To. Especially If She Really Really Wants To—” he stopped then.
She looked over at him with inquiring eyebrows, but he didn’t elaborate. Didn’t really need to.
“It was a public school,” she said. “A regular public high school. Next time, it was something else. I can’t remember.”
“Yes you can.”
“Yes I can. The next time—oh it doesn’t matter. The next time, when I—” she paused to find the right word, “left, I offered to sponsor an annual Award for Independent Thought. To be given each year to a graduating student chosen by the teaching staff. Each May, I’d send a book prize for the award. They’d give it out at the graduation ceremony in June.”
“And?”
“The Awards Committee refused my offer. They said it would be too complicated to administer.”
“Ah, well, they’re administrators. The May-June thing probably stumped them.”
“So if you aren’t a lawyer,” he said after a while, “how can you write the questions that go on the LSAT?”
“I write the questions for the critical reasoning part. You know, ‘If X, Y, and Z are true, what must also be true?’ or ‘Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the information provided above?’”
“Multiple-choice questions? I love multiple-choice questions! No, wait a minute. I hate multiple-choice questions!”
“And they certainly don’t all go on the LSAT. I send in my quota per month, they go through first review, second review, sensitivity review, edit, penultimate review, re-edit, and ultimate review. If the question makes it that far, if the on-site team is convinced the question would stand up in a court of law—”
“You have to defend your work in a court of law?”
“Well, it turns out the LSAT test-takers are a litigious bunch. Go figure.”
He grinned.
She passed a transport truck on an uphill. “But no, not me. The onsite-staff. That’s why they’re so picky about accepting questions. They have to be able to say, for example, that in item 34, the question itself is perfectly clear and totally unambiguous, there’s no way it could be justifiably interpreted to mean anything other than what it means, and that option (B), for example, is absolutely and demonstrably correct, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and each of the other options is just as demonstrably incorrect.’”
“That sounds—exhausting.”
“Yeah.”
“But you like it.”
“I do,” she looked over and smiled. “It makes my neurons sing.”
“Ah, well, neurons singing, that’s always a good thing.”
“And when they buy a question, I get paid well. ’Course when they don’t—”
“So you have a flexible income.”
“Exactly. But it’s a job I can do whenever I want and wherever I want. And I don’t have to deal with people.”
“Because you have no people skills.”
“I do not,” she agreed.
“Which is why you went into teaching,” he grinned.
“Okay,” she looked over at him, “that was a wrong turn. I so wanted to make a difference, you know? But I didn’t. I couldn’t. And I figured that out,” she said, proudly. “After ten years.”
“So whatever happened to—ten years?” He put his hand on the dashboard as if to absorb an impact.
“That’s how long it took, remember? For real jobs to come around again. The ones with benefits and a pension plan. But, since I wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed anymore—”
“No, I imagine by that point you were walking into the schools with a loaded rifle, taking aim at the principal, and screaming ‘Leave the kids alone!’” He tilted his can and finished it.
“How did you know?” she dead-panned.
Pop sprayed out his nose.
“So when I got out of prison that time—”
He started choking, so she gave him a moment to recover.
“—I was de-certified.”
“I can see how walking into the classroom with a loaded rifle might have that consequence.”
“Well I just got so tired of the—resistance. Schools are such hostile environments,” she added.
He raised his eyebrows at the irony.
“That explains it,” he said then.
“What.”
“Well, you’re still angry.”
She flared at him.
“Just a little,” he pulled back as his eyebrows got singed.
“’Course I’m angry. Aren’t you?” She looked over at him. “And if not, why not? What happened to you? I mean—after Japan…” she tried to cue him.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t as persistent as you. I didn’t try as hard.” He looked out the window. “I’m not entitled to be angry.”
“Hm,” she nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll come back to that.”
He grinned.
“So whatever happened to the novel,” he said after a bit. “Did you finish it?”
“I did. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman. It’s in my desk drawer. Unpublished, unknown, unread.”
“How—appropriate.”
“Isn’t it just.”
“Couldn’t get a publisher?”
She snorted. “Twenty years and I still can’t get an agent.”
“Um, you ever think it just might not be very good?” he said a little delicately.
“Of course. But apparently that’s not an obstacle to getting something published.”
“Good point.” He looked out the window again.
“So what about you,” she asked again. “Are you still playing,” she couldn't keep a straight face, “the tambourine?”
“No, alas, my tambourine days are over.”
She waited.
“Carpal tunnel syndrome.”
She burst out laughing, and a snort escaped.
“Well,” he resumed, “I too have a flexible income.”
“Doing?”
“Oh, this and that. And a good deal more of this than that. For a while I was a dj at a radio station.”
“Oh yeah? That must’ve been cool.”
“It was. I did social commentary. I’d play ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ followed by ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Or the Carpenters’ ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ followed by Deana Carter’s ‘Did I Shave My Legs For This’ followed by Neville’s ‘Everybody Plays the Fool.’ Then one day, I played ‘I’ll Be There,’ ‘I Am Here,’ and ‘Here I Am,’ followed by ‘What Am I Doing Here?’—and—it was all just so confusing.” He paused.
“And so then you were not there?” Rev said helpfully.
“And so then I was not there. At the moment, I’m a freelance reporter.”
“Yeah? How did that come about?”
“Well I started in Obits. ‘John Smith led an unbelievably boring life. And now it’s over.’ They saw right away I had a gift.”
“So they fired you.”
He nodded. “Thus I became a freelance reporter.”
“Ah. Though I was after an explanation more for the reporter part than the freelance part.”
“Ah. Well, I wrote an article about something, and it got published. And I got paid. So I wrote another article. About something else,” he clarified, “and it got published as well. And I got paid again. So I wrote—”
“Got it. It was that easy to get published, eh?” There was, of course, a tinge of sour envy in her voice.
He looked over, regretting immediately his insensitivity. “Well, remember that we established the irrelevance of quality.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She was not convinced. Either that or she was convinced.
“So what do you report on?”
“Oh, this and that.”
“And a good deal more of this than that, I’ll wager.”
He grinned over at her.
*
“So whatever happened to Leech?” she asked after a while.
“I don’t know. I didn’t stay in touch with anyone. Everyone was so…so. Present company excluded.”
They were both quiet for a bit.
“We would’ve made the best teachers,” Rev said. Sadly. Bitterly.
“Which is why we quit or were fired,” he replied.
“Or declared redundant,” she qualified, defensively.
“Same thing. They could’ve declared the football equipment redundant instead.”
“Seeing as there were already a number of ways in which young men could display their stupidity,” she agreed.
“Or the football team,” he said.
“Seeing as.”
“I bet he became a principal,” he said then.
“Who?”
“Leech.”
“But he borrowed your notes even for classes he attended!” she said. Then she sighed. “You’re probably right.”
They drove on. After a while, when the sad and bitter had dissipated somewhat, she thought to ask, “So where are we going?”
“I don’t know, you’re driving,” he said. Grinning.
“So your car—”
“Died. I left it at that shop to be a multiple-organ transplant donor.”
“Oh. But you—”
“Where were you going before you met me?” He grinned at how that came out. So did she.
“Actually, I was on my way to Montreal. To see the fireworks.”
“You’re driving to Montreal,” he repeated with some disbelief, “to see fireworks. But that’s so—oh, yeah,” he said then, “they have that international competition. I’ve heard about that. Lots of sparkles and—okay,” he said after a moment.
“Okay what.”
“Let’s go see the fireworks.”
She smiled. It was so—Dylan.
“So you speak French then?” he asked.
“Probably as good as you speak Japanese.”
“Then we’ll do fine. How hard can it be to ask for directions to see the—” he exploded his hand and made some noises.
She glanced over. “The re-enactment of the War of 1812?”
“No, silly. The War of 1812 wasn’t in Montreal. Or in 1812.”
She shot him a look.
“Okay, yeah, it was in 1812. But it’s not something most students know, I can tell you that.”
They drove for a bit.
“Hey, before we go to the fireworks,” he pointed just up the highway to their left, “let’s go to the ice cream place.”
“Okay,” she slowed and pulled into the small parking lot. When they walked in, they saw it was the local hang-out. An assortment of teenagers occupied the corner with a table. Gangsta rap was pumping from a jukebox at the far end.
“That’s—confusing,” Rev commented.
“What?”
“Rap coming from a jukebox.”
“Hm. But the Fonz would approve.”
“Think so? I don’t know.” She took in the sullen-looking teenagers sulking in the corner. “The Fonz was basically a happy person, don’t you think?”
The teenagers looked back at her belligerently.
“It wasn’t just the principals, was it,” Dylan said.
“No,” she confessed. “At first, yes. But eventually—no.”
She brushed the pain away and went up to the display freezer. She cruised by slowly, reading the names and looking at each of the open round cartons.
“Do you have soft ice cream?” Dylan asked the young woman behind the counter.
“Yeah, but only in vanilla.”
“That’s fine. I’ll have a soft cone in vanilla.” His eye was caught then by the containers of ice cream condiments. “With pink sprinkles,” he added delightfully.
He heard the snicker and turned to see the smirk. “Fag,” one of them said.
“Why, because I’m getting vanilla? Or because I’m getting a soft cone. Or is it the pink sprinkles? Just curious.”
They laughed and jostled each other.
“Whichever,” he continued, “you realize you’re being totally irrational, yes? Because what could the flavor or consistency of the ice cream I prefer—or the color of my sprinkles—possibly have to do with my sexual orientation?”
Rev turned to look at the boys. They were not amused. She tried to catch Dylan’s eye, but surely he knew. He couldn’t help himself. She understood. Or did once. If it moves, teach it.
“I’ll have the Chocolate Almond Deluscious,” she turned back to the woman, unable to watch.
The woman gave Dylan his vanilla cone, then scooped out Rev’s cone. While they were paying, the boys shuffled out. Good. No, not good. They were clustered around the door.
“We can eat our cones here,” Rev suggested.
“Don’t be silly. The décor is awful.”
“But I don’t have my rifle,” she muttered.
Dylan went to the door, and opened it, but the boys didn’t move to make room for their exit.
“Excuse me,” he said, reasonably enough.
“No. We don’t excuse fags.”
Dylan paused a moment. “I thought we went over that.” Then he smooshed his ice cream cone into the biggest guy’s face and yelled to Rev, “Run away! Run away!”
They sprinted to her car and got in.
“Lock the doors!” she shouted at him.
“Drive!” he shouted at her, tumbling into the back seat to get the locks.
She zoomed out of the small lot and back onto the highway. He clambered back into the front seat, then looked behind them to assure himself that they had not had a car.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded.
“That it was too bad we didn’t have a cow we could throw over the castle wall at them?”
She looked at him then burst out laughing. “Wasn’t it a killer rabbit?”
“No, the killer rabbit was before, wasn’t it?”
“No, don’t they go up to the castle wall—oh, hell, I can’t remember.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay then what.”
“Okay then we have to find a video store, rent The Holy Grail, and find a motel for the night.”
“Yeah,” she looked around vaguely. “My eyes don’t like driving in the dark these days. I hate this growing old shit,” she added.
“Me too. But before we grow old, we have to find another ice cream place. I want my pink sprinkles.”
Rev rather smugly picked up her Chocolate Almond Deluscious cone from the drink resting place. Dylan looked at her in amazement.
“It’s chocolate,” she said. What more need she say?
*
They drove another hour before they found another ice cream place. It was in the next town, and it wasn’t so much an ice cream place as a corner store that had an ice cream counter. As for the pink sprinkles, Dylan had to improvise. He bought a little box of cake decorations, no doubt made in the 1950s, and sprinkled its contents on his vanilla cone.
Conveniently enough, the store also had an aisle of videos for rent. Which was surprising, Rev thought, since most people in the area must be getting more movies than they could ever watch through satellite TV. There wouldn’t be any cable service, and she suspected that until they got closer to—somewhere else—anyone with an aerial would be getting only two or three stations. Even DVD rentals were becoming passé. They looked through the comedy section, which was understandably old, but apparently Monty Python was older still.
“Excuse me,” Dylan absently waved his cone to get the attention of the young man behind the counter. And almost lost it, again. “You don’t by any chance have Monty Python and the Holy Grail, do you?”
“Yeah, it’s in the half-price bin. Sarah brought in Don’s old collection for sale. Buck a piece.”
“Don doesn’t want them anymore?” Dylan couldn’t believe anyone would give up their Monty Python collection.
“Don died.”
“Ah.” He was momentarily disconcerted, then started searching for the Holy Grail in the half-price bin.
“Is there a motel in this town?” Rev asked in the meantime.
“Another half mile. End of town.”
“Thanks,” she said, as Dylan cried out, “Aha!”
They paid for the video, left the store, walked back to the car, then drove the half mile to the motel.
“Do you find it personally disturbing that Monty Python fans are dying already?” Dylan asked.
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
She pulled into the small parking lot of the motel at the end of town. He grabbed his bag out of the back seat, and she got hers from out of the trunk. They walked into the office, a quasi-apartment attached to a row of five motel rooms, and rang the little bell on the cluttered desk. It didn’t sound loud enough, given the hockey game coming from behind the curtain. So they rang it again. When the play stopped and a commercial came on, the motel guy came out from the back.
“Hi there, we’d like a room for the night, please,” Rev said.
The motel guy shuffled over to the cluttered desk and looked at a handwritten list of sorts.
“Only a double left.”
“That’s fine,” she said. She filled out the paperwork and gave the guy her credit card. It took a few tries for the swipe to take, but eventually her payment was processed.
He gave her a key. “Unit #5, at the end. Check out’s by two.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” Dylan said, as they walked to the door.
“Here,” he reached out his hand to Rev, “give me that. You move the car.” She gave him her bag and went back to her car. He walked down to unit five, stopping on the way to get a couple cans of Pepsi from the vending machine. She met him at the door, then had to convince the key that it was indeed made for Unit #5. Dylan tossed her bag on one bed and his on the other.
“Well, that explains the video rentals,” he said, nodding at the old TV and VHS player chained to a cabinet. He put the video into the player and flopped back onto one of the beds, as she headed to the washroom.
“You still smoke?” he called out to her, sitting up then and tugging his knapsack toward him.
“Oh man, you’ve got a joint? How big is it?” she hurried back into the room. “Is it a Cheech and Chong joint?”
He laughed as he handed her a can. “They only had Pepsi.”
“Don’t you love the free market? It lets companies buy the freedom of distributors.” She took the can and popped its lid. “Thanks.”
Dylan got up to press the ‘play’ button—there didn’t seem to be a remote—then settled back onto the bed. He pulled a baggie out of his knapsack and a book of matches. As he lit up, Rev arranged the pillows of the other bed against the bedboard.
“Oh don’t be silly, I can’t reach that far.” He lamely held out the joint to her in the space between the beds.
She picked up the pillows from her bed and tossed them beside his against the bedboard. Settling herself companionably beside him, she took the joint.
She drew in. “Last time I smoked,” she said as she exhaled, “I was doing my laundry. Took forever to get my shirts onto their hangers. Have you ever noticed how complex a spatial task that is? Matching the two shoulders of a shirt with the three corners of the hangers. It was kind of like playing musical chairs. One corner was going to be left out, and I couldn’t figure out which of the five it should be. Around and around I went.”
“So why’d you stop?”
“I got dizzy.”
“I meant—”
“The guy I was with, we split, and then it was forever until I came across someone else who had a connection. And then, well, the next day is a total write-off in terms of lucidity.”
“You still notice a difference?” he giggled. “What with the growing old shit?”
“Oh shut up.”
They watched the movie, drank their Pepsi, and smoked the joint.
“Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.”
“To Don!” Dylan said soberly.
“To Don!” Rev echoed.
Then the Requiem scene followed and they both lost it when the first monk slammed himself in the head. By the third one, Rev had tears in her eyes from laughing so hard.
“To Don!” she gasped.
“To Don!” Dylan echoed.
About an hour later, Dylan called out, “Here it comes!” The cow came flying over the castle wall and they both collapsed again in giggles.
“You know what we forgot?” Dylan said.
“The airspeed velocity of an African swallow?” Rev suggested.
“Doritos.”
“Ah.”
“And pizza.”
“Do you think the local place is still open?” she asked.
“Did you see a local place?”
“Well, of course. By definition any place we see here is a local place.”
“Good point.” He considered that. “Okay, did you see a local pizza place, that’s what we need to determine,” inordinately pleased with himself for identifying the obvious.
“No I didn’t see a local pizza place.” She ruminated on that for a moment. “But that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”
“You got an A in Epistemology, didn’t you.”
“I got an A in everything.”
“Okay, put on your shoes. We’ll go look.”
“I’m not driving.”
“Of course not. The whole town is just half a mile.”
“Okay, I can do that. I can walk half a mile.”
“I should think so.”
“But I have to piddle before we leave.”
“I should think so. Piddle after we leave and you’ll be charged with another misdemeanour.”
“Do you think piddling in public is a misdemeanour?” she called out through the bathroom door.
“Well it should be. Don’t you think it’s a lapse in decorum, a mis-demeanor?” he giggled. “A mis-demeanour. A misdemeanour is a mis-demeanour. Perspicuity,” he added. And giggled again.
She came out of the washroom.
“Perspicuity,” he said again. “It sounds funny,” he explained.
“Especially coming from you,” she agreed. “Okay, I found the door out of the washroom. Now we have to find the door out of the room. And it won’t be the same one,” she added.
“That’s a helpful clue. It adds,” he sputtered with delight, “perspicuity.”
“Maybe we should just order out for the pizza,” she suggested, suddenly daunted by the quest they were embarking upon.
He looked at the phone, doubtful. “Can you negotiate all those numbers? They’re very little.”
“Good point. Okay, here’s the door.”
They stumbled out of Unit #5.
“Okay, which way?” she asked.
“To the holy grail! To the pizza!”
“Yeah, but which way?”
Dylan pondered as he looked one way, then another, then another. “Forward! It’s always easier to walk forward than it is to walk backward!”
She agreed and they walked forward onto the walkway that joined their unit to the walkway running along all five units. When they got to the corner, Rev stopped.
“Having hanger flashbacks?” Dylan asked her with concern.
“Yes. I am the shirt.”
“And I am the walrus. Let’s go this way,” he suggested. They turned left and walked into bush.
“Okay, now let’s go this way,” he suggested. They turned around. “Isn’t that the highway I see in yonder distance?”
“I believe so,” she said. “Isn’t that where we need to go?”
“I believe so,” he replied. “Engage! Warp speed five!”
They stumbled along the motel walkway to the highway.
“Okay, so far so good,” he proclaimed. “We have come a long way.”
“And no one’s thrown a cow at us yet.”
“The night is young,” he cautioned. “And there are cows about.”
“Which way now?”
They looked at the highway stretching in both directions. They looked behind them, and they looked in front of them.
“Up!” Dylan shouted. They looked up. “Ah, stars.”
“Oh, look,” Rev said, “there’s a bunch in the shape of a—cluster.”
“Is it moving? Are the aliens coming to get us yet? I want to go home,” he cried.
“Okay, but before we do, let’s get some pizza.”
“Right. Good idea. I’m hungry.”
They turned right and started walking along the shoulder of the highway.
“Okay, we have to be careful to keep the gravel under our feet. You remember what happened to the rabbit in Watership Down.”
“But it wasn’t a killer rabbit.”
“No. But it was road kill just the same.”
“Look! Pizza Pizza Pizza!” he cried out.
“I think there’s only two of them.”
“How fortuitous. Because we need only one of them.”
They kept walking, toward the Pizza Pizza sign.
“Keep our eyes on the pizza and our feet on the gravel,” she said, “and we’ll be fine.”
“Feet on the pizza, eyes in the gravel, we’ll be fine,” he agreed.
Eventually, they reached their goal.
“We’re here!” he shouted triumphantly as he burst through the door.
“Yeah,” the young man behind the counter said, clearly not as enthused about it as Dylan. “And what can I get for you this evening?” The script had definitely lost its sparkle.
“Pizza pizza pizza!” Dylan cried out.
“Just one,” Rev clarified. With perspicuity.
“But a really, really big one!” Dylan insisted. “I’m so hungry,” he confessed to Rev.
“Duh,” Rev giggled. “We just walked all the way here from the motel,” she explained to the guy.
“A whole quarter-mile,” he said dryly. “Bet you could eat a horse.”
“Or a cow!” Dylan burst into giggles. “Throw one over the castle wall!”
The young man started to smile then. “Riiight,” he said. “So that’ll be one family size pizza, with the works, two cans of Pepsi, and two bags of Doritos.”
“Yes!” Dylan cried out. “No! Four bags of Doritos! We need four bags of Doritos.”
The young man smiled more broadly then. “Can you carry all of that all the way back to the motel?” he asked as he started making their pizza, plopping one of the ready lumps of pizza dough onto a floured table. “I mean, I’m off in ten minutes. We close at midnight. I could deliver on my way home.”
“Could you? Yes! Deliver! That’s a very good idea!” Dylan turned to Rev. “He’s going to bring the pizza to us. Instead of the other way around.”
“Wow.”
“All right, then.” Dylan was pleased. “That’s settled. Now what?”
The guy chuckled. “Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll deliver you two as well.”
“Brilliant!” Dylan said. “But you can’t put us in a flat box. We’re not road kill yet.”
“Okay,” he smiled. He finished making their pizza and put it into the oven as Dylan and Rev found the little table in the corner and sat down. Rev started examining the cross bars under the chair’s seat. The way they intersected in the corners then went off in different directions.
“Wow,” she said.
“I’m so hungry,” Dylan moaned.
A bag of Doritos came flying at them from behind the counter.
“Look!” Dylan said to Rev, “We are blessed! Doritos fell from the sky and landed on my head.”
The young man burst into giggles.
Ten minutes later, he was bundling Dylan, Rev, a family size pizza, two cans of Pepsi, and three bags of Doritos into his beat-up Neon.
He drove back to the motel.
“Which—do you remember which unit you’re in?”
“The one near the bush,” Dylan said.
“We walked into the bush. Before.”
“Before we walked out of the bush.”
“Okay, here we are. Do you have your key?”
“Oh no! I forgot to take the key!” Rev cried.
“That’s okay! I forgot to lock the door!” Dylan said.
Sure enough, the door was unlocked. They walked in.
“Come in, come in, good kind sir! Here, have a Pepsi!” He opened one of the cans and gave it to the young man. He opened the pizza box.
“And have a slice! Have a seat!” He gestured vaguely to the room. “Have a name! I mean, what’s your name?”
“Shaun.” He moved the chair from against the wall closer to the bed upon which Dylan and Rev had settled.
“And you live around here?”
“Yeah, just down the highway a bit. I live with my grandpar—I live with my grandmother. My grandfather passed away.”
“So did Don,” Dylan said.
“You knew him?”
“Who?”
“Don.”
“No. The guy at the video store said—”
“Wait a minute—you’re Don’s son?” Rev figured it out. She wrote for the LSAT, after all.
“Grandson.”
“Grandson? Just how old was Don?” Dylan asked.
“I don’t know. ’Bout your age, I guess.”
“Cannot be! We’re about your age!”
Shaun laughed. “You got that right.”
Dylan pulled his knapsack onto the bed and began rummaging through it. “Ah, the last one.” He pulled out a crumpled joint. “Alas. No matter,” he reached for the matches, lying on the table between the beds. “Here, join us.” He lit up, then passed it to Shaun. Shaun took it, drew in deeply, then passed it to Rev. She took a small drag, then got up to press ‘play’ on the VCR.
“To Don,” she said, lifting her can of Pepsi. Dylan echoed her, waving the joint.
“To Don,” Shaun said, raising his slice of pizza. “My grand-dad.”
They watched the rest of video as they ate, drank, and smoked. The killer rabbit scene came on.
“Run away!” Dylan cried out. “Run away!”
Shaun’s eyes began to tear.
“It’s okay,” Dylan noticed. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he said, then collapsed in giggles. Shaun couldn’t help joining him.
“He’d’ve loved this,” he said when he recovered. “This is perfect.” He looked at Rev and Dylan. “Thank you so much, you guys.”
Dylan and Rev nodded a ‘you’re welcome.’
The video played to the end, then started its automatic rewind.
Dylan got up, pressed the eject button, then put the video back in its box.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Shaun who’d also gotten up. “Your grandmother shouldn’t’ve given them all away. Though I can understand why she might’ve. But you should have this one.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Shaun turned to leave. “Hey. On your way out of town tomorrow?” he half-said, half-asked. Rev nodded confirmation. “Stop at the grey bungalow. I can replenish your supply if you’d like.”
“Good man. We’d like. Till tomorrow, then.” Dylan put his hand on Shaun’s shoulder at the door.
*
(free download of complete novel at jassrichards.com)