AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 69

Liz lifted her head up from the vomit blackout, only to have a map shoved in her face.  They were trudged up by traffic: sidewalk-afoot African-Americans on each flank sped by the practically parked puppy-uppity-buggy.  Ahead was the Red Sea of tail lights; couple of yellow Jap turn signals getting revenge for Nagasaki by blinding Stateside eyes.

“Find out where the fuck we are,” Reed said.

She accepted the fold-out map and tried to get her stomach under control.  The taste of the ick, and the goddamn SMELL of the puke just made her want to Ralph all over again.

Liz had no eyes for maps; they didn’t make sense to her, they strained her brain.  See D-4, page 2?  Hell, see F-U, page 86.

Liz looked around, thinking: Those jigaboos, they’re eyeballin’ right back!

Liz had the paranoia to parabolize: Seize that sucker, bro.  Hook the frame on the WeBeTow,Y’Know.  Send it to the chop shop.  Pull those parts.  Bum-rush the Berlin boat and strip it down.  Midnight acquisition.

Liz looked.  Over there!

Those two Blacks over there, heads under the hood of the crashed 280-ZX, hands flying.  They ran back to their junker, with metal & dangling wires in their happy hands.

Every person Liz saw on the streets was Black.  Every person she saw in the cars was Black.  The night was oppressive with decay.  Over there!  Flattened buildings lying in rubble; burnt out and boarded over buildings, trashed tenements, grime & gang graffiti, street lights busted and smashed.

“We’re in Harlem!” Liz screamed.  She didn’t know where they were, but it looked like every nightmare she ever had of Snow White stuck in Harlem at night.

Traffic started to move.  But slow, so slow.  Reed cut right to get some movement, some action, and got it.

Four Blacks standing in the street, reluctant to move out of the way of the big BMW.  In fact, when they saw the BMW coming, they tried to fake Reed out, played a little basketball-chicken; two of the bigger Black boys doing one-on-one there in the middle of the narrow street, one guy bouncing the basketball, the other hands out to block the pass.  Reed stomped on the accelerator, popped his palm down on the horn.  The two Black boys played their pavement.  At the last instant, they folded: the ritz-car was not bluffing!  The one on the right was an instant too slow, and the BMW slammed into him; a double Pu-thoomp! as the bumper hit his flying foot, and a segment of micro-time later the windshield banged against his shoulder.

Liz looked back: the basketball was bouncing alone, up and down.  She felt the sudden wild thrill of her heart thumping and her blood dancing.  She sniggered: “Hit and run, dude.  If they catch you, Reed, you’ll pay for that in spades.”

In a cold voice Reed said, “Maybe he’ll get the free throw.”  He did not allow himself to feel sorry——anyone who got in his way, on his way to Courty, was in the wrong place at the wrong etc.  “We just passed Jerome.  Open the map and find Jerome.”

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“I don’t like dead bodies in my car,” Reed said.  “Help me shove him out.”

“But . . . but people’re watchin’, Brain-Leak!”  Liz looked around wildly, they were stuck at a red light, clunkers in front, junkers in back of them, more Hiroshima turn signals retina-burning the night vision.  The neighborhood had improved.  Slightly.  She saw one white: a scuzzy albino wino being robbed of his dumpster coat by two Mex pre-teens, too zonked to do anything but cry into his Ripple.  Reed was following signs to the George Washington Toll Bridge.  That wouldn’t get them to Manhattan, but it would get them safely on the other side of the Hudson.  But Go Out There?  Get Out Of The Car?  Now?  Here?  Dump The Body Here?  NO WAY IN HIGH SCHOOL HELL!

“Let ’em watch,” Reed said.  “Get out and help me.  Do It, Tootsie!”

“Go mack-tack your dirt-chute!  I ain’t gonna——”

“Kick-start your dildo, lesbian!  Move your cunt out that door, or I’ll put a bullet in it.”  He reached down for the gun.

Liz popped out of the left rear door, muttering blasphemies under her breath.  She ran around back of the BMW, seeing her shirt still covering most of the plate, and opened the dreaded front right door.  She tried not to look at the exploded bloody mess and the bloody body that half fell out of the car toward her.  “Horny Christ With Hemorrhoids!” Liz squeaked.  Squeamish.  She tried to find something not bloody, not icky to pull on.

A streetwalker walking along the Street screamed: “Oh God!”

Liz looked: The Black woman——no, man, it was a Black TV——was pointing at Liz and had a wild hysterical look on his/her face.

“Hurry up,” Reed yelled.

Some other gawkers were doing the gawk too.

Liz muttered, swore, yanked.  “Help me, morgue-face!  PUSH!”  She hassled dead icky body, squealed, and dragged the dead fucker out on the pavement.

Slammed the front door!

Jumped over the dead body, ran around, dived into the rear!  “Drive!  Drive!  Drive!” Liz screamed, closing the door, and almost puking again at the jarring whiff of her own vomit on the floor of the rear of the car.  “Drive,” she choked.

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“I don’t like driving around with rags over my license plates.”

“What??”

“You heard me, Tootsie.  You’re cold.  You’re topless.  Go get your shirt.  And grab the coat up front, while you’re at it.”

They were on the other side of the Hudson River.  Pulled off the freeway into some kind of lower-middle class turf.  Reed parked the car on a side street.

“Fuck,” Liz yelled, and kicked open the door.

Liz ran around back.  “Shit.”

She ran around front, and pulled off the coat.  She ran back and got in the car.  Threw the coat at Reed.  “Shit.  My shirt’s gone.”  Liz shivered, looking at the top of Reed’s head in the rearview mirror.  “Christ with pierced nipples, Reed, look’atch’urself!”

Liz watched Reed move his right arm back and forth, flexing it at the elbow; working the fingers, clutching them, expanding them out.

Liz yelled: “Hey, faggot in the front!  Are you dead, or what?”

“Don’t gimme shit, Tootsie.”

“Look at your fuckin’ head, man!”

COURTNEY, Chapter 70
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47