Night Run

Race with the Devil
If you lose, you gotta pay the Devil his dues
Race with the Devil
If you dare
One foot on the gas
The other in Hell!!
                                             --Roxx Gang

Night Run
By
Matt R. Jones, Esq.

             Utter madness gripped the crowd.

            As Stacey and I stood back-to-back on the stage, wailing through our guitar solos, I saw several folding chairs go flying through the air, and if there were less than ten people crowd-surfing, I would have been extremely surprised.  It was a capacity crowd of two hundred, and there wasn’t a single person in the audience that wasn’t yelling, jumping, or thrashing around.  The inside of the Roxy, on of the better nightclubs on the infamous Sunset Strip, throbbed with sheer, unbridled energy.  Everyone was blasted out of their minds on rock ‘n roll, and we, known collectively as the Electric Gypsies, were the gleeful purveyors.  The interior of the club was a tangible slab of heat, light, and solid sound . . . the music was truly a living, breathing entity all its own.

            Dorian, our blond-haired bassist and resident lady killer, strutted up and down the stage like a two-dollar whore, shamelessly grinning and gyrating for the benefit of our female fans.  While I bent over my guitar and ripped my way through the second solo of Roxx Gang’s “Scratch My Back,” Dorian slid out of his denim vest and flung it into the crowd.  I looked up from my strings long enough to see an explosion of sweaty, grasping humanity well up out of the audience, fighting for possession of Dorian’s vest.  Dorian cackled and then danced around in a circle, obviously pleased with the reaction he’d garnered.

            “You slut!” Stacey bellowed at him while I worked my way through the last section of my solo.  Dorian flew Stacey the finger and grinned.

            Laughing, I spun on my heel, then sprang back over to my mike stand and slithered my way through my vocals, making eye contact with as many people as I could.  Letting Stacey take care of the guitar duties for the moment, I grabbed the mike and leaned down on the edge of the stage, just inches from the closest of the reaching hands of our fans.  If they got hold of me, I could kiss my guitar, mike, beloved black leather jacket, and probably my best pair of carefully shredded jeans goodbye.  But if I stayed just out of reach, I could drive them even crazier.  I smiled sassily at the women in front of the stage, and bobbed down at them, skirting the line between provocative and downright stupid.

            Just as they lunged for me, I leaped back up, pulling a 360 as I did, jammed my mike back into its stand, and started the guitar section that brought the song to a close, belting out the last bit of lyrics at the same time.

            When the song ended, we all stopped perfectly still, and I roared at the audience, “I wanna hear you scream!  You ain’t nearly crazy enough for us yet!  C’mon you lazy fuckers!”

            The interior of the Roxy thundered with the audience’s reply to my call.  “Louder!  I can’t fucking hear you!  Do you think this is Woodstock?!  I want all you Hollywood fuckers to show me what you’re made of!  C’mon!”

            The air shattered as the crowd simultaneously shrieked at the tops of their lungs and started stomping on the floor.  “That’s it!  That’s it!” I yelled at them.  “MORE!”

            As the audience further worked themselves into a frenzy, Stacey, his guitar slung over his shoulder, came charging out from behind one of the amp stacks with a bucket of water.  As he flung the water out over the writhing mass of people, we went berserk.

            Tommy, our sardonic and cynical drummer, ripped out from behind his drum kit like a hurricane, swinging one of his cymbal stands like he was doing the hammer throw at the Olympics.  Just as he cleared his drums, they promptly burst into flame.

            “Holy shit!” Stacey and I said in unison.  Tommy had a definite knack where pyrotechnics were concerned.

            Not to be outdone, I grabbed my mike stand and sprang over to the flaming drum set and started pounding away on it, sending chunks of flaming drums all over the stage (which was fireproof, thankfully).

            Dorian and Tommy bashed the living daylights out of one of the house amp stacks, and Dorian actually got the neck of his bass stuck in one of the individual amps.  That didn’t seem to bother him, though, as he and Tommy proceeded to tip the stack over onto Tommy’s still-flaming drum kit.

            I jumped out of the way and flung my stand at the other stack, the force of the blow sending it toppling off the stage like a falling redwood.  Stacey swung his guitar around like it was a propeller, and when he let it go, it smashed into the lighting rig above the stage.  Sparks and pieces of the rig rained down everywhere.  “Oh yeah!” Stacey howled in satisfaction.  “Fatality!”

            The lighting rig tipped crazily to one side, and one side of it dropped down low enough that Stacey and I were able to jump up onto the rig and start pulling it down even further.  The stage was in total chaos, and the crowd was even worse.

            As the lighting rig crashed to the ground under the force of Stacey and my efforts, I yelled, “Great gig!” at Stacey, who gave me a double thumbs-up and laughed like a madman.  I jumped off of the remains of the lighting rig, raised my arms above my head, and screamed, “You’re the best in the fucking world!  We love you guys!” at our fans.

            At that point, the audience started flowing up onto the stage like The Blob on speed, and we ran like hell.  “We done did it this time!  Run for the hills!” Stacey yelled as we made tracks for the safe haven of our dressing room.

*     *     *

            My blood-red Chevelle ripped through the desert night, and I glanced out the window at the sky; the stars shone down exceptionally strong and clear, and I smiled.  I pressed down on the accelerator a fraction of an inch more, and my speed climbed up to 75, a comfortable speed, especially out here in the middle of nowhere.  The road ahead of me was as straight as an arrow, and the scenery whizzed by, a blur of sandy soil, rocks, and scrub, and some mini-mountains and hills in the distance.  The silvery moon also shone powerfully, and it lit up the desert with a clean and unspoiled light.  I was feeling quite content.

            That had been an incredible gig tonight, period.  Geno had never asked us to come back the night immediately following one of our concerts, but he’d put us down to perform tomorrow night, too.  He’d really raked in the money from this performance, and even after he’d taken the stage damage out of our cut, we’d all done quite well.  My favorite guitar sat in its case in my backseat, securely seatbelted in (I took no chances where my baby was concerned), ready for tomorrow night’s action.

            I pushed back a handful of my hair and dug around inside my jacket for my cigarettes.  I found them in short order, and lit up a few seconds later.  People always told me that smoking was bad for a vocalist in any band to do, and I always had to laugh at them when they informed me of this.  I’d picked up the habit over a decade ago when I’d first come out to California, and thus far my voice hadn’t suffered a wit; in fact, I was a better singer these days than I had ever been.  I’d first started smoking mostly to aid me in fitting in with the characters that roamed the Strip’s nightlife . . . I was the new guy in town back then, and I didn’t drink, and though I looked like any other creature of the Hollywood night, I needed a vice, and smoking fit the bill.  It hadn’t done anything for me in the beginning, but after a time, I had actually come to enjoy the rough, ticklish warmth in my lungs.  I had told Lita, one of my feminine acquaintances who had been especially deadset against my vice, that as soon I had started coughing up black shit when I woke up and my teeth started turning yellow, I’d quit.  That hasn’t happened yet.

            Holding the steering wheel of my custom-built beast in one hand, I reached over and adjusted the knob on my stereo.  The station I’d been listening to started to play a song by one of those bands that the MTV generation loves so much, and as a proud member of the Strip’s dark glam/hard rock movement, I felt compelled to switch to music that better suited my sensibilities.  Besides, this modern rock shit sucks hard.  If I couldn’t find a decent song on the radio, I always had my prodigious collection of tapes to choose from.  After a few turns of the knob, the sassy riffs of one of my favorite Faster Pussycat songs purred their way out of my speakers, and I ceased scanning the band.  Much nicer.  I took a long drag off my cigarette, puffed the smoke back out, and let my gaze momentarily wander from the road to the moon overhead. I was once again impressed that no matter how many times I looked up at it, the moon was still just as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it.  Yeah, I’d say life was pretty good.  There were a few things I would have liked to have, but on the other hand, I really had no room to complain.  Now if we could just score ourselves a record deal tomorrow night . . .

            Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw a pair of headlights that hadn’t been there a minute before, and they were probably less than a mile away from me.   Considering how long and flat this stretch of road was, I should have seen those headlights a lot sooner than this.  Speaking from personal experience, I can safely tell you that it is impossible for anyone to sneak up on you out here in No Man’s Land (which was the tag most of the Strip musicians had given this stretch of highway).  And yet, this joker behind me had done just that, and he was rapidly gaining.

            My first thought was that it was a cop, but I mostly discarded that notion, as the cops that patrol No Man’s Land don’t give a damn about speeding unless you’re doing over one hundred.  It might have been a rookie or a guy who had rotated in from another patrol, but I doubted it.  I flicked my cigarette out the window and gave my mirror a long look.  This asshole had to be pushing over a hundred to be gaining on me this rapidly, and I wondered what his deal was.  It might have been just another speedfreak out to put his engine through its paces, and would just pass me as he came up on me, but for some reason I doubted it.  My instincts whispered to me that this mysterious stranger was, in fact, very interested in me and would be making his intentions clear before long.  I felt no fear, as I had had my share of run-ins with so-called badasses over the years and had sent all of them on their merry way with another set of injuries to add to their collection or, in some cases, with a nice new tag for their toe.  I was, however, curious, and watched the headlights in my mirror very closely, waiting for my “friend” to catch up and make his desire known.

            I didn’t have long to wait, and less than a minute later, my mysterious speed demon was riding my ass.  After hanging behind me for a few seconds longer, he pulled out as if to pass me, but he checked his speed when he was even with me, and he held station there.  I still had no idea who it was, but I liked his style.   The bastard was driving a late-seventies model Cadillac Eldorado with the sleekest, blackest paint job I’d ever seen, and from what I could hear of his engine over the growl of my own engine and my stereo, this guy had some serious power under his hood.  The rumble of the engine told me that this car had one purpose in life, and that was to blow away anything and everything it came up against.  I couldn’t see inside the car to take a look at my friend, though; his windows were tinted as black as the rest of his car.  I peeled my eyes off his car and back out at the sky, and the stars seemed to wink at me and the moon’s silver glow had taken on a slightly unreal cast: I could almost taste destiny in the air.

            The Eldorado held even with me for a few seconds longer, and then I heard the voice.  It sounded as if the speaker were sitting right next to me, but I knew, without a doubt, that it was the driver of the monster now cruising along beside me.  The voice, which was rough and gravelly, with overtones that my trained musician’s ears couldn’t even begin to identify, actually gave me a chill, which hadn’t happened to me in years.  This wasn’t a voice that you heard out in the streets or even in the darkest alleys: this was a voice that had no groundings in the mundane world of the average joe at all.  It asked me a very simple question: “Wanna race?”

            I blinked at the question; I knew that this had been the Eldorado’s intention since it had pulled up alongside me, but to actually hear it in the manner that I did was something that I wasn’t quite prepared for.  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” I replied.  “Maybe I’ve got more important things to do.”

            The voice chuckled.  “Don’t even try to kid me.  You’ve got all the time in the world, Steele.”

            My eyes grew large when the specter spoke my name, and my head whipped around to look at the Eldorado again.  For a brief second, the interior of the Eldorado flickered with a weak light, and a detached part of my mind noted that the specter was lighting a cigarette.  However, the majority of my mind absorbed the pointed, jackal-like features, and the predatory grin that the face wore.  I now had no doubt as to who this character was.  It was someone that I had long thought that I would never see: the driver of the mysterious Eldorado was none other than the Devil himself.

            For the first time in ages, I truly felt fear.

            The Devil snickered again, and he asked me, “What’s the matter, Steele?  Cat got your tongue?  If you beat me, you’ll have what you want the most, and if you lose, you’ll be mine.  A very simple deal.”

            The fear burned through me like a fire, and instead of making me want to flee, it galvanized me, and my lips formed a grin.  This was interesting, indeed.  “What could you give me that I can’t already achieve for myself?” I asked him.

            “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Steele.  There are some things that even you can’t do,” he chuckled.  “We both know that.  Wouldn’t it be nice to show your face during the daytime again?  To be able to rejoin regular society, at least once in a while?  I’d wager that the nightlife gets old after a while, and blood taken while you’re alone can get tiresome after so many years.”

            Touche.  In just a few sentences, he’d sliced through to the things that I desired most . . . how many times had I had to turn down offers to go somewhere and do something with the guys during the day?  How many afternoon cookouts over at Stacey’s neighbor’s had I missed?  How many daytime concerts had we had to turn down because I’d feigned being sick from “overindulging?”  Too many.  I loved the night so strongly that it hurt, but there were times that I wanted more.  I’d knocked over and mowed down everything that had stood in my way during my lifetime, and yet, I couldn’t go play a simple goddamn game of frisbee with the guys and Dorian’s dog in the park during the day.  The guys tolerated my “eccentricities” very well, for which I was grateful, especially since they didn’t know the truth about what I was, but it could get awkward at times.  I’d seen and done so many wonderful things in my life, but in the back of my mind, especially since I’d come to Hollywood, that had whispered to me that I was missing out on a vital part of life.  I’d never paid much attention to it, and it had mostly manifested itself as a vague desire that I didn’t know how to fulfill, but now the Devil had brought it to the forefront of my mind.  Bastard.  I was the only one of my kind around here, and the barrier between myself and my friends could make things pretty lonely at times.  If I won, I’d never have to say no to another game of frisbee or trip to the beach again.  I’d be even more than I already was.  If I lost, my existence would come to an end, and in some strange, self-destructive sense, the danger thrilled me.  I couldn’t turn this down, just as I couldn’t turn down the kids who had once, so long ago, dared me to go into a field, kick a bull in the rear, and then try to get out before he gored me.  The pushy little imp inside my head that had coerced me into kicking the bull in the butt was talking fast and loose now.  I couldn’t decline the Devil’s offer and then go back to living my life the way I had before: I’d be forever asking myself the question “what if?”  If I won, nobody could touch me, and I could have everything.  I was listening to every word the little imp was saying . . . the belligerence that had long been my trademark was going to get its way again.  Hey, why the hell not?  No one had even come close to beating me and my car.  The imp jumped up and down, gleefully laughing its head off.  My course was set, and my grin grew broader.  “If you think you can handle me, let’s go.  I’ll blow your goddamn doors off.”

            The Devil laughed heartily at my cockiness and said, “As you wish.”  The air seemed to shimmer for a second, and I was suddenly sitting next to the highway sign that marked the beginning of No Man’s Land, my engine idling and my foot off of the accelerator.  I blinked in near-disbelief; that was quite a trick, I decided, and my fear increased a few notches.  I looked to my left, and the Devil’s Cadillac sat next to me, the engine growling like a slumbering bear.

            “We race to the first electrical tower out there on the flat, two miles from here,” the Devil told me.  In the bright star and moonlight, I could easily see the said electrical tower, which was only one of a network that crossed this desert area and supplied power to the nearby towns, glinting in the distance.   “You win, your fondest desire is yours, but if I win, which I most assuredly will, I’ll be able to add you to my collection.”

            “You ain’t winning shit,” I muttered at the Devil.  I revved my engine (custom-rebuilt by myself with some help from Dorian and Tommy) a few times, and it snarled at the Devil.

            “That’s right,” the Devil replied smugly.  “I’ll be winning you.”  His wheels spun on the pavement with a shriek like a banshee, kicking up a cloud of thick, foul-smelling smoke, and he took off down the road like a rocket.

            “Son of a bitch!” I growled, and I launched myself after the bastard, taking care not to smoke my wheels off like the Devil did.  Time was of the essence, and I couldn’t afford showoff tactics like that.  The Devil already had a good lead, and I wasn’t going to get my ass blown away so early in the fight.  I watched the r’s on my tach climb steadily as my engine built power, and I slammed the stick down into the next gear, and I drew closer to the fleeing Eldorado.  A few seconds later, I rammed into third, and I was gaining steadily on my enemy.

            I took a few seconds to reach over to my stereo and push in my L.A. Guns album and crank the volume to the max.  A race for one’s very existence needed a proper soundtrack, and they fit the bill perfectly.  Tracii Guns’ razor-edged riffs mixed in with the high-energy snarl of my engine and the scream of the wind, and my fear transmuted into sheer excitement.  Now I was totally pumped and ready to rock.  I bared my teeth in a feral smile and growled deep in my throat.  “Rip and tear, motherfucker!” I roared as I ripped into fourth and continued to close the gap.

            The Devil was putting up a good race.  I’d never been behind someone for this long before: I’d usually blow everyone away not far from the starting line.  Flames licked out from the Cadillac’s dual exhaust pipes as it flew down the highway, and as I closed in, a small laugh escaped my lips when I saw what was on the Devil’s license plates: SATN 666.  And I thought I was cocky.  My speedometer was dancing at one hundred twenty.  The desert night was shooting past me at a mind-numbing blur.

            My front bumper was now even with the Cadillac’s rear, and within seconds I was slowly inching my way up the black car’s body.  I dragged my eyes away from my opponent and the road long enough to look ahead towards the electrical tower.  Shit.  It was barely a mile away now, and I was still behind.  “C’mon baby,” I whispered to my Chevelle.  “We beat this bastard and we’ll be the baddest pair in town . . . nobody’ll be able to touch us.”  Tommy had been with me on several of my previous races, and he couldn’t fathom why I talked to my car.  I didn’t really know either, but I knew that it sure didn’t hurt matters any.

            Now I was holding even with the Devil, but I couldn’t get any farther.  My already-pale knuckles were bone white as I gripped my steering wheel, and my body was so tense you could have bounced a tank round off of it, no problem.  I even think I was actually starting to sweat.

            As the electrical tower drew ominously closer, I heard the Devil’s laughter again.  “You’re one bad sonofabitch, Steele, but when you race with the Devil, you’re gonna lose every time!”  With that, the Cadillac started gaining speed and began walking away from me, flames shooting out of its exhaust pipes.

            I cursed violently.  I couldn’t lose, not with so much at stake!  Nobody, but nobody, beat me!

            Both desperate and enraged, I drove the stick back down into third gear.  My engine bellowed in protest and the r’s on my tachometer went through the roof.  The Devil’s Cadillac pulled away even faster now, and his laughter echoed through my head.  “See you in Hell, Steele!”

            “That’s what you think, you pointy-tailed cocksucker.”  Just as the needle on my tach redlined, I hammered my shifter back into fourth and mashed down on the accelerator as hard as I could, practically pushing it through the floorboard.  The sudden burst of acceleration shoved me back in my seat, and my grip on the wheel tightened like a vice.  My engine roared and my car leaped forward like it’d been shot in the ass with Stacey’s double-barreled .10 gauge.  The Devil’s lead began to dissolve like a snowball thrown into Hell.  The electrical tower was flying towards us at a disturbing rate of speed.  My speedometer needle wasn’t even dancing any more: it was totally buried below one hundred thirty.

            As I blew past the Devil, I turned towards his blackened windows,  graced  him with my biggest grin and gave him the finger.  “Go to Hell, you old bastard!!” I yelled.

            Just as my tail-end pulled away from the Devil’s front bumper, we reached the electrical tower.  With a brilliant burst of light and banshee-wail of anger and frustration, the Devil’s Cadillac exploded into flames as the Devil blasted out of this plane of reality and back into his own.  I slammed on my brakes, leaving an impressive trail of burnt rubber behind me, and when I’d slowed sufficiently, I turned my car into a skid and did a neat 180 on the highway.

            I pulled over to the side of the road,  put my car in Park, turned the volume on the stereo down, and let my beleaguered engine idle down.  “You did good, baby,” I whispered as I patted the dashboard affectionately.   I noticed that my hands were trembling like they’d been zapped with electrical current.  Hell, my entire body was shaking!  I left my engine running and stepped out of the car into the night.  My legs were unsteady at first, but they regained their confidence after a few moments.  I looked up at the star-streaked night sky and took a few deep, long breaths, letting the cool night air fill my lungs and soothe my jangled nerves.  It was so beautiful out that my heart ached.  What a night!

            I peeled my eyes from the stars and started to walk towards the electrical tower, which was only a couple hundred feet from where I now stood.  The only sound was the soft clump of my bootheels on the highway.

            I slowly approached the spot where the Devil had disappeared and saw that there was nothing left of his car save for a fire burning on the surface of the highway, as if someone had tossed a lit match into a small oil spill, and even that was rapidly fading away.  There was a thick oily smell in the air, but the soft night breeze was starting to clear that away, and in minutes, the stink would be gone entirely.

            I stared into the quickly dying flames.  “Time to pay the piper, Uncle Scratch,” I said.  “You just got your ass wasted.”

            The breeze grew stronger, and my hair was blown out from me and my jacket billowed out.  I closed my eyes and I suddenly felt different than I had a minute ago, in a way I couldn’t define.  When I reopened my eyes, the flames were gone from the highway, and there wasn’t a trace of them anywhere, not even a small burn mark on the pavement.  I stretched my arms out over my head and arched my back, twisting the remaining tension from my body, and I felt refreshed.  I threw back my head and laughed.

            A few moments later, I turned on my heel and walked back to my car.  The sun would be up soon, and I had places I needed to go.  I fired up my engine and blasted off into the remnants of the night.

*     *     *

            Around high noon, I pulled up in front of Stacey’s house, which was in a small neighborhood out on the edge of town, and shut my engine off.  Yeah, those three were out back in the cluttered garage working on somebody’s car, if the music and the clanging emanating from behind the house was any indication.  I ate the last bite of my McDonald’s hamburger and closed my eyes, in heaven.  This was only the second hamburger I’d ever had in my life, and despite Dorian’s insistence that fast food was “complete shit” (he ate it any way), I was hooked.  I couldn’t wait to try out some of the other foods that the others were so fond of . . . there were so many different varieties of food out there that I’d never be able to try them all.  Well, maybe.  After all, I had all the time in the world.

            As I chewed up the last bite, I looked down at my hands resting on the steering wheel.  Their customary paleness had been giving way to a bright red ever since the first rays of sun had touched my face out at Finnegan’s Point this morning.  My face was doing the same thing, and when I’d seen my now-pink face in the mirror on my car’s visor, I had laughed in both joy and amusement.  I think I was getting a sunburn, of all things!  I had wept when the sunlight had only brought a comforting warmth instead of the searing agony that I had unintentionally brushed with several times before.  It was a warmth I hadn’t felt since before the days of Homer, and it felt wonderful.  As I had dazedly walked the streets during this first day, I had heard people complaining of the brightness of the sun and the heat it brought, and I had to chuckle.  To me, this simple sunlight was one of the greatest gifts I had ever received.  The Devil had delivered in a big way.

            I was used to the busy nightlife of Hollywood, but the daytime blew me away.  I’d seen it on TV and in the movies, but that hadn’t prepared me for the real thing at all.  My sharp eyes, long accustomed to picking out the details from nightime lighting, were overwhelmed with the sheer vibrancy of the sights, sounds, smells, and colors.  By the Deity, I had no idea what a rainbow swirl of activity the daylight world was!  I had stood on the sidewalk outside the Chinese Theater for several minutes, trying to take in everything, practically going into sensory overload.  A little boy looked up at me and asked his mom what my problem was.  “He’s stoned, Timmy.  Don’t look at him,” she’d said, and had dragged him away from me as quickly as she could.  I had practically gone into hysterics.  This was great!

            After sitting in the sun down at the Point for an hour or so, I’d tossed a few small boulders into the ocean and had levitated for several minutes to make sure that I hadn’t lost anything in the transaction.  I hadn’t.  If anything, I was stronger than ever, and I hadn’t felt this alive in years.

            I got out of my car and walked up Stacey’s driveway and followed it around to the back of his house, where, sure enough, Dorian  and Tommy were hard at work on Dorian’s old Mustang, Dorian under the car and Tommy leaning into the open hood.  Stacey was idly sitting on the workbench, next to his boombox stereo (which was blasting Motley Crue, as usual), reading a girly magazine.  I took my sunglasses off (it was going to take me awhile to get used to the intensity of the light outside), stuck them in the pocket of my black jean shorts (I was now dressed for the warm weather, though I was still in all black)  and walked into the garage.  Stacey noticed me first; he dropped his magazine and held his chest in mock pain.  “Oh shit, you’re here during the day!  I can’t take this!” he yowled as he rolled off the workbench and went into convulsions on the floor.

            Tommy, whose dark blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, glanced around from where he was tightening something and looked down at Stacey with mild interest.  “Pussy,” he muttered.  Then he turned his eyes to me.  “In the couple of years I’ve known you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you show your face during the day.  I was beginning to get the impression that you were a vampire.”

            “Yeah, a Hollywood vampire!” Dorian offered from underneath the Mustang.

            “Oh, aren’t we clever,” Tommy said, and he dropped a small wrench through the maze of the Mustang’s engine, and I heard it thump onto Dorian’s chest.  A yelp emerged from beneath the car, and Dorian’s legs twitched.

            “Dickhead!”

            Tommy snickered, and I had to join in.  Stacey ceased his convulsions, got up, and brushed some of the garage floor crud off of his beloved Ratt shirt and out of his mane of black hair, which was almost as dark as mine.  He started slightly and his eyes lit up.  “Hey, guess what?  Tommy got a call this morning from Elektra and they’re interested in us!  They’re gonna be at Roxy’s tonight to watch us perform!”

            My eyes bugged out.  Elektra?!  They were one of the biggest record labels in the damned country!  The most we’d hoped for was a deal with a small local label, and now one of the biggest fish in the pond was eyeing us . . . gee, I wonder whose handiwork this was?  He’d not only given me what I’d wanted, he’d given me more.  I’d have to send him a Hell-o-gram to show my appreciation.

            I burst out laughing.  “That’s great!  Our performance last night must’ve really made an impression.”

            “Tommy thinks that Geno had a hand in getting Elektra to take notice of us . . . that wily old bastard’s got connections everywhere.  We’re going big time, man!” Stacey said as he jumped up and down with excitement.

            Tommy looked over at Stacey and said, “Don’t whiz yourself just yet . . . you can do that after we’ve been signed.  If we get signed.  Remember, they told me they were interested, but weren’t definite.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know, piss all over my parade.  You’ve already told me to settle down, so I’m settling down now.”  As Tommy turned his attention back to the engine, Stacey flipped him off and stuck his tongue out.  “So, any way, what’s new with you?” he asked me as he handed me my first soda, which was a Pepsi.

            “I thought I might stop by and get my engine worked on a little bit . . . I got into a race with a black Eldorado out in No Man’s Land last night,” I replied, opening the can.  “I blew the fucker away, but he put up a good fight.  That was the closest race I ever ran.”  I took a sip of the drink, and immediately started guzzling it.  This was good shit!

            “Tear up our engine, did we?” Tommy asked me from where his wiry frame  was half-buried in the Mustang’s engine.  “Such are the trials and tribulations of a gearhead.”

            “Bring her around, and we can get started right now,” Stacey said.  “After we get this stuff done, we can start getting ourselves ready for tonight.  We are gonna kick some serious ass.”

            “One thing,” Dorian called out and he scooted out from underneath his car, his light blonde hair, face, and Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt smudged with grease.  “Could somebody run in and grab that other six-pack of soda?  I’m dying here.”  He hung his tongue out of his mouth for emphasis.

            I laughed and said, “I’ll take care of it.  You bring my beast around, Stace.”  I reached into the pocket of my jeans and threw Stacey my keys.

            As I headed out of the garage and towards the house, I heard Tommy say, doing his best impersonation of a condescending schoolteacher, “This is a very simple task, Stacey.  Try to not to have a repeat of the incident over at Dorian’s house.”

            “Yeah, man!” Dorian chimed in.  “Those pink flamingos had sentimental value!”

            “Fuck off!” Stacey barked, though the amusement in his voice was readily apparent.

            I let myself into Stacey’s small house and dug around in the fridge in the much-used kitchen until I found the six-pack of soda.  I took one out of the plastic rings and drank it more slowly than I did my first one.  Ambrosia.  If the junk food of the world tasted as good as the hamburgers and Pepsi, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some truly decent food.  As I enjoyed my soda, I heard Stacey’s doorbell ring.

            Technically, it wasn’t a doorbell: it was an old “ooga” horn that Dorian had found in his Mom and Dad’s attic and had given to Stacey for his last birthday.  The four of us had spent the better part of an evening rigging the blasted thing up to the doorbell button, but the effect was well worth it.

            I set the six-pack down on the counter, walked through Stacey’s poster-covered living room (which was dominated by his massive stereo system), and answered the door.  Standing on Stacey’s small porch was one of his neighbors, a short, fat, balding fellow that looked like he hadn’t had a wit of fun since the Nixon administration.  The sour expression on the man’s face told me that he wasn’t here on pleasure.  “May I help you?” I asked as politely as possible.  Damn, the sun coming through the open door felt good!

            “If you devil-worshipping hot rod lunatics don’t quiet your evil music down now, I’m going to be forced to take action,” he said, sweat beading on his forehead.  Maybe he was hot because he was wearing what looked like a business shirt and a pair of black slacks that looked terribly stuffy.  “I’m tired of your continual noise!  If you’re not working on one of your unholy speed creations, you’re either playing the music of the Devil too loud or you’re playing your own Satanic works!  You must cease and desist!”

            Ah, this must be Mr. Hoboken, the neighborhood’s local religious nutcase.  Stacey had wanted to blow out his windows with his .10 gauge after Mr. Hoboken had pulled down Stacey’s five foot tall,  machine gun-toting, deerslaying Santa Claus lawn ornament last Christmas.  Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and we convinced Stacey that ripping out the motor of Mr. Hoboken’s riding lawnmower was good enough.  Besides, we sold the motor to a couple of rowdy kids for a good amount of money.

            “Look, it’s more or less high noon out, and everybody’s got a right to make noise at this time of the day.  We always quiet down when the sun sets, so you’re gonna have to live with it.  Besides, if you wanna get somebody for noise, what about Charles across the street?”  Charles, a big fat Mexican fellow sporting a huge mustache, with a heart and sense of humor to match, was by and far Stacey’s favorite neighbor.  Charles was also renowned for having large numbers of people over to his place for cookouts, and with his five kids, his house was constantly emitting a barrage of cheerful noise.  At the moment, Charles was hard at work mowing his lawn, sitting on his riding lawnmower (which was the loudest contraption on four wheels that I had ever heard) wearing only a pair of underwear and a cowboy hat.  When he saw us looking at him, he grinned around his cigar and tipped his hat.

            “Not only that,” I said, drawing closer to Mr. Hoboken, “Contrary to popular belief, musicians and speedfreaks aren’t in league with the Devil.  And neither are vampires.”  I gave him my special grin, which fully revealed my snow-white fangs.

            Mr. Hoboken turned dead-pale, sputtered something unintelligible, backed up, and scurried back over to his yard.  I heard a door slam, and I threw back my head and laughed.  What a dork!

            “Beautiful day out, isn’t it?” Charles called out to me from his mower, waving to me with his hat.

            “It sure is!” I yelled back, waving at him in return.  As I shut the door, I said softly, “It sure is.”