Going Bovine (14 page)

“She gave me this.” I show him the laminated wristband. Gonzo puts his face near and reads.

“An E-ticket?”

“It’s got some cosmic, stabilizing mojo to combat the prions.”

“Cool! Punker Angel gave you more health.”

“Yeah, exactly. But it’s only good for two weeks.”

Gonzo whistles. “Man. Bummer. Well, good luck, dude.”

“I’m supposed to take you with me,” I say very fast.

His hand flies up. “Oh, hell to the no.”

“Gonzo—”

“No, no, no, and no with a side of no.”

Gonzo plops down on his bed and makes a big show of opening his video game manual, turning pages way too quickly to read them.

“I told her you were too chickenshit to go.” It’s a low blow, but I’m pissed that Gonzo is such a chickenshit and that Dulcie set the bar so high right away.

“I’m not a chickenshit,” Gonzo says, sounding hurt. “I’m not an unnecessary risk taker.”

“Gonzo,” I say, playing my final card. “She said this dark energy Dr. X brought back is bringing about the end of the world. You. Me. This. Everything will be gone if we don’t find him.”

He sits up and dangles his legs over the side of the bed, swinging them so that his heels bang softly against the metal railings like a chime. “Everything everything?”

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Dulcie said you’re part of this, too. That you’d find your purpose on this trip, and that’s why we were put in the same room together. No accidents. Everything’s connected. In a random sort of way.”

Gonzo’s eyebrows crease into furry caterpillars of concentration. “So, like, when’s this big mission supposed to go down?”

“Tonight. Right now.”

Gonzo stares at me. “Dude, this is insane! You know, we probably need shots wherever we’re going. I’ve only got one roll of my special toilet paper—”

“We can get more. Gonzo, this is my only chance to stay alive, okay?”

“I don’t know, man. I gotta talk it over with my mom.” He reaches for his cell and I pull it away.

“No. Sorry. If we go, we can’t tell anyone. They’ll try to stop us. It has to be a secret.”

“Dude, my mom will freak.” Gonzo’s breathing gets shallow and wheezy. He grabs for his ever-present inhaler, his version of a blankie, and puffs away.

“Gonzo, if Dulcie’s right, in two weeks, your mom will be dead.” I toss his cell at him. “Do what you want. But I’m going to find Dr. X. And I’m leaving tonight.”

I throw my backpack on the bed. All I’ve got are a few pairs of clean underwear and the clothes I came in with. My jeans feel strange against my legs; they wake my skin up. I grab the puke-yellow bin with its array of helpful products—toothbrush, toothpaste, scratchy tissues, mouthwash, comb, and lotion—and dump the contents inside, tossing the bin back on the bedside table.

Gonzo’s got his chubby hands on his hips like a weary camp counselor. “Dude, you are insane.”

“Yeah. Documented.”

“All right,” he says with a sigh. “Give me a minute to get dressed. I’m going with your bovine ass.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Which Treats of Our Daring Escape from St. Jude’s and Our Talk with a Stinky Dude in a Tinfoil Hat

Nurses are a little like cops—they’re never around when you need them. But when you want to avoid them, they are everywhere.

“How are we gonna get past the nurses’ station?” Gonzo asks, panicked, as we open the door a crack and peek into the long corridor that leads from our room, past the nurses to the bank of elevators around the corner.

He has a point. This would be an ideal time for somebody around here to flatline like they always do on TV shows, all the bells and whistles going off and creating a big, noisy distraction. But this isn’t a TV show; it’s an actual hospital with sick people doing what sick people do best, which is largely to lie around with a minimum of fanfare.

“This is a bad idea. Let’s blow it off,” Gonz says.

“Don’t chicken out on me.”

“I’m not! It’s just, I mean, come on, dude. This is so not possible.”

My eyes scan the corridor for something useful. Glory’s standing at the nurses’ station, gossiping with two other women sitting behind computer screens. She’s wearing her mauve scrubs today. I know the angel pins ring her neck. Someone says something amusing, and Glory laughs. “Oh Lord, help me, girl,” she says in that accent that sounds like music. Off to our right is a red Exit sign that I know has to lead to stairs.

“Come on,” I say, pulling Gonzo out behind me. “Don’t look up. Just keep moving.”

The bright lights of the corridor wash over us in waves. A maid comes by with her disinfecting cart. A doctor strides past, trailing residents like a kite’s tail. Visitors wander carrying overly festive flowers and balloons. The gifts are a lie meant to disguise the fear and worry hiding in their eyes.

I don’t want to die here. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.

My right leg twitches and I will it to keep functioning. For now, it’s gotten the message. We round the corner and there are the stairs.

For some reason, I turn back for a final sweep of the hall, and when I do, I see Glory has left the nurses’ station. Clipboard in hand, she’s heading for her rounds. In fifteen minutes tops, she’ll pull into our room for a temperature/blood pressure/pulse rate check and all hell will break loose. I’d hoped for a longer head start. Shit.

“What’s the matter?” Gonz asks.

“We need to move,” I say, pushing into the stairwell for the long climb down.

* * *

When the hydraulic front doors of St. Jude’s release us into the world, the sky is the blue-going-to-purple of late sunset. Above the praying-mantis-style lights of the parking lot, bashful stars flutter like they’re not sure whether it’s okay to show their full light just yet. The air is warm and sweet. I breathe in as much of it as my lungs will hold. It hurts in a good way, like my insides are holding a deep stretch.

“Ah shit. Taste that air, man. So good.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now what?” Gonzo asks, looking left and right like a wanted man.

“We need to get out of here. Got your cell?”

He pats his bag. “Yeah.”

“Great. Call for a cab.”

“What’s the number?”

“I don’t know. Call Information.”

“That’s, like, a dollar seventy-five. My mom will kill me.”

“Gonzo, she’s gonna kill you for breaking out of the hospital and going on an unscheduled road trip with me. Calling Information’s kind of incidental, don’t you think?”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Gonzo grumbles, but he punches in the three digits anyway, and ten minutes later, a battered cab picks us up on Eldorado Street, two blocks from the hospital.

“Where to?” the guy asks, flipping on the meter.

“Good question.” Gonzo glares at me.

This would be a good time for Dulcie to show herself, give us a little divine intervention, put her money where her “there are no accidents, my friend” mouth is.

The meter goes up another fifteen cents and we haven’t even moved. I’m waiting for a sign. This is what it’s come to: I’m now believing in supernatural visions of punk-rock angels and last-ditch missions to save the universe/my life and random signs to point the way forward. Right. I’m just about to say, “Okay, you got me—game’s over. Let’s go back to the hospital and laugh it up about this over a nice cafeteria tray of gelatinized mystery meat” when I see something glinting over the rooftops. It’s a sign, all right. A large, peeling billboard advertising the Roadrunner bus depot. The smiling roadrunner is in a full run, going so fast that one of his feathers flies loose behind him. JUST FOLLOW THE FEATHER TO BIFROST ROAD, the sign says.

Follow the feather.

It’s not trumpets or thunderclaps, but it’s the best we’ve got right now.

“Bus station,” I say at last, hoping the prions in my brain are right.

The bus depot has been carved out of dirty tile, ancient plastic benches, half-empty candy machines, and overflowing trash cans. It’s run by people who were offered a chance at a job in hell or the bus depot and lost the coin toss. Also, it smells like piss.

Some grizzled man in a janitor’s uniform is swishing dirty water around on the floor with an even filthier mop. An empty information board hangs from the low ceiling, taking up most of the middle of the mostly deserted room. No buses. No info. Nothing to go on.

“What now?” Gonzo asks.

The clerk at the ticket counter doesn’t even move his little partition when we get up there.

“Hi,” I say. “Um, there’s nothing on the information board.”

“A-yup.” He flips the page in his comic book without looking up.

“Great. Thanks for that,” Gonzo mutters.

“When’s the next bus?” I ask.

“Not till seven-o-five tomorrow mornin’. But y’all cain’t stay here. Ten minutes till closin’. Won’t open up again till six a.m.”

“Okay, thanks.” I leave the window and sink onto a bench.

“I told you this was wack.” Gonzo sucks down a mouthful of asthma medicine.

Signs, signs. Dulcie said to look for the “seemingly random.” How do you look for the random? Doesn’t the random generally find you and that’s what makes it random?

A hollowed-out, gray-skinned dude who smells like pee sits next to us. It’s the same guy I saw in the parking lot the night we went to Luigi’s. He’s still wearing his tinfoil hat. “What are you boys doing?”

“Saving the world,” Gonzo says, scooting away.

“Ah. Good. It’s going to end, you know. It’s all going to shit. That’s why I got me one of these.” He points to his wrinkled silvery cap.

“Hank, you need to let these boys be, now.” The guy with the mop has reached us.

“Piss off,” the old guy snaps. He takes out a bag and inspects the things inside.

“’Scuse me,” the janitor says. “Could you lift yer feet, please? I need to get that spot.”

Dutifully, Gonz and I raise our legs, drawbridge style, and he mops underneath.

“Dude, there’s no bus tonight,” Gonzo says. “Give it up.”

The old homeless guy stops rummaging through his bag. “Yes there is. There is one! It’s downstairs waiting.”

I look to Mop Guy for confirmation. He stops long enough to wipe his sweaty brow with his arm. “Well, there is one tonight, but it ain’t on the regular schedule. It’s private. The Fleur-de-Lys.”

“That sounds like a porn thing,” Gonzo whispers nervously. “Does that sound porny to you?”

I ignore him. “Where’s it go?”

“Where you think it goes?” the homeless guy says. “New Orleans. That there’s the Mardi Gras bus, son. It’s Mardi Gras time.”

“Thanks.”

“You welcome,” he says. “Might as well have fun before it all ends.”

“Gonz,” I say, digging in my pocket for cash. “How do you feel about New Orleans?”

“What? You don’t know for sure that’s the right bus.”

“No. I don’t. But it’s the only bus. Look, I know this seems a little half-assed …”

“No, dude. I’d be thrilled if this plan were half-assed. This is, like, no-assed.”

“You’re right. It’s the most no-assed thing I’ve ever done in my life. So am I getting two tickets or one?”

Gonzo rubs his inhaler pump like a talisman. “All right. I’m in. But if we don’t find this Dr. X in New Orleans and see what he’s got for me, I’m on the first bus back.”

“Fair enough.”

I open up my wallet. My credit card, the one my dad gave me to teach me fiscal responsibility, is still there. I’ve got a whopping credit limit of five hundred and fifty dollars.

I run to the window and rap on the bulletproof glass. The clerk barely looks up. “Yup?”

“How much for two tickets on the Fleur-de-Lys?”

With a sigh, the clerk puts his book down. “That’ll be two hundred seventy-eight dollars and fifty-two cents with tax,” he says.

He processes the charge and hands us two tickets, and Gonzo and I race for the last bus of the night.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In Which We Make a Stop in New Orleans and Gonzo Refuses to Eat Fish, Annoying the Crap out of Me and Our Waitress

I mostly sleep on the trip from Texas to New Orleans. Occasionally I open drowsy eyes and catch dreamlike glimpses of the world. Gas stations hawking plastic cups with every fill-up. Cram-packed strip malls featuring the same stores and restaurants. Skeletal dogs picking through trash. Litter-strewn marshes. Crumbling roads snaking under half-finished highways. Factories belching toxic smoke clouds. I take it all in, and for a second, I wonder whether this planet is worth saving. Close to morning, I wake up long enough to see that we’re crossing over some ginormous bridge that seems to stretch out forever. We’re surrounded by water. It’s sort of cool, like I’m floating.

“Lake Pontchartrain Causeway,” the lady across the aisle says. She’s wearing a WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA T-shirt, and under her flowered skirt she has on panty-hose support socks that only come up to her knobby knees. She offers me some of her peanuts. I decline, and she puts them away, pulling out a long thin cigarette that she tucks over the top of her ear. “You got family in Nu’walins?”

“No.”

“Ever been there?”

I shake my head.

“Well, it’s a mighty special place. Or was. What they let get done to it …” She shakes her head. “But we survive, we survive.” She starts singing a little bit of a song to herself. It sounds old and sad and promises a better day. “Law, I hope we get there soon. I can’t wait to have me a smoke. They say smoking kills you, but I been smoking my whole life and I’m healthy as a horse.”

Coughing hard, she turns a matchbook over and over between her fingers, working it like a worry stone. The image on it is familiar, and I cock my head to get a better look. It’s the cover of the Junior Webster album Eubie showed me.

“You heard of the Horn and Ivory Club?” the old lady asks, holding up the book of matches.

“No,” I lie. I don’t really want to get drawn into a conversation.

“Good place. Here. You take these, honey.” She puts the matches in my hand.

“That’s okay.” I try to give them back.

“No. Go on and take it. Souvenir of your first trip to the Big Easy. You never know when they might come in handy.”

“Thanks.” These matches look ancient. They probably can’t light anything for shit. On the flip side the cover reads The Horn & Ivory Club, 141 N. Rampart Street, with a telephone number that starts with letters. I put them in my pocket, lay my head against the seat back, and stare out the window at that bridge that just keeps going on. After a minute, the lady starts to sing her song again, lulling me to sleep.