Last Call (Last Call 1)

The highway was a straight line in the twilight, a tenuous link between the dark horizon so far ahead and the red horizon so far behind. The old Suburban barreled along steadily, squeaking and rocking but showing a low temperature and a full tank of gas in the green radiance of its gauges. On either side of the highway the desert was pale sand, studded as far out as the eye could see with widely spaced low markers that looked like, but couldn't have been, sprinkler heads.

The ember of Mavranos's Camel glowed as he inhaled, and half an inch of ash fell onto his already gray-dusted jeans. He exhaled, and smoke curled against the inside of the cracked windshield. "So what's it like," he asked quietly, "Vegas?"

Crane inhaled deeply on his own cigarette. This section of desert was far bleaker and more humbling than the stretch before Baker had been, without even any broken glass along the shoulder, and the small smells and sounds and glows inside the truck were precious. "I haven't been in twenty years."

"What you remember."

"It's … pure," Crane said. "It's self-indulgence with no … no marbling."

"Sounds like a lean steak, no marbling."

Crane leaned forward to tap off his ash, but it fell to the floor. He leaned back. "Yeah. Yeah, did you ever read about that chicken heart that scientists took out of a—a chicken, and kept alive? The heart's been alive for like fifty years now, and it's grown to the size of a couch. Las Vegas is self-indulgence with every other part of life trimmed away, and it's grown to a size that's freakish. Not just grown like a city, you know, buildings and suburbs and all, but … grown to fill all the space, psychically. And what you get, the result—probably like the chicken heart—is—is blandness, with a kind of burnt aftertaste."

"How do they treat you? The casino people."

"Oh, everybody's real cheerful, real helpful. The cops see you walking down the sidewalk with a drink in your hand, they just smile and nod. Everybody's that way around the casinos, which is to say downtown around Fremont Street and out on the Strip. They don't have to say 'screw you' because they already are screwing you, in more ways than you know, and in more orifices than you knew you had."

Mavranos took a gulp from the can of beer that had been catching ashes between his thighs. "Sounds like fun."

For a while Crane watched the monotonous pavement rushing at them and tumbling away under the humming wheels. "It is, actually."

Ozzie had begun wheezing in the back seat, but now he coughed and shifted on the seat and resumed breathing normally.

"Bother you," Mavranos asked Crane quietly, "me drinking beer?"

"Nah. I'm full of that damned tamarind stuff—couldn't think of drinking anything."

"How you think you're gonna do, being on the wagon?" Crane thought of the beer he'd chugged in Baker. "I don't think it'll be any hassle. It's just a habit I've got into, like coffee in the morning, or parting your hair on the left. I'll probably just replace it with … I don't know, Ovaltine, or Bazooka gum, or crossword puzzles." He yawned. His cigarette had burned down to the filter, and he poked it into the ashtray and dug another one out of the pack.

"You don't figure you're an alcoholic."

"I don't know. What's the definition of 'alcoholic'?"

Mavranos shrugged, staring at the highway ahead. "Can't stop."

"Well, look at me. I stopped … hours ago, and I'm fine."

"Settles that," said Mavranos, nodding. A big Harley-Davidson full-dress bike roared past them, its wide, light-studded rear end looking like the transom of a receding speedboat; in a few moments it was just a spot of red light in the darkness ahead, and its engine was a distant whine.

Crane hadn't slept for about forty hours, and he was very tired—he was thinking of curling up against the door and napping for a few dozen miles—and Mavranos's truck had a constant background noise of rattles and slidings and clanks and squeaks, so he was sure that the voice he seemed to be hearing from the back was imaginary.

… it all anyway, and if they want to borrow it, ask them what happened to the weed whip thing, or our forks, and you remember what Steve said about that plant he had in his front area by the door and they stepped on it …

"What are we doing out here?" he asked sleepily.

"We're off to see the Wizard," said Mavranos. In a piping voice he said, "Do you think the Wizard can cure my cancer?"

"I don't see why not," said Crane in an exhausted soprano. "We're going to see him about saving my foster sister from getting shot in the face like her mom, and maybe even to see if I can keep my real dad from stealing my body."