“What have you got scheduled for tomorrow?” John asks.

Travis thinks about it. “Let’s see… I’ll need to lie in bed for about an hour and cry because I’ll have woke up again. That’ll be at about one-thirty in the afternoon right now the way things are going—I’m behind schedule on all the putzing I was supposed to do yesterday. And then, after breakfast, I need to stare at a wall until the sun goes down maybe.”

John smiles, “I have some errands to run—money stuff. But, I figured we could get that hundred watt amp of yours fixed.”

“That’d be cool. I have been meaning to get that fixed for a while.”

“Yeah, you mentioned it the other day.”

“I did? When?”

“I believe you said, ‘John, you asshole, why won’t you help me get my amp fixed? I hate you.’ I think that’s what you said.”

Travis nods. “Now that you mention it, I seem to recall saying something like that.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re right. I’m lying—don’t remember a damn thing.”

Suddenly, John yells in a german accent like Gestapo officer, “Vats you name!”

Travis starts quivering in his seat.

“Vats you name, damn you!”

Travis scratches at the passenger door and begins quietly whimpering.

“Vats you name!” John yells again, growing still more intense.

Breaking down, Travis covers his head and screams into his lap. “I don’t know! All right? I don’t know! Leave me alone!”

John stops the car in the middle of Broad street in the emptiness of downtown. Very calmly, he says, “Get out.” Travis hesitates for a moment. He can never be sure of the conviction John has to a joke. “Get out,” John repeats seriously, while the innocent glisten in his eyes tells Travis, Let’s play a game.

Still whimpering, and actually a little nervous, Travis miserably opens the door and slides himself out of the car. As soon as the door is shut behind him, John drives off, his rear lights glaring red in city light. Standing in the middle of the road, Travis calmly takes his cigarettes out of his pocket, lights one and watches John’s receding lights. You’re a wanted man now, Fleeting, the scratchy voice of Will Munny says to Travis. Be he replies, if I’d aimed ta’ kill a man, then I guess I woulda’, but I’m innocent. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth with his index finger and thumb, looking as menacing as he can. Slowly, he crosses the street, watching the Thunderchicken streak down to the next intersection, execute a u-turn, and come flying back. Standing by the other side of the road now, Travis carelessly watches as the car approaches him and stops again. Leaning over John calls out the open passenger window, “Hey pal! Good ta’ see ya’! Need a ride?”

Travis looks up the empty street and back the other way complacently, and only after full consideration of the situation, he looks back to John who is smiling like a nymphomaniac with five prostitutes in his back seat. “I reckon I do,” he admits with a shrug, and gets back in the car—and almost falls back out as John stomps on the gas peddle and peels the Thunderchicken around one hundred and eighty degrees to face the direction they had been heading. Travis is laughing, “Are you fucking nuts?” The engine roars menacingly as the car charges through three yellow lights in a blast. John poignantly kisses his hand and pats the ceiling of the car as tradition demands of close calls with yellow lights. Pink Floyd tells them now that they used to shine like the sun, as they drive through the empty night.

Hunching up over the steering wheel, his cigarette sticking defiantly straight up from his bottom lip, John intones a deep and scratchy voice, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Travis laughs, because it doesn’t. Turning left onto Lumpkin Street for a few blocks and then right again back onto Baxter, the pair begin their final stretch home. Settling back into his seat, John returns to his normal driving sensibilities, as they are told to shine on like crazy diamonds. A few blocks more and John pulls in the parking lot of their apartment complex, driving all the way down to the horseshoe corner where they lived in building D, apartment 3—though more often than not, they referred to it as living in 3D. Getting out of the car in theatrical unison, Travis and John spot Nick sitting out front of the apartment, his lean and tall form gathered in a huddle on the stoop. “I’ll be damned,” Travis said. “He did lose his key.”

“Shit,” Collin says, “he found us.”

Sitting on the couch next to Steve, Nick says, “It’s not that—it’s just, like, I went to get a drink, and there’s some guy passed out on the stairs, and then I come back and you guys are gone.” Nick laughs, a little exasperated.

“Where you been?” asks Travis. “It couldn’t've taken you that long to find us here.”

“Oh, no, I was hangin’ out with… uh—you know—Beetlejuice.”

“Jackson,” says Ian.

“Yeah. Jackson,” Nick agrees.

“Ian, le’me have a beer,” Collin says.

Ian just gives Collin a look like, “What’re you gonna’ do about it?”

Getting up to go to the refrigerator, Collin asks, “Anybody else?”

“Yeah,” John says, and Collin tosses him one.

“I’m actually feelin’ just fine,” Travis says, dragging out “fine”.

“I tol’ ya’, right?” Steve says.

“Shit, man, this stuff is righteous,” Nick adds. “You should bottle it and sell it.”

“I still wanna’ know what the hell’s in this,” Travis says, but Steve just shakes his head, smiling flatly.

“We should do somethin’ stupid,” Collin says, sitting down again.

“Stoopid,” Nick adds in a Brooklyn accent.

“Stoopid,” Travis echoes, and they both laugh.

Collin looks at them for a moment, and then says, “What?” He doesn’t get the joke, but it’s just an old joke between Nick and Travis, a cartoon they adored, and they give no hint of explanation.

“What do you mean?” Ian asks Collin.

“I don’ know. Stupid. You can’t think of shit, you jus’ always end up doin’ it.”

“Stoopid,” Nick says again.

“Stoopid,” Travis repeats.

“What the fuck?” Collin asks, get a little irritated.

“Were you out with us for my birthday, when it snowed?” Nick asked seriously.

“No.”

“That was hilarious. Everybody was sledding on Clayton and making snow angels in the middle of the road. It started around one and there was inches on the ground when everybody came out after last call.”

“I remember that. Me and John were watchin’ people wreck their cars on Baxter.”

John starts laughing at the memory.

“Hey, yeah!” Nick says, “Why the hell weren’t you out with us on my birthday?”

Travis shrugs. “Didn’t have the magic card then.”

“Oh, right.”

“You remember that, though?” Travis asks John, who just rubs his eyes and smiles. “You know that hill, right by the dorms?” Travis asks Collin.

“Yeah.”

“Me and John were on the Blue Monkey’s porch, just standin’ there watchin’ while people came over that hill at, like, what?—forty-five miles an hour? There were, like, five cars in a row smashed into each other right there in front of us. And the owners were just standin’ there on the sidewalk screamin’ at whoever came over the hill and smashed into their cars. People on the porch would applaud them when they got out of their cars. Humiliating.”

“Shit,” Collin snorts.

“It was ridiculous,” Travis agreed.

“People here don’t know how to drive in the snow,” Ian says.

“Ya’ll don’t know how to drive, period,” replies Collin—insinuating politely that Ian’s a Yankee. Everyone in the room seems to agree with these two points. People down South drove obliviously, and people up North drove rudely. Big difference, of course.

“See, that’s what I mean, though,” Collin says, shaking his head.

“What?” Ian asks.

“Jus’ stupid shit.”

“Stoopid,” Nick says.

“Stoopid,” Travis repeats.

“Stoopid,” Collin says.