“Yeah?”
“Rydell, hey.”
“Hey, Durius.”
“You want a ride up to NoCal tomorrow in a nice new car?”
“W/ho’s going?”
“Name of Creedmore. Knows a guy I know in the program.”
Rydell had had an uncle who was a Mason, and this program Durius belonged to reminded him of that. “Yeah? Well, I mean, is he okay?”
“Prob’ly not,” Durius had said, cheerfully, “so he needs a driver. This three-week-old ‘lectric needs to get ferried up there though, and he says it’s fine to drive. You used to be a driver, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s free. This Creedmore, he’ll pay for the charge.”
Which was how Rydell came to find himself, now, driving a Hawker-Aichi two-seater, one of those low-slung wedges of performance materials that probably weighed, minus its human cargo, about as much as a pair of small motorcycles. There didn’t seem to be any metal involved at all, just streamlined foam-core sandwiches reinforced with carbon fiber. The motor was in the back, and the fuel cells were distributed through the foam sandwiches that simultaneously passed for chassis and bodywork. Rydell didn’t want to know what happened if you hit something, driving a rig like this.
It was damn near silent though, handled beautifully, and went like a bat once you got it up to speed. Something about it reminded Rydell of a recumbent bicycle he’d once ridden, except you didn’t have to pedal.
“You never did tell me whose car this is,” Rydell reminded Creedmore, who’d just downed the last two fingers of his vodka.
“This friend of mine,” Creedmore said, powering down the window on his side and tossing out the empty bottle. 24 “Hey,” Rydell said, “that’s a ten-thousand-dollar fine, they catch you: “They can kiss our asses good-bye, is what they can do,” Creedmore said. “Sons of bitches,” he added, then closed his eyes and slept.
Rydell found himself starting to think about Chevette again. Regretting he’d ever let the singer get him on the topic. He knew he didn’t want to think about that.
Just drive, he told himself,
On a brown hillside, off to his right, a wind farm’s white masts. Late afternoon sunlight.
Just drive.
25 6. SJLENC)O SILENCIO gets to carry. lie’s the smallest, looks almost like a kid. He doesn’t use, and if the cops grab him, he can’t talk. Or anyway about the stuff.
Silencio has been following Raton and Playboy around for a while now, watching them use, watching them get the money they need in order to keep using. Raton gets mean when he’s needing to use, and Silencio’s learned to keep back from him then, out of range of feet and fists.
Raton has a long, narrow skull and wears contacts with vertical irises, like a snake. Silencio wonders if Raton is supposed to look like a rat who’s eaten a snake, and now maybe the snake is looking out through its eyes. Playboy says Raton is a pinche Chupacabra from Watsonville and they all look this way.
Playboy is the biggest, his bulk wrapped in a long, formal topcoat worn over jeans and old work boots. He has a Pancho Villa mustache, yellow aviator glasses, a black fedora. He is kinder to Silencio, buys him burritos from the stalls, water, cans of pop, one time a big smooth drink made from fruit.
Silencio wonders if maybe Playboy is his father. He doesn’t know who his father might be. His mother is crazy, back in los projectos. He doesn’t think Playboy is his father really, because he remembers how he met Playboy in the market on Bryant Street, and that was just an accident, but sometimes he wonders anyway, when Playboy buys him food.
Silencio sits watching Raton and Playboy use, here behind this empty stall with its smell of apples. Raton has a little flashlight in his mouth so he can see what he is doing. It is the black tonight, and Raton is cutting the little plastic tube with the special knife, its handle longer than its short curved blade. The three of them are sitting on plastic crates.
Raton and Playboy use the black two, maybe three times in a day and a night. Three times with the black, then they must use the white 26 as well. The white is more expensive, hut too much black and they start to talk fast and maybe see people who are not there. “Speaking with Jesus,” Playboy calls that, hut the white he calls “walking with the king.” But it is not walking: white brings stillness, silence, sleep. Silencio prefers the white nights.