Nat did not respond. The yellow line seemed to run through black space and the empty geography of thin clear air. From the edges of the road, a few scraggled and flashpopped shadscale bushes wheeled their skeletal shapes against the headlamps.
Ah fuck it, Rick said then. I don’t wanna deal with that shit right now. I just wanna get drunk and high. And laid, if I can find Susan.
Right on, Nat said.
And so they drove on into the increasing darkness in silence but for the quiet entanglement of guitars from the cassette deck, northward along the eastern slope of the Sierra, the temperature dropping so that the spattering rain turned to slush that thwacked against the windshield in uneven punctuations like diminutive gunfire. A grainy and disconsolate luminescence lining the scalloped and rolling clouds to the north. Soon the tower of the MGM Grand appeared in the distance, faintly glowing. Then, on the road before them, the Peppermill coffee shop with its modest casino room and motor lodge marking the edge of town. Beyond it came the towers and the lights, enormous clean rooms of clanging bells and tweedling sound effects. Everything a container for a possibility that would never actually materialize. That was why they had tried the Quik-Stop to begin with. Neither of them would speak such a thing—not then and not now—but Nat knew it was true. There was no getting ahead in this world. That much was true as well.
This the new Van Halen? Rick said. He had lifted the cassette case from where it lay near the gearshift and sat turning it slowly in his hands.
Yep.
Van fucking Halen, Rick said.
Van fucking Halen, Nat repeated. You wanna start at Grady’s?
Sure, Rick said. Fucking Grady’s.
Fucking Grady’s, Nat said.
A quarter mile on, he pulled to the curb and switched off the car. The engine sputtered and died. On the sidewalk beyond Rick’s window, a woman in a shiny dress moved up the street toward the bar. They both watched her progress in silence.
Goddamn it’s good to be out, Rick said when she was gone from view. Shall we?
Hang on a minute, Nat said. He cleared his throat.
What?
So look, Nat said, I know that it, you know, could’ve been me.
Oh man you’re not gonna get all sappy on me. Are you?
I just want you to know that I appreciate what you did.
I didn’t do anything.
Yeah you did. I know you came out because they were hassling me.
I just came out to see where you were.
Well, I’m glad you did. I just wish I would’ve done something.
They were dicks, Rick said. Nothing you can do about a couple of dick-ass cops. Better me than you anyway.
Why’s that?
Just because it is. Gotta take care of your people.
That’s what I mean, Nat said. That’s what I didn’t do.
Rick exhaled sharply as if laughing or coughing. What’s done is done, Natty, he said. Talking about it doesn’t change anything. He sat there in silence for a moment. Then he smiled. Let’s go get fucked up, he said.
Dang right, Nat said, and in the next moment they had both stepped out onto the curb.
WITHIN TWO hours Nat was so drunk and so high he could barely walk, the room hanging on an axis that seemed to shift each time he moved. Were it not for the cocaine Rick was offered again and again—and in which Nat was included each time—he likely would have passed out altogether. His face was numb from smiling and laughing.
Goddamn fucker didn’t know what hit him, Rick said. He slapped the palm of his hand against the table. A kind of punctuation. All the glasses jumped.
Just boom, like that. Flat on his ass. Rick smiled and started laughing at his own anecdote, a prison story none of them had heard before. Like a sack of shit, he said. Then he was gone-laughing, hard and constant.
Sack of shit, Nat said between breaths.
The barlights swung in their orbits. The stools tipping.
Oh God, Nat said. If I don’t stop laughing I’m gonna puke.
The people at the table with them kept changing into other people. Billy Carl was there but when Nat looked again he had become Sheila and later Dave Vollmer. All people he had not seen since Rick had been put away and now he found that he could not keep track of any of them. He had been telling Billy Carl a story and now Billy Carl had become someone else entirely but then he was too high and too drunk to remember the story and Rick was here and he was talking and they were laughing and it had been a long long time since he had laughed.
He had even forgotten to look for Susan, although when they first arrived at Grady’s he had done so without cease, searching for her shape in the bar, for the dark sweep of her hair, but with the alcohol and the cross tops and cocaine and the laughter he had forgotten for a moment and so had also forgotten to hope and to fear that she would arrive. So when her arm came across Rick’s chest and her hair fell across his shoulder it was as if she had materialized out of thin air, her body leaning into Rick’s. A feather in her hair like an Indian princess out of Peter Pan. Where the hell have you been? Rick said, and in the next moment their open mouths were together.
Nat’s smile was frozen on his face, stuck there for a long moment as the others around the table mumbled their oohs and ahs. When they broke apart at last, her eyes glanced over at him, just for a moment. It’s not polite to stare, she said.
Oh, he said, a small involuntary sound that he hoped covered the guilt that flooded through him like a hot wave.
She leaned in to Rick and whispered something in his ear, or seemed to, and then slid onto his lap. I missed you so much, she said.
I missed you too, baby, Rick answered, but I’m still pissed.
How come?
You were supposed to be there to pick me up.
Didn’t Nat pick you up?
Yeah, but that’s not the point.
I’m here now, aren’t I?
They kissed again, quickly this time, and then she took the beer from his hand and took a long drink.