“What the fuck are you talking about?” Billy said.
In his defense, Billy Hinman was a bit drunk, so his stupidity was somewhat excusable. He went on, “I thought I told you we were going to do something fun.”
I persisted in trying to defuse the situation. “Are you guys watching Rabbit & Robot? This is my favorite episode!”
I still held my hands in the air. Billy stared at me. The insane ex-bonk with no trousers softened a bit and lowered his machine gun so it was pointing at our knees instead of our faces.
“This is my favorite episode too,” the naked guy said. “But I wish that fucker Mooney would shut up and die.”
Mooney, the “robot” in my father’s program, was a v.4 cog who sang ridiculous, overly repetitive songs that helped kids memorize code sequences for school. Mooney was also a cog that was stuck on the emotion of “outrage.” For some reason, an awful lot of v.4 cogs were either outraged or elated, both of which are highly unattractive attitudes. Some v.4s were horny, which was extremely awkward. They picked up their emotional tracks from the coders who put them online. I guess some coders, if they weren’t outraged or elated, were horny, even on the job.
Whatever.
But it was understandable to me that the naked guy wanted Mooney to die. As far as I could tell, nobody liked Mooney, and he died at one point or another in most episodes.
Billy Hinman hitched a thumb at me. “His dad’s Anton Messer.”
“Anton Messer?” Texas Dude was so impressed, I’m pretty sure he was getting a boner. It might have been because the screens behind Billy and me were showing the Canadians, though. Who knows for sure?
“You boys should sit down with us and watch the war, and Rabbit & Robot,” Naked Guy, who may just as well have been an elated v.4 cog, said.
I said, “I’ll tell you what. Let us go say bye to our friend Charlie Greenwell, and we’ll be right back. Okay with you?”
Texas Dude lowered his gun, grabbed his dick, and then fiddled with one of the silver arrows piercing his nipple. He nodded. “Charlie Greenwell is a hell of a rabbit.”
“The best,” I agreed.
“Do you realize you almost got us killed down there?” I said.
“Whatever, Cager.”
We rode the rickety and urine-fouled elevator up to Charlie’s floor.
It was fortunate for everyone, even the insane guys in the lobby, that we arrived at Charlie Greenwell’s apartment when we did.
We didn’t knock. Knocking scared Charlie. Walking in on whatever Charlie Greenwell was likely doing scared me, but I was not insane and heavily armed, so we just walked right in, as we always did.
Charlie was attempting to set fire to a Canadian flag that he’d draped over a sofa in his living room. There was a tipped-over can of barbecue starter fluid beside his bare right foot, and Charlie was flicking the flint wheel on a dead plastic cigarette lighter.
Charlie was in his underwear. For whatever reasons, Wozhead insane ex-bonks didn’t like to wear clothes very often. Also, like most bonks—insane and otherwise— Charlie Greenwell was covered in tattoos. One of them particularly fascinated me. It was a colorful grizzly bear on the right side of Charlie’s chest, walking upright, smiling, and carrying a tattered American flag over his shoulder. The grizzly bear was wearing a flat-brimmed straw campaign hat with a band on it that read VOTE RED OR I’LL TEAR YOUR FUCKING THROAT OUT! It was completely absurd. On the opposite side of Charlie’s chest was an octopus wearing a monocle and a derby hat and holding various unidentifiable types of firearms in each of his eight tentacles.
That tattoo made me feel inadequate, because I didn’t know what any of the guns were.
Apparently, Charlie Greenwell was a fan of hats and wildlife.
“Hi, Charlie!” I said as cheerfully and calmly as I’d ever spoken to him in my life. “I think those guys downstairs are going to get all bent out of shape if you burn the Kenmore down and kill us all.”
“Huh?” Charlie Greenwell’s eyes were completely glazed over with Woz. He put the lighter down when he realized who we were, which didn’t happen right away. “Oh. Hey, Bill. Cager. Want to get hacked?”
“Got any beer?” Billy asked.
“Sure. Come on in. I was just getting ready to do something, but I don’t remember what it was,” Charlie said.
“Put on trousers?” I guessed.
Charlie looked down at his bare legs and shook his head. “No. That wasn’t it.”
The Hotel Kenmore burned to the ground that afternoon.
People naturally blamed it on burners—arson gangs— but nobody was too concerned about it. Every one of the insane ex-bonks, in various stages of undress, managed to get out. And they were all rounded up and moved to another abandoned Hollywood hotel that day—a place called the Wilshire Marquis, which had once been made famous for having been the site of a suicide from heroin overdose by one of the original actors who’d played Rabbit in my father’s program.
Everyone in Los Angeles—and this is not hyperbolic—always loved stories like that.
But now, despite his plan being in full effect, Billy Hinman was exceptionally drunk. It was the only way he’d ever get inside anything that flew.
I had no idea.
Billy and I sat in the backseat—Rowan playing the role of chauffeur, as usual—and I watched the blurry, barren landscape of the abandoned and pointless California desert smear past us as we sped out toward Mojave Field.
The Woz was particularly strong.
“So where, exactly, are we going now?” I asked.
“You’ll see. It’s a birthday surprise,” Billy said.
Rowan, who never lied, shifted in the front seat and cleared his throat.
“I need to pee again. Maybe Rowan can just pull over for a minute,” I said.
“We’re almost there. You can pee when we get there. Trust me,” Billy said.
Maybe it was one of my infinite flaws, but I always did trust Billy Hinman.
I’d read something about how people used to complain a long time ago about all the procedures they’d have to go through before being permitted to board an airplane. Whatever. The stuff we had to do to get on a transpod— one that my father owned, no less—for a flight into space was as regimented and absurd as Maoist reeducation.
And although I was out of it on booze and Woz that day, I still suspected something was not right.
“I don’t understand why we have to take showers and put on entirely different sets of clothes, just to visit Tennessee,” I said.
I have a foggy memory of Rowan and Billy telling me something about taking a train to Tennessee. I had never been to Tennessee. I didn’t actually want to go to Tennessee, but I trusted Rowan and I loved Billy, so I would do anything with him, especially because whenever I’d fall into one of my depressed moods, I would generally find myself trying to calculate all the normal human experiences I would never be permitted to have.
“It’s a Tennessee thing. A custom. Trust me,” Billy told me. “It’ll be worth it. I hear they have great food.”
On Woz, I wasn’t much of an eater, but Woz makes everyone so compliant