Seven Deadly Pleasures (16 page)

Yes.

The program was his now, was it not?

Melvin fought with this question. Part of him wanted to shut the thing down immediately for the sake of legality and morality. The other side of him, however, the professor, the theorist, and yes, the inner child, could not help but marvel at the possibilities of this device. Could it actually work? Did he have the courage to give it a test run? Would he get caught?

He thought of that big, dark warehouse again. Garbage in, garbage out. And the mobsters were nothing but conduits anyway. Stooges working the sale. The ones in charge came from beyond. It was even possible that they did not have the corrupt intentions that their association with McGillicutty and Delsordo suggested. Did they understand our system of law and ethics to begin with? Didn't the presence of the program itself suggest a certain need to be educated in the ways of humanity? They were most probably scientists, and it was entirely possible that they were under the assumption that those with the power to make first interplanetary contact would have been our world leaders.

Melvin gave a scan to the subject directory and found no mention of McGillicutty or Delsordo. Of course not. Moreover, there was probably a failsafe even if their social security numbers were discovered, that which would keep them forever immune to scrutiny. The circumstance that built this relationship across worlds was meant to remain secret.

And whether the alleged aliens were aware that they were in league with criminals was not finally the point. While Melvin would have dearly loved to have had the opportunity to unravel the politics of all this, chart the history of the initial encounter, and communicate with beings from another world, he did not have McGillicutty's nor Delsordo's initial exploratory technology on hand. He had the spawn, and the question was whether or not he had the balls to use what he had accidentally pirated. Friendly aliens or not, Melvin was trespassing. And stooges or bosses, those "conduits" did have nasty reputations for taking matters into their own hands. At least their fathers had.

On the other side of that, the horse was already out of the barn now, wasn't it? The thing was
on
his computer. What difference would a test run make at this point?

Melvin spent the evening tabbing through the subject directory. He saw plain people, rich people, famous people, faceless people, beautiful people. What would it be like to read their thoughts for five minutes? He ran scenarios through his head of various journeys, and countered them with possible consequences. His eyelids were drooping. He needed a fresh start here. He needed to sleep on this.

Melvin backed out to screen number two and dimmed it for safe keeping. He killed the light and climbed into bed with the residue of fluorescent green still dancing in his eyes.

That thought tailed Melvin through the first stages of sleep and followed him into the R.E.M. state. All night, he tossed and turned, in and out of erratic dreams in which he became a melodramatic, cartoon villain. He wore a top hat and black coattails. He had a thick, waxed, handlebar moustache. He wrung his hands, twisted his lips to a sneer, and gloated over his evil machine. His shoulders and arms then began moving against his will. His dance became erratic and violent. One of his hands ripped off at the wrist, the other at the elbow. From the shadows above, blue alien fingers worked the strings. He'd woken in a cold sweat.

Melvin cracked a window to breathe in the smell of the pines, winter's kiss on this crisp morning's breeze. He buttoned his sweater. Now that he was showered and Dot was gone, he was free to consider the mind-melding time machine that sat amidst his clutter of private projects.

"Oh, bug off," Melvin thought. The recurring memory of her criticism distracted him.

She was unable to share in the thrill of creation because her eyes could not see past the bald results. To her, the room was not some storybook playground laden with the very landscape of her husband's potential, but rather a metaphor for failure, a wasteland of bogus inventions that refused to function properly.

The hair suddenly rose on the back of Melvin's neck as if he were being watched. It was the computer with the words
WELCOME TO PASSIVE PASSENGER
smiling across its screen.

"I work properly,"
it seemed to whisper.

"Let's find out," Melvin said. He sat down at the terminal. A final vision of himself as a fifth grader reciting the Pledge of Allegiance came into his head, and he combated the vision of purity with cold logic.

He backed off to the Subject Directory, closed his eyes, tabbed multiple screens in, and pointed his finger. He opened his eyes.

"Floyd Lynch—Truck Driver."

Melvin tabbed back to screen number four.

O—ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

Melvin entered his own.

S—ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

Melvin looked at his watch. Ten seconds until 9:10 A.M. He counted it down. At precisely 9:10, Melvin hit the RETURN button and activated Passive Passenger.

It was immediate. There was no sense of travel, no supernatural feeling of exit and entry, but an instant exchange of physical presence. A moment before, Melvin Helitz had been sitting in his bedroom, but now pushed through the doors of Lucy's Bar and Grill, hungry, pissed off, and ready to drink anything that would smooth his raging hangover.

In the back of his mind, Melvin had imagined that the experience would be somehow removed, like being in a theater and watching a movie shot in first person. But he was there, not only with Floyd Lynch, but as Floyd Lynch, the finest West Virginia had to offer, thank you very much. He felt the greasy perspiration that had built up already that morning around the dirty inner band of Floyd's Mountaineers baseball cap and down the back of his underwear. He had a cut on the ring finger of his meaty left hand from breaking down cardboard and carelessly slipping with a box-cutter last week on Bay #2, and the small of his back was killing him. The thick smell of sausage, lard, and home fries doused in onions sickened Floyd in a vague, friendly sort of way that made Melvin know that Floyd isolated the smells as those of preferred breakfasts most mornings after a run. Not today. American fire-water was going to do just fine. He walked heavily past the seating area and its steel booths with maroon, plastic cushions. A busboy moved out of his way.

The place was so busy that there were a few stragglers eating breakfast in the bar at dark tables by the windows. The shades were pulled, and Floyd's eyes adjusted to the shadows. He ambled past the pool tables on the right, and approached the long mahogany bar. Three green paper lampshades hung above it with old tobacco smoke suspended underneath like veils. Though Lucy's advertised all-night service, the idea of cocktails at 9:00 in the morning only seemed to appeal to an old-timer at the far corner of the bar wearing old gray overalls, weathered boots, and a John Deere hat pulled over his eyes. A Garth Brooks song came from a vintage jukebox that actually played vinyl.

"Double, Jack Daniel's," Floyd said. The bartender, a stiff, quiet type, set down the Pilsner glass he had been wiping and chucked down a cardboard coaster. A rock glass followed, and he filled it two-thirds.

"Two-fifty."

"Tab it," Floyd said. The barkeep left the bottle within reach, and Floyd grabbed his glass. He downed it, refilled it, and Melvin had a sudden, clear understanding of why alcoholics drank for the purpose of remedy. The jolt of whiskey was like dark fire, deliciously burning the throat, warming the stomach, and coursing into Floyd's throbbing headache with kneading, soothing fingers. Everything loosened, and suddenly Melvin felt Floyd's arms and thighs come to the forefront of his perception of personal physicality. Gone was the idea that the stomach creeping over the beltline defined "Floyd Lynch," and the backache from lifting fifty-pound crates from concrete dock to rusty truck bed slipped far into the background like a dream. The ghost of a teenage Floyd, starting center for the Jarvisville Panthers, rose right up behind the eyes, and concentrated old feelings of power in the junctions of the knees, the elbows, the hips, and the balls of his feet. Floyd sat up straighter and glanced to his right. A thin woman with straight black hair had just taken a seat two stools down. Her back was to the bar, elbows propped backward upon it, and she watched the game of pool that began to unfold in front of her with mild interest. She pushed out her lower lip and blew upward to fluff her bangs.

She wore a sleeveless black T-shirt and cut-off blue jean shorts. She had those silver and turquoise Injun earrings and a braided ankle band. Black mascara, purple gypsy eye shadow, no lipstick, she had the face of a thief and the legs of a hooker.

"Oh, let this get good while there's still time," Melvin thought.

"Hey there, sister," Floyd said, as if in response to Melvin's plea. "When I wake y'all up tomorrow morning, should I nudge you or call you?" She looked over, and let a half-smile tug at the side of her mouth.

"I don't know, baby. The day is still young."

Floyd felt his mood brighten, and he was glad for it. This morning had been a shit-poor experience, and he wanted nothing more than to forget about it. Melvin laughed silently. It was like that old joke, "Tell someone not to think about pink elephants, and that's all they can think about," for the morning Floyd wanted to push out of memory projected through to their shared present like a technicolor movie. The flash took but a moment, barely enough time to equal a breath, but Melvin was amazed at how well it familiarized him with the heart and soul of Floyd Lynch.

The day had started fair to middling considering the raging drunk Floyd hadn't quite slept off from the night before. He had shown up bright and early at the Red Arrow Trucking Depot with a pounding headache, a steaming cup of black coffee, and dark glasses. He got double overtime on Saturdays, and he needed to make these two deliveries to cover some bad online bets he'd made on college hoops the week before. The rig was pre-loaded, and Floyd had headed toward Clarksburg with nothing on his mind but making it through the run.

"Base to Lynch, over."

Floyd grabbed the radio mike, stretched the curly cord, and pressed in the button. "Lynch here, over."

"Ahh, Floyd, uh y'all got to double back here right away, over."

"What the fuck for!" Lynch shouted into the radio despite the FCC violations he had been warned of. He could almost feel the dispatcher cringe on the other end.

"Uh, Scutter Drywall called the vendor for the pro number of that ceiling wire that come in late yesterday. The guy chewed me a new butt asking where it was, over."

Floyd smashed the mike back into its holder and looked for a place to turn around. This was bad news three times over. First, Scutter Drywall was in Glenville, a hick town that sat at the tail end of Route 33 West, the twistiest, turniest stretch of back road in all West Virginia. Second of all, Floyd had spied the Scutter invoice back in the warehouse and noticed that the rig assigned to it was #3, an old 1982 International cab-over shitbucket with a 6V-53 Detroit engine and two-speed rear end. This meant a trans so full of slop that finding gear was like sticking a cold virgin with a limp pecker. And third and most finally, the Scutter order was still piled by load dock 5, and since Floyd wasn't union, he'd now have to help load five hundred bundles of twelve-foot wire like an African slave-boy.

Things got worse quick. Route 50 Westbound was under construction and cut to one lane. And the moment Floyd pulled on he got stuck behind an old Toyota Starlet that refused to break forty. Floyd ran right up its butt, close enough to see the weather stains on the bumper stickers. One said "Save the Trees," and the other said, "Lick Bush."

Floyd bristled with rage since this flatlander got to display dirty shit about our commander-in-chief whilst he had been forced by a statie to scrape off his own that read, "I shoot Muslims on sight." He squinted and saw the frightened eyes stare back at him in the rearview. The kid had small circular wire frames and hair all over the place. The little fuck was probably the type to parade the White House steps and hand out leaflets defending the rights of faggots to marry each other, adopt little Asian rug rats and collect benefits. Floyd suddenly ached to spy just one piece of left lane so he could sneak up, run the little shit off the road, blare the horn and yell "God bless America" as he passed. When the kid turned off exit seven in fact, Floyd almost followed him to carry through the urge. Almost. After all, he was a professional.

The rest of the run was a slushy haze. The extra labor, the back and forth, and the complaints and questionings and demands of the given warehouse managers receiving his shipments blurred in a vision of a headache that had began as a hot needle in the middle of his forehead and spiraled out to a massive pounder. But he had made his runs without puking. At least he had that. After all, as long as a man could hold his liquor, it never really had a hold on him, now did it?

With that thought, the memory faded and Melvin found himself once again with the present tense of Floyd Lynch. The big trucker downed another shot of J.D., hauled up, adjusted his trousers and plopped himself down by the thin woman's left elbow.

"What's your name, darling?"

"What's yours?"

"Floyd Lynch, ma'am."

"Well, mine's Elaina Mayberry. My friends call me 'Lay-May.'"

Floyd winked.

"Lay-May, your legs are so purty I'd drag my balls through a mile of broken glass just to hear you piss in a tin cup." Her full smile revealed a gap between her two front teeth.