Cruddy - Lynda Barry [105]
The Stick said, “Shut up, Vicky.”
She shrugged. “Fine with me.”
The Stick said, “So you cut his throat?”
I nodded.
“And you know for sure he’s dead?”
“He’s dead.”
“Didn’t you stay to make sure?”
“I got bored.”
“Bullshit,” said Vicky. “None of it ever happened. It’s all bullshit. Nobody would leave that much money behind. How much did you say it was?”
“Thousands. Thousands and thousands.”
“Such bullshit.”
Our bus boarded. The doors whooshed open and we climbed on. I carried the shoes of the Turtle and the robe of the Great Wesley. “To the back,” I said. “All the way back.”
Vicky wanted to hold the Turtle’s shoes and I was very surprised when she cried a little over them. I couldn’t cry. The Stick got the window seat. He leaned back and said, “And then what?”
The flat landscape moved behind him, looking oddly fake. “And then what happened?” He closed his eyes.
And then what happened was I made my way back to the car and I started shaking very violently and it was a long time before I could drive and it was very hard to drive once I could and I made it back to the Lucky Chief and I threw up and hollered for Cookie and I kept hollering for Cookie and I popped the trunk and took a handful of money out of one of the suitcases and then I dragged both of the Samsonites into the cavern, deep, deep, deep into the cavern and I hollered and hollered for Cookie and I heard her barking and she came running and she was wagging her tail very hard and I picked her up and kissed her and we walked into the sunlight. The End.
“The END?” said Vicky.
“The End,” I said.
“What a fucked-up bullshit waste-of-time story! God, Roberta! I could slap you right now.”
“You could,” I said. “But it would be a terrible idea.”
She was picking at the Turtle’s shoes. At the silver foil around the insole. She pulled it away and found a rectangle of origami paper. Inside were two perforated sheets. A miniature deck of cards printed on each. “It’s blotter,” she said. “It’s actual blotter.” There were two more sheets in the other shoe. There were 127 hits of blotter in all.
And after a moment there were only 121. She took three hits and gave me three hits. I snuck one to the Stick.
The bus bounced, Vicky got carsick, the strawberry milk shake found its way to the floor. She took three more hits. When we got to Cruddy City we were so blasted we could hardly maintain enough to get the 7 Dunbar bus home. The Stick said he was feeling better, that in fact he was feeling perfect. Vicky wanted to go home. None of us could think of a better idea. She walked very fast and we fell behind and the Stick put his arm around me. He said, “I’m a bleeder. Did Vicky tell you? I’m a bleeder.” But I didn’t know it was a situation. A condition. I just thought it was a thing you say when you are very high, like I’m an eater or I’m a breather. And we were so very high. All the streetlights shot rays at us and the cars left trails for us. All the ugly things around us looked beautiful. I missed the Turtle and the Great Wesley very much right then.
The Stick said, “My real name isn’t the Stick. My real name is—” He said something unpronounceable. Something that sounded slightly like “the Stick,” but had more letters in silent combinations. I tried to repeat it and he laughed.
He said, “I have a crush on you, Roberta.”
I told him my name was no longer Roberta. I told him my name was Junior Bizarre and Vicky heard this and she fell on the grass laughing and having contortions and it took us a very long time to make our way to the hedges that surrounded the Tallusoj house.
He stopped at the broken front gate. I could tell that even in his blasted condition that he was thinking about Susie. He hadn’t told Vicky. He said, “Vicky, Vicky. Um—um, Susie—”
Vicky said, “Fuck Susie. I’m sick of Susie.”
She bounced up the porch ahead of us. The TV light was jumping in the window. The green porch light was on. He looked at me. Did we leave the TV on? Did we? I thought we turned it off.
Vicky shoved open the door.
“SHIT AND GODDAMN! THE INTERRUPTION! MY PROGRAM!”
The resurrected