Old Faithful in the consciousness of the consumer, and to that end the eccentric Mormon family that owned the company was willing to spend a respectable seven-figure sum.
Around Rodale & Burns, the Old Faithful Root Beer account was regarded as a lucrative but hopeless loser. Nobody liked the stuff because one sixteen-ounce bottle induced thunderous belching that often lasted for days. At a party, Pete Archibald drunkenly offered a joke slogan: “The root beer you’ll never forget-because it won’t let you!”
Lying there alone in Augustine’s house, Max Lamb savored the prospect of single-handedly resuscitating Old Faithful. It was the sort of coup that could make him a legend on Madison Avenue. For inspiration he turned on the Home Shopping Network. Into the wee hours he tinkered determinedly with beverage-related alliterations, allusions, puns, verses and metaphors. Bonnie didn’t cross his mind.
Eventually Max struck on a winner, something that sounded like good silly fun to kids, and at the same time titillating to teens and young adults:
“Old Faithful Root Beer-Makes You Tingle in Places You Didn’t Know You Had Places!”
Max Lamb was so excited he couldn’t sleep. Once more he tried calling the apartment in New York. No Bonnie, but the answering machine emitted a telltale beep. He punched the three-digit code and waited.
Bonnie had gotten his message-and left him a reply that caused him to forget temporarily about the Old Faithful account. The flesh under Max’s shirt collar prickled and perspired, and stayed feverish until dawn.
He wasn’t surprised by the symptoms. The downside of seeing his wife would be seeing the deranged kidnapper again. Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared shitless.
TWENTY-NINE
Snapper regained consciousness with the dreamy impression of being someplace he hadn’t been in twenty-two years-a dentist’s chair. He sensed the dentist hovering, and felt large deft hands working inside his mouth. The last time Snapper had a cavity filled, he’d reflexively chomped off the top joint of the dentist’s right thumb. This time he was becalmed by the ejaculate of the dart rifle.
“Lester Maddox Parsons!” The dentist, attempting to wake him.
Snapper opened his eyes in a fog bank. Looming out of the psychedelic mist was a silvery-bearded grin. A dentist in a plastic shower cap? Snapper squirmed.
“Whhaannffrr?” he inquired.
“Relax, chief.”
The dentist’s basso chuckle rolled like a freight train through Snapper’s cranium. His jaws were wedged wide, as if awaiting the drill. Come on, he thought, get it over with.
He heard buzzing. Good!
But the buzzing wasn’t in his mouth; it was in his ears. Bugs. Fucking bugs flying in his ears!
“Hrrrnnnff!” Snapper shook his head violently. It hurt. All of a sudden he was drenched by a wave of salty water. What he didn’t cough up settled as a lukewarm puddle in his protruded mandible, which functioned as a natural cistern.
Now he was completely awake. Now he remembered. The fog cleared from his mind. He saw a campfire. Edie, sweaty and barefoot. And the young broad, Bonnie, with her arms around the asshole punk who’d shot him.
“Yo, Lester.” It was the giant one-eyed fruitcake, holding an empty bucket. There was no dentist.
But Snapper definitely felt a cold steel object bracing his jaws open, digging into the roof of his mouth, pinching the tender web of flesh beneath his tongue; something so heavy that it caused his head to nod forward, something that extended diagonally upward from his chin to beyond his forehead.
A heavy bar of some type. Snapper crossed his eyes to put it in focus. The bar was red. !
Oh fuck.
He wailed, trying to rise. His legs tangled. With > rubbery arms he flailed uselessly at the thing locked in • his mouth. j
Skink held up a small chrome key and said, “Accept j no imitations.”
“Nnnnngggggoooo!!”
“You shot my friend. You called him a nigger.” Skink \ shrugged in resignation. “You beat up a lady, stole her momma’s wedding ring, dumped her on the roadside. What choice have you left me?”
He took Snapper by the hair and dragged him, blubbering, to the shore of a broad milky-green creek.
“What choice?” Skink repeated, softly.
“Unngh! Unnnggghhhh!”