Burn Down The Night (30 page)

Sheila jumps out
of the back of the truck, skids on her high heels and goes over backwards on her ass. That pretty
much describes her, inside and out. Morrison reaches down and helps her to her feet. "First
impressions are always the best," he says to her.

Sheila smiles at
him, liking him already. She's not hard to get acquainted with. Her average seduction time must
be around fifteen seconds. She's dressed in—and it's hard to believe, but it is what it is—a
frigging girl scout uniform. It's so tight on her, her vaccination is showing through the fabric.
It's about three sizes too small and only misses covering her knees by about eight inches. Sheila
is also wearing high-top black leather boots with silver stars sewn into the sides and a
tricorner hat that Errol Flynn probably wore when he was swashing his buckle on the high seas of
some Hollywood sound stage.

"Who's you?" she
says, hanging all over Morrison. "Are you famous? Did I sleep with you already or
what?"

Morrison blinks,
she's really lovely, but without a cigarette in her hand, she really has no attitude. What a
space case!

"I think it was or
what," says Morrison, amused.

"Stick around,"
she tells him, touching his face with one crimson-nailed hand. "If you're not famous, you should
be. That's my karma, you know. I sleep with famous people. And Sagittarians. But no football
players. That's bad karma. They try to bite your nose off." That makes no sense but that's
Sheila.

"She's
good-looking," Morrison says to me, looking surprised. I hadn't lied. For an idiot, she's stuffed
to the limit with good-looking.

Under his breath
Morrison adds, "But somebody gave her mind an enema."

Sheila latches on
to Morrison. "Have you met Snowflake?"

Morrison shrugs,
finds himself dragged in front of a bored-looking St. Bernard. I busy myself with loading the
rest of the goodies in the truck.

"Like say hello,"
Sheila says to Jim. "His name's Snowflake but you can call him Snowflake. He's a far-out cosmic
real-like person only he's a St. Bernard at the moment, which is like his karma. He's not a
vege­tarian, which is like his trip, you know, and he's bummed out, you know. I mean really
bummed out, 'cause like Elvis Presley, you know, and like the Beatles, you know, and anyway, say
hello. He's really very sensitive, you know."

Morrison just
stands there with his mouth open. The dog stares open-mouthed at Morrison. It's a Mexi­can
standoff.

"Does he speak
French?" asks Morrison, not about to rap with a dog, no matter how sensitive the pooch is.
"French is the only literate language."

Sheila taps one
bright painted nail against her teeth, thinking it over. "I don't know. Remind me and I'll ask
him later."

I continue loading
up the truck. It's gonna be super-crowded. The people who ride in back are going to have to be
either very very friendly or so fried that they aren't going to mind being stacked on top of each
other like Oreos in a cookie bag.

At least I don't
have to worry about Morrison getting together with Sheila. I can sense room service in the
immediate future. Sheila's attached to Morrison like a leach. Morrison keeps rolling his eyes
heavenward. The longer she talks, the more brain damaged she sounds.

"What are you
getting me into?" says Morrison with a sigh, as I help him and Sheila up into the back of the
truck. Snowflake's already loaded up, taking up most of the room in back. Sheila wouldn't go
anywhere without Snowflake. I don't envy those guys riding in back. Twelve hours up close with a
bummed-out St. Bernard is not my idea of fun.

"What if Snowflake
has to go peepee and doodoo like, you know, while we're traveling?" asks Sheila as I close the
rear door on her face.

"Pray for
constipation," I tell her.

Spence and I get
into the cab. The cab is full of beer, must be four six-packs of it. Spence touches me on the
elbow. "Hey, what about that?" he says, motioning out the front window.

I look out and see
a guitar cast, and the groupie who had been sleeping under it, crawling across the parking lot in
front of the truck. "That's my guitar," says Spence. "It's trying to walk away."

Spence looks at me
with a very serious expression on his face. "You know I can't play my guitar if I don't have it
with me?"

This guy is
brilliant! I get out and get his guitar and the chick and stuff them in the cab with
us.

"Now is that it? I
mean is that everything? Is there anything else that's going to holdup the parade?"

"Uh, nothing,"
says Spence, "except maybe the hotel manager who's coming out of the office and is heading this
way."

I look out the
side window on Chris's side. Oh, Christ!

I start the truck
and go roaring out of the parking lot. The manager runs out into the street, shaking his fist at
us. I can see his lips moving, as he memorizes our license plate number.

"Gee," says
Spence, "that guy looks likes he's really pissed off."

"Assholes!" I say.
"All he has to do is call the cops, report the license number and our asses are
grapes."

"Don't sweat it,"
says Spence. "Soon as we get out of sight"—he reaches into the glove compartment and takes out
two license plates, hands them to me—"all you got to do is stop, take the stolen plates off,
throw them away and put the new set on. Take your pick. We got six different sets."

I shake my head.
These guys would make good gangsters if they practiced a little more. Spence especially. He could
be another Al Capone, except he lacks his compassion.

"I got a bad
feeling about this," I say, zipping through the traffic, heading for the freeway. Spence leans
back against the seat, not paying any attention to what I'm saying.

I feel something
cold crawling up my spine. I have this uneasy feeling I can't quite shake or explain.

"I got a feeling
we're headed for the big nasty."

I know what I'm in
for so I raid the glove compart­ment and take a couple of Benzedrines, the patron saints of truck
drivers everywhere.

The tape player's
going full volume. Spence, beside me in the cab of the truck, bangs the dashboard in time to the
Grateful Dead. "Jerry Garcia is my main squeeze," he says, popping the top on the third can of
his second six-pack. The inside of the truck cab smells like a brewery.

A groupie,
underage, with crooked teeth, is passed out between Spence's legs, one arm wrapped loosely around
the gear-shift lever. She'd been awake for a little while, talking disjointedly about downers and
beer and weed and too much of everything. Her poor little brain had its mental tongue hanging
out. Spence and I were glad when she slipped back into unconscious­ness. It was when she was at
her best.

I wonder where
Spence finds these pigs anyway.

Spence is tapping
his foot on the floor and her head bobs up and down on his knee in time to the music that blares
from the speakers. Spence is drunk. Completely shit-faced. Nothing new. Far as I can tell, he's
been drunk every night for the last two weeks.

"Pull over. I got
to piss."

"Christ! I just
pulled over," I growl, and it's true.

"I gotta
piss."

"I ain't stopping.
You wanna piss and I wanna make it in time for this gig. You guys ain't exactly rolling in money,
you know. If we don't get to this gig, we're going to all end up working in a friggin' gas
station again!" The stupid maniac! Spence downs a can of beer every ten minutes and has to piss
every five.

"Stop the truck,
you dumb bastard."

"Climb a
pole!"

"Hell with you.
I'll piss out the frigging window."

Next thing I know,
Spence whips it out and is hosing down a fat woman in a blue convertible. In broad day­light no
less. Piss splashes in a yellow stream all over the fat woman's windshield.

The woman panics,
jams on her brakes, weaves across the road crazily and ends up with her car, ass backwards, in
the ditch.

"You frigging
maniac!"
I scream at Spence. Spence
zips up, unconcerned, totally aware of what's happened, but indifferent.

Chris has his head
through the window in the divider and sees it all. The window slaps shut. Out of sight, out of
mind.

I slam the
accelerator to the floor and we speed away. The situation suggests distance and I want to get as
much of it between us and the accident as I possibly can and fast.

Getting stopped by
the cops is the last thing in the world we need right now. We are a traveling mass of
illegalities.

"Eat my biscuits,"
says Spence, and then, as if for the first time, he notices the chick passed out between his
legs. He grabs her hair and lifts up her head so he can take a look at her face. "Hey! Who's
this?"

I don't say
anything; concentrating on my driving, passing everything in sight. Ben Hur has nothing on
me.

Spence says, "Is
she yours?"

"What?"

"Is this thing
yours?" Spence bangs her head against the dashboard to see if she's still among the living. She
doesn't respond.

My eyes open wide.
"I thought she was yours! I thought she was your chick. She was passed out under your guitar
case. You saw me dump her in the cab with the rest of your stuff."

"She ain't mine,"
says Spence. "I thought she was yours."

"No way. I never
get that desperate."

"Who does she
belong to then?"

Spence bangs on
the divider that separates the cab from the back of the truck. The little window flies open and a
small cloud of marijuana smoke blows into the cab through the window. Chris sticks his face
through the window. He has a pencil in his teeth, a totally destroyed look on his face. He holds
up a crossword puzzle book. "Hey, you guys! What's a three-letter word that means 'suck my
donkey'?"

Spence flips his
hand over his shoulder, dumping the rest of his can of beer through the window. Chris splutters
as the beer hits his face, then reaches through and hits Spence in the face with the crossword
puzzle book. These guys are what you call real intellectuals.

Spence calls out,
"Truce!"

Chris stops
hitting him in the eye with the crossword puzzle book.

Spence says, "Hey,
piss-eyed wimp! Is this your piece of nooky out here?"

Chris sticks his
beer-wet face farther through the window, looking down at the face that Spence drags into view by
its hair.

"Nah! It ain't
mine, man. She's got the terminal uglies and I swore off that kind of chick until the VD clinic
gives me their seal of approval."

"Well, then, whose
is it?" asks Spence, still holding her head up by her hair. She's lucky she's out cold 'cause it
would hurt like hell otherwise. "She's giving my legs cramps. Find out whose she is. I'm tired of
her already."

The faces at the
divider window come and go. All except Morrison's and Sheila's. They are busy in the back, being
overfriendly. Nobody claims her. Not too surprising.

"Pull over," says
Spence, throwing an empty beer can out the window. He lets go of the chick's head and it smashes
back against the dashboard. She's going to have some terrific bruises if she survives.

"I frigging-A do
not believe it!" I say. "You just pissed five seconds ago!"

Spence is mad.
"Pull over or I'll ram the frigging gear shift through your heart!"

A rest stop is
coming up, so I turn signal, bitching all the time, and pull off the highway. At this frigging
rate, we are definitely not going to make it.

I pull up in front
of the john and park. Spence bangs open his door, swings one leg out and then shoves the little
chickie out, head first.

As her head spangs
into the concrete, it makes the sound a watermelon makes when you kick it. I flinch, glad it's
not my head.

"You maniac!" says
Chris, looking through the window, seeing what Spence is doing. Chris's head disap­pears and we
hear a scuffle in back as if somebody is walking over bodies and then we hear the back door of
the truck slamming open.

Chris comes
tearing around the side of the truck, looking really pissed off about something. Maybe it was his
chick after all and he was just too embarrassed to admit it?

"What's his
problem?" says Spence, glaring at Chris. The dump on her head hasn't done real good things to the
little lady. Her nose is bleeding and she's upchucked in her sleep, coating herself in what looks
like three boxes of Oreo cookies. What a pig!

"Spence, you
frigging maniac!" says Chris, pointing an accusing finger at Spence. Chris looks
furious.

Spence looks
indignant, slouching on the seat in his top hat. "Well, shit," he says, "it ain't all that far
from the cab to the—"

"You animal! You
frigging, heedless animal!" says Chris, and he grabs the chick by her ass and hauls her up, more
or less on his shoulder, careful not to get vomit on his shirt. "How many times do I have to tell
you! They got laws in this frigging state! 
Laws!"