The Stingray Shuffle полностью

“Well, there’s a story here about a hypnotist in Europe who killed a woman onstage in 1894 by commanding her soul to leave her body. She had a heart attack.”

“Oh… hic… right!”

“I wasn’t there, but that’s what it says…. Lenny, you can’t read over my shoulder and drive at the same time. Pick one.”

Lenny reluctantly returned to his side of the car and the approved ten-o’clock, two-o’clock steering-wheel grip.

“Okay, Mr. Skeptic,” said Serge. “Want to get rid of those hiccups?”

Lenny nodded. “Hic.”

Serge turned sideways in his seat and spoke in a monotone. “Concentrate on my voice.”

“What are you going to do?… hic…”

“Make your hiccups leave your body.”

“Not with my soul!… hic…”

“Good point. I’ll try to make sure I get the pronouns right in the incantation.”

“Don’t you need to swing a pocket watch… hic… or have me look at a pinwheel or something?”

“That’s bullshit. Besides, you’re challenged enough with just the road.”

“Hurry up,” said Lenny. “I hate hiccups… hic…”

“Focus on my voice. Relax. Take deeper and slower breaths. Hiccups cannot survive at low rates of respiration….”

“…Hic… I still have the hiccups.”

“Shhhh! Don’t listen to the hiccups…. Only my voice…. You will continue to relax, the interval between hiccups growing longer each time…. Each hiccup is one less until they’re gone for good…. Okay, I’m not talking to Lenny anymore. Hiccups, do you hear me? I’m talking to you now. I command you — in the name of Christ, leave Lenny’s body!”

Serge heard a rattling sound. He turned forward and saw they were off course, running over the raised reflectors as they crossed the inside breakdown lane, then down into the narrow median. Serge looked over at the driver’s seat and saw Lenny’s head slumped to his chest. He reached over and grabbed the wheel, but it was too late. They had already entered the construction zone, and the temporary cement retaining walls funneled them into oncoming traffic.

“Lenny! Wake up!”

“Huh? What? What is it?… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“So that’s what happened,” said Lenny. “I hate it when I wake up driving.”

“How are your hiccups?”

Lenny thought a second. “They’re gone.”

“What do you think about hypnosis now?”

“Gimme a break,” said Lenny. “That didn’t do it.”

“What do you mean? It did it and then some. You were fuckin’ out.”

“That was the weed,” said Lenny. “It was already making me feel like nappy time.”

“Atheist.”

Lenny lit another joint, started up the car and pulled back on the road. Serge put down the hypnosis book and picked up the morning paper as they passed a thousand-acre brush fire.

“Anything good?” asked Lenny.

“Second-grader brings gun to school. Jesus, what ever happened to just sticking out your tongue?”

“I still do it.”

“Here’s an item on a drunk bridge tender who sent a car airborne,” said Serge, oblivious to the wall of flame down the side of the highway. “And someone stole the Picasso cat again from the Hemingway House. A funeral home is being sued for putting voodoo dolls in a chest cavity. Eleven more Floridians die from smoke inhalation trying to stay warm by barbecuing indoors. Man convicted of killing his dog because it was homosexual….”

“How did he know?”

“It says the Yorkshire made advances on another terrier named Bandit. That’s when the owner decided to put a stop to the godlessness.”

“What is it about this state?” asked Lenny. “All my friends up north keep asking me: Does the freak show ever take a break down there?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Serge looked back down at his newspaper.

Up ahead, Lenny saw a small stampede of flaming rabbits running from the brush fire and into the road, where they were snatched up by turkey buzzards circling overhead, whose claws were singed by the burning fur, and the rabbits began dropping by the dozen on passing vehicles, one splattering on the Cadillac’s windshield and bouncing over Lenny’s head.

Serge looked up from his newspaper at the sound of the thud. “What the hell was that?”

Lenny’s jaw fell open, the joint sticking to the spit on his lower lip.

Serge pointed at the bloody stain on the windshield. “What kind of bug did you hit?”

“It was a bunny.”

“How’d you hit a bunny with your windshield?”

Lenny pointed up at the sky.

Serge shook his head. “You’re higher than a motherfucker.” He went back to his newspaper.

Lenny took the joint out of his mouth, looked at it a second, then threw it out of the car.

“Serge.”

“What?”

“Do you think I’m dysfunctional?”

“No, Lenny. You know those nagging sensations you’re always having? Total alienation, utter lack of self-worth, chronic-masturbation guilt and perpetual dread of impending death?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s all normal. Feel better now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Your problem is you lack focus. The key to life is hobbies, otherwise you’re asking for trouble. You know what they always say — if Hitler only had a train set…”

“Who says that?”