12.1
A week later, Rupert had started to feel like he’d made a solid inroad with some Methheads, so at the very least, he could tell Pyrdewy there was progress, though, in fact there was not. No one had mentioned the D.E.A.T.H. program, and he was wary of bringing it up. He had a position now. Marketing and Sales. He even got a small commission, so while the Spliphsonian paid for the room and a meager daily stipend, Rupert was cultivating a small monetary cushion, in case of an emergency.
The idea of an emergency down here upset him and he tried not to think about it.
He walked out of a Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing) store after a meeting with Bill, who was, as usual, cooking and smoking, but had grown so accustomed to Rupert’s visits that he no longer turned from his lab to conduct the business anymore. Rupert didn’t have to worry so much about the pipe triggering him, though he was always on guard. You never knew.
If you have a pipe aversion, navigating the world of meth and crack was a minefield of potential panic bombs—like a Bouncing Betty, it could jump up out of nothing and blast your face off.
He left the air-conditioned store, out into the punishing heat and blinding sun, and was about to step off the curb into the parking lot, toward Jesus’s blue Lincoln, when he smelled a smell of . . . cooking meth. At first he thought maybe it was on his clothing, so he sniffed his sleeves and shirt, but no. It came from elsewhere. Rupert scanned the lot, squinting and making another mental note to get some damn sunglasses.
There were a few cars here and there—cars from the present decade, which was remarkable as more often than not, Rupert felt like he was in a bit of a time warp. Off in the corner, somewhat camouflaged against a large brown bush that Rupert couldn’t tell was brown by species or by death, was a chocolate-colored 1977 Cutlass Supreme with matching brown smoke wafting from its half-closed trunk.
Of course it is, Rupert thought. And then he wondered how many of these little box labs there were per square mile in Florida. The Feds must keep track with statistical information published somewhere.
The car was backed into the bush, which followed the curb, landscaped in what someone assumed was a pleasing form, but its maintenance routine must have been suspended. Most of the smoke disappeared into the bush, and Rupert thought that maybe he was witnessing his first evidence of strategic intelligence among these people. But then his eyes drifted forward to the front of the car and he saw a middle-aged, though balding man in khakis and an unbuttoned baby blue, sweat-stained dress shirt, slumped in the driver’s seat, door open, one leg hanging out, heel on the pavement, and a banana in his limp left hand, which was balanced perilously on his thigh. His ears protruded from his head dramatically and he looked as though he had recently shaved off a thick mustache, as his upper lip was considerably lighter than the rest of his face.
Nope, Rupert thought. That’s not normal.
He was in with SIKildo Industries, but in sales. He felt that if he was going to get in with a community of Methheads and get closer to the D.E.A.T.H. project, he’d need to be around meth production, hands on. He needed to learn how to cook it. Bill wasn’t apt to teach him; his usefulness to Fulva—who consorted with demons—was shaky enough as it was.
He looked to Jesus who put up his hands in a what the fuck? gesture from the car, to which Rupert replied with a different hands-up signal that said, hang on a minute. He heard the music turn up in the Lincoln, despite the windows being up (Whitesnake’s “In the Still of the Night”), took a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose.
As he walked toward the brown car, he kept an eye on the man inside. Rupert wasn’t sure how he’d react to being approached out in the open like this. He didn’t even have a game plan, until it came in a flash: He’s just trying to sell some Golden Tickets, man. But the closer he got, the more he wondered if this man was even alive.
Then the guy twitched. Well, less a twitch than a waking convulsion. His shin smacked the bottom of the open door and his banana fell to the concrete.
“Aw, shit,” the man mumbled.
Rupert’s pace slowed to a more cautious speed as he watched the man lean as far over to the left as he could to pick up the banana without having to change his drooped position. Rupert saw now that this guy’s Cutless was mint. It was in perfect condition—washed and waxed. The front seat, pristine. But everything from the back of the front seats to the rear window was jam-packed full of all manner of things, including the ominous head of some angry horned animal that Rupert didn’t recognize. Barely-contained, highly-localized entropy, it looked on the verge of collapsing and winking out of existence to become a clean, but rusty Cutlass on the other side of the universe and in another dimension.
Rupert moved closer and was practically on top of him when the guy pushed himself vertical in his seat, clutched the recovered banana like a gun, and looked up at Rupert, squinting.
“What?”
Along with the stink of cooking meth was another smell, one that should have been pleasant, but was so strong under the meth that is was nauseating instead. Rupert saw that strung around the rearview mirror, which this guy didn’t need and couldn’t use, looked to be approximately thirty air fresheners, all banana shaped, some looking more faded than others, some looking brand-spankin’ new.
“I . . . ” Rupert blanked. “I . . . noticed your car.” And he had, in a way.
“Oh yeah?” The guy’s face burst into a smile in a manner that was a little disconcerting. “You like my car?”
“Yes, I can see that it’s very well . . . loved,” Rupert said as the guy stood, stretched, and tossed the banana onto the seat behind him. The chemical-banana smell followed and engulfed Rupert, but he held steady.
The guy grabbed Rupert’s left hand with a surprisingly firm grip and shook it.
“Tommy Bananas.”
Oh? For a moment, Rupert wanted to give a false name—he almost said Derek Peterson—but he knew if he started with that it would get out of control and he’d get nailed in the end.
“I’m Rupert.” He resisted the urge to wipe his hand on his shorts, what with that having been Tommy Bananas’s banana hand.
They stood there for a moment, admiring the car, smoke roiling from the trunk, banana stink emanating from the front seat. Rupert’s gaze kept returning to the scratched-glass eyes of the horned animal within.
“Would you believe I grew up in this car?” Tommy said, grinning and nostalgic.
Rupert thought he misheard. “This was your family car then?”
“Yep! Me and my dad lived in this car, since, whoa, geez, since about when I was six.”
“Ah, is that so . . . ?”
“Best years of my life, right here in this car,” Tommy waxed. “Well, all years of my life.” He looked at Rupert who could only look back helpless in this conversation. “Can’t leave it.”
“I’m sorry, can’t?”
“Can’t. Got a condition. One of them phobias.”
“Agoraphobia?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“In your car.”
“Yep.”
“But you’re not in it now,” Rupert pointed out.
“Oh well, sure, I can get out, stretch, walk around it,” he paused here. “Do business. And my business! Ha! If you catch my drift!”
He slapped his banana hand on Rupert’s back and Rupert did catch his drift.
Then Tommy turned serious again.
“But, yeah . . . can’t get more than five feet from it.”
“What happens if you do?” Rupert had to ask.
“Well, I haven’t tried it in a while, but last time, I went a little nuts,” Tommy said.
“Nuts.”
“Some kind of attack. Couldn’t breath, heart runnin’ a mile a minute, that kind of shit.”
Rupert felt startling empathy for this weird, sweaty, banana-stinking, open-shirted man.
“Well, as far as cars that you can never leave go, it’s a good one,” Rupert said, hoping to make Tommy feel at ease.
Tommy grinned from ear to ear. “You got that right.”
Rupert also felt more comfortable, but as they walked around it, the horned beast’s eyes caught his and the running in his chest kicked up to a trot.
“My dad left me this car,” Tommy said, reaching in and picking up the discarded banana.
And everything in it, presumably, Rupert thought, eyeballing the beast.
“You know, we didn’t have a house, or anything like that, but man,” Tommy reminisced. “We had some great times in this car.”
Rupert wanted to be polite, and he even thought maybe this guy, though insane, might be all right. Regardless, he didn’t want to hear all the heartwarming tales of living out of a car with your crazy, beast-head-keeping father.
“Sometimes it’d get to smellin’ not so great, you know, two men living in such a small space,” Tommy went on. “But he took care of it. He took care of everything. Know what his favorite thing was?”
“Can I guess?”
Tommy Bananas stood back and held his arms out like, give it your best shot. Rupert imagined the banana was getting warm and a bit mushy inside its peel as Tommy gripped it.
Rupert pretended to think for a minute.
“Bananas.”
Tommy almost fell over. “Man, how did you know?”
Rupert pointed to the wilting banana in his hand, but also drew Tommy’s attention to the suffocating bouquet of banana air fresheners starbursting from the rearview mirror. Tommy laughed and gave Rupert a good-natured punch to the shoulder and a sly side look.
“You’re like that Sherlock Holmes.”
“I can be.” Rupert smiled.
Yes, Rupert almost liked Tommy Bananas. He didn’t even mind that he didn’t know what the man’s last name was, but then, he now knew a white guy named Osceola and a monkey named Steve Perry.
“So, brother,” Tommy said. “What is it that you do? You play basketball?”
For once, Rupert was unoffended. “Ha, no. Knees are no good. Not too keen on sports anyway. No, Tommy, I’m in sales.”
“Oh yeah?” Tommy appeared interested. Rupert didn’t think he’d ever had a conversation with anyone who expressed genuine interest in what he was saying. Maybe that one time, with Leenda, but, had that even been a conversation?
“Yeah,” Rupert said. He started to pull a Golden Ticket from his cross-body bag. “I’m working for SIKildo Industries—”
Sock it to me...