Part 18 (1/2)

And right now, it is time to move on.

The feelings didn't diminish as he walked in the door. The achingly familiar smells: wood, smoke and beer, the fragrant perfume and funky sweat moved him to his core. Someone had slapped ”The Alabama Song” on the jukebox; somehow Jim Morrison singing about finding the next whiskey bar made the moment perversely complete.

Chameleon's on a Monday night wasn't nearly as packed as the weekend shows-there was no band and no cover charge, no Red standing watch at the door, no Jane on hand with a smile or a sly observation to share-but they still had a sizable crowd. Very few people he knew, but that was okay, too. Fewer speeches to make.

Jules was already motioning him forward with a wiggle of one finger. Nora was sitting near him at the bar; she turned at Syd's approach. He sensed a weird compet.i.tion between them, as he ambled up.

The long-necked Rolling Rock appeared in Syd's hand before he even took his seat. ”Happy birthday, man,” Jules said. He raised his iced tea in toast. Syd said thanks and clinked his bottle with Jules's gla.s.s, then turned to Nora. She had two double shots set up. When she slid one over to him, he toasted with her as well, then engaged her in a quick sloppy soul-kiss that tasted of caramel and bourbon.

Then she asked him if he was going to tell Jules. Of course, Jules said, ”Tell me what?” Which put Syd in the awkward position of having to leap right into his explanation, without any setup or anything. Which kind of p.i.s.sed him off.

It didn't help that Jules wasn't exactly supportive, either. It was like trying to tell Tommy and Budd about the wolf, only a hundred times worse; like showing someone the most beautiful work of art you could possibly create, only to have him ask you if you'd ever really considered that career in locksmithing.

Jules had a million irritating questions: irritating mostly because Syd didn't have any solid answers. Do you know where you're going? No. Do you know what you're going to do with your s.h.i.+t? No. Do you have any money saved up? No. Do you have any idea how you're going to survive on the road? Well, no. Did you already quit your job? Well, yes! And, hey, so long as you're at it, why not just ask if I still remember the difference between my a.s.s, my elbow, and a hole in the ground?

Nora interrupted to order another round. There were a couple of other customers queuing up for the firewater of their choice. Jules excused himself for a minute, leaving Syd's little outburst to dangle in midair.

”This is what you can expect,” Nora said under her breath, ”from people who just don't f.u.c.king get it.” And Syd, p.i.s.sed as he was, was inclined to agree.

So by the time Jules got back with their drinks, Syd had built up a considerable head of steam. He didn't even wait for the next interrogatory round; he just launched into a little preemptive strike of his own. He had some questions he wanted to ask, if Jules didn't mind horribly.

Like, for example, hadn't Jules done the very same thing at one point in his life? Yes, sort of. And didn't he now spend many a night waxing nostalgic about those very same bygone days? Yes, but . . . Syd interrupted then, asked so exactly what in h.e.l.l did Jules have against people taking a little calculated risk with their lives. Not a thing, Jules said, as long as it looks like they know what they're doing. Syd's anger spiked and redlined. Was he implying that Syd didn't know what he was doing?

I don't know, said Jules. Do you think you know what you're doing?

And that was when Syd lost it.

”You know what I think?” he spat, sneering, ”I think you're jealous!” The anger was as irrational as it was all-encompa.s.sing: a lifetime of frustration, lubed by alcohol, unstoppable in its fury. ”I think you went out and tried to stake your claim in the world, and it just chewed you up and spat you back. I think you shot your wad, and now you don't want anyone else to even get a chance.

”I think,” he hissed, ”that if anything this intense ever happened in the whole of your measly, pathetic life, you'd know what the f.u.c.k you were talking about.

”But it hasn't, and you don't, and that's about all there is to it.”

The s.p.a.ce around them went dead silent, save for the white-noise wash of dead air. Syd's anger retracted as quickly as it had come on, leaving him embarra.s.sed and weirdly defiant in its wake. His brain went condo to accommodate the multiple voices in his skull, slamming up against the wall of att.i.tude he'd just thrown up: screaming are you out of your f.u.c.king MIND?; mumbling I can't believe I just said that; peripherally aware that others had begun to stare or back away, catching the emotional gist, if not the actual riff he'd just unleashed. He felt a dozen pairs of prying eyes upon him, heard a dozen whispers slither like snakes down his spine. Nora, too, was watching him: her gaze alert, alarmed.

And as for Jules . . .

Jules never took his eyes off Syd. And Syd could tell from the look in those eyes that he'd hit some genuine tender spots, the kind only old friends can ever really touch. Syd and Jules had logged a lot of time together, confessed their fears and dreams and a mult.i.tude of sins in the privacy of friends.h.i.+p. Syd had just taken aim from that privileged position and emptied both barrels point-blank in his best friend's face. The past regrets. The futures that never panned out. The hopes abandoned in the wake of a youth that was gone forever.

He'd nailed it all.

But instead of decking him or inviting him to take a f.u.c.king hike, Jules just shook his head. And when he spoke, his voice was low and soft, gently lethal. He spoke to Syd alone.

”Man, when you wake up from this-and you will wake up-you're gonna remember this conversation. And it's gonna make you feel real stupid.

”But that's life,” he concluded. ”You do what you gotta do.”

Syd desperately wanted to say he was sorry, that he took it all back, he didn't mean to hurt him, that this was an important move and it would mean a lot to have Jules's blessing.

What came out instead was, ”If you were a real friend, you'd back me on this.”

”If I backed you on this,” Jules sighed, ”I wouldn't be a real friend.”

At which point, Nora scooped up Syd's hand before he could even begin to respond, saying come with me and dragging him off through the crowd. Her manner was urgent, uncompromising. Syd looked back at Jules as they went. The big man's eyes stayed on him until the crowd closed ranks, severing the connection.

As they hit the dance floor, Syd was still reeling. The pain was back, w.a.n.ging through his brain. Were they gonna dance now? He didn't really feel like dancing.

But instead she led him down the hallway to the bathrooms. Or was it the back door she was leading him to? No, the women's room, its door banging open as she entered, pulling him in behind her. He asked her what she thought she was doing. She told him to shut up.

There was no one else in the bathroom. The stall in the back was empty. She threw the door open, pushed Syd in. His mouth opened with a question. She filled it with her tongue, and her hands went down quickly to undo his belt.

No one else can do this, she whispered, jerking his pants down. No one else understands. Taking him in hand. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. She squeezed him for emphasis, kissed his neck. There's only one thing that matters.

Then she was moving, down and down and down, to take him into her mouth. He leaned back against the wall, the reek of air fresheners and raw l.u.s.t intermingling with the spinning in his head and the burning in his loins.

You and I, she said.

And then sucked his vessel dry.

Vic knew it the second he pulled onto the Mt. Haversford Road.

Up to that point he'd been starting to get a little annoyed. He'd tracked Nora all the way into Pittsburgh, where he'd scored a copy of Pennsylvania Musician, found the names of the local clubs. Vic hated cities; way too easy to mask her trail in the swarming concrete jungles. Sure enough, he'd lost it altogether sometime late Sat.u.r.day, which forced him into the aggravating position of spending all of Sunday covering the same ground over and over, just hoping to get lucky.

And then just today as he was heading out of town and flipping across the radio dial, searching for tunes, he caught the tail end of a late news wrap-up. He missed the first part, but that didn't matter: the little bit that he caught was more than enough. The part that talked about the mutilated remains of an unidentified adult white male found this morning in the warehouse district of Monville.

Vic cackled. Gee, he thought, wonder who did that? He checked his map, found Monville, and realized that the b.i.t.c.h had actually tricked him: kept him thinking she was heading east, when in reality she'd doubled back to the west.

An official access only crossover appeared before him and he whipped across it in a cloud of dust, nudging up to ninety as his anger stoked to a fine burn. Tricked him. How could it be? Either she was getting smarter, or he was slipping.

Vic thought about it, ultimately rejected both possibilities. This was just a new wrinkle in the game, is all. Fine. Great, actually: it upped the ante, put a keener edge on the hunt.

Besides, he thought, Nora wasn't the only dog that could learn new tricks.

He chilled out a bit once he got south of the city, resisted the urge to just burn up the highway all the way to Monville. No sense in getting sloppy, especially if she was getting cagey on him. He spent the next few hours checking out the dozens of dives that dotted the western Pennsylvania outback.

And then about forty-five minutes ago, he hit on a twisty little two-lane blacktop snaking through the mountains, and there it was: after days of sniffing cold leads, that unmistakable scent. She'd been here, all right, and recently. She was lubed. And something else, too.

She had company. . . .

Vic came upon the little blinking neon sign at nine forty-five, and smiled. It was secluded, tucked up in boonies, with woods and mountains all around. Even the name was perfect.

He wheeled into the big gravel lot, took stock of the number of cars, noted that it was pretty crowded. That was not so good. But there was a nice inconspicuous spot on the far end that had a clear sight line to the front door. Vic pulled in and shut the engine off, then reached under the seat and pulled out Billy Hessler's long-lost bag of crank.

Two king-sized lines later, he threw the door open, stuck one long black-booted leg out into the night.

Her scent was heavy in the air as he made his way to the entrance. It mingled with the drugs in his system, made the bloodl.u.s.t rise and burble inside.