Page 79 of Shadow Ticket
Hop finds the road-Pullman all lit up, size of a railway sleeping car, futuristic as something just rolled off the cover ofAmazing Stories, reflected in wet pavement, three decks high, intake manifold outlined in purple neon, giant stabilizing fin on the tail end, brightly lit control cabin and crew’s quarters up on top, where personnel can be seen bustling about. He walks all around the vehicle, squinting doubtfully. Too high and narrow to take any kind of curve at any speed and stay upright, in fact breathe too hard and this rig could tip over right here standing still, is the impression it gives. How’s a weary music maker supposed to get any sleep speeding around dangerous curves in the middle of the night on board a buggy like this?
As it turns out nobody will be sleeping that much.
28
Sometimes all Hicks wants is to be back in Milwaukee, restored to normal life, to a country not yet gone Fascist, a place of clarity and safety, still snoozy and safe, brat smoke from a lunch wagon grill, some kid practicing accordion through an open window, first snow coming into town off the prairie, barrooms where the smell of beer is generations deep, women in round little hats. Penny scales, newsstands run by war veterans named Sarge, everyday street doors that lead to nothing deeper than friendly speakeasies, El Productos in glass tubes, fried perch and coleslaw on Friday nights. Buttermilk crullers, goes without saying. A fantasy of old-time Milwaukee, dairy-colored surfaces through the leisurely days imperceptibly continuing to darken behind a bituminous haze safe to breathe, never as bad as Chicago…Back when you spent more time on the interurban than in a car, work just unexciting enough to keep a gumshoe happy, matrimonials with little to worry about except now and then some dainty pearl-handled Housewife’s Special in a kitchen cabinet someplace…
“Well-known condition,” nods Slide, “you might call it post-American, some choose it deliberately, some not, but whatever it is you’re headed for it, and on the express track too, allow me to point out.”
“Maybe someday I’ll get tired enough of all this to just turn around and go back to M’waukee. No reason not to, is there?”
“None at all. Ticket offices’ll be open bright and early tomorrow morning, anybody’s free to walk in—first, however, allow me to point out, seemsto be, why look, it’s another Central European night to be got through, in the course of which anything might happen, even giving you a reasonnotto turn around but to continue ahead, the way you’ve been going, into winds of the sort that tend to pick up east of midnight.”
It doesn’t improve the situation to learn that Terike will soon be off on a 2,000-kilometer scramble, maybe farther, in mostly, call it 90 percent, male company. Hicks isn’t sure how comfortable he feels about that. Allowing for rare examples of fidelity to absent wives or girlfriends, time taken up by field repairs and improvised parts redesign, men with little to no interest in women, that still leaves a hell of a lot of bikers at loose ends for Hicks to worry about, though Terike doesn’t seem to, especially.
“You and Daphne won’t mind.”
“Terike—”
“Excuse me, are you confusing this with an emotional exit? Do you see anybody storming out of here? What do you know about it anyway? This is the Trans-Trianon,Haver, not some local hill climb.”
“Leaving me to deal with the bughouse cheez heiress, plus a skip ticket I never asked for…”
“Cheer up, it’ll give you two a chance to recover that long-ago speedboat magic.”
“Yeah, a-and what about you and that Ace Lomax? Maybe I should install a lens in my belly button, so I can see where I’m going with my head up my ass.”
“Don’t take it personally,” she recommends. “I’m not what Ace is looking for.”
“Thought you two go way back.”
“That’s just it. I know him better than he thinks anybody can, and that’s the last thing he wants.”
“To the world,” as Ace likes to put it, “I’m the notorious V-twin Valentino, bike-happy cuties topplin over like bowling pins, too many to know what to do with. But in sad truth the real-life Ace Lomax you see just goes grimly rolling on, older every day, out on constant patrol searching for that one-in-a-million road mate of his dreams.”
“You really think that sounds romantic, Ace? It doesn’t, it’s pure resentment’s what it is, you’re just a big soup kettle bubbling over with sex prejudice.”
“C’mon, no—me? I’m a li’l more sociable than that, ain’t I?”
“Don’t see too many ladies looking to ride pillion.”
“I need the space. Oil if you want to know. This machine is known far and wide for losing oil in its sleep.”
Then there’s Praediger, in whom Hicks has begun to feel a certain wavering of trust.
“Only a cordial suggestion,” the inspectorly smile making up in curvature what it lacks in sincerity, “if you should happen to run across our dear friend and conditions allow, why, perhaps, in some way to be determined—”
“Here it comes, it took you long enough. Would I mind putting the bump on Bruno for you. Your tough luck, Egon, I’ve been off the torpedo crew for a while now.”
“Most of you’d be flattered.”
“Not that kind of publicity, sorry, no, draws too much kiddie outlaw attention, and the history to follow don’t ever turn out too happy.”
“Yet I notice you’re still alive.”
“Sure but have I earned it? There’s enough of us hard cases who’ll kill for pay, dangerous-looking but inside quivering like a plate of Jell-O in a dining car from too much thinking, too many thoughts running wild, prices that are never right, deals that fall apart…somebody in your shop must keep a list of bad actors who’ll work cheaper, why bring me into it?”
“Have you ever really looked at your employment history? One high-risk orangutan job after another, always in the service of someone else’s greed or fear?”
