1: Deacon Blues

"I'm going back for what's left," he said shortly after breakfast. They watched him leave, quiet about the shared certainty that not a thing had been "left".

The sky was a solid sheet of blue but outside it still smelled of rain. His balding tires had trouble negotiating the mud.

He had to use a window; it never crossed his mind that the old place would be locked tight. Inside, he was shocked at the emptiness of it. The place was nothing but walls and passageways, with no suggestion as to where one should stand or what one should do.

Light came in from windows, holes, and cracks and traversed entire rooms uninterrupted, breaking against the walls.

The heat got to him and he took off his hat. Extending his arm he used it to catch the light here and there, becoming the interruption.

He turned around and noticed he had tracked a looping line of mud. He heard himself say, "I am the endpoint."

3:Can't Stand It

What Kadrey knows: there is no reason to have lunch in the baby mall situated within this building's guts. Festering with humanity by 11:55, it becomes a grueling miasma difficult to wade through, exhausting one during the very hour reserved for recuperation.
What Kadrey does: lunch is eaten at the wokstation where there will be no waste of time, energy or social tolerance. This action awards him 18 to 22 minutes that belong to no institution or biological need. In this time Kadrey thinks about fighting. About winning fights. The opponents and settings vary. The style of fighting changes from 70s Hollywood tussles, to Jack Kirby throwdowns, to UFC massacres, back to Hollywood for golden age duels. The ending is always the same, it will brook no modification, mutation, or innovation: the fallen opponent receives an uncivilized kick to the ribs. Kadrey will feel his leg swing back, every joint perfectly aligned as if on a track, then there is the acceleration toward the offered torso, surprisingly effortless, which doesn't end in impact but is transmuted into a wave of pleasure racing past epidermis, then through the nerves, spiraling up the spinal chord, and finally redefining the brain, changing chemicals, opening up transmitters, allowing brand new divorces and unions. It's a party.

5: Planet Telex

In his car, hands at ten and two, Kadrey is waiting for the frenzy of coworkers fleeing the parking lot to die down before turning the key. He is thinking about the paycheck already en route as electric impulses to his only account. The one in charge of shelter, sustenance, entertainment and emergencies. The one that can never grow quite large enough to actualize desire. He is thinking about all of these fixed numbers that he lives with: the rent, the cable, the insurance, that kid in South America ("just pennies a day") and so on. All of them will be debited automatically from the account. The mighty paycheck will be reduced to a measly allowance in no time flat. Of course there is time. Time enough to change his automatic settings and live at least for a little while with his full compensation. To look at the screen and see what he is worth for real. And then maybe to apply this power towards something significant. Something unexpected. Fuck the rent, he can take the money and run. But where to? And how far? It isn't that much money.

7: Alpha Beta Parking Lot

Sleeping in a car moving across this continent is time travel; you're very likely to wake up in another era. That man you just locked eyes with could have been your grandfather. Before the War. This brand and that cut are were not, until today, things you know from experience but from heavy-lidded memories of late nite reruns. You start to wonder how exactly the world twists around you while you sleep. You look at your hands expecting scars and calluses to still be in your future. You get a little paranoid.

9: The Late Greats

With the earnings from the race they go into that little record store across from the Barnes and Noble. They're there until closing, carefully selecting; this will be the soundtrack to their entire October and maybe even November if money's tight.

On the road they test out their new materials. As the tones and stories fill the Civic they slip in and out of new characters. Testing them out. Gripping the wheel a certain way. Twisting their features into unfamiliar expressions. They are renewed.

11: Softest Bullet Ever Shot

13: Don't Take Me Alive

Evan decided to look up an old buddy. Since we were in town and all.




His family had no news and no curiosity. I think there was a peak of lassitude in their answers but I won't swear to that.

He was not at work where they told us he'd dropped by if and when he was needed.

He was nowhere. And if he was somewhere then we had no idea of what that looked like.

15: Bad Sneakers

Drinking in worn out clubs with young ladies.

Trailing the music by half a beat.

Pissing in badly lighted johns crowded with scoundrels.

Smelling like smoke and vinegar.

Feeling like ashes and leather.

Forgetting what day it is.

Only Evan is having fun

17: Equivalents

Kadrey says:

"Everybody is from TV"

"Everybody looks like somebody else"

"No one's got their own face"

"Not Any more"

19: How To Disappear Completely

Kadrey was blind for an entire day. Blind is perhaps not the correct term but in my personal vocabulary and , I believe, the entirety of the English language it is the closest approximation one will find of his 24 hour affliction. The peculiar mechanism that transforms light into the multitudes of the world was corrupted and shapes, colors and depth were lost to the poor man. For an entire rotation of this Earth, Kadrey was not immersed into the inky blackness customarily caused by the absence of light but was trapped in the words of Paul Auster. It is not that this building or that hydrant were beyond his perception but rather that they were replaced by a descriptive paragraph in the style of his prose. Kadrey was quite certain that it was Auster.

After the crisis had passed and Kadrey was once more able to slowly move his gaze through the subtle shifts in the blue of a summer sky, he rather surprised me. "I could have lived with it," he told me, "if I had a good variety available to me. If this car were described by Chandler or this lamp post by Bukowski, I maybe could have lived with it. I could have enjoyed being immersed in words."

21: Pyramid Song

People

Of Course

Matter

But so do Things

Things

Matter

And also Places

On and off the highway a dozen times tonight looking for a bit of real estate from my 5 foot and below days. Evan is remarkably patient. Is this a real memory? Running with some cousins in the woods? i don't really remember their names. i know the occasional flu had me laying in the living room, nursed by Mom and TBS. Swiss Family Robinson. Little House on the Prairie. Didn't one of the Ingalls sisters loose her sight after some illness? Was fever involved? Glad i never lost nothing. Nothing that big. Jasper! The big dumb one was called Jasper. Jasper and then my last name. That's him. Dumb son of a bitch but funny. Funny goes a long way. Bet he's married now. Paunchy with a litter of dumb kids all his own. Living like an adult. Jasper.

Time done ate it up to shreds but the old cabin still squares with Kadrey's description. Lucky bastard, it's like something out of a Paulsen book out here. I should holler, but I'm in no hurry to have him see the place. I imagine of a bunch of kids inside, their life force tied to the cabin, rotting away at the same pace. Moss and crawlers coming out their mouths and ears. Tiny bugs making songs in their hollow bellies. I'm going to be sick. I need a cigarette. I holler out his name.

The cabin was a mess of flames. The men left the woods.

23: Black Cow

fucking nosebleed every fucking time in the parking lots no exception to all this abject retardity just once one fucking time it would be nice a straight line through a parking lot at peak hours a simple understanding of civility it wouldn't kill you how do the old fucks do it without a stroke and a change of diapers every fucking time was that fun asshole was that your idea of entertainment can't afford cable never learned to make a fist and shake your wrist asshole cumsmear i swear i understand the nra your taurus vs me and smith and wesson how would you feel whose idea was it to arm this entire country with 2 ton bullets just once respect the idea of a motherfucker trying to get to point b keep your fucking paw on the right pedal look think a little reminder that we built pyramids and invented cake and holland all out of dirt and twigs what do you do for a living what do you do with your fucking brain all day you're allowed access all day just once across the lot fucking nosebleed this was a nice shirt

25: I'm a Wheel

There is a volatile alchemy of blood and words.

Whispers from a stranger engorge capillaries.

Consequences wait offstage.

27: Knives Out

The world out the windows is flat and black. The road offers up a long series of soft, small curves, like a string of honey poured by an octogenarian. The forward motion, the push against the wind, the tread on blacktop, it all becomes melody, sweetly vibrating in Kadrey's skull.

Evan is in the back. Asleep. Maybe. He's so quiet that Kadrey is afraid that he'll die one day, in the dark, and his body will be cold and stiff before morning can reveal the stone-like nature of expired skin.

It is very hard not to think about sudden endings; so many creatures have had their bellies split, theirs skulls caved in on the asphalt band. The headlights define a tiny, ever-changing kingdom. Red trails come in and out of clarity. Blood arabesques to deepen the music.

Strange that there are no carcasses on the road, just evidence of collisions. It must be that the road rejects anything that static. Still, it leaves constant reminders, some of them fresh enough to glint in the beams, that eventually there is not enough space for everyone. We are, every single one of us, headed for a crash.

29: In Limbo

Ten years on and this country is clockwork. You know when to spit out "Yes Sir", when to susurrate "No Bitch". The rules don't change, but that don't mean that they can't be deflected, mutated, digested and shat out as Montelimar.

Just like the old men, you deal in real estate now, like Bobby Baltz or Lee Frost,

you're always on the lookout for soil with potential,

enclosed areas where each angle responds to the previous one,

places where one can stand and feel the rotation.

You are past the point (hell, can you even draw the point)

Where architecture can betray you,

So it knocks you off your game a bit to fall for the old round-the-corner trick.

Shit, shit, shit, Fuck.

It figures they would not disappear

Just because you stopped thinking about them

An awful long time ago.

Ten years of roads spiked with opportunities for contact.

Ten years they've been carrying your features on their own trajectories.

It occurs to you that they probably could not cut you out from the static. They may have the benefit of transportation, but transformation is beyond them. It must be. There has to be a reason you left. There better be. Four men are in the jelly aisle of a grocery store with one nose and one gait to split between them. You start to close the distance, and with every step you get closer to a new kind of comedy.

It's about twenty five paces to the trio

Just don't walk like a dolt at a wedding

Your path is butchered out of this world

You will splice it back after thirty paces

Close enough to tell Ted's asthma's no better

Eyes down they're looking for apricot

Aren't you glad you're strawberry tall

Rounding the aisle you stash the loaf

Bread can wait, the getaway's constant

On the wide open you keep it steady at 75

You make all the left turns they can't

You wish for another dime, at least

31: Babylon Sisters

Bones are slow-built cathedrals revealed only at the architect's exit.

It's day five on the Malibu coast where camping is surprisingly affordable. Kadrey pours himself out of the tent a good hour before sunset because nobody's yet bothered to design a tent for smokers. Evan's there, of course, drawing something in the back pages of whatever he's reading this week.

Kadrey's been a bitch all week but Evan chances a greeting anyway, "Hey Dracula." Kadrey answers through the filter, his words spurting from the tobacco, "Whazit? What the hell are you talking about?" Evan stands and faces Kadrey, "Two weeks in California. Two weeks and you are still lilly-white. I think you had more of a tan in Michigan."

A couple of screeching kids run in between them, their frequencies liquefying thoughts and molars. Kadrey knows they live four tents down, he knows their parents are usually reduced to pinot grigio containers by nine P.M., he has a warm cannibal thought.

He starts walking away from the field of tents and Evan follows. Thirty feet from the highway he stops and speaks.

"I'm tired of this fucking water. And I'm tired of these rocks. I want to get back into the car. I want to keep going."

"Keep going," Evan shouts over the traffic, "there is nowhere to go. This is it. We ran out of country."

"So? We go back."

"We go back why, Kadrey? We do what? It takes me a week with both of my feet in one little spot to feel like I've stopped. All of this movement, Kadrey. All of this for no real reason."

"What are you saying? You can't do this anymore? You don't want to?"

"Driving is getting scary. I keep thinking that we keep avoiding disaster by just a little bit, feet probably, but we keep running we're gonna end up smack dab in the middle of fucked."

"I thought I was the pussy."

"You've been the pussy. Now you're aiming for retard. Did we loose anything on the road, Kadrey?"

"You're not curious? How about Joanie, and Olly, and The Casbah, and that grave in the desert. How about we go back and make sure we kept all of our promises and nobody is worst off in our wake."

"How about we go back and erase every dumb ass thing we ever done. Come on Kadrey there's forward and there is stop. There is no time travel."

"That's it? You're settling?"

"No, no. I never said that."

"Well I'm not. In two days I'll be headed East. It would make sense if you came along."

"What will you do till then?"

"Right now I'm gonna cross this road, go down that cliff and jack off into the Ocean."

Sand gives to any pressure but it's foolish thinking it will remember.

33: Kamera

Understand that this inventory does not include the trunk or the glove box. It takes no accounting of those places where things go to hide, but it does include all objects that, by some accident, find themselves out of sight.

In the civic we find:

A pack of Marlboro Reds, three left

A pack of Benson and Hedges menthols, one left

An eyeglass repair kit, no screws

A pack of Merits, five left

A crumpled Wendy's bag with two Whataburger bags inside

Five dollars and forty-three cents in loose change

Three Euros

Five packs of Turkish Gold, all empty

Two atlases, both falling apart

That morning's copy of the Arizona Republic

A pillow

A Tom Waits cd case with Shakira's "Fijacion Oral" inside

The latest copy of the New Yorker

The latest copy of Swank

An old copy of In Touch with a subscription sticker for a Doctor James Bannon

Ticket stubs for a Fellini retrospective

An open bag of trail mix

Eight lighters, most of them green

A paperback copy of "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" by Chip Delaney

A Steely Dan shirt

A switchblade

A half full bag of Sun Chips

An empty wallet

An Oregon traffic ticket

A laptop

Evan

Kadrey

35: Handshake Drugs

At first light, it is often obvious what type of opportunities a day will offer, and on those days that offer neither the option of making nor breaking, Evan and Kadrey will somehow find themselves in one of those gigantic hardware stores.

They prefer the Home Depot, definite article always included, because it gets the scent right. That odor of eager wood with its metallic accents and plastic finish; it's the same in Maine, Georgia, or Wyoming. They must get it from a bottle kept in the back.

They'll walk those deep, bright aisles for hours, gliding from thrill to thrill as raw materials whisper new promises. All that potential animating every piece of wood and stone, every color and fixture, it's dizzying. A man will go light in the head and his knees will tremble and a shopping cart will be the only thing keeping him upright.

Evan and Kadrey haven't built a thing. Not yet. But the trunk of that Civic is slowly filling with hammers and levels and tape measures, and it is often their pleasure, between these two oceans, to correct or clarify a thing or a person that needs correcting or clarifying.

37: Black Friday

SCENE - Lobby of an abandoned building. Three chairs and a broken table emphasize the desolation of the place. An inch of dust covers everything. It is pitch black.

[Evan and Kadrey run into the room holding flashlights. Kadrey stops suddenly]

Kadrey: Wait. Wait! [whispering] why the fuck are we running?

Evan: [Stopping. Catching his breath] I don't... I don't know. That was a real ruckus.

Kadrey: Quite the commotion. Quite the commotion. But I'm not looking to get my throat slit.

Evan: What are we looking for?

Kadrey: Only the correct exit. [he shines his beam on the floor] What's this.

Evan: [augmenting Kadrey's beam with his own] I think it's blood.

[Kadrey is still. Evan moves his beam along the crimson trail. It goes into the next room.]

Evan: What do we do?

Kadrey: The correct exit.

Evan: We leave? Now? What if someone needs us?

Kadrey: That question only has the one answer. I only have the one life.

Evan: What's that worth?

Kadrey: What?

Evan: A life.

Kadrey: That's not fair Evan. I see no life here demanding consideration. It's curiosity. You want me to gamble for your curiosity.

Evan: You're no kind of man.

[Evan goes into the next room. Kadrey is left alone and in silence for about two minutes. His beam stays fixed on the spot where they first saw the blood]

Kadrey: Evan, damn you, make a sound.

Evan: [Coming out of the room, looking queasy] There's most of a man in there...

Kadrey: My God.

Evan: Alone. Whoever, whatever did this... He doesn't have much of a face left...

Kadrey: What can we do?

Evan: I don't know. I don't see a whole lot of options.

Kadrey: Can we take him somewhere? Or do we have to...

Evan: Damn it Kadrey! He's not some fucking horse.

[There is a long silence]

Evan: You get our shit packed up, I'm going to drive down to that truck stop and make a call.

Kadrey: Are we going to wait with him?

Evan: I've got no answers for cops.

Kadrey: For a little bit then.

Evan: You do what you want. I'm not going back in there.

[Evan leaves. Kadrey raises his beam to the entrance of the next room. As we hear Evan's car start up Kadrey starts walking towards the entrance. He turns his flashlight off and goes in.]

Kadrey: Hello?

39: Street Spirit

Words rush up and bottleneck right behind my voice-box

Collisions and fusions confuse meaning

My body refuses me

Pressure builds

Cannot

And right there

Like a joke

I growl and cough and shout

An impostor

Obscene and vicious

Propelled by my own two lungs

Is poured into the world

It's not today and it's not happening

It's not today and I shut it in

It's not happening not today because I shut it in

It's staying in today

I won't let it happen today

Today I shut it in

I shut it in

I shut it in

I close it down

So it won't happen

Not today