Warren Ellis - Crooked Little Vein

“We are the FCC,” a loud voice proclaimed. “Take off your clothes and put these orange jumpsuits on.”

“The fuck?” said Herb Boy.

“Pirate radio operations have been reclassified as Broadcast Terrorism. You’re going to be wearing dogs in your asses at Abu Ghraib for the next five years, you dirty bastards.”

“This is community radio!”

“If we wanted communities, we’d make Clear Channel pay us to run them. Put on the hoods, too. No more devil music for you, Radio bin Laden.”

I switched off the radio, miserably, wondering if it was all my fault for listening and daring to enjoy it.

I got a little angry.

Not long after, the passenger-side door opened, and Trix climbed in, grinning.

I took a deep breath and said, “All set?”

“Sure. You should have stayed.” She looked at the dashboard. “What happened to the radio?”

“It broke.”

“Looks like someone kicked it in. Did someone break into the car?”

“Must’ve.” I started up the car. “Let’s go. I need to buy plane tickets.”

“Where are we going?”

“Texas,” I grunted.

She looked at me. Up. And down. And giggled. “Well, they do say everything is bigger there.”

“Oh, ha fucking ha.” I went to adjust my shirt. And found that things had changed.

I guess I’d been in the car a couple of hours. My balls had diminished to an approximation of their standard size. My penis, however, was significantly bigger than I was used to. Like half a dozen times. And, not having rearranged my shirt, I found that I was sticking out of my pants like I was an incompetent salami smuggler.

“They told me that the saline diffuses out in an hour or two,” Trix said. “I guess it migrates on the way.”

She leaned in way too close and whispered, “If that happens to me, my clit is going to look like a pool ball.”

I threw the gearshift and gunned the engine. “You better get some sleep. Neither of us are going to be laying on our fronts tonight.”

“I don’t mind you laying on your back,” Trix said.

“I’m going to order plane tickets and make a phone call, and then I’m going to get so drunk that I cannot see. You can find something to do tonight, right?”

“Sure. I’m going to jerk off like a freak. Want to watch?”

“Jesus, Trix…”

“What is wrong with you, Mike?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you! I’m all tingly as hell, I’m hornier than a dozen rabbits, I’ve seen you looking at me, and suddenly you’re a monk. Are you scared of me?”

“Of course I’m not goddamn scared of you.”

“Well, you’re pissing me off, anyway. You want me to go home tomorrow?”

“You want me to buy you a ticket home?”

“That’s not what I asked. Do you want me to go?”

“I’ll buy you a ticket home, if you want.”

“What are you, eight? Answer the question, Mike.”

“No.”

“Christ! What no? No to me leaving?”

“No, I’m not eight.”

“Mike, I could snap your neck using only my pussy lips right now.”

“Oh, for…”

I pulled the car over, in sight of the highway back to the hotel.

“Trix… No, I don’t want you to go. If I’ve been shit at hiding that I look at you sometimes, then I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel uncomfortable. If you want to go because I’m being creepy, then I’ll buy you a ticket, pay you for your time, and we’re cool. And I’m sorry. Okay?”

Trix sighed. Looked out the window. Looked back at me.

“Mike. I am asking you to have sex with me.”

“…oh.”

“Oh? Did the easy-reading version work?”

If you think I’m telling you about having sex with Trix, you’re insane.

I think it’s finally going down,” Trix said.

I took a look. “Yeah. You no longer have girl-balls.”

She gave that little tinkling giggle and snuggled into my arm. “I have decided that we need to do that more often.”

“Fill our bits with salty water?”

She bit my nipple. “No. The other thing. Although, you know…”

“No chance. One-time thing. I’m not carrying my nuts around in a wheelbarrow for you.”

“And I thought you liked me. Didn’t you have to make a phone call?”

“Shit. So I did. Someone distracted me.”

“So it’s all my fault now?”

“Absolutely.” I kissed her hair. “I’ll call him later. He’ll still be awake.”

“Who do you need to talk to?”

“Bob Ajax. Guy I knew back in my Chicago days. He moved to San Antonio a few years ago. A little local knowledge might help.”

“You don’t look happy about it.”

“Oh, I like Bob fine. He’s a good guy. What bothers me is who we have to go and see.” I sighed, tried to relax. “Doesn’t matter. Not right now.”

“No. It doesn’t. You stay right here. How long since you last got laid?”

“Well, I remember saying, Mr. Lincoln, when am I going to meet a nice girl?”

“Seriously.”

“Since my girlfriend left me, pretty much. A few years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“A few years? I would have died. It would have healed over.”

“If you check the condom, you’ll find a bunch of gray pebbles in the end.”

“Oh, that’s gross.”

“You bring out the best in me. I need a cigarette.”

Cold and sticky, wobbly knees, rooting around in my jacket, something occurred to me. Because I can’t just leave things alone.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why this.”

She coiled around onto her front, feet on the headboard, and considered me. “I think I want to meet your ex. And kill her for whatever she did to your brain.”

“No, really. Was it just because…?”

“Because what? Because your dick was full of brine? Because when I’m horny I just jump into bed with the first available live body?”

“No,” I lied, because when she put it like that I sounded like an asshole, and that couldn’t be right. “I just…You weren’t interested in me like…that.”

She stared. “Oh my God, Mike.”

“What? You came for the thesis and the job. I know that. That was the deal, I’m not pissed or anything.”

Her eyes were like saucers. “You. Are. Such. A. Retard.”

“What did I do now?”

“Mike. I wanted to kiss you the first time you made me laugh. But you’re always so…freaked out. By everything. Mike, you’re a really nice guy who made me laugh and you wanted me to go on an adventure with you. You think that happens to me, you know, ever? Do you have any idea when anyone last wanted to talk to me for what was in my head?”

I stood there like an idiot with the cigarettes in my hand, unable to think of anything worth saying.

“I’m not getting through to you, am I?” Trix smiled.

“…um.”

“Okay. Easy-reading version. I wanted to spend time with you and see what happened. I am kind of a big slut, but I don’t give it away for candy bars. I sleep with people I really like. I really like you. I am not here for the money or the thesis. I am here because I really like you, and because you took me on an adventure with you. How’s that?”

“…big slut?”

“Come here.”

I went back to the bed, forgetting the smokes. She reached up, grabbed me by my nipple, and pulled me down.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to continue our trip for as long as it lasts. We are going to learn about each other and be together. We are going to be friends. We will go back to New York and we will still be friends. And we are going to have sex, you know, a lot. Because that’s what I do with my very best friends because it makes us closer and because it is fun. You will agree now.”

“Yes.”

“There. See how easy that was?” She flipped me onto my back and looked at me thoughtfully. “Hm. We may need some ropes.”

“…oh my God.”

“God can’t help you now, Mike. There’s only me here.”

Bob? It’s Mike McGill.”

Bob had acquired a bit of Texas in his accent.

“Mike! Jesus, man, it’s been years! How you been?”

“I followed you out of Chicago. Set up on my own in New York.”

“Good for you, man. Always said you were the smartest guy in the agency. So what’s up?”

“You still in San Antonio?”

He laughed. The laugh had a bit of edge in it. I filed that away, nervously.

“Sure. You need something?”

“Listen, me and my partner need to fly down there today and do some digging. Any chance you could give us some local knowledge?”

“Damn, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Got a flight yet?”

I’d already booked tickets by phone, and gave him the details. That was that, and we hung up.

“Huh,” I said, standing over the phone.

“Problems?” Trix said from the bathroom.

“I don’t know. He didn’t sound right.”

“Define.”

“Nothing ever got to Bob. He was Teflon—everything just slid right off him. Stuff only ever came out when he was drunk. He sounded…not stressed, but edgy. Not like Bob.”

“Been a while since you saw him, though, right? I think I like being your partner, by the way.”

“Well, what the hell else was I going to call you? I couldn’t tell him you were my girlfriend or anything.”

Waited.

“No, you couldn’t,” came her voice.

Shit.

“Friend-with-benefits doesn’t sound too professional, either,” she laughed. Making damn sure I had no idea where things stood.

She tripped out of the bathroom, flames around her eyes. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

“Bob’ll pick us up, we’ll find a hotel, and he’ll give us some background on the next visit.”

“Which is?”

“Ever heard of Roanoke Oil?”

Her face set. “Yes, I have. Serious eco-criminals.”

“I didn’t know that. Well, we’re going to have some fun. Because the thing was bought from our briny friends by the Roanoke family.”

“Oh, wow. That’s interesting. How long ago?”

“Three years, I think.”

“Wow. You know one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around?”

A few things went click click click in my head. And, I don’t know, call it an aftereffect of the exfiltration of vintage semen, call it suddenly becoming uncomfortable with only ever having told her part of the story, call it what you fucking like, I don’t care. But I asked her to sit down, and I told her what the book really was. Told her what I’d been told it was and what it was for.

After a while, she blew out a breath and said, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit.”

“You said that.”

“What do you think he wants it back for?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a magic book. I think it’s a little bit of history that he wants safely swept under his own carpet, rather than floating around out in the world.”

Trix stood up. Sat down again. Thought for a moment. Stood up. “Can I have one of your cigarettes?”

I handed her the pack and the lighter. There was memory in her fingers as she lit up. I felt bad for bringing on a relapse. She sucked the smoke down, and coughed it back out in big blue puffs. “What the fuck are these?”

“They’re organic.”

She looked at the pack. “You smoke cigarettes called ‘American Ghost’? Jesus, Mike. Organic what? Dead bodies?”

“Feeling better?”

“No!”

“Oh.”

She stabbed the cigarette to death in the ashtray. “Mike, I’m working for the White House.”

“It’s an adventure.”

“It’s the government.”

“It’s their money we’re spending. It’s their money I’m giving you. They are paying for our adventure because, well, they’re nuts and they think there’s a magic book on the loose in America. It’s not a magic book. It’s a faintly embarrassing antique that they are handing over stupid amounts of money for me to attempt to return to them. That said—”

Trix found my eyes. “—that said, one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around.”

“Yeah. So you said. What happened?”

“The guy couldn’t get on the ballots. Had worse problems than Nader. Spent a lot of money, but it all fell apart. Indymedia called it Bush Envy. See, what threw people was that he had no experience at all, in anything. He made Ross Perot look like JFK, you know? No one knew what made him think he could win. But, what I’m now thinking is, see, if he had the thing, the book, an actual honest-to-God whole other draft of the Constitution…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. If he’d managed to get into the political fight, he could have, I don’t know, shown it off, or used it as secret leverage…”

“Hold on.” I quickly lit myself a cigarette. “You’re a bit ahead of me. Mentioning him running for office, that put up the red flag, because it’s the first political connection to the book I’ve had so far. But you think it could actually leverage someone into office?”

“Don’t know. I mean, if your guy honestly believes it’s full of…what? Precepts by which America can be healed? If your guy believes it, maybe someone else is crazy enough to. A book that can save America, signed by all the Founders…”

“…hell. That’s interesting. That’s really interesting. We need to get on a plane.”

“Hell, yeah,” she said.

At the departure gate, a drunken airport security woman was handing out box cutters to the passengers.

“My asshole boyfriend’s in San Antone,” she slurred, pressing the plastic handle, sticky with beery sweat, into my hand. “Take over the plane, drop it on the fucking Alamo.”

Trix and I dropped the things into the nearest wastebasket. I looked back to see a team of cops lay into her with batons. “I’m white, you bastards!” she yelled, until one of them shot her with a Taser. The cops gathered around and silently watched her flop around on the floor like a fish out of water.

“Just another day out at the zoo,” Trix whispered. “Keep walking, Mike.”

Bob Ajax was waiting for us in the arrivals lounge at the San Antonio airport. Huge and fifty, with a grin like he’d just cheated God out of his savings.