The wake-up

14

Quentin wrapped his arms around himself as the jitters hit, holding on while his teeth chattered, jerking like one of those Dodger bobble-heads every Mexican in L.A. had on the dashboard of his Camaro. He sagged when it was over, his mouth sour. He looked over at Ellis, who was hitting on a pint of Southern Comfort while his knees bounced, racked with the jitters, too. "Told you the batteries were a bad idea."

"Recipe called for batteries," Ellis said, watching the Westminster dog show on the big screen with the sound off. He sat in the living room of the double-wide trailer, a pasty scarecrow in threadbare cutoffs, scabs crusted across his arms, hair hanging down to the middle of his back. The air conditioner rattled in the side window. It was ninety-eight degrees outside, but the heavy-duty conditioner kept things at a frosty sixty-five degrees inside. He was sweating anyway. Ellis was always hot. So was Quentin. Their nerve endings were too close to the surface-that's what Quentin said. Ellis shifted on the recliner, eyes on the dog show. "Recipe calls for batteries, I add batteries."

"Recipe calls for lithium batteries, not rechargeables," said Quentin. "You ruined the batch, admit it. You're the one got to explain it to Vlad and Arturo."

Ellis scratched the scabs on his arms. "Batteries is batteries."

"Rechargeables don't have no lithium in them," sputtered Quentin, his guts cramping up again. He groaned, a bony motorhead in a Green-peace T-shirt and greasy jeans, his dirty bare feet curled up under him on the flower-print sofa. "It's the lithium the recipe calls for."

"You… you got to admit…" Ellis took another drink, trying to hold his hand steady, the neck of the Southern Comfort bottle clicking against his front teeth. "You got to admit, Quentin, it's a fine buzz."

By way of response, Quentin bent over the coffee table, hooked a half gram of crank with the long nail of his pinkie, and snorted. It burned like drain cleaner. Damn Ellis had run out of coffee filters and used paper towels to filter the ephedrine brew, left in all kinds of impurities. He shook his head, hit the other nostril, jerked with the brain freeze. He smiled at his reflection in the glass tabletop, his brown hair spiked out. He would have liked to grow his hair long like Ellis, but it kept breaking off. Skin hung loosely from his arms and waist, sagged over his belt, dripped from his jawbone. He looked like he was a melting wax candle. A former all-state tackle at Huntington Beach High, Quentin had lost over one hundred pounds since he discovered the wonders of bathtub speed. He had never felt better in his life, really, but he no longer watched football on TV. He watched everything from Jap cooking contests to soap operas, but never football. Not even the Super Bowl.

Through the back window of the double-wide, Quentin could see the carcasses of half a dozen stripped cars rusting in the desert heat, hoods gaping, engines and tires missing. Ellis collected cars. Said it was the sport of kings. Most of them had bullet holes through the windshields from when they got bored. Plenty to be bored about, too, living out beyond the outskirts of Riverside, eighty miles from H.B. It might as well be 80 million. Fuck it. Riverside was Crank Central. He flicked his lighter, held it overhead, honoring his new alma mater. He looked over at Ellis, thinking he might get a laugh, but that crater-head was glued to the big screen.

Ellis watched a standard-size white poodle flounce across the floor of the pavilion, puffy balls of fur on the dog's head and the tip of its tail bouncing with every step. "I'd like to get me one of them dogs."

Quentin stared at the poodle's handler scampering beside him, an old guy in a black tuxedo, breathing hard. He shook his head. The things some people would do to make a buck. Fucking pathetic.

"Beautiful dog," said Ellis. "Looks like Julia Roberts."

"You said the same thing about the cocker spaniel and the terrier and the Afghan hound. They all look like Julia Roberts to you."

Ellis dragged a hand through his greasy hair. "I'm just saying we should get us a dog."

A couple of weeks ago, some lady and her kid had walked down the private driveway to the front door, the kid in a Girl Scout uniform crisscrossed with merit badges, the lady carrying a paper bag loaded with cookies. Ellis had answered the door, listened while the kid went into her sales pitch. The lady had sniffed, wrinkled her nose, catching a whiff of the ethyl ether cooking in the garage. Ellis, for once in his life, had a smart reaction-told the lady they had cats and he was overdue to empty the litter box. "Gosh, mister, how many cats do you have?" asked the kid, gagging. No sale, bitch.

For the next couple of days, Ellis had jabbered on about how they should get a cat in case anyone else came around wondering about the smell. Quentin said no way, he had allergies, so now Ellis had switched to wanting a dog. Quentin tried to tell him that dog piss didn't smell like cat piss, but once Ellis got his mind around an idea, he didn't let go. It was just a matter of time until he came home with some puppy that would get into the acetone, go into convulsions, and then there would be a three-hour argument over who was going to dig the hole for it.

Quentin grabbed the remote and switched channels. Dozens of hot rods streamed around an oval track, kicking up dust. "That reminds me. Any of them cars of yours run? My sister's kid wants one bad. Just turned sixteen and that's all he talks about."

"Nothing out there is worth a damn," said Ellis, "but I can put something together for him. Clean VIN numbers guaranteed. Just give me a week or two."

"How much?" asked Quentin.

"Don't worry about it."

Quentin watched the hot rods go round and round. They looked like windup toys. "My sister's kid, he can tell you everybody won the Daytona Five Hundred. He can go clear back to 1946 or '47, tell you what they were driving and what their time was, too."

Ellis peered at the screen. "I'll put a real nice car together for him. Anybody who can remember all that shit, he deserves it."

"I don't know…" Quentin repacked his nose. "I tried to tell him, when you pencil it out, it hardly pays to own a car. You figure in the DUIs, it would be cheaper to take a cab."

"How you gonna pick up supplies if you don't got a car?" asked Ellis. "You going to ask the cabbie to wait while you buy a couple hundred road flares, a crate of Sudafed, and twenty gallons of anhydrous ammonia?"

"I'm not talking about us," said Quentin, "I'm talking about him. You start figuring in gas, oil, retreads, DUIs… and jail time, you can't forget that. Even if you make bail, you're still gonna lose a day, assuming you don't get popped on a weekend, when it's gonna be worse. Like I said, all things considered…" He turned around, hearing something. Two men stood just inside the side door. They were wearing Bozo the Clown masks with orange hair and big red noses. If it hadn't been for the shotguns, he would have thought it was Halloween.

"Oh wow, I love this part," whispered Ellis, oblivious to their visitors, as one of the hot rods veered into another, the cars behind them unable to stop, tumbling end over end.

The shotguns had focused Quentin, brought his mind to full attention. He couldn't bring himself to look at those Bozo faces-that was too much to ask-but he was thinking better now, with all the time in the world, because things had slowed down, the way they always did when he was behind a load of crank, and the more he thought about it, the more the fact that they were wearing masks seemed like a good thing. If you were going to waste somebody, you didn't need to bother wearing a mask. Yeah, the masks were a hopeful sign, but he still couldn't bring himself to look at anything but the shotguns, a sawed-off double-barrel and a pump Mosburg. The shorter Bozo, the one cradling the Mosburg, had lacy tattoos scrolled over his forearms, spiderwebs with spaceships caught in the strands, and Quentin recognized the design, knew who they belonged to, but he didn't say anything. Not a word.

"Give up the goods, motherfuckers," demanded the tall Bozo.

"What?" Ellis tore himself away from the TV. "Hey… what's the deal?"

The tall Bozo waved the double-barrel. It had been sawed off unevenly, the metal still shiny, not filed smooth, and that bothered Quentin for reasons he couldn't even fathom. "The deal is, you hand over your stash, and I don't blow your shit away."

Ellis peered at the shorter Bozo's arms. "Pinto? Is that you, man? What up, dude?"

"He recognizes you." The tall Bozo pulled back the hammers on the double-barrel. "Time to make a commitment here, Pinto."

Ellis looked at Quentin. "Did I fuck up?"

Quentin wanted to cry.

Pinto pushed back his Bozo mask. "Damn thing was too hot anyway," he said to his partner. He raised his shotgun.

"Quentin?" wailed Ellis. "I fucked up, didn't I?"

Quentin closed his eyes. He covered his ears, too, covered them tight.