several narrow turns. 'It's really odd to watch the locals when snow season starts. They try to pretend nothing important has changed. They're determined. And they go sliding around in their bigass cars and crashing into each other at intersections, and the expressions on their faces never changes. Like this is all some act of God and it's not their station to comprehend.'
Bash had chosen the surface streets because the highway had become a nightmare of vehicles jumbled together in HO toy chaos, not so much an orderly, frozen row of taillights as a mad, Modernist neon sculpture: Black pavement, sliced from an ice frosting in double strips; police flashbars winking pink to crimson on the snowbanks; whirling frost-blue from the tow trucks; the brilliant glare of high beams pointed in the wrong directions for progress on the road. And everywhere, white, descending from the sky like a hex of legend to bedevil mortals foolhardy enough to attempt travel. White, blanketing all, the starched sheet on the corpse, the non-tint of bloodless leftovers, the visual expression of absolute death.
Bash's eyes memoed the freeway deadlock with his usual bitter bemusement. 'Like I said, they all try to ignore the snow. Stupid. And… congratulations. You have just made your first successful excursion through the township of Russet Run without getting robbed.' His voice dropped into his deadly Rod Serling impersonation. 'And survived.'
'Russet Run. Sounds like what you get when you eat too much Tex-Mex.'
'Your first dry township, me bucko.'
'So that was one, huh. I noticed it looked a touch haunted.' Actually, Jonathan hadn't, but it sounded good.
The streets began to shed their commotion of crowded brick buildings, metamorphosing into a series of woodland suburbs linked by scenic roadways lacking many streetlamps. In moments it was all trees, shadows, and snow. Jonathan fantasized the night-time eyes of forest creatures, chatoyant, monitoring the motorway and trying to figure out what automobiles were.
'They're heavy into oaks in this neck of the woods.' Bash was still in tour-guide mode. ' Oakland, Oakdale, Oak Run, Oak Park, Oakwood. The mighty oak, lending a touch of spurious class to the progeny of gangsters and bootleggers. You'll see more Frank Lloyd Wright architecture here than in any other part of the country. Actually, I dig the hell out of the houses - there's very little ticky tacky here. The houses aren't all falling down or rotting, like in New Orleans. If I never see no more Spanish moss in my life, it'll be a lifetime too soon, you know what I'm saying?'
Splash! Jonathan had sunk back into fugue and was jolted to reality by the truck's obliteration of a genuinely awesome puddle of ice.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm phasing out. Too much time on the white line.'
'Mm. Road fever. Classic case. What you need is some Terminal Turbo from Uncle Bash's killer espresso robot.'
'Or a Quietly Beer.'
He regretted missing Bash's anecdote about Quietly while busying himself in misery. If he waited a respectful distance, he could probably coax the story out again; Bash loved rattling on, never more so than when the talk involved one of his personal theories on why the world was so fucked up.
'What the hell is a Terminal Turbo?'
'Santy Claus - in the voluptuous form of Camela - hath bestown upon my pore white head a Krups Espresso Novo. Top of the line, state of the art. When I first got it I spent a week trying to figure out how to froth milk for cappuccino. It looked like the Amazing Colossal Man had ejaculated all over my kitchen. Whitewashed it. Now I'm pretty good at driving that ole foam nozzle. I had to drink all my experiments. Espresso is too expensive to waste. Speed while you learn. I spent the next week or so grinding my teeth to sleep. Once I got the espresso right I cross-bred it with a Hot Shot. You use four
Bash had chosen the surface streets because the highway had become a nightmare of vehicles jumbled together in HO toy chaos, not so much an orderly, frozen row of taillights as a mad, Modernist neon sculpture: Black pavement, sliced from an ice frosting in double strips; police flashbars winking pink to crimson on the snowbanks; whirling frost-blue from the tow trucks; the brilliant glare of high beams pointed in the wrong directions for progress on the road. And everywhere, white, descending from the sky like a hex of legend to bedevil mortals foolhardy enough to attempt travel. White, blanketing all, the starched sheet on the corpse, the non-tint of bloodless leftovers, the visual expression of absolute death.
Bash's eyes memoed the freeway deadlock with his usual bitter bemusement. 'Like I said, they all try to ignore the snow. Stupid. And… congratulations. You have just made your first successful excursion through the township of Russet Run without getting robbed.' His voice dropped into his deadly Rod Serling impersonation. 'And survived.'
'Russet Run. Sounds like what you get when you eat too much Tex-Mex.'
'Your first dry township, me bucko.'
'So that was one, huh. I noticed it looked a touch haunted.' Actually, Jonathan hadn't, but it sounded good.
The streets began to shed their commotion of crowded brick buildings, metamorphosing into a series of woodland suburbs linked by scenic roadways lacking many streetlamps. In moments it was all trees, shadows, and snow. Jonathan fantasized the night-time eyes of forest creatures, chatoyant, monitoring the motorway and trying to figure out what automobiles were.
'They're heavy into oaks in this neck of the woods.' Bash was still in tour-guide mode. ' Oakland, Oakdale, Oak Run, Oak Park, Oakwood. The mighty oak, lending a touch of spurious class to the progeny of gangsters and bootleggers. You'll see more Frank Lloyd Wright architecture here than in any other part of the country. Actually, I dig the hell out of the houses - there's very little ticky tacky here. The houses aren't all falling down or rotting, like in New Orleans. If I never see no more Spanish moss in my life, it'll be a lifetime too soon, you know what I'm saying?'
Splash! Jonathan had sunk back into fugue and was jolted to reality by the truck's obliteration of a genuinely awesome puddle of ice.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm phasing out. Too much time on the white line.'
'Mm. Road fever. Classic case. What you need is some Terminal Turbo from Uncle Bash's killer espresso robot.'
'Or a Quietly Beer.'
He regretted missing Bash's anecdote about Quietly while busying himself in misery. If he waited a respectful distance, he could probably coax the story out again; Bash loved rattling on, never more so than when the talk involved one of his personal theories on why the world was so fucked up.
'What the hell is a Terminal Turbo?'
'Santy Claus - in the voluptuous form of Camela - hath bestown upon my pore white head a Krups Espresso Novo. Top of the line, state of the art. When I first got it I spent a week trying to figure out how to froth milk for cappuccino. It looked like the Amazing Colossal Man had ejaculated all over my kitchen. Whitewashed it. Now I'm pretty good at driving that ole foam nozzle. I had to drink all my experiments. Espresso is too expensive to waste. Speed while you learn. I spent the next week or so grinding my teeth to sleep. Once I got the espresso right I cross-bred it with a Hot Shot. You use four
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