Sully pulled out the lighter, started to apply the cherry-red coil to the tip of his cigarette, and then remembered he was in a demonstrator. He could smoke in a demo — hell, it was off his own lot — but if one of the salesmen smelled the smoke and concluded that the boss was doing what was a firing offense for anyone else, it wouldn’t be good. You had to walk the walk as well as talk the talk … at least you did if you wanted to get a little respect.
‘ Excusez-moi,’ he told the old mamasan. He got out of the car, which was still running, lit his cigarette, then bent in the window to slide the lighter back into its dashboard receptacle.
The day was hot, and the four-lane sea of idling cars made it seem even hotter. Sully could sense the impatience all around him, but his was the only radio he could hear; everyone else was under glass, buttoned into their little air-conditioned cocoons, listening to a hundred different kinds of music, from Liz Phair to William Ackerman. He guessed that any vets caught in the jam who didn’t have the Allman Brothers on CD or Big Brother and the Holding Company on tape were probably also listening to WKND, where the past had never died and the future never came. Toot-toot, beep-beep.
Sully hitch-stepped to the hood of his car and stood on tiptoe, shading his eyes against the glare of sun on chrome and looking for the problem. He couldn’t see it, of course.
Bitches, barbecues, and bowling tournaments, he thought, and the thought came in Malenfant’s squealing, drilling voice. That nightmare voice under the blue and out of the green. Come on, boys, who’s got The Douche? I’m down to ninety and a wakeup, time’s short, let’s get this fuckin show on the fuckin road!
He took a deep drag on the Winston, then coughed out stale hot smoke. Black dots began a sudden dance in the afternoon brightness, and he looked down at the cigarette between his ringers with an expression of nearly comic horror. What was he doing, starting up with this shit again? Was he crazy? Well yes, of course he was crazy, anyone who saw dead old ladie s sitting beside them in their cars had to be crazy, but that didn’t mean he had to start up with this shit again. Cigarettes were Agent Orange that you paid for. Sully threw the Winston away. It felt like the right decision, but it didn’t slow the accelerating beat of his heart or his sense — so well remembered from the patrols he’d been on — that the inside of his mouth was drying out and pulling together, puckering and crinkling like burned skin. Some people were afraid of crowds — agoraphobia, it was called, fear of the marketplace — but the only time Sully ever had that sense of too much and too many was at times like this. He was okay in elevators and crowded lobbies at intermission and on rush-hour train platforms, but when traffic clogged to a stop all around him, he got dinky-dau. There was, after all, nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.
A few other folks were emerging from their air-conditioned lifepods. A woman in a severe brown business suit standing by a severe brown BMW, a gold bracelet and silver earrings summarizing the summer sunlight, all but tapping one cordovan high heel with impatience.
She caught Sully’s eye, rolled her own heavenward as if to say Isn’t this typical, and glanced at her wristwatch (also gold, also gleaming). A man astride a green Yamaha crotchrocket killed his bike’s raving engine, put the bike on its kickstand, removed his helmet, and placed it on the oilstained pavement next to one footpedal. He was wearing black bike-shorts and a sleeveless shirt with PROPERTY OF THE NEW YORK KNICKS printed on the front. Sully estimated this gentleman would lose approximately seventy per cent of his skin if he happened to dump the crotchrocket at a speed greater than five miles an hour while wearing such an outfit.
‘Bummer, man,’ the crotchrocket guy said. ‘Must be an accident. Hope it’s nothing radioactive.’ And laughed to show he was joking.