“Still, I wouldn’t want to live around them.”
“We’ve got rats in New York.”
“Rats don’t bite people’s legs off.”
“If you lived in Florida, I can almost guarantee you’d never get your leg bit off by an alligator, whereas in New York City, I can almost guarantee you will get your car crapped on by a pigeon. Which is worse?”
“I’d rather take the one-hundred-percent chance on pigeon crap than the one-percent chance on an alligator bite.”
“I think it’s way less than one-percent.”
“Any percent is unacceptable.”
“It’s probably not even one in a million. So what’s that...one percent would be one in a hundred, so you’d times it by, uh...ten thousand?” Lou frowned as if mentally checking his math. “One ten-thousandth of a percent chance of getting a leg bit off by an alligator. That’s pretty slim.”
“They also have hurricanes.”
“Again, low odds.”
“And it’s too damn hot.” George had grown up in Cleveland, and moved to New York City in his late twenties. As far as he was concerned, the entire bottom half of the United States could just fall off into the ocean.
“I completely agree about the heat. That’s what should keep you away from Florida--the climate, not the alligators and hurricanes.”
“Are you two entertaining yourselves?” asked Ivan.
George turned around and glared at him. “Yeah, it’s called a conversation. Do you have a problem with it?”
“No, no, by all means, continue your insipid conversation.”
“We’re driving across this miserable state on a road that has nothing to look at but alligators. Why shouldn’t we talk about alligators? If we drive past an anti-abortion billboard, we’ll be sure to have a spirited philosophical debate for your entertainment, but for now it’s alligators and pigeon crap. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“Sure. Go right ahead.”
George grinned. “You didn’t think I’d know what ‘insipid’ meant, did you?”
“Nope. Surprised the hell out of me.”
“Well I do. Fuck you, werewolf.”
Ivan settled back against the bars of his cage. “You know, if I was a werewolf, this cage wouldn’t hold me. I’d be picking my teeth with your ribs in about thirty seconds.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep.”
“Then I’d deserve it, because I would’ve let my guard down and failed to take the necessary precautions. If you do that, you deserve to have your ribs used as toothpicks. But Lou and I, we don’t let our guard down like that. Would you like an example?”
“By all means.”
“Right now, I want nothing more than to smack that smirk right the hell off your face. Not torture you, not beat you bloody--just smack you really, really hard. If we pulled off to the side of the road, I am ninety-nine point nine-nine percent sure that I could get in this smack with no danger to myself, and then we could proceed on our merry little way. But even though it would give me intense pleasure to do this, I’m not going to. Instead, we’re going to continue to drive your werewolf ass to Tampa, just like we’re supposed to.”
“Then I salute you,” said Ivan, saluting him. “A lesser man would have succumbed, but not the mighty George.”
“You’ve become kind of sarcastic all of a sudden.”
“Hey, if I can’t appeal to your common sense or your sense of decency, I might as well be a dick for the rest of the ride. How are we doing on gas?”
“No need to worry yourself about the gas situation. We’ve got everything under control.”
“I’d hate to be stranded out here. I know how concerned you are about the alligators.”
George glanced at the GPS. “We’re going to get gas in a few minutes at someplace called Hachiholata. Nice Indian name.”
“Native American,” said Lou. “Indians are from India.”
“I thought ‘native’ was offensive?”
“No, ‘native’ is offensive to people in the jungle with spears, like if you say ‘the natives are restless.’ Native American is fine. Did you know that the word ‘midget’ is offensive?”
“To Native Americans?”
“Very funny. To a little person, the word ‘midget’ is as offensive as the n-word to a black person. Can you believe that? You hear midget, midget, midget all the time, and it’s like saying n-word, n-word, n-word. If a politician said the n-word, his career would be over, but he could probably say ‘midget’--hell, he could probably tell a midget joke--and he’d be fine.”
“Can other midgets say midget?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t say it. It’s not their fault they were born like that.”
“So anyway,” George said to Ivan, “we’re stopping for gas in a few minutes. Does that make you feel better?”
“It does indeed. Can we get a burger while we’re there?”
“No.”
“Come on, I’m starving.”
“No.”
“You can just toss it through the bars.”
“No.”
“What am I going to do, throw a deadly bun at you?”
“You can’t have a burger. Drop it.”
“It’s pretty sad that a couple of big strong guys like you are scared of a man in a cage.”
“We’re not scared of you.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re scared that if you toss me a hamburger and fries I’ll somehow use them to my advantage. That, my friend, is fear. You have to be pretty damn afraid of somebody for them to intimidate you with a sack of fast food.”
“What about those overcooked fries? Those tiny sharp hard ones at the bottom of the bag? You palm one of those, we let our guard down--smack! French fry in the eyeball.”
Ivan stared at him for a long moment. “You know, I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.”
“I’m kidding, but you still don’t get any food.”
“See? Fear. Knee-shaking, bone-chilling fear. It’s okay, we all have our phobias--it’s not your fault that yours is a helpless man in a cage. I’m going to take it as a compliment.”
“Is this supposed to be the part where my masculinity is so threatened that I give you a burger just to prove I’m not scared?”
“I wasn’t thinking about your masculinity, necessarily, but that was the general idea, yeah.”
“I’ll make you a deal, werewolf. If you can go ten full minutes without talking, we’ll buy you a value meal.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I was serious, but you just talked.”
“Prick.”
“Now I’m going to buy the biggest, juiciest burger they’ve got, with mayo and ketchup and onions and bacon and maybe even bleu cheese, and I’m going to eat it right in front of you. Do you prefer fries or onion rings?”
“Onion rings.”
“I’m going to get those, too. Big greasy ones, with just the right amount of breading. Some places use way too much breading, so it’s like you’re eating fried dough, but I’ll make sure that these onion rings are perfect.” George felt kind of guilty after he said that. He normally didn’t behave like this, but something about Ivan just annoyed the living hell out of him.
Ivan smiled. “You both realize that you’re going to die today, right?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. We’re all having a grand old time right now, busting each other’s chops, kidding around like best buddies, but what you two don’t realize is that you’re in hell. You’re burning in hell right now and you can’t even feel the flames. If you walked right up to the devil and tugged on his horns, your soul could not be more damned than it is right now.”
“I don’t think that’s how damnation works,” said George. “I think God has to do it or you have to make some kind of deal for vast wealth or something.” He nudged Lou. “Did you make any deals with the devil recently that I should be made aware of?”