Here's the first few pages of the book. The story takes place in the bay area and the plot revolves around a hate crime that occurs in the middle of the night in Dolores Park. Also, I'll be posting a different story soon, well, a link to a different story when it gets published. Enjoy!
Shame At the Wheel
Introduction:
473
The van sped down I-580 carrying the boys and their equipment. On
either side of the eight-lane highway, brown and yellow brush slowly began to
turn lush and green as they moved west towards Oakland, towards the coast.
Above, the sky was grey and pockmarked with holes, as if God was a rat and the
clouds were made of Swiss cheese. Rays of light circumnavigated the shadows,
which danced like peaceful ghosts, while homes on the hills behind them glowed
with the hot white heat of the early morning sun. The wind picked up and the
light shifted. The color palette of the landscape became its own inverse;
broken down and rusted cars gleamed on overgrown grass lawns while the gloom
spread across the hedges and driveways of the gated home communities. Spencer,
who was in the front passenger seat, observed and made comment.
“This
bay area weather reminds me of my ex-girlfriend.”
There
were a few ruffled sounds and a yawn from the back seat, but no one
responded. Todd, the man at the
wheel, was rocking his head up and down and tapping his fingers on the steering
wheel. Spence could hear the beats of a six piece drum kit coming out of Todd’s
headphones, the hi-hat sloshing in 4/4 as the kick drum dialed in the beat on
the 1.
“It’s
bi-polar,” Spence said to no one. He didn’t mind being ignored. Though they had
only been on the road for eight hours, the boys came to an organic consensus
(organic consensus meaning no one had actually said it) regarding their
intra-friend social interactions. The credo read: personal space is more important in the beginning of a
journey than in the end. After all, when they made it big, there was no doubt
that they would be sharing women—sometimes in the same night—as well as hotel
beds, sinks, showers, toilets, bottles of water (and whiskey), drugs (though
not needles) and the small thing that time and experience amount to: their
lives. Spencer chuckled to himself. Bi-polar! He couldn’t
wait to get sick of these motherfuckers in the wake of their obscenely
hedonistic success.
The
van hit a small bump in the road causing the snare drum to rattle. Another yawn
came from the backseat followed by a painfully-slow-leaked fart. Spencer rolled
his window down an inch and breathed in the fresh air of…he looked down the
freeway at the next sign…Livermore. What a name for a city, not that Temecula
was any better. But why live in Livermore when it was so close to Oakland, the
new artistic mecca of California, and Berkeley, where the cops light your
joints for you and, of course, San Francisco: heaven or hell on Earth depending
on whether or not you voted for the black guy. They were getting closer. Twenty
miles to the bridge? Twenty-five tops?
Todd changed lanes and the equipment in the back shuffled again.
The guitar cases were bungee-corded together and slid around like one giant,
expensive-in-terms-of-saved-up-allowance package. While the whole lot,
consisting of guitars, bases, drums, microphones, effects pedals, drum sticks
and amplifiers, was about as organized as an open-mic punk show, everything
seemed to meld together among blankets, pillows and bundles of clothing. The
band’s worldly possessions were forged by the availability of space and
tempered by the polyester fabric and cotton stuffing. They could fly off the
freeway, barrel roll into a ditch and all die in an ironic, pre-fame pit of
poetic cliché, but the equipment would still be playable at a show that
evening, barring a few tuning adjustments and broken string repairs.
Spencer
tapped Todd on the shoulder and pointed down the stretch of freeway that would
soon deliver them to their new home and their big chance: San Francisco. In the
way that youthful souls always envision the future, the feeling of grand hope
in Spencer’s mind was not accompanied by the questions of attainment: how and
why. It was instead preoccupied with that first grasp of greatness, the
existential springboard that answers who am I, what am I worth, and what will I
be remembered for? The question was never how or why, it was always: how soon?
The road ahead stretched far and the miles driven,
metaphorically—and Spencer was
just plain tickled by metaphor—paled in comparison to the miles to come. Todd looked back at Spencer, smiling
and nodding in agreement. Todd lifted his fist and extended it. Spencer pounded
his fist against Todd’s and pulled back in mock explosion. In the back seat
someone farted again and then again. The van began to stink. It was 7:05 a.m.
Spencer
closed his eyes and pictured the first half of the Bay Bridge, the suspension half.
He pictured himself entering the tunnel next to Yerba Buena Island and emerging
as a citizen of San Francisco. It was surreal. Just last night they had been
four college drop-outs. Now they were a band. They had residence in a co-op in
the famous Mission District and in a matter of days they would be playing their
first gig. Maybe it would be in a park or outside a BART station for free, but
it would be step one to getting the word out. It was official: Assorted Olives
had arrived.
“Yo,”
came a gravelly lurch, “We almost there?” Billy had slept seven of the eight
hours on the road and Spence guessed that one of two things were about to
happen: either Billy was going to sit up, comb out his Raven black, bird’s nest
of a hairdo and make the final leg of the trip as a conscious member of the
band, or he would take out the bottle of Black Cherry whiskey he had used as a
sleep aid while they were still on the first surge of caffeine on the 91, still
seventy–five miles from interstate 5 (the big blue vein that comprised most of
the journey according to a map bought at a gas station), and re-enter the realm
of the dead.
“Fifteen
minutes, twenty tops until the bridge,” Spence said, smiling and growing more
excited by the moment. Through his grin he added, “You look like Trent Reznor
after a three way with Kourtney Love and Melissa Etheridge.”
“Rock
n’ roll, bitch,” Billy croaked and grabbed the whiskey, lying down and nursing
it like a bottle of milk. Party hard and party early, Spence could hear Billy saying almost every
Friday and Saturday afternoon during college, hours before their plans for the
night had begun, there’s no reason to be drunk when everyone else is. Though he didn’t know exactly what Billy had
meant by that, Spence saw no harm in it. But still, a small voice in the back
of his skull, the voice behind reason and caution made a peep. It whispered:
this is your roommate, now. Isn’t that…neat?
Todd
interrupted Spencer mid-thought, “Have you heard from Blake yet? We might be a
little early.”
“I’ll
text him right now,” Spencer said, beginning to grin again without realizing he
had even stopped. “He said either he or Sage would be there in the morning for
sure.”
“You
should just text him right now and tell him we’re coming,” Todd said, still
bobbing his head up and down to the beat in his headphones. “San Franciscans
don’t like surprises. If we arrive to early and ring the doorbell, we’ll cause
a house full of guys to flush their weed down the toilet…”
“…yeah,
and unplug their liberal pirate satellite feeds and burn their underground
healthcare facilities. Fuck needle exchange and morning after pills, sinners!”
Todd,
looked over at Spencer and gave a look that said: I didn’t hear what you
said, but the tone came through just fine. Sarcasm after nine a.m. please.
“Why don’t I jus text him now then and let him
know we’re coming,” Spence said.
“Just
give him a text now, and let him know we’re coming, okay?” Todd said, keeping
his eyes on the road. Spence was about to respond, but his incredulous look caught
Todd’s attention in his peripherals. Todd turned to him again with a knowing
grin and punched him in the shoulder. As he smiled the smile of that didn’t
hurt even though it really fucking hurt, Spencer was reminded of the fact that up until a year and a half
ago, Todd had been a fat kid. Diet, drugs, exercise and the tail end of puberty
had slimmed him, but he had a fat kid’s strength and a fat kid’s chip on the
shoulder. The sign on the side of the freeway said San Leandro next three
exits; Oakland—three miles and the East Bay Bridge—Eight miles. Spencer got his
phone out of his pocket and texted Blake. Somewhere in the back, somebody
farted. Four hundred and seventy three miles into the trip and the air was
beginning to go stale. Spence plugged his nose and hummed a chord progression while
editing the lyrics to a song he had been working on:
If he were a real Napoleon, he would have killed Porfiry
for even
suspecting him.
for even accusing him
It’s not about being right, it’s about murder.
It’s not about being right, it’s about winning
It’s
about being the most important and absolving the sin with fame!
Raskolnikov!
Raskolnikov!
Raskolnikov!
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