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lounged back in the passenger seat, one arm thrown along the top, his fingers almost touching Charlie's shoulder. Slumped down behind the steering wheel, Charlie watched-what the hell else was there to do?-the apartment building across the street and a little way down the block.
        They were parked somewhere over in the northwest section of the city. He knew vaguely his way around here. There was a health food co-op a couple blocks away, he remembered, which had been full of hippie types with hair straggling down to their asses years ago, and which was now considerably more upscale. He'd had a girlfriend, off and on, back when he'd been taking classes at the campus downtown, who'd make him drive out here so she could buy huge sacks of whole grains that'd looked to him like the stuff you'd feed to horses. She was probably still out here, schlumpfing around in her Indian print skirts, getting maybe some grey streaks in her hair, living in some Lesbian poetry-writing commune in one of the funkier old houses-he didn't want to know. A huge crock of lentils soaking, and a dozen cats. This whole area, he knew (Aitch had told him; info some of Aitch's customers had passed on), all these ratty houses with sagging porches and peeling fish-scale shingles-it was all slated for being bulldozed and replaced with skinny packs of row houses. What's-her-name would have to migrate, with her cats and lentils, down the I-5, to Eugene maybe.
        Those were the kinds of thoughts that came drifting by-thoughts about old girlfriends-hanging around late at night in a pilfered Caddy. At least Aitch had burned out finally on those goddamn cassettes; now they had the graveyard shift on the classical station oozing out of the speakers. That was okay-he just had to be careful not to nod out to all that Mozart shit. All this driving back and forth-you figured it up, it was like ten, twelve hours of driving-along with all that pounding away on Mike beforehand… no wonder he was tired. Plus-he rotated his hands on the steering wheel to look at them-he had a really nasty cut across the back of his left hand, deep enough to have drawn blood and scabbed over by now. He'd gotten it from one of Mike's teeth, he supposed, from giving him a crack in the mouth when he'd still been trying to fight and yell.
        What he really wanted to do-besides go back to Aitch's apartment and get something to eat and go to sleep-was to wash out that cut with some kind of disinfectant, even just that raw isopropyl that Aitch always had lying around. Something like that could get really infected. Christ, a dog's mouth was supposed to be cleaner than a human's. And a dog would eat its own shit if you let it. So you had to figure this was a lot worse…
        But instead, they were hanging out here, waiting for Mike's girlfriend to show up. Some other horseshit idea of Aitch's. He took his hand off the wheel and pumped his fist, brooding over the cut on its back.
        "Hey, there she is." Aitch raised his head, peering out through the windshield. "Here she comes."
        Charlie followed Aitch's gaze and spotted the Corvette heading up the street toward them. A red number, a convertible; some flashy piece of shit, as far as he was concerned. A teenager's idea of a neat car. Good for blowing off old ladies in Plymouths at the stop lights, and that was about it. It figured Mike's girlfriend-Charlie had met her before-would have something like that.
        He tried to rouse himself, bracing his arms against the wheel and flexing his shoulder blades to work the stiffness out. "She's got a big surprise coming," he said, getting with Aitch's sense of humor, "when she finds out her boyfriend's gone bye-bye on her."
        Aitch made a little laughing, snorting sound and nodded. They both watched the Corvette pull up to the curb in front of the apartment building. It was easy to spot the girl's blonde hair and the big sunglasses from here.
        The girl