CHAPTER 25--AN OMINOUS SIGN

June 1997

W

oke up abruptly, and with a slight hangover. Between the hot sun beating down on my face, and disjointed rhythms emanating from a drum circle one row of cars over, there wasn't much more sleep I was going to get at that place. It was time to move on.

My pleasant acid trip seemed like nothing more than a pleasant dream. Today was the day we were to hook up with Rooster. And it couldn't happen soon enough. Not only were Louie and I broke, but without the box it was getting increasingly hard to identify future sources of income. It was time to get together with the Rooster and talk business.

Dragged myself up and decided that, before getting the Dodge in gear, a few things were in order, like a cup of coffee. And after that a smoke. I was out, but maybe I could find somebody with a cigarette. Nothing like that first cigarette and that first cup of coffee in the morning. But then, a more pressing biological need presented itself. In fact, it had been nagging at me all along. I was ignoring it. I needed to take a piss. That was a lot of beer I drank the night prior.

Found what I thought was an out-of-way spot. With no one looking, I unzipped my Levi's and let my thing hang out and drain into the dirt between two cars. One was an old Chevy Blazer that obviously had seen better days. It was facing the front of another car, whose license plate was slowly coming into focus. And as the letters on that license became unambiguously clear, I seriously considered that I must still be asleep. And, no, I wasn't dreaming. I was having a fucking nightmare, because the letters on that license plate, of which there were three, were unmistakably the three I feared most: DDT. I was so startled I jerked upwards, and my piss stream leaped up about a foot and splattered all over the license plate. If I wasn't scared shitless, I would have laughed.

But I couldn't laugh. As soon I was no longer paralyzed with fear, which was moments, that lasted centuries, later, I knew I had to get out of there fast, because the car to which the license plate belonged, which now I had clearly registered in my mind, was a late model black 328i BMW.