Off Topic
Travelblog of Thom S. Hunter
Editor’s Note: Dammit. Far as I can tell this idiot idea of a beat reporter is going to stick. Guess he’s got low friends in high places. Or at least high friends. And I like to eat, and I got a wife and three kids (that I know of) who need clothes and sneakers. So I got nothing to do but to let the guy write whatever he writes. Good luck reading it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The van rode smooth as you’d expect a hover vehicle to ride. Electric and all. Inside the thing was a piece of art as fine as the curved grace that still rode on Descartes’ lips. He was older than he looked. Wiser, too. You don’t get where Descartes is without being able to think yourself around the block a time or two. Right now he was wise enough to be sitting on a plush seat in the riding compartment, sipping on something iced, and watching out the surely bulletproof window that was clear as the Goon’s head.
I sat to his left and wedged myself into the nook that made a little corner. Mostly because I was able to pretend it was safer with something hard at my back. Shorty and Tailwind got in across from us.
As the door swung down, the fireball surrounding the Cutlass had become that full red-orange that tells you it’s gonna burn for a while.
Everything was quiet in that no one talked, but that there was a steady patter of a call-in show going on over the speakers. “Surfer City” was the name a the show. Hosted by a couple nobodies who used to play for the team. The Long Beach ball club was out over the far side of the country in Heartland territory, which was maybe good because they’re sitting eleven games out of the Mad Popes…I mean, the Crusaders. Things aren’t looking that good. As in, the team just made a “splash” by giving my new club a million bucks in return for a guy hitting .179. The fans are squwaking like they’ve been waiting for a big wave, and Richie Dares ain’t it.
Not that I blame ’em.
It’s maybe five minutes down the line when L-Pain’s phone comes on again.
Descartes fishes it out. I take it again, and when I’m done with the call he just waves me away. “You keep it," he’ll say. "I gotta feeling you’re gonna need it.”
He says this because I answer it and it’s a guy what calls himself Anton, and says he’s in for twenty gallons, and that I’ll find the address on the line where I told him to send it. Turns out the call’s coming from the Pacific Ocean, but I know enough to say it’s not Bikini. “Hawaii,” I said to Descartes. “I get the feeling Anton isn’t the sharpest coconut on the tree.”
Turns out Descartes might as well be a fortune teller.
Every few minutes the phone lights up and I get another conversation, or at least a part a one before the other side breaks things.
First comes a guy named Chuck from Omaha. Next is a chick with a rough voice who doesn’t say lots but sounds like a cheesehead on account of the new Manobu Shimizu song that’s rocking the joint in the background. The next call’s from Canada. The next, too. I’m barely off that call when some idiot from Des Moines calls and screams at me about a goddamned water war, and how he wants a whole lake of the stuff I got. I had heard of the mass insanity of the fake water war helping to create a whole damned nation state in the middle of a whole nother one, but that’s the first ass chewing I ever got from it.
“Fascinating,” Descartes said after that one, though maybe he was responding to the Surfer fan on the call-in that was explaining how the team ought to trade four younger pitchers so as to kill them off earlier.
And still, the phone rang.
Nashville. Yellow Springs. Even a covert call from the Vegas troop, though maybe they were just wanting something to drink. Phoenix called, too. Direct from their local Denny’s.
What the hell were you doing, L-Pain, I thought as I hung up from that one, recalling the conversation he and Foghorn had in which Louey said he’d faked it all. What the hell were you doing?
But I knew the answer already. Louey had been playing all sides of a 32-sided dice.
I looked at Descartes, and saw he was adding numbers up in a way similar to mine.
“Yes,” he said over the drone of another Surfer fan calling for GM Lane to do something smarter this time. “This really is going to be fun.”
The van rode smooth as you’d expect a hover vehicle to ride. Electric and all. Inside the thing was a piece of art as fine as the curved grace that still rode on Descartes’ lips. He was older than he looked. Wiser, too. You don’t get where Descartes is without being able to think yourself around the block a time or two. Right now he was wise enough to be sitting on a plush seat in the riding compartment, sipping on something iced, and watching out the surely bulletproof window that was clear as the Goon’s head.
I sat to his left and wedged myself into the nook that made a little corner. Mostly because I was able to pretend it was safer with something hard at my back. Shorty and Tailwind got in across from us.
As the door swung down, the fireball surrounding the Cutlass had become that full red-orange that tells you it’s gonna burn for a while.
Everything was quiet in that no one talked, but that there was a steady patter of a call-in show going on over the speakers. “Surfer City” was the name a the show. Hosted by a couple nobodies who used to play for the team. The Long Beach ball club was out over the far side of the country in Heartland territory, which was maybe good because they’re sitting eleven games out of the Mad Popes…I mean, the Crusaders. Things aren’t looking that good. As in, the team just made a “splash” by giving my new club a million bucks in return for a guy hitting .179. The fans are squwaking like they’ve been waiting for a big wave, and Richie Dares ain’t it.
Not that I blame ’em.
It’s maybe five minutes down the line when L-Pain’s phone comes on again.
Descartes fishes it out. I take it again, and when I’m done with the call he just waves me away. “You keep it," he’ll say. "I gotta feeling you’re gonna need it.”
He says this because I answer it and it’s a guy what calls himself Anton, and says he’s in for twenty gallons, and that I’ll find the address on the line where I told him to send it. Turns out the call’s coming from the Pacific Ocean, but I know enough to say it’s not Bikini. “Hawaii,” I said to Descartes. “I get the feeling Anton isn’t the sharpest coconut on the tree.”
Turns out Descartes might as well be a fortune teller.
Every few minutes the phone lights up and I get another conversation, or at least a part a one before the other side breaks things.
First comes a guy named Chuck from Omaha. Next is a chick with a rough voice who doesn’t say lots but sounds like a cheesehead on account of the new Manobu Shimizu song that’s rocking the joint in the background. The next call’s from Canada. The next, too. I’m barely off that call when some idiot from Des Moines calls and screams at me about a goddamned water war, and how he wants a whole lake of the stuff I got. I had heard of the mass insanity of the fake water war helping to create a whole damned nation state in the middle of a whole nother one, but that’s the first ass chewing I ever got from it.
“Fascinating,” Descartes said after that one, though maybe he was responding to the Surfer fan on the call-in that was explaining how the team ought to trade four younger pitchers so as to kill them off earlier.
And still, the phone rang.
Nashville. Yellow Springs. Even a covert call from the Vegas troop, though maybe they were just wanting something to drink. Phoenix called, too. Direct from their local Denny’s.
What the hell were you doing, L-Pain, I thought as I hung up from that one, recalling the conversation he and Foghorn had in which Louey said he’d faked it all. What the hell were you doing?
But I knew the answer already. Louey had been playing all sides of a 32-sided dice.
I looked at Descartes, and saw he was adding numbers up in a way similar to mine.
“Yes,” he said over the drone of another Surfer fan calling for GM Lane to do something smarter this time. “This really is going to be fun.”
