The End of FUN (34 page)

This all happened right around the time of the next big wave of the Avis Mortem—thousands of seabirds washing up on the coast of Oregon. I remember because when I was at the store that night I had to watch and give a YAY! for CNN Action IU
™
Important Update. It was a pretty bleak scene, all right: waves white with birds, bulldozers crisscrossing the sand, smoldering incineration piles—a stunning ecological collapse to be sure, but I had other things on my mind.

Katie was coming home soon. She was coming home in a week, then she was coming home in a couple days, and then she was coming home tomorrow. Never in my life had time passed so quickly. It was like standing in a freakin' wind tunnel.

Instead of telling her the truth, I told her I'd come down with something and it was probably contagious, and then I decided to go see what other kinds of trouble I could get into—which is how I ended up at the King Cowboy Casino that night, sneaking shots of dead man's liquor into my jumbo iced tea, watching the Lakers get their asses handed to them by the Jazz in the second game of the Western Conference play-offs. I was waiting for Oso to show up. He'd sent me a message earlier:

He arrived in the middle of the third quarter dressed all in black—black turtleneck, black jeans, black shoes—and holding in his hands what appeared to be a block of Valu-Best
®
medium cheddar cheese (YAY!). He draped an arm over my shoulder.

“It's the birds, right?”

“What?”

“The melancholy pose, bro! The slumping shoulders. It's the whole bird die-off thing, right? I know just how you feel. That shit will drill a hole in the middle of your head and suck out all the fun.”

“Yeah, the birds.”

I didn't feel like telling him about Shiloh or Katie. I just didn't.

“Maybe this will help.” He dug a hand into his jeans and came out with a fistful of something and held it under the bar where only I could see. Resting on his palm were eight little pills—four green and four yellow.

“What are those?”

“Those are Rectrine, bro. And those green dudes are Follicol.”

I've never really been all that into pills. I guess my experience on medication kind of put me off the scene. But I was feeling edgy, so I figured, why not?

Oso handed me my share and I drank them down. Then I asked him what Rectrine and Follicol were.

“You don't know Rectrine?” he said.

“I don't think so.”

“Really? You don't remember the ads? ‘The all-natural solution'? This was maybe two years ago? There was a blond lady in a wheat field? And some pictures of clouds?”

“Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Well, here's the thing. On its own, Rectrine is merely a colorectal stimulant—but you mix it with plain old over-the-counter Follicol hair growth for men, and it's a freakin' howl. That's why they call it
werewolfing
, bro!”

“Werewolfing?”

“Also because the Follicol makes you grow hair.
Side effects may include hair growth, auditory hallucinations, nausea, dry mouth, memory loss, spine tingle, ghost limbs, and severe equilibrium deprivation
.”

“Those are just the
side
effects?”

“Yeah, bro! But they pale in comparison to the main event: random energy bursts and creeping euphoria.”

“What the hell is a rectal stimulator?”

“
Colorectal stimulant
. Like a laxative. Thus the cheese.”

“The cheese?”

“The
cheese
, bro! The cheese will plug up our digestive systems and counteract the laxative effect. The cheese is
key
.”

I wasn't so sure about that. Wouldn't the cheese just make it worse? Oso didn't seem to think so. He said that's what everyone who werewolfed did: they ate the cheese. He ripped open the plastic, tore off a big orange hunk, and slapped it into my hand.

“Eat up and hold on, because in forty-five minutes to an hour we are going to be bigger than Jesus.”

Fine. I ate the cheese. In twenty minutes, however, the pain was too much—not the pills, but the loneliness of the bar, the wickedness of man, and the inadequacy of the Utah Jazz, who no matter how good they get will always be from Utah—and that just ruins it somehow, even when they beat up on the Lakers.

Oso was fidgeting around, making a dirty, thumb-printy wolfman action figurine out of the remainder of the cheese—the dude is an artist—but I was in a dark mood. I asked him if this was what he'd meant when he'd said an adventure, sitting in a bar making cheese men. He said it was a part of it, then he bit the head off the wolfman and handed me the rest.

“Come on, bro! It's action time.”

Twenty minutes later we were standing in the shadows of a tree in the yard of a dark split-level house.

“What is this?”

“
La casa de Pedro
,” said Oso. “The home of the leader of Los Ojos de Dios.”

“What are we doing
here
?”

“Going on an adventure, bro.”

This didn't answer my question, but I let it ride for a moment because Oso was busy looking for something in the flower bed. Then he found it. A rock. A fake rock. With a little sliding door on the bottom. And inside the door, a little silver key, gleaming in the moonlight.

“You can't call it breaking and entering if you got a key, bro.”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

“What we're doing here is merely
entering
.”

Actually, the word for it was “trespassing.” But my question was, What were we doing here in the first place?

Oso pulled an envelope from his back pocket. “See this? This here is my exoneration, bro. I'm tired of running. Inside this envelope is the title to my truck, plus a key, plus instructions as to where they can find the truck, plus the rest of the money I owe, plus a note explaining in so many words that this is my final offer and that if they choose to pursue me further, I am taking my story to the cops, where I will sing like a little bird about their multitude of nefarious activities. Pedro and his bros are at the Winnemucca biker festival this weekend. I'm gonna leave this on his pillow for when he gets back.”

“Why not just hand it to him in person?”

“Nah, I want him to understand I'm serious. Imagine the look on his face when he finds out I've been inside his home.”

“Oso—man—are you sure this is a thing you want to be doing?”

“Absolutely, bro. I've got it all planned out. Here's how it goes: with stealth and werewolf-like reflexes I will deposit this exoneration on the pillow of his bed. Next, you and I will drive up to Ass Mountain—one last ride in the creepermobile—hike up to the white-rock
A
, and howl at the moon. Look at it. Have you ever seen anything more freakin' glorious?”

I looked. It was true: a big, fat yellow moon hanging in the sky over Antello.

“And
then
, bro, just as we're peaking, the first golden ray of dawn will
ping
over the hill like a laser, and the light will scour us clean and leave us pure as children, with the white
A
shining on the hillside like a passing grade from God. How's
that
sound?”

I couldn't deny it. It sounded pretty good.

“I'm going in,” said Oso. “You're the lookout. You see something, you give a howl, OK?”

He disappeared into the house, and I took up my post in the yard. It had a bad feeling to it—I mean, the yard did. The grass was too neat, the juniper bushes trimmed into cubes, with little stone statues in the flower beds—the kind of yard that belongs to a person with a home security system.

There was something else, too. I was just beginning to notice it. The air had a strange buzz—or more like a crackle, like someone had turned up the volume on a dead radio station.

Homie
™
popped up.

“Send to voice mail.”

“I said,
Send it to
—”

“Aaron?”

“Oh, hi, Katie.”

“Hi. How's it going?”

“Um, you know….How about you?”

“Well, I'm back.
We're
back. Papa and me. We just got into town. We're staying at the Best Choice Inn out by Walmart.”

“Oh. OK.”

“He, um, kind of wants to meet you.”

“Who?”

“My dad. It's not anything bad. He just gets really, um,
excited
about things….And so I was wondering, what are you doing in the MMMOOORRRNNNING…?”

Katie's voice had gone real low and slow. Not soft—
low
. Like someone playing a church organ underwater, with lots of slow vibrato. Like
wub wub wub wub wub.
I brought up the equalizer and messed with the levels. It didn't help. What was going on? I slapped Homie
™
, and the sound reverberated into the night. I scratched my head, and that reverberated, too.

My hand had reverb. Why the hell did my hand have reverb?

The pills
. Right. THE PILLS. YAY! for Follicol
™
hair growth for men and BritLabs
®
Rectrine
™
, and their potent interactive chemistry tingling up my spine.

Silence now.

Katie was done talking.

It was my turn to reply.

“Tomorrow morning?” I said. My voice sounded like a muted trombone, just
wah wah wah
. “What time again?”

“
Wub wub wub
,” she answered.

“OK, cool.” (
Wah wah
.) “Talk to you later.” (
Wah wah wah
.)

The nausea was hitting me hard as I flopped to the lawn. Everything was swirly. The trees wouldn't stand still. I thought about puking, and even tried a little, but nothing would come up. My retching sounded like a squeak toy.

Then suddenly the nausea passed, replaced by something else. Something different. It took me a moment to figure out what it was—and then I figured it out. I had to use the bathroom. I
really
had to use the bathroom. What about the cheese? Screw the cheese. I
really
,
REALLY
had to go—and that's when I noticed the light.