Rider Blue: Part One free porn video

DEDICATION: This story is dedicated to Brett Lynn, an author on this site, and to all the people like Tony Blair (the British PM) who turned a punk rock hobby into something slightly more estimable. Rider Blue [Part One] By Jacquie Windsor JAN 2003 1. Perry reluctantly moved into the ground floor of the old rooming house at Stern's invitation. His father, a cop, and his mother, a municipal clerk at the courthouse, disapproved of Perry's radical music and teenager's apathy. Not that he was a teenager--Perry was already twenty-two and just as shiftless as in his teens. Stern had been a school chum since about the fifth grade. His father had died of cancer when the youth was only twelve, and had left him a trust fund that became Stern's on his twenty-first birthday. Perry had brought his collection of electronic paraphernalia with him. Dixon helped him move his stuff, mostly computer and television equipment, from his folks' place in the northwest part of the city. Neither Perry nor Stern had bothered learning how to drive. Dixon knew how to drive, but his small coupe was insufficient for the task at hand. For that he needed to borrow his father-in-law's Dodge truck. The second trip in, Perry noticed a tall and slender girl watching him from the top of the stairs. The third trip in, the girl was joined by two others. He was too busy with the bulky stuff to bother saying hello. The last thing Dixon brought inside was a case of beer. Although traditionally the person moving would buy the beer, Dixon knew that he was the only one with a job, and gladly bought for the both of them. Stern was home all the time, but feigned sleep to avoid helping his friends. He'd already told Perry that he could set up in what passed for a living room. The young man showed up, scratching his black hair, wearing only his underwear, just as Dixon and Perry popped the caps of their first beer. "Who's the girls upstairs?" Perry asked. "Maybe we could have them join for a beer or something." "Oh? The transsexuals?" Stern acknowledged. "Well, they don't drink, first of all, and--" "They're not real girls?" Perry sipped from his bottle, looking perplexed. "Arlene and Lisa aren't," answered Stern, "but Wanda is. You can't really tell unless you knew it, though." The black-haired young man popped one of his homemade cassettes into the stereo and turned up the volume. "Minor Threat" was one of his favourite bands. He'd ridden a bus all the way to Calgary to see them at Ten-Foot Henry's once. Conversation among the three continued unabated despite the churning hardcore that shook the windows. 2. Harold Lawson, a prominent Saskatoon attorney, drove down a back lane towards the pre-ordained meeting place. His BMW looked out of place among the rusty Chevies and Plymouths parked along the alley. He halted behind The Spandau, a former adult theatre converted into a club. He watched the young people gather around the exit, drinking beer and showing off their costumes borrowed from films like "Suburbia" and "Rude Boy". He waited for Kingfish, a dopey, malevolent kid who'd been expelled from "the scene" in Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary and Edmonton. Mostly, the young man with the shaved head and weightlifter's physique was scorned for proudly displaying the "NF" tattoo on his cock. His unpopularity wasn't just because of showing his cock to people. Rather, the punks in most of the prairie cities were adamantly opposed to the philosophy of the National Front, Aryan Nations, or any other of the fractious groups scattered across the North American interior. Kingfish was hard to control, but the proprietors of The Spandau discovered that his value as a physical presence could be harnessed by giving him responsibility. So the muscle-bound wannabe fascist became the bouncer at the place. The owners were simply business students at the University of Saskatchewan who fostered punk rock as a matter of making money. Their club was more popular than anything similar west of Chicago or east of Los Angeles. There were a few good places in Texas, but they catered mostly to homegrown talent and shunned touring groups by and large. Punk rock acts travelled only by van or bus, so most of them chose to get from LA to New York, and back, through Canada instead of through the na?ve American plains states. "Did your crew get the shit I need?" the lawyer asked as the burly youth got into the front passenger seat of the luxury sedan. "Not only just," answered Kingfish. "We got a rig stashed out at the Atikokan Barn up the 785." "What kind?" "Well, there's an International Harvester and a White Freightliner," Kingfish responded. "And the usual shit--boom boxes, some catering equipment, whole shitloads of tools, and a few gate valves, pop valves, packing and that there." "Good stuff, Shane," replied Lawson, using Kingfish's given name, "I know I got a buyer in Missoula for the rig and the tools, so you did good." He handed the bouncer a bag containing several gelatine capsules in return for the keys to the barn. Kingfish pocketed the drugs and warned the lawyer about calling him Shane. "It's Kingfish and only ever Kingfish, you motherfucker." 3. Crazy Johnny Loo pulled out quickly from the front of the municipal administration building where he'd dropped off Lan Tranh, his sister- in-law. Most of the Vietnamese community were related, beneficiaries of the Canadian policy of encouraging immigration on the basis of kinship. If one person in a family qualified for landed immigrant status, the whole family was often welcomed. There were a few bad seeds in the bunch and Crazy Johnny typified them. He had one thing in mind, to curry favour with larger families in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary, with a purpose to run the lucrative drug and prostitution businesses on the prairies. His wife was related to a powerful syndicate leader from Saigon, before it fell to the communists. It was odd that, in the intervening years, the chief source of capital investment in the recently united country of Vietnam was from old guard families who had firmly established branches in North America. The Saskatchewan leader of the Circle X's, Crazy Johnny's gang, funnelled profits from their unambiguously illegal businesses in Canada, through accounts held in credit unions, into finance companies in Ho Chi Minh City. But there was trouble in Saskatoon ever since Metal Machine and The Skull Riders had made peace. The biker gangs were a lot tougher nuts to crack than the slough of aboriginal gangs that centred on The Peg. War Paint, the biggest of the native gangs, was notorious for importing excise-free cigarettes from the First Nations reservations on the Ontario-New York border, crossing the St. Lawrence each night by watercraft from an American reservation to the Canadian side. They were bought over simply, by issuing fake temporary debit cards provided by Vancouver Asian gangs who had the technology to reproduce them en masse. The bikers, though, had a stranglehold on the area strip clubs, drug trafficking, and numerous among them had wives, sisters and girlfriends working at banks all over the place. The banks were like candy stores for identity thieves and nobody bothered to screen any employee's background in the same way they would the references. Crazy Johnny stole that idea. If the banks would let anyone in on their dirty little secrets, then the municipal government couldn't be any less amenable. That's where Lan came in. She was a credible applicant for the by-law enforcement job he'd told her to apply for. It would allow her plenty of access to news that missed the papers. Not only that. There were addresses to be had. Who was paying their taxes? Who owned vacant properties? Who were the landlords? Which businesses had applied for what kind of police protection? Lan's interviewer was a grey-haired woman whose baggy appearance belied a career in sedentary bureaucratic work. The questions were exactly what Crazy Johnny promised they would be, straight out of an academic text. A little chit-chat as well. Lan kept her cheery and professional demeanour while learning about the middle-aged woman's son who'd finished his second year of law school, her mortgage re-financing, and her aspiration to trade in her Volkswagen for a late model Buick. "Of course there are security concerns in a job like this," she explained. Lan drew a breath and nodded. "I can tell you, this one girl we had doing the network stuff came out and told almost everything to her brother, this guy whose wife worked for the cable news. That was just about as embarrassing as could be, I can tell you." Lan almost sighed audibly. "My family is in business, Mrs. Cunningham. I don't even know any reporters." "Oh, that's such a relief. I must tell you, it is." The interviewer nodded along with Lan and leaned forward to tap the Vietnamese-born girl on the knee. "And can I say? You have such excellent communication skills. Are you second-generation Canadian? Certainly it's to our advantage to hire within the Asian community. Budgetary conditions and so on." Lan truthfully admitted that her family was born in Asia. She was quietly amazed that the woman interviewing her was concerned about nothing more than her heritage and the black and white on her resume. There were no further questions regarding her family or her connections. As she left, the older woman smiled pleasantly and told her frankly that she was easily the most qualified applicant she'd seen all week. "If this interviewing has gone on all week," asked Lan, "is that meaning I will wait long for your telephone call?" "I have all your paperwork, finished," replied Mrs. Cunningham, "so I doubt you will have to wait long at all." Lan left the office with certainty that her brother-in-law would be pleased. 4. Perry had almost unpacked everything, storing the big boxy electronic stuff in the basement. He'd had to put down cinder blocks and plywood since the slush of April sometimes seeped into the foundations of the old house. He was upstairs, setting up a set of computers--a Tandy and an Atari-- when Stern strolled into his living quarters. Since his room doubled or tripled in function, as a recreation room, his bedroom, the living room and his computer room, there was no privacy to speak of. Stern had made that clear at the outset. The arrangement wasn't the best he could think of, but it beat the hell out of living with his parents. The only thing he missed was the little family terrier, Skokie. "Perry, you ever met Arlene or Wanda before?" asked Stern, characteristically shoving his black hair out of his face and tucking several strands over one ear. "No, I only just got all my stuff unpacked, really," answered Perry. Wanda was a short girl, making Perry feel taller than his five-foot- seven normally would. Arlene, though, was nearly Stern's height, probably a good three inches taller than Perry. Stern frowned. A steady bump came from directly upstairs. Perry discerned the music throbbing from the ceiling as the Stones' "Shattered". Inoffensive as the song was by itself, whoever was playing the stereo either had it on an endless loop, or was physically replaying it over and over again. "Bloody Piper," scowled Stern. "Him and his Keith Richards." "Who? Is that coming from your guys' place?" Perry asked Wanda and Arlene. "No," replied Arlene, adjusting a pair of large eyeglasses. "That's Piper. There's two apartments upstairs. Me and Lisa and Wanda have the one on the left and Piper's got the other one." Stern knelt by the stereo and plunked in a Dickies tape. He turned up the volume to nullify the endless rhythm thudding out of the upstairs apartment. Perry couldn't help but grin. Anyone who could get under Stern's skin like that probably deserved a medal. "I brought along a bit of vodka," Arlene smiled. "I don't suppose you got any clean glasses, do ya?" Perry sat there until Stern gave in and walked to the kitchen. There were two ways to get into the kitchen from Perry's makeshift bedroom. You could either go through a set of French doors into the narrow hallway of the rooming house, or you could go through Stern's bedroom, which was separated from both of the other rooms in the suite by flags instead of doors. "How much liquor have you got there?" asked Perry. He was curious about Arlene. Her voice was somewhat effeminate. He knew she was transsexual, but unsure what that quite meant. He wondered whether her boobs were real. "Well we got halfway into it last night," Arlene explained, displaying the bottle in one hand, its clear contents obscured by the label. "I thought you didn't drink," said Perry. "That's what Stern told me." Arlene waved her hand at him. "That guy. He lies so bad it's funny." "Got just ice. No mix." Stern came back, carrying a collection of mismatched glasses and coffee cups in one hand, and a half-empty tray of ice cubes in the other. "This is just a teaser," Perry said as Arlene poured equal amounts into each container. Stern plopped some ice in his and handed the tray to Wanda. "Well I'm busted flat till my cheque comes in," Stern added. "This is going to be it unless I can come up with some cash. Just spaghetti for the next three days." "If you can get a personal cheque cashed," offered Wanda, "I can write you one and you can pay me back when your government cheque comes in." Perry saw Wanda smiling innocently at Stern. She was built like the kind of girl Perry had always been scared to approach in school. She seemed far out of her element in the dilapidated old place in this sort of neighbourhood. He thought Wanda had the appearance of a middle- class, even a high-class, background. Her clothes were immaculate and so was her hair and make-up. "You know," Stern suggested, "that might be a good idea. I'd hate to put you out though, Wanda. I know you've got to pinch pennies, yourself, being a nursing student and everything." Wanda giggled. "It's not going to put me out. I'm not poor." "Well where's your chequebook?" Stern followed Wanda upstairs to their suite. Perry drank his own vodka and reached over to pour Wanda's unfinished cup into his own. He had a hard time coming up with words to keep up a conversation with Arlene until she, too, left once her glass was empty. 5. "Anyone know some red-haired chick with big tits?" asked Adam. He peered through the peephole in the front door and walked back to the common room of the converted old fraternity residence, now known as The No House. Its name came from a sign in the front window, created from the sign left behind by the brothers of the bankrupt fraternity. Someone had torn out the wooden rectangle in the Greek 'theta', leaving an English 'O', someone else had removed the 'chi' completely, and Adam had taken the 'zeta' symbol and nailed it back on in front of the 'O'. So now the frat sign said 'NO'. It was screwed into place where a small pane of glass had been removed from the squares making up the front window. "She's got a pretty nice ass, too, from what I can see," Adam went on. He asked the question, generally, of the five people hanging out in the living room of the place situated in the university district. "Maybe Kingfish knows," shrugged one of them. Everyone was sitting around smoking dope and listening to a Los Popularos record. "Where is he?" Adam demanded. "I think he's upstairs--" "Jacking off," snickered the only girl of the bunch. Adam dashed upstairs and rapped hard on the door to Kingfish's room. "The fuck you want?" asked the skinhead, opening the door violently. The door had a piece of plywood riveted into the middle. During a party, he'd inadvertently smashed his head through the flimsy barrier, to the wild appreciation of a small group of his admirers gathered in the little upstairs hallway. "There's some chick at the front door," explained Adam. "I've never seen her before. I was just wondering if it was cool." "Nice ass?" asked Kingfish. "Exactly." "That's Marie. She's a friend of Piper's. You can let her in and just send her on up." Adam knew Piper, sort of, because he lived at the same place as Stern and Perry. He'd known Perry for a long time. Unlike Perry, though, he still had academic ambitions and even now was enrolled full-time in the pre-law programme at the university. Living in the No House was a bold distraction, but Adam found it as a challenge. The rent was cheap and he liked the danger, too, fully aware that Kingfish was peddling drugs. He also suspected that the bald, muscular young man was involved with a great deal more, but didn't ask and didn't intrude on what he figured was none of his business. He walked back downstairs and opened the front door. "Hi. Marie? I'm Adam." "Listen, Adam, I'm just here to see the Fish or whatever." The red- haired girl swept past him and perused the living room. She didn't see Kingfish, so turned to Adam again to find out where he was. When she found out he was upstairs, she simply went upstairs, with Adam's eyes following her swaying ass all the way. She found Kingfish's room and asked for a quarter. Piper liked hash. "While you're here," stated Kingfish, "why not try some of this?" He inspected the money that Marie had taken out of her jeans pocket, threw it on the dresser, and picked up a small piece of square glass. On it lay a white powder and a razor blade. "What is that?" asked Marie. "It's MDA," replied the skinhead. "Is that going to screw up my mind?" Kingfish stared plainly at the girl. He took one of the bills she'd given him and silently rolled it into a hollow cylinder. "Why would you think it would screw up your mind? You don't seem so screwed up. Piper, maybe, but not you." He chopped at the powder, using the razor blade, with an unbecoming patience and delicate touch. "You have to knock the chunks up easy, Marie, because you see that rock that's left with a few of the clumps? That's what you want to get sitting right about--here." Kingfish reached over and touched the bridge of Marie's nose, gently. Even though she hadn't come over to do drugs with Kingfish, she found his tone soothing and even brotherly. Besides, the money Piper used for his hash was really mostly hers anyhow. He tended to borrow what he needed. She worked. Piper didn't. "Just try a line like this one," Kingfish encouraged. He pointed at one line of the beige powder, flecked with three small chunks. "Don't really snort it. Just breathe it in and let it sit right up there. It's going to sting like a bitch but, whatever you do, just don't fucking sneeze." Marie took the rolled up ten and inhaled the powder. She drew tiny and abrupt breaths through her nose, tasting bitter phlegm in the back of her throat. She'd gotten two-thirds of the line in and stopped. She felt like she was about to sneeze. Seeing this, Kingfish abruptly pinched the top of her nose. She squeezed her eyes shut, tasting the powder almost melting inside her nasal passages, rolling in thick globs down towards her throat. A metallic flavour spread over her tongue. "Don't sneeze. You OK now?" Kingfish looked at her until Marie was able to nod and open her teary eyes once more. Within five minutes Marie wanted another line. The drugs felt good. Kingfish saw her cherubic cheeks blush deeper red than usual and he knew she was getting high. "Can I? Can I have some water? My throat's getting awful dry. Dry and kind of hot." She waved her hand quickly in front of her face. "I'll get it," offered Kingfish. He set the mirror on the chest of drawers and scrambled to the bathroom where he rinsed out a glass and came back with it filled. "Thank you," said Marie. The water sparkled and went down like ginger ale. "You feeling all right?" asked Kingfish. "How about this?" He ran his hand over her shoulder and wondered impatiently what she looked like naked. The stimulation of his fingers on her body quickened Marie's heart, stirring the amphetamine into her blood, warming her to his obvious intent. "Say, sugar, you ever seen nothing like this?" Marie's surprise was tempered by the drugs. Kingfish had undone his pants and pulled out his cock. He pointed at the tattoo. "You tattooed your dick?" Marie giggled stupidly. "I can't believe that. I never seen anyone with a tattoo there." When she shut her mouth, Marie's teeth clenched suddenly. She moaned shortly and fell back on the bed. "I don't think I could suck it, you know, Kingfish. My jaw is kind of feeling weird." "Here. Try some gum. It'll stop you from biting your tongue." Kingfish unwrapped the stick and crawled over her to shove it between her lips. "You'll be cooler without your top on." She let him strip both of them. Yeah, she felt cooler on her skin and warmer inside. Pleasant and horny. No thoughts about Piper or the reason she'd come over in the first place. Piper's hash could wait. Kingfish buried his head in her willing neck, crushing her breasts with his meaty hands, and fucking her like he thought she needed it. Marie didn't protest as he pried her legs apart and penetrated her. He may have been an asshole and a drug dealer--Piper had convinced her of the former--but he sure was good in bed. 6. When Dixon returned to his urban condo, Valarie was helpfully making the evening meal in the kitchen. Unlike Perry or Stern, Dixon had kept his head about him and finished college. So did Valarie, who also knew Perry and Stern from her school days. In fact, she'd been the first girl in town with the courage to shave her head. The hair had since grown back and her fondness for the wild life had subsided under the weight of middle-class ambitions. "You know, Dix, I had a call from Bradley and invited him over for supper. I hope that's okay with you." "Certainly, Val," answered Dixon, scooping a quick lick of the spatula that sat in the heated tomato dish stewing on the stovetop. "Leave the dinner alone till it's ready," Valarie admonished. "Bradley's not going to have any left if you keep nibbling." Dixon wandered into the living room and picked up a newspaper. Their condominium wasn't big, a mezzanine and a main floor, but the building was fabulous. It was nothing to look at from the street. Inside, though, was a colossal atrium with trees and flowers worthy of a nature preserve. The place catered to young childless couples with the same kind of ambitions and backgrounds as Dixon and Valarie. Dixon worked, in fact, for Valarie's father as the manager of two warehouses on the east side of town. That was what you could get these days with a degree in criminology. He'd first gone to university to become an engineer, which was when he started dating Valarie, but his goals were side-tracked by interminable role-playing games he'd played with Perry and others. Perry was used to running the games. For that reason Valarie was suspicious of the influence the unemployed young man had on her husband. But Dixon had pledged he wouldn't spend any more time with Perry or Stern, or role-playing games, than any average husband would in the bar, or playing poker with his buddies, or bowling. He kept that promise steadfastly and their love had survived. "Bradley. Good to see you." Dixon welcomed the tall and lanky man into their house. "How's everything?" "Pretty good. I haven't seen you guys since your wedding. That was some neat thing. We ought to have another one some day." "After you finished your chem degree, I thought you'd lost your mind, Bradley. Didn't you go all Buddhist or something?" Bradley followed his host into the living room, hugging Valarie in the kitchen along the way. "No," replied the tall man. "I had to get away from all that stuff. The gaming, the music, the laziness. I guess it was easier for me to make something up than to tell the truth. The truth is, though, that I happened to have a set-up career down in Calgary, but the industry's getting beaten up pretty badly these days. I figure if someone went down there and shot Trudeau once and for all, we'd all be better off in the long run." "Shooting the Prime Minister? Sounds like a game scenario," laughed Dixon. "The Pilduvian warlords on their pegasi? The Dome of Unhappiness over the dreary realm of Saskatchewan?" "You don't still play that shit, do you?" asked Bradley. "Some. Not a lot. Still see Perry, Stern, and a few others, but it's nothing too regular. I've got a day job." "I can see that. I don't think I'll be out of work long. I mean, the petrochemical industry isn't going to be in the tank for permanent. Better not be." Bradley leaned back in his chair to appreciate the wall hangings and artwork placed all over the condo. "You're an art collector now, Dix? Or is that mostly Valarie's doing?" "Actually both of us. What we do is pick up pieces we like from new artists, local artists. There's a reason for it, though. Part is investment and part is just plain appreciation." Dixon explained that one of his wife's relatives had just sold a piece he'd picked up for a few dollars more than twenty-five years before. By some stroke of luck, the painter had found some fame in New York City and there was a new market for work he'd done as a youth. Dixon's natural curiosity led him to publications explaining how ordinary people had become rather wealthy by re-selling pieces for huge profits. Few investments tended to appreciate over time like art. "You must have to know what you're doing, though, I guess," shrugged Bradley. "That charcoal drawing there," he pointed, "looks an awful lot like something Stern would do. Is he still scribbling away?" Dixon looked around at the picture--a self-absorbed drawing of a young man seated at a table, hands clasping his head, with an ink bottle tipped over a piece of paper next to a couple of broken pencils, pens and brushes. "That would be Stern's. I call it 'Revenge of the Punk Rock Gods'. I don't know if that's going to be one of the ones worth a lot over the next twenty-five years. Call it a pity purchase." After dinner, during which Bradley purposefully avoided the topic of his unemployment, he accepted Dixon's offer of a cigar. They retired to the balcony since Valarie forbade smoking inside. "I wouldn't ask you normally, buddy, but I'm really in a pretty bad situation here right now. If you and Valarie could put me up for a few days, I'll be able to slip my resume around town and probably land something useful within a week." Dixon half expected the request. "Listen, Bradley, I'd really have to run that past Valarie. We don't usually put up houseguests. It isn't like our 'Let's Lynch The Landlord' pad we had during second year. This is like our home and everything." Bradley sucked on the cigar, nodding in agreement, yet secretly fuming about the apparent hypocrisy of his host. He felt like saying something. He remembered back just five years to parties they all had together. He remembered Valarie, too. To look at her now you wouldn't imagine a teenaged slut, on her knees, sucking the cocks of every ska, punk, or rockabilly band that blew through Saskatoon. He particularly recalled his own experience with her, mushing her big fleshy boobs as she blew him in the back seat of her father's Chrysler, with 'Stuck in a Pagoda (with Tricia Toyota)' blaring from a ghetto blaster. Now she was turning Dixon into an art fag or it least that was Bradley's impression. "No problems, Dix," he grinned. "You know, though, that if I could borrow your car for a couple of days, I'd be able to make do." Bradley knew that they had a vehicle each and besides had access to her father's. "I could loan you the Chrysler for, say, a week," offered the host. Bradley accepted. 7. "I will take care of you and your little brother," Crazy Johnny promised Lan. The return phone call from the nice woman at the municipal building came earlier than Lan had expected. For all her certainty that her talents fit their job description, she had worried that her English wasn't good enough. She had to learn the language again since coming to Canada, almost from scratch, since her mother had learned it as a youth from a French-speaking nun in Vietnam. Lan's mother still spoke with an unusual accent--English tinged with French and Vietnamese pronunciation. Lan got out of the car and thanked Crazy Johnny. "I will work as hard as I can, but you have to tell me what I'm supposed to get for you." "Not a problem. Not a problem," he assured her. "Just remember, that you must be on time every day. Dressed proper. No-one can suspect a thing. If they ask who is driving you to work, even, you can be honest and tell them I am your brother-in-law. They will be okay with that. You must trust me entirely." 8. Perry woke up bored. He pulled out a board and some chits where he'd been playing around with a new game of his own invention. Stern walked in, scratching his head, with just his jeans on. There was an ambient throbbing from upstairs. 'Shattered' again. "What's that game there?" asked Stern. "Well it was 'The Game Of Festive Colours' but I'm planning to turn it into either 'Batmen From Mars' or 'Lost Soldiers Of Peking'." Stern kept scratching himself. "Stick with the Lost Soldiers. I think I might even play that one. I am not too keen on festive colours." Oob, she-do-bah, shattered, shattered. "Fuck, that Stones shit is driving me insane," cried Stern. "Listen, I've got to borrow a couple of your tapes and albums, OK Perry?" "Sure, but bring it back if it's anything good. I don't know that guy upstairs and I don't want to lose my music," answered the game maker with the short hair dyed copper. Naturally, Perry's hair was nearly copper, and the hair colouring made it literally brassy. "Don't panic," Stern reassured him. "I'll just get him to tape it, all right?" "Fine." Stern gambolled up the narrow stairs and turned right at the top, knocking heavily on Piper's door. Within minutes, Piper responded and greeted his neighbour with a crooked smile. He had a beer in his hand. Stern looked around and saw a mess. There were tape cases and tapes all over the floor and empty beer bottles on the counter and even in the sink. The upstairs was divided into two small apartments--Piper's was only a bachelor--and a bathroom used by everyone in the place. "Hey, Piper, if you got any papers, I brought up some hash oil I got a couple of days ago." Piper rubbed his chin as though deeply considering the offer. "Yeah, I've got papers. Let's crack it out." He spent a quite couple of minutes scooping the goop onto a rolling paper, using a straightened paper clip, and added a finger full of tobacco to let the burn go evenly. They smoked the hash oil and Piper relaxed. Stern couldn't relax. He kept pacing around the cluttered living room/bedroom. "You can sit down if you want, dude," offered Piper. Stern looked around at the couch, which obviously doubled as Piper's bed, and a stuffed chair. He frowned and went into the kitchen and brought back a straight metal chair, placed it amid a wreckage of clothes and tape cases, then sat down gently on it like a condemned man in an electric chair. "You can use that chair over there," said Piper, observing Stern's impatient and bizarre behaviour. "No. I can't sit in soft chairs. They might damage my testicles." Piper sat stupefied before unleashing a roar of laughter. "What the fuck are you talking about? Crush your nuts in an easy chair? You insane?" Stern answered plainly: "No, my doctor advised me that my balls are larger than normal and have to sit up in a certain way when I rest my ass." Piper screwed his face up, stopped laughing, and shrugged, waiting all the while for Stern to crack a smile. He didn't. Piper realised that the unemployed artist, his neighbour, was completely serious about his claim. What an odd-ball. He had to change the subject. "Glad you brought over the hash, really, Stern. Well, hash oil, or maybe that was pot oil. It smoked up kind of like pot oil, I thought." "No problem," nodded Stern. "Usually I get Marie to come over with a bunch of it but she's been bloody unreliable these days." "You know what I was wondering?" asked Stern. "Huh?" "What is Piper supposed to mean? Why are you called Piper?" "You know, that was just something they called me when I lived in residence. I smoked a couple of pipes in university. I mean, I thought I was all psychological and everything, smoking a pipe. And I had a hash pipe, too, of course. This guy, MacIntyre, used to give out nicknames to everyone and I got Piper. Could have been a lot worse. I mean, we had a guy called Wombat, a guy named Goat and a guy named Woolhead." The whole time, Stern glared furtively at the stereo, which still blared out Stones' tunes. He noticed there were a few others that weren't "Shattered", but at least every second one was. He played with the albums and cassettes he'd brought upstairs with him. Piper noticed. He liked music, and he found it was an effective weapon against fools, and alternately it was a way to meet people. He still hadn't decided whether he disliked Stern and his new roommate, or whether he felt like meeting them and being their friends. "Look," said Stern. "I brought up a couple of records and some tapes. You might like them." "What are they?" "I got Motorhead, I mean, 'Ace Of Spades' and 'Iron Fist', Government Issue, some other California shit--Angry Samoans--some Naked Raygun. They're out of Chicago. This tape here has Killdozer and some New York shit like Ramones, mainly, some DC straight-edge. You hear of any of them?" Piper scratched his jaw. "Not all of them. So it's punk rock?" "Yeah, that's it. It's a lot more raw than the Rolling Stones. Not saying the Stones aren't good or anything like that, but these guys are all really a lot more honest." "Oh?" asked Piper. "How much more heroin has Angry Samoans done than Keith Richards?" "Well," Stern responded, "it's not always just about how much smack you do. There's energy and composition and rebellion and shit, too. But, I mean, the Stones are cool. But you might like this stuff for the edge. Maybe the Stones don't have that much an edge any more. I mean, they tour on wheelchairs and all that." Since Piper's door was open, there wasn't any reason for Arlene to knock. She came right in. "Oh, Stern, I heard your voice. I was wondering if you were just here by yourself. But I guess you both are." "Put on your tapes, then," Piper told Stern. "Maybe Arlene likes it, too. It's punk rock." "Oh, you know what? I used to live in this place in San Francisco and there was a band called Flipper that practised there. It was really pretty cute, because none of those guys knew how to tune their guitars," said Arlene. She shoved her glasses up her nose as she spoke, settling into the comfortable chair that Stern avoided. The Angry Samoans launched into their ballad about some guy licking assholes and eating shit. "The music's great," nodded Piper, "and the lyrics are pretty much Shakespeare I'd say." Arlene laughed. Stern frowned deeply. He told Piper that he needed the vinyl and tapes back, but that Piper was free to tape them if he wanted. Arlene raised her index finger and rose just after Stern stood up to leave. "I need to talk to you." "Mmm, OK--about what?" Stern answered the transsexual as he started down the stairs. "Your friend, there, Perry. Is he--does he have a girlfriend?" Stern stopped briefly and looked at Arlene. He saw a glimmer of hope in her face. This would be all right. If Perry could become involved with Arlene, then Stern would have no competition for Wanda. He wanted the short, busty, blonde nursing student badly, and suspected that his new roommate had designs too. "No, Arlene, he isn't dating anyone right now. You got your eye on him or something?" "Yeah. I think he's pretty cute," she answered. "He's a little shy, I think," said Stern. "You probably have to make the first move, I'd say." Stern spoke in subdued tones, knowing that his roommate was in the living room and, in spite of the double doors, might be able to hear him if he spoke out loud. He had no idea whether Perry was interested or not, but Arlene's approach let him imagine anyhow. "Really?" quizzed Arlene. "I guess I should find out what he's interested in, I mean, aside from vodka." Stern spun his gears into overdrive. What was Perry interested in aside from booze? There were the interminable role-playing games. Would that fascinate Arlene? Or simply bore her? He made up his mind. "Music. Calculus. Computers. Games." Stern judged Arlene's response. "Blowjobs." The tall thin girl laughed. "Calculus and blowjobs? He sounds completely adorable." "Listen," added Stern, "if you'd like, I'll just tell him you're interested. How's that?" "Oh my god, I would love that so much," smiled Arlene. "Just do it nicely, though. I don't want him to think I'm some kind of sex freak." "You got it," winked Stern. 9. The Green 'Riders were off to a bad start that year. Again. Perry's folks were dyed-in-the-green fans like most people in Saskatchewan, no less the Canadian prairies and beyond. There weren't many sports franchises with the same kind of dedicated fan base. In US college football there were the Sooners and the Fighting Irish, out of Norman Oklahoma and South Bend Indiana, respectively, who had similar fanatical dedication, but they were also storied winning teams. Knute Rockne had movies made about him. Nobody was ready to make a film about Eagle Keys, George Reed, Dave Ridgway, or Ronnie Lancaster, the Little General. If anything, the famous Canadian football team was better compared to the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox in major league baseball, storied teams that were known more for losing than for winning. The connection to the United States ran deeper, too. The team started in 1890 as the Regina Rugby Club. In 1910, its colours were chosen--red and black--to match the colours worn by the Canadian contingent that fought with the US in the Spanish-American war. The name itself was borrowed from Teddy Roosevelt's renowned cavalry formation that fought in Cuba. It wasn't until 1948 that the colours became the familiar green and white. The club had battled adversity all its life. Their Regina home, Taylor Field, took its name from a war hero who'd lost an eye and spent time in a German prison camp in 1915. 'Piffles' Taylor was a pre-Great War champion athlete for the Regina Rugby Club. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the amateur clubs in Saskatoon and Moose Jaw folded, leaving just the Regina team, and it survived only when the provincial government bought it and continued to run it thereafter. The general manager in 1948 changed the team colours almost accidentally. The club was so strapped for cash that he went to a discount store and could not find uniforms in red and black. He had to settle for what they had-- green and white sweatshirts. Perry's mom phoned her son at his new place. "Honey, me and your father are going down to Regina this weekend. Care to join us?" Perry kicked loosely at his blanket. He was lazily playing on his Atari, trying to learn assembly language by intuition. It was painstaking, to put it mildly. "I don't think so, Mom," he said, almost inaudibly. "I'm working on something and I think it's going to take all week at least." "Are you working now?" asked his mother. "Well, I guess you could say that." "I don't mean to pry. I just care about you, honey, and I don't want to see you all broke and miserable." Perry paused. "Mom. I'm not miserable. Just broke." He hurried into his next sentence. "And I don't mean anything by that. I just mean I'm OK. Everything's fine." He paused again, wondering what his mother was thinking on the other end of the line. He knew where he got his conversational style from. Both his parents were terse and filled their dialogue with pregnant pauses. He remembered that once, in high school, he'd invited a girl over for dinner with the family. As they ate in virtual silence, scarcely saying anything, he'd felt intensely embarrassed for the girl. Afterwards, her reaction was saying 'That was a bit, um, creepy'. She never called him back, even though he'd promised to help her with some mathematics homework. "Perry, maybe you'd like it if we brought back a hat or something?" "Who are they playing?" asked Perry, rubbing his stubble, not having shaved for a couple of days. "The Eskimos." Perry snickered into the receiver. "Mom, we're going to get killed." "Don't say that," scolded his mother. "We're going to do fine." Pause. "Well, you're probably right, really. Still, I'll bring back a hat if you want." "You do that, Mom. I could probably use it." Perry looked at a coat rack in the corner of the living room. It had three jackets hanging there and four ball caps. The caps were his and so was one of the jackets. "How's this, then. Come over for dinner on Tuesday after that. That's pasta day. We still do pasta day." "Sure. You better phone first and then I'll make sure I'm ready." "Skokie sends his love, honey." "Thanks, Mom. Tell him I love him too." After he hung up the phone, Perry heard a familiar sound through the ceiling. It was Piper's music. Now it wasn't the Rolling Stones. Instead, it was Government Issue, playing their underground hit 'Bored To Death'. The words struck home: "Ain't got a job. My life's a drag. I'm just a waste. Put me in a bag. I went to school to learn how to cheat, and all I got were words on a sheet. Nothing to do--I'm bored to death--I'm so bored--I'm bored to death. When boredom sets in, I just wanna die. I just can't move no matter how I try. I don't do drugs and I won't start. I did 'em once and got blown apart." The chorus repeated over and over again. And then the song began anew. "That motherfucker," Perry said to himself. "Now he's going to fucking ruin the GI's for Stern. Serves him right." 10. When Lisa picked up the phone at work, she already figured it would be Arlene on the other end. Sunset Studios, a massage parlour in a commercial building downtown, was on her home phone's speed dial, so that neither Wanda nor Arlene needed to memorise the number. "Hey Lisa," came Arlene's warm voice. "I need some kay-ash." "I've only had one client so far. What's up? What's the big deal?" Arlene was excited about something. Unless it was rent day, there was nothing she'd need that desperately except for drugs. "You know that guy, Kingfish, that you seen at The Spandau? Well, Marie told me something today. That that guy has a handle on some MDA. Lisa, Lisa, we just got to get us some." Lisa pondered the request. "I'll phone you as soon as I get enough. What is it? Fifty? A hundred?" "We can get something like three of these caps for seventy-five," Arlene enthused. "What, have you done some already? Is it any good?" "Marie says it's unconscious," answered Arlene. "Give me about an hour and a half and I'll phone you back." Lisa hung up. She had found herself literally full circle in Saskatoon. Right outside the back window of the place she could see a vacant lot across the alley, between two bungalows, where the house she'd been raised in once was. Then, though, she was known to her family as Tristan. Her family was nominally Dutch but her mother's relatives were from Hamburg. Lisa's grandfather was a Dutch soldier who married a German girl after getting her pregnant with Lisa's mother. In the heyday of the internecine wars that practically ruined Europe in the early twentieth century, it was as common for Allied fighters to engage in the ritual rape of German women as it had been for the Nazis to do so in the occupied countries. It was an unmentionable and unspeakable part of war. Whether it was environmental or genetic, Lisa--or Tristan--didn't know. What she did know, however, was that her mother continually reminded her that women were good and men were not. She gazed upon the site of her boyhood home without fondness. She remembered an unusual ritual in their basement, when her mother and an older sister shared a few of their paste-on fingernails with the youth. They put one of the plastic adhesives on Tristan's forehead and stood there laughing. They teased him about being such a little sissy. Tristan ran away from home when he was just fourteen. He found his way to Minneapolis with forty bucks in his pocket. He had originally wanted to go to Los Angeles to meet John Wayne. He didn't know how a bus ticket, and forty dollars he'd stolen from 'the sock' that his stepfather kept in his parents' bedroom, would get him an audience with the undisputed Duke of American Cinema, but he knew it was something he wanted to do. Just like Saskatoon, Minneapolis was a big town straddling a river that already put the Danube and the Rhine to shame, no less the Thames, the Po or the Seine, puny streams quartering the cosmopolitan cities of London, Milano and Paris. Great seas awaited the silt-laden waters from all five rivers. The Adriatic swallowed up the Po. The English Channel, and the site of so many failures by the continental powers--Sluys, Gravelines, Operation Sealion--gobbled up the remains of the Seine basin. The Thames ran roughshod out of the countryside where the ancients built Stonehenge and straight into the North Sea, past the magnificent cathedral in Kent where such a thing as being English was first defined. Then, in North American, the young nations grew aside rivers that each drained areas larger than any single European country. The early European explorers, no less Mark Twain, were perplexed in every possible manner by the great waterways of the North American interior. The warm maw of the Gulf Of Mexico drew in the combined weight of the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri, the Red and the mightiest of them all--the Mississippi. The indifference of geology, though, condemned an even greater river system in Canada to flow the wrong way, north, into Hudson's Bay. The flow of the 'other' Red, a cruel lass that ruined Winnipeg once a decade until Duff built his Ditch, the Assiniboine, a writhing snake that met the northern Red on the capital's doorstep, the North and South Saskatchewan, coming out of the Rocky Mountain icefields to scour deep valleys in the black earth of the prairies, each piled into the complexity of lakes and the indifferent Nelson, a broad and icy river who belched everything into the frigid Bay found four centuries ago by same explorer who proved New York City was more valuable than the Dutch thought it was. Minneapolis was therefore different than Saskatoon. Tristan went broke very quickly, until a kind matron offered him lunch and solace. She was everything his mother wasn't, at first sight. After a while, though, Tristan figured they were all the same. She encouraged him to explore his sexuality. When Tristan explained that he liked lingerie and wondered aloud whether he knew that he was male, she urged him to dress as he wished. When he told her that he wanted to be female, she nodded agreeably. On his fifteenth birthday, the older woman bought Tristan an outfit that he had picked from a catalogue, and she introduced him to a man who took a vigorous sexual interest in him. When the man, after a few dates, offered to buy the youth the boobs of his choice, Tristan was on his way to becoming Lisa. John Wayne would have to wait forever. "Lisa?" interrupted a familiar voice. "Your next appointment is ready." "George? The diabetic?" Lisa laughed out loud. "No, girl, it's 'Happy' Landis." "Oh my god. 'Hand Job' Landis? His wife must be out of town again," Lisa said. "Yeah," answered Lisa's co-worker, a Mitsou look-alike who'd admitted that she failed high school three times before finally quitting. "She's doing promo for the Wheat Kings out in Brandon." She cupped her hand near her mouth. "Promo. Slurping promo." 'Hand Job' Landis became 'Tit Job' Landis today. He wanted to put his old cock between Lisa's breasts and cum on them. That was enough to afford the MDA and more. Lisa called Arlene back on the extension phone in one of the massage rooms while wiping Mr. Landis' sperm off her boobs. "I'll call a cab and he'll bring you the envelope, Arlene." The taxi drivers in Saskatoon all knew the addresses of both the massage parlour and the house now shared by Piper, Wanda, Perry, Stern, Arlene and Lisa. "Oh, and Arlene, please, please, please save some for me. If you do it all I will beat your ass." 11. "Dixon's here I think, and I think he's borrowed Valarie's car," said Perry. He looked out the window to see the familiar grey car drive up to the curb. Stern mumbled and watched the television set showing the Cubs tied one all with the Cardinals in the top of the fourth. But Ron Cey had muffed a throw to first and Ozzie Smith stood on second as the go-ahead run. There was one out. Steve Trout was on the mound while his adversary, the moody Joaquin Andujar, chewed on some birchbark in the visitor's dugout. "Wait a minute," said Perry, flicking the Venetian blinds again, "that's not Dixon. I think it's Bradley of all people. Haven't seen the guy in about three years." "Bradley?" Stern countered. "He went all Zen and shit last time I knew. He said he couldn't play games any more because you were stealing his soul. What a gimp." The toothpick physique of their old gaming buddy made its way up the walk. On the TV, Terry Pendleton took a second strike while Ozzie stole third. Perry opened the double doors and walked to the front door. Trout was in trouble. Darrell Porter fixed his glasses, standing in the on-deck circle, and watched every move as the curveball missed outside. "Hey. Perry. How's things?" Bradley acted chummy towards the very person he'd miffed by feigning spiritual renewal in order to quit gaming with what he thought was perfectly appropriate dignity. "Living," answered the red-haired young man. "Come on in if you want to." Trout walked Pendleton. Porter got his hate on. Speed and volatility marked everything the St. Louis team stood for. Porter found his solace in alcohol. Andujar was just about insane. The team was poised to steal more than 200 bases this year, led by the amicable Ozzie, Van Slyke-- whose one-liners puzzled as near as they amused, the other Smith-- Lonnie--whose off-field friends included convicted drug dealers and at least one convicted murderer, and the reclusive, talented switch- hitter, Willie McGee. "You're not living anywhere permanent then?" Stern challenged Bradley. "Just for now. I tried Dixon, but Valarie is just a little too, well, you know." "There's room downstairs," said Perry. "I don't even think anyone's paying for it, really. But there's nothing to sleep on except a few pieces of couch." "And don't do what the Target Head did," added Stern. He mentioned, in his nonchalant style, that a temporary resident almost electrocuted himself on a live wire hanging near the concrete basement wall. The kid was one of the rootless wanderers that Stern had met at The Spandau. The part-time artist had immediately chosen the name 'Target Head' for him, since the kid had shaved one side of his head and painted orange concentric circles on it. After the accident, which had the unusual side effect of making Target Head crave Alpen cereal for breakfast, lunch and supper, the kid left within a couple of weeks. He bought a bus ticket to Lloydminster and told Stern he was going to work on a gas rig. "How was he going to get a job on a rig with his head painted orange?" asked Bradley. Stern laughed and shrugged. He had a way of laughing that suggested sarcasm rather than genuine merriment. After hearing Bradley's brief explanation about his unemployment, Perry offered him the use of his printer if he needed to copy any resumes. He warned, though, that there probably weren't as many jobs, in Saskatoon, requiring a petrochemical engineering degree as there were in Alberta. "It'll happen," nodded Bradley. "I just got a pretty good feeling about it." 12. Crazy Johnny screeched his sports car to a halt in front of an old building, near the rail line, in the south-west corner of the city. The sign announced that the proprietor was a mechanic for farm equipment. Another weathered sign, covering part of the dusty window, indicated this was also the headquarters for the Saskatchewan chapter of the Confederations Of Regions party. The party was one of the myriad voices of what went for Western Canadian discontent. Every now and then, one of the groups might elect a lone voice to go to Ottawa. There, he or she would get bogged down in the inevitable drag of constant paperwork and would eventually forget their so-called grass roots. Provincial politics attracted the smarter malcontents. Provincial governments, on the whole, possessed more power than the federal government anyhow. Except for the grievous harm inflicted by the National Energy Policy, the provinces could get away with anything they wanted. The energy programme, though, was a weapon with which the Trudeau government successfully forced the producing provinces, largely Alberta, to sell oil and gas at a discount to Ontario whenever OPEC forced the international prices too high. It was a subsidy of the most disingenuous kind. The transfer of wealth was so transparent that it could only be seen as what it was--a stick to beat the western provinces for sending the wrong party's politicians to Ottawa. So the provincial politicians just made up their own rules. To get a trucking contract with any of those smaller governments, you had to finance their election campaigns. To run your trucks on roads restricted to light traffic, you had to help build a new provincial office in your constituency. The Vietnamese, like Circle X, found out about these peculiarities through inquiries and intuition. It had been the same way, generally, in the old country. Just more mercenary in the prairies. Everyone had a price. The familial connections, useful in their culture to establish ties and maintain honour, were non-existent in Canada. Crazy Johnny walked into the building unannounced. An idle receptionist, sitting amid a clutter of unfiled invoices, greeted him jovially. "Mr. Loo. Mr. Robbins is expecting you, I think." Crazy Johnny moved past her desk quickly, advancing to the inner office where the white-bearded proprietor sat behind a similar clutter. "Johnny. Good to see you." "Enough shit. Your buddy in Melfort didn't make a deposit to the credit union. What's his problem?" The pudgy, middle-aged businessman, attired casually in a pair of overalls and a John Deere hat, knew what Crazy Johnny expected. The New Democrat member of the provincial legislature, a timid man Robbins had paid for, was supposed to be collecting a per cent on beer sales from the liquor board to small town taverns, and depositing it into an account set up in a credit union in Tisdale. Robbins expected his cut too. "Listen, Johnny, the problem ain't Corrigan," he said, referring to the MLA. "It's Metal Machine. They might have gotten to him. I told you when we started this thing that Corrigan would fold if the bikers got involved. He don't even know you exist." "Who is it from Metal Machine. I'll snuff the bitch," sneered Crazy Johnny. "Send his fucking intestines back to his president. Corrigan's my man, damn it, my fucking man." "Calm down, Johnny. Have a whiskey." The older man poured a drink into two glasses, wiping them clean with a paper towel near the desk. "You just want to run around shooting people. I tell you, buddy, that's a real good way to get the Mounties into it. You can't do that with skimming revenue. It just ain't good baseball." "You telling me how to run my business?" demanded Crazy Johnny. He was fidgeted and Robbins figured he was armed. "No. I'll find you the account holder where the money's going. Can do that with a couple of phone calls. Then you want to take care of it? Be my guest. Listen, I'm losing two grand a month just and only because of this one problem. It ain't me you got to be mad at. Corrigan is off bounds, though. You do anything to him and you'll get the whole goddamned RCMP down here." Crazy Johnny glared at the grim-faced machine shop owner. He had to get a break. As long as Robbins wasn't lying, he knew he could depend on his sister-in-law to find out more about the account holder just from the name and the account number. That was his own secret. Robbins wouldn't have to know anything about the rest of his plan. Somebody was going to pay for this. 13. Adam spent all Friday night working on a paper. "Dutch Maritime Law In The Sixteenth Century." Seven hours of Coca-Cola and an old typewriter. By one o'clock in the morning he was tired of writing. But he was wide awake. He knew that everyone else in the house was out at The Spandau. He picked up the phone to call Perry and invited himself over. "Where's Stern? Out at the club?" he asked Perry after cycling the eight blocks in the dark. Perry nodded. He was wearing his bathrobe over a pair of jeans. "Into some gaming or something?" "Yeah," replied the student, whose academic ambitions weren't about to dull his interest in games. "Not Traveller though. I still haven't recovered from the crash at Doolie's last month." Traveller was a science fiction role-playing game with an amazing character generation system. The drawback was the extreme lethality of the weapons and, most remarkable, routine tasks like landing one's character's spaceship. The PGMP--Plasma Gun, Manned, Portable--once it penetrated body armour, was likely to kill rather than wound any target. Rolling snake eyes on two cube dice when landing at a planetary spaceport meant "crash-explosion". "You know," mumbled Perry, "I can't imagine anyone attempting intergalactic travel if one out of every 36 voyages ended up in a fiery crash." The character acquired skills in the game merely from the dice-rolling leading up to the adventure. It was extraordinarily tough to advance "levels" as you could in Dungeons and Dragons, Chivalry and Sorcery, or even Bushido. "You've already got computers here more powerful than the ones they defined, too," said Adam. "I think they said something like a 128 K machine would be almost as big as a house." Perry convinced his old school friend to try out one of his new games. He'd just finished the instructions for "Lost Soldiers of Peking", using Squad Leader boards to move the cardboard pieces around. "Are you working yet?" Adam asked, rhetorically. He knew Perry was still unemployed. "Naw. Need a plan or something." Perry moved his Portuguese machine- gunners out of an oil slick appearing on a village road, trying to get a better angle on the entrenched Dutch mortar teams Adam had placed behind a ridge. "Have you tried the Lindquist Plan?" Adam frowned after rolling the dice once some of his auxiliary French riflemen entered a house. The result indicated that their souls had leapt out of their bodies and wouldn't return for three to six turns. "That's the insanity plea, isn't it?" asked Perry. His own luck had turned bad, suddenly, as his off-board artillery caught a whiff of Berserker Fog. That intensified the barrage, doubly, but also killed its observation crews, allowing the Fire-For-Effect markers to stray up to twelve hexes from their intended targets. Three of his Portuguese squads had already broken and were headed backwards towards his own side of the board. "It's more useful than you think," Adam replied. "If you're broke and you can get in, you can get that on top of whatever UI you have already. Did you work long enough at the flyer place to get anything?" "Don't remind me," Perry grimaced. "Delivering flyers? You know, because they paid at the end of every week, there's some loophole there that didn't qualify you for UI." Now Adam was in peril. His mortar teams moved up to the tractor factory and attempted to set up inside. The cruel dice rolls, though, required in the game whenever a new building was entered, showed that the first platoon was transformed into teenaged girls. The high morale of the Dutch, rolling a nine or less each turn, meant there was a five in six chance that they would imagine they were in a mall, and wouldn't be able to fight while picking out shoes and dresses. "So I guess that means you're totally fucked, Perry. Listen, the Plan has to accept you if you fail the test. I think you can pretty easily make them think you need therapy. They'll pay your rent fully and you get a cheque every middle and end of the month." "I'll think of that. Hey, I just found the Pistol of Great Power," Perry beamed. "I win!" "What?" demanded Adam. He realised that his gaming opponent had entered a structure on the flank of his main advance, rolled a six, followed by a three, and then a one on a dodecahedral die. The charts didn't lie. The unlikely result was that one of his Amish snipers had found the POGP. "The Pistol endows its finder with the ability to see and fire through all terrain barriers. It doubles the range and strength of any unit's inherent firepower. It also acts like a morale 10 leader for any unit. The Pistol allows the unit carrying it to enter any building without rolling for consequences." Adam got up to stretch his legs. He heard a noise on the street, a vehicle coming up to the curb. He flicked one of the slats on the blinds and saw a cab unloading Stern and two girls. The street lights were still on, but the dark violet night was already brightening with the arrival of dawn. "Well, since I lost the game, probably, I should make it a night," said Adam. He put on his jacket as Stern, Arlene and Wanda came inside the house. "Fuck, was that a good gig," Stern announced, tossing his black leather jacket on the floor beside the game boards. Perry frowned. "Good party after, too," added Arlene. She had her hair up in a luxurious do. That was Wanda's influence. "What I remembered. I was pretty fucking stoned for a while," said Stern. His brown eyes were still blazing. "What did you guys do?" asked Perry. "Acid," smiled Wanda. "I'm still stoned, I'm pretty sure. Not the best of stuff but it sure was brilliant, like, for a while." "Aw," Perry grumbled. "And you never even told me?" "I thought you were broke," said Stern. He slumped on the sofa and invited Wanda to sit next to him. "Well, I am, but I got a plan to get an income." He nodded dolefully at Adam. It would be time, as soon as he could, to get onto that therapeutic programme. Couldn't hurt. "Where did Lisa and Piper get to?" asked Wanda. "Bradley and them went off somewhere," Arlene reminded her. She sat in a chair, hunched forward, staring furtively at Perry. This wasn't the time. She was tired, but still intrigued by the young man. "He's not driving after taking acid, is he?" Adam asked. "That would be stupid." "No," Stern replied. "He just had a few drinks. Nothing to worry about." "Why do you guys waste your time with acid?" Adam shrugged. "That's kid's stuff, isn't it?" "Biggest bang for the buck," answered Stern. He poked Wanda playfully in the side and she grabbed his long black h