Read Online The Front of the Freeway by Logan Noblin - Free Book Online Page B

much a gram goes for? How about a hundred of them? Shoot, this is Hollywood, every other waitress is a model on a coke diet.” Tony snuffs an imaginary line off his pointer finger and smiles at me expectantly. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Tony doesn’t need someone to talk to. He needs an audience. I force a smirk and grab the heavy red can behind me, a gallon of gas sloshing against the ribbed metal frame inside. The top snaps off with a soft pop, and I hang the bottle over the dark grey hood. A current bursts from the white plastic nozzle and falls heavily to the car, breaking on the flat aluminum hood, pelting the wide front window with a thousand thick, shimmering beads. Immediately the gas bites at my nose, and I can taste the fumes like a toxic cloud, but I walk the canister around the car, drenching it in the slick, translucent slime. Tony’s flicking a small metal lighter open, close, open, close, eyes stuck to the sweat-damped vehicle. After two passes I toss the empty can into the driver’s seat. The transmission’s set to neutral, and the dripping grey nose peers cautiously over the ledge of the long gravel coffin. I walk to the back and press my hands against the smooth, greased bumper, digging my feet in the torn grass. A two-ton metal box stuffed with fourteen gallons of gas and a pint of blood rolls slowly in the dirt, but Tony kicks the taillight and, with a heavy metallic sigh, the four-door ship sinks into the concrete valley. The bow bounces off the rough channel floor with a crash and sags into the aqueduct flat, groaning to a halt ten feet from the thick vein of water cut into the middle of the track, and Tony hands me the first mixed cocktail.
    “Light?” Tony flips open the silver Zippo and strikes it against the end of the damp cloth dripping from the mouth of the bottle. After a second, a thin wisp of smoke meekly pulsing from the tail of the wilted rag explodes into a brilliant orange flame, climbing hungrily up the wet and hanging cloth.
    “Maybe we should say something,” I offer, “like some last words.” Tony picks another brown bomb out of the dirt and pinches his eyebrows at me thoughtfully.
    “What, like a funeral?”
    “No, not like a funeral. Maybe like a toast.” Tony turns his eyes to the dark metal frame resting in the shaded valley and scratches his neck. After a second, he smiles, and turns two creased eyes back to me.
    “Alright then, to what?” I want to say something clever about business, or something respectful for the cop, or anything about where the hell this is all going. But I don’t say all that.
    “Strippers and coke.” Tony coughs a laugh and softly clinks the top of his drink against mine. The flame hanging from my bottle bites into the soft, saturated rag dripping from his, spreading smoothly towards a pair of slender glass necks.
    “To the customers,” he agrees, dropping his hand almost to the ground behind him and hurling the little glass grenade high into the blackened sky. The bottle flutters across the dark canvas, a little flashing sun arching back to earth, and explodes across the tail of the waiting car, a wide ring of fire and glass spitting out across metal and water and concrete. I wind up too, careful to keep the waving flame off my hand, and launch the bottle into the ravine, soap and gas splashing over the blazing funeral pyre. And it feels good, pelting the aqueduct and Tony’s scrap-metal carriage with these little glass grenades, because it all feels like the start of something new, something different. Something to get ahead. Sure, maybe Tony’s a little psychotic, calling his own pitches while bombing his blood-stained car, but he’s the L.A. Moses, and I believe him when he says we’re getting out of here together. We watch the gas tanks catch flame in the ditch, erupting one after another like thunder claps, spitting fireballs and incinerating the tires and the roof and the frame, but I’m already thinking about new cars and