desk at the third-floor window, he bet, you could stare down Kansas sunsets or study the sparse skyline of Kansas City—decent, quiet, removed.
“Only madmen work with views,” Lilah had said.
“Such as?”
“Hitler,” she said. “For one.”
“You got yourself educated.”
“Your money.”
“Your po-po covered a bit.”
“You’ve paid,” Lilah said. “Balloons in arteries. I mean, doesn’t that strike you as funny?”
“The man’s yet to amuse me.”
“Prolongs the inevitable,” she said.
“We tend to prefer that.”
“People are all messed up.”
“I take them different sometimes.”
Lilah shrugged. “Have to.”
He still could not parse why she’d opted to drown on fumes, or in the garage of that house. After he’d quit the juice, Hodge contemplated drowning more than he figured healthy. Gulp and gone, he called it. He liked to watch the Missouri River, no more than a wing-diked drainage canal of silted effluent guarded by cottonwoods and roiling by old-brick and glass-faced buildings. A body could be drowned there and buried at once.
* * *
Stroh’s turned left. The Jaguar whipped around, and Hodge flowed with a crowd of cars down Broadway. Framed in the rearview, the legless man kept waving; Hodge checked long thighs beside him. Rare working girls had tapped his passenger’s-side window with coins; none had gotten in his car. Blame economics; George H.W. Bush; one-in-ten-years wars; crack. If times weren’t hard, then, as Lilah might have it, they were all messed up.
“Thirsty?”
“Known to be,” Hodge said.
“You sweat like a whore in church.”
“Your denomination?”
“Shit,” she said. “Buggered, blessed, or both. That’s church, Honeydew.” She took from a fringed leather bag a fifth of sloe gin and proffered it.
Hodge refused the syrup, pulled off below the Record Exchange, and considered going in for a Ray Charles album that he’d visited, so she’d give up, but he lacked green leaf and didn’t want to leave her with his ride. Four car lengths back, the T-Bird drifted to a stop, a blocky headlamped sixteen-footer; its curb feelers shimmered; late light obscured the driver.
She tucked away the sloe gin and took from her bag a Mickey’s Big Mouth. Green glass sweat in her hand, and when she passed it over, he caught a glimpse of her pager. How many in her line carted cold booze in purses? He twisted off the cap and sniffed, then handed back the bottle.
“I like the smell.”
“What else you like?”
* * *
He’d white-knuckled his way off juice, loath to admit to the maddening tedium of cold turkey. Writhing on the floor of his rental house off Gillham, he swore truths left his mouth but couldn’t determine if they’d originated in his head. He clung to the crapper. He sweat, chilled, cramped, twitched, dreamed, told himself this was but a dream, crying out the child’s song for comfort. Scissor-tailed birds scratched along the baseboards of his lathe and plaster shithole, their beaks long and glistening. He killed knots in the hardwood floor.
Hodge lay curled on linoleum tiles of the breakfast nook when a cabal of middle-aged men entered: camel-hair coats, stingy-brim fedoras, brown boots, toes rigged with silver blades. “Out to Hey Hay,” the darkest man said, “two bits straighten you out.” The others chuckled.
“I want a steak,” Hodge said to a square of tile. He thought he might throw up.
“White boy down to Milton’s get him a steak. Rare cuts just waiting on you.”
* * *
He attended one meeting but knew too many people, and his bad habits were not their business, so he drove the city—like with Lilah—riding swells of street as if he were a pilot maydayed out at the controls of a plane gone down in gulf waters.
Hodge rarely thought on the events leading him to quit. He took an elbow from Lou or Hugh or Drew, bouncer nonetheless, and fell against the front door of the Grand Emporium. Onstage, a
“Only madmen work with views,” Lilah had said.
“Such as?”
“Hitler,” she said. “For one.”
“You got yourself educated.”
“Your money.”
“Your po-po covered a bit.”
“You’ve paid,” Lilah said. “Balloons in arteries. I mean, doesn’t that strike you as funny?”
“The man’s yet to amuse me.”
“Prolongs the inevitable,” she said.
“We tend to prefer that.”
“People are all messed up.”
“I take them different sometimes.”
Lilah shrugged. “Have to.”
He still could not parse why she’d opted to drown on fumes, or in the garage of that house. After he’d quit the juice, Hodge contemplated drowning more than he figured healthy. Gulp and gone, he called it. He liked to watch the Missouri River, no more than a wing-diked drainage canal of silted effluent guarded by cottonwoods and roiling by old-brick and glass-faced buildings. A body could be drowned there and buried at once.
* * *
Stroh’s turned left. The Jaguar whipped around, and Hodge flowed with a crowd of cars down Broadway. Framed in the rearview, the legless man kept waving; Hodge checked long thighs beside him. Rare working girls had tapped his passenger’s-side window with coins; none had gotten in his car. Blame economics; George H.W. Bush; one-in-ten-years wars; crack. If times weren’t hard, then, as Lilah might have it, they were all messed up.
“Thirsty?”
“Known to be,” Hodge said.
“You sweat like a whore in church.”
“Your denomination?”
“Shit,” she said. “Buggered, blessed, or both. That’s church, Honeydew.” She took from a fringed leather bag a fifth of sloe gin and proffered it.
Hodge refused the syrup, pulled off below the Record Exchange, and considered going in for a Ray Charles album that he’d visited, so she’d give up, but he lacked green leaf and didn’t want to leave her with his ride. Four car lengths back, the T-Bird drifted to a stop, a blocky headlamped sixteen-footer; its curb feelers shimmered; late light obscured the driver.
She tucked away the sloe gin and took from her bag a Mickey’s Big Mouth. Green glass sweat in her hand, and when she passed it over, he caught a glimpse of her pager. How many in her line carted cold booze in purses? He twisted off the cap and sniffed, then handed back the bottle.
“I like the smell.”
“What else you like?”
* * *
He’d white-knuckled his way off juice, loath to admit to the maddening tedium of cold turkey. Writhing on the floor of his rental house off Gillham, he swore truths left his mouth but couldn’t determine if they’d originated in his head. He clung to the crapper. He sweat, chilled, cramped, twitched, dreamed, told himself this was but a dream, crying out the child’s song for comfort. Scissor-tailed birds scratched along the baseboards of his lathe and plaster shithole, their beaks long and glistening. He killed knots in the hardwood floor.
Hodge lay curled on linoleum tiles of the breakfast nook when a cabal of middle-aged men entered: camel-hair coats, stingy-brim fedoras, brown boots, toes rigged with silver blades. “Out to Hey Hay,” the darkest man said, “two bits straighten you out.” The others chuckled.
“I want a steak,” Hodge said to a square of tile. He thought he might throw up.
“White boy down to Milton’s get him a steak. Rare cuts just waiting on you.”
* * *
He attended one meeting but knew too many people, and his bad habits were not their business, so he drove the city—like with Lilah—riding swells of street as if he were a pilot maydayed out at the controls of a plane gone down in gulf waters.
Hodge rarely thought on the events leading him to quit. He took an elbow from Lou or Hugh or Drew, bouncer nonetheless, and fell against the front door of the Grand Emporium. Onstage, a
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