All Tomorrow's Parties

5. MARIACHI STATIC

'SO she left you for this TV producer, the country singer said, slipping what was left of thirteen ounces of vodka back into the waistband of his indigo jeans, so new and taut that they creaked when he walked. The flat bottle's concavity rode there behind an antique buckle that resembled an engraved commemorative plaque, something someone had once won, Rydell supposed, for calf-roping or some similar competitive activity. Rydell powered the side window down, a crack, to let the fumes out.

'Production coordinator, Rydell said, wishing the vodka would put his passenger, whose name was Buell Creedmore, to sleep again. The man had spent the better part of their drive up the coast asleep, snoring lightly, and Rydell hadn't minded that. Creedmore was a friend, or maybe more of an acquaintance, of Durius Walker's. Durius had been a drug dealer before, in South Central, and had gotten addicted to the stuff. Now that he'd gotten his recovery, he spent a lot of time with other people who had drug problems, trying to help them. Rydell assumed Buell Creedmore was one of those, though as far he could see the man was just basically a drunk.

'Bet that one burned your ass, Creedmore said, his eyes slit with spirits. He was a small man, lightly built, but roped with the sort of whipcord muscle that had never seen the inside of a gym. Ditchdigger muscle. What Rydell took to be several layers of artificial tan were wearing off over an inherent pallor. Bleached hair with dark roots was slicked straight back with some product that kept it looking like he'd just stepped out of a shower. He hadn't, though, and he was sweating in spite of the air-conditioning.

'Well, Rydell said, 'I figured it's her call.

'What kind of bleeding-ass liberal bullshit is that? Creedmore asked. He pulled the bottle from his waistband and eyed the remaining liquor narrowly, as though he were a carpenter checking a level. It seemed to fail to meet his standards just then, so he returned it to its place behind the commemorative plaque. 'What kind of man are you, anyway?

Rydell briefly entertained the idea of pulling over on the margin, beating Creedmore senseless, then leaving him there at the side of the five, to get up to San Francisco as best he could. But he didn't and, in fact, said nothing.

'Pussy-assed attitude like that, that's what's wrong with America today.

Rydell thought about illegal choke holds, brief judicious constriction of the carotid artery. Maybe Creedmore wouldn't even remember if Rydell put one on him. But it wouldn't keep him under, not that long anyway, and they'd taught Rydell in Knoxville that you couldn't count on how a drunk would react to anything.

'Hey, Buell, Rydell asked, 'whose car is this anyway?

Creedmore fell silent. Grew, Rydell felt, restive.

Rydell had wondered from the start if the car might not be stolen. He hadn't wanted to think about it really, because he needed the ride up to NoCal. A plane ticket would've had to come out of his severance from the Lucky Dragon store, and he had to be extra careful with that until he determined whether or not there was anything to this story of Yamazaki's, that there was money for him to earn, up in San Francisco.

Yamazaki was deep, Rydell told himself. He'd never actually figured out what it was that Yamazaki did. Sort of a freelance Japanese anthropologist who studied Americans, as near as Rydell could tell. Maybe the Japanese equivalent of the Americans Lucky Dragon hired to tell them they needed a curb check. Good man, Yamazaki, but not easy to say where he was coming from. The last time he'd heard from Yamazaki, he'd wanted Rydell to find him a netrunner, and Rydell had sent him this guy named Laney, a quantitative researcher who'd just quit Slitscan, and had been moping around the Chateau, running up a big bill. Laney had taken the job, had gone over to Tokyo, and Rydell had subsequently gotten fired for, they called it, fraternizing with the guests. That was basically how Rydell had wound up working night security in a convenience store, because he'd tried to help Yamazaki.

Now he was driving this Hawker-Aichi roadster up the Five, very definitely the designated driver, no idea what was waiting for him up there, and halfway wondering if he weren't about to transport a stolen vehicle across a state line. And all because Yamazaki said that that same Laney, over in Tokyo, wanted to hire him to do some fieldwork. That was what Yamazaki called it, 'fieldwork.

And that, after he'd talked with Durius, had been enough for Rydell.

The Lucky Dragon had been starting to get old for Rydell. He hadn't ever gotten along with Mr. Park too well, and when he'd take his break, out back, after the curb check every morning, he'd started to feel really down. The patch of ground the Lucky Dragon had been set down on was sort of scooped out of the foot of the hillside there, and at some point the exposed, nearly vertical cut had been quake-proofed with some kind of weird, gray, rubbery polymer, a perpetual semi-liquid that knit the soil behind it together and trapped whatever was thrown or pressed against it in a grip like summer tar. The polymer was studded with hubcaps, because the place had been a car lot once. Hubcaps and bottles and more nameless junk. In the funk that had started to come over him, out back there on his breaks, he'd collect a handful of rocks and stand there, throwing them, as hard as he could, into the polymer. They didn't make much of a noise when they hit, and in fact they vanished entirely. Just ripped straight into it and then it sealed over behind them, like nothing had happened. And Rydell had started to see that as emblematic of broader things, how he was like those rocks, in his passage through the world, and how the polymer was like life, sealing over behind him, never leaving any trace at all that he'd been there.

And when Durius would come back to take his own break and tell Rydell it was time to get back out front, sometimes he'd find Rydell that way, throwing those rocks.

'Hit you a hubcap, man, Durius would advise, 'break you a bottle.

But Rydell hadn't wanted to.

And when Rydell had told Durius about Yamazaki and Laney and some money, maybe, to be made up in San Francisco, Durius had listened carefully, asking a few questions, then advised Rydell to go for it.

'What about job security? Rydell had asked.

'Job security? Doing this shit? Are you crazy?

'Benefits, Rydell countered.

'You tried to actually use the medical coverage they give you here? Gotta go to Tijuana to get it.

'Well, Rydell had said, 'I don't like to just quit.

'That's 'cause you got fired from every last job you ever had, Durius had explained. 'I seen your résumé.

So Rydell had given Mr. Park written notice, and Mr. Park had promptly fired him, citing numerous violations of Lucky Dragon policy on Rydell's part, up to and including offering medical aid to the victim of a one-car collision on Sunset, an act which Mr. Park insisted could have involved Lucky Dragon's parent corporation in costly insurance litigation.

'But she walked in here under her own power, Rydell had protested. 'All I did was offer her a bottle of iced tea and call the traffic cops.

'Smart lawyer claim ice tea put her in systemic shock.

'Shock my butt.

But Mr. Park had known that if he fired Rydell, the last paycheck would be smaller than if Rydell quit.

Praisegod, who could get all emotional if someone was leaving, had cried and given him a big hug, and then, as he'd left the store, she'd slipped him a pair of Brazilian GPS sunglasses, with inbuilt phone and AM-FM radio, about the most expensive item Lucky Dragon carried. Rydell hadn't wanted to take them, because he knew they'd turn up missing on the next inventory.

'Fuck the inventory, Praisegod had said.

Back in his room over Mrs. Siekevitz's garage, six blocks away and just below Sunset, Rydell had stretched out on his narrow bed and tried to get the radio in the glasses to work. All he'd been able to get, though, was static, faintly inflected with what might have been mariachi music.

He'd done a little better with the GPS, which had a rocker keypad built into the right temple. The fifteen-channel receiver seemed to have really good lock-on, but the tutorial seemed to have been translated badly, and all Rydell could do was zoom in and out of what he quickly realized was a street map of Rio, not LA. Still, he'd thought, taking the glasses off, he'd get the hang of it. Then the phone in the left temple had beeped, so he'd put the glasses back on.

'Yeah?

'Rydell, hey.

'Hey, Durius.

'You want a ride up to NoCal tomorrow in a nice new car?

'Who's going?

'Name of Creedmore. Knows a guy I know in the program.

Rydell had had an uncle who was a Mason, and this program Durius belonged to reminded him of that. 'Yeah? Well, I mean, is he okay?

'Prob'ly not, Durius had said, cheerfully, 'so he needs a driver. This three-week-old 'lectric needs to get ferried up there though, and he says it's fine to drive. You used to be a driver, didn't you?

'Yeah.

'Well, it's free. This Creedmore, he'll pay for the charge.

Which was how Rydell came to find himself, now, driving a Hawker-Aichi two-seater, one of those low-slung wedges of performance materials that probably weighed, minus its human cargo, about as much as a pair of small motorcycles. There didn't seem to be any metal involved at all, just streamlined foam-core sandwiches reinforced with carbon fiber. The motor was in the back, and the fuel cells were distributed through the foam sandwiches that simultaneously passed for chassis and bodywork. Rydell didn't want to know what happened if you hit something, driving a rig like this.

It was damn near silent though, handled beautifully, and went like a bat once you got it up to speed. Something about it reminded Rydell of a recumbent bicycle he'd once ridden, except you didn't have to pedal.

'You never did tell me whose car this is, Rydell reminded Creedmore, who'd just downed the last two fingers of his vodka.

'This friend of mine, Creedmore said, powering down the window on his side and tossing out the empty bottle.

'Hey, Rydell said, 'that's a ten-thousand-dollar fine, they catch you.

'They can kiss our asses good-bye, is what they can do, Creedmore said. 'Sons of bitches, he added, then closed his eyes and slept.

Rydell found himself starting to think about Chevette again. Regretting he'd ever let the singer get him on the topic. He knew he didn't want to think about that.

Just drive, he told himself,

On a brown hillside, off to his right, a wind farm's white masts. Late afternoon sunlight.

Just drive.