Catch hit the roadway face first and skidded headlong, throwing up sparks where his scales scraped the asphalt. He bounced off a signpost and into a ditch, where he lay for a moment trying to gather his thoughts. The Impala fishtailed and came to a stop sideways in the road.
Travis slammed the Chevy into reverse, righted the car, then threw it into drive and screeched toward the demon, keeping the wheels out of the ditch until the moment of impact. The Impala’s headlights shattered against Catch’s chest. The corner of the bumper caught him in the waist and drove him deep into the mud of the ditch. The engine sputtered to a stop and the damaged radiator hissed a rusty cloud of steam into Catch’s face.
The driver’s side door was jammed against the ditch, so Travis crawled out the window and ran around the car to see what damage he had done. Catch was lying in the ditch with the bumper against his chest.
“Nice driving, A.J.,” Catch said. “You going to try for Indy next year?”
Travis was disappointed. He hadn’t really expected to hurt Catch, he knew from experience that the demon was virtually indestructible, but he had hoped at least to piss him off. “Just trying to keep you on your toes,” he said. “A little test to see how you hold up under stress.”
Catch lifted the car, crawled out, and stood next to Travis in the ditch. “What’s the verdict? Did I pass?”
“Are you dead?”
“Nope, I feel great.”
“Then you have failed miserably. I’m sorry but I’ll have to run you over again.”
“Not with this car,” the demon said, shaking his head.
Travis surveyed the steam rising from the radiator and wondered whether he might not have been a little hasty in giving way to his anger. “Can you get it out of the ditch?”
“Piece of cake.” The demon hoisted the front of the car and began to walk it up onto the berm. “But you’re not going to get far without a new radiator.”
“Oh, you’re all of a sudden an expert mechanic. Mr. help-me-I-can’t-change-the-channel-while-the-magic-fingers-is-on all of a sudden has a degree in automotive diagnostics?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think there’s a town just ahead where we can get it fixed. Didn’t you read that sign you bounced off of?” It was a dig. Travis knew the demon couldn’t read; in fact, he often watched subtitled movies with the sound off just to irritate Catch.
“What’s it say?”
“It says, ‘Pine Cove, five miles.’ That’s where we’re going. I think we can limp the car five miles with a bad radiator. If not, you can push.”
“You run over me and wreck the car and I get to push?”
“Correct,” Travis said, crawling back through the car window.
“At your command, master,” Catch said sarcastically.
Travis tried the ignition. The car whined and died. “It won’t start. Get behind and push.”
“Okay,” Catch said. He went around to the back of the car, put his shoulder to the bumper, and began pushing it the rest of the way out of the ditch. “But pushing cars is very hungry work.”
4
ROBERT
Robert Masterson had drunk a gallon of red wine, most of a five-liter Coors minikeg, and a half-pint of tequila, and still the dream came.
A desert. A big, bright, sandy bastard. The Sahara. He is naked, tied to a chair with barbed wire. Before him is a great canopied bed covered in black satin. Under the cool shade of the canopy his wife, Jennifer, is making love to a stranger — a young, muscular, dark-haired man. Tears run down Robert’s cheeks and crystallize into salt. He cannot close his eyes or turn away. He tries to scream, but every time he opens his mouth a squat, lizardlike monster, the size of a chimpanzee, shoves a saltine cracker into his mouth. The heat and the pain in his chest are agonizing. The lovers are oblivious to his pain. The little reptile man tightens the barbed wire around his chest by twisting a stick. Every time he sobs, the wire cuts deeper. The lovers turn to him in slow motion, maintaining their embrace. They wave to him, a big home-movie wave, postcard smiles. Greetings from the heart of anguish.
Awake, the dream-pain in his chest replaced by a real pain in his head. Light is the enemy. It’s out there waiting for you to open your eyes. No. No way.
Thirst — brave the light to slake the thirst — it must be done.
He opened his eyes to a dim, forgiving light. Must be cloudy out. He looked around. Pillows, full ashtrays, empty wine bottles, a chair, a calendar from the wrong year with a picture of a surfer riding a huge swell, pizza boxes. This wasn’t home. He didn’t live like this. Humans don’t live like this.
He was on someone’s couch. Where?
He sat up and waited in vertigo until his brain snapped back into his head, which it did with a vengeful impact. Ah, yes, he knew where he was. This was Hangover — Hangover, California. Pine Cove, where he was thrown out of the house by his wife. Heartbreak, California.
Jenny, call Jenny. Tell her that humans don’t live this way. No one lives this way. Except The Breeze. He was in The Breeze’s trailer.
He looked around for water. There was the kitchen, fourteen miles away, over there at the end of the couch. Water was in the kitchen.
He crawled naked off the couch, across the floor of the kitchen to the sink, and pulled himself up. The faucet was gone, or at least buried under a stack of dirty dishes. He reached into an opening, cautiously searching for the faucet like a diver reaching into an underwater crevice for a moray eel. Plates skidded down the pile and crashed on the floor. He looked at the china shards scattered around his knees and spotted the mirage of a Coors minikeg. He managed a controlled fall toward the mirage and his hand struck the nozzle. It was real. Salvation: hair of the dog in a handy, five-liter disposable package.
He started to drink from the nozzle and instantly filled his mouth, throat, sinuses, aural cavity, and chest hair with foam.
“Use a glass,” Jenny would say. “What are you, an animal?” He must call Jenny and apologize as soon as the thirst was gone.
First, a glass. Dirty dishes were strewn across every horizontal surface in the kitchen: the counter, stove, table, breakfast bar, and the top of the refrigerator. The oven was filled with dirty dishes.
Nobody lives like this. He spotted a glass among the miasma. The Holy Grail. He grabbed it and filled it with beer. Mold floated on the settling foam. He threw the glass into the oven and slammed the door before an avalanche could gain momentum.
A clean glass, perhaps. He checked the cupboard where the dishes had once been kept. A single cereal bowl stared out at him. From the bottom of the bowl Fred Flintstone congratulated him, “Good kid! You’re a clean-plater!” Robert filled the bowl and sat cross-legged on the floor amid the broken dishes while he drank.
Fred Flintstone congratulated him three times before his thirst abated. Good old Fred. The man’s a saint. Saint Fred of Bedrock.
“Fred, how could she do this to me? Nobody can live like this.”
“Good kid! You’re a clean-plater!” Fred said.
“Call Jenny,” Robert said, reminding himself. He stood and staggered through the offal toward the phone. Nausea swept over him and he bounced back through the trailer’s narrow hallway and fell into the bathroom, where he retched into the toilet until he passed out. The Breeze called it “talking to Ralph on the Big White Phone.” This one was a toll call.
Five minutes later he came to and found the phone. It seemed a superhuman effort to hit the right buttons. Why did they have to keep moving? At last he connected and someone answered on the first ring. “Jenny, honey, I’m sorry. Can I-”