Chapter XXIII: Rock me Tonight

Chapter Twenty-Three: Rock me tonight

Why go with Vance Larsen? Because if you've got nothing going for you and somebody else does or can pretend they do then you go along. Saying 'No' left doors closed while saying 'Yes' opened them. I needed to open doors so I said yes.

Now, Vance may be a complete asshole, but he is a driving guru. During the day there were too many cars in Vance's way so he sat in his attic apartment in Market Square and rolled cigarettes until night. He had not been to California yet, but Vance had California in his blood. He would have thrived in California, but in New England he was like the pig at a cook out, always on the run. Around midnight Vance would start calling the friends of his who weren't in jail (Evan) or rehab (Hawk Addard). Most would mumble and slam the phone back down. Vance never called back. Either they were into it or out of it. Either they grooved or they didn’t. I always took the bait.

Vance’s energy was limitless except when it came to working. The moment Vance punched the clock he became the most slothful, incompetent employee on the planet. He once got fired because he pretended he didn't know how to answer a phone. He stole and cheated and lied so much that it became a full time job to stay out of doing any work. He was currently putting chowder on the table by selling five hundred scratch tickets he claimed he had found “Just lying there on the street.”

“I don't question good fortune,” he had said, “I take what I get when I can get it.”

Vance sold the dollar scratch tickets for half price after he had delicately scratched off enough to tell if the ticket was a winner. Then he repainted the little square so it looked brand new and he sold it. Since he suspected that the police were waiting for him, he couldn't redeem any of the winners. Before I went to Florida he had promised to pay me thirty percent of any winning tickets I could safely redeem. I had refused to do this on moral grounds, so he had foolishly trusted over two hundred dollars in winning tickets to the arch-criminal Evan Squidly. Evan promptly redeemed the money, bought two kegs of beer for his own money-making scam, but was nabbed by the police for underage possession after being tipped off about the stolen tickets. Squidly would definitely make a deal for his freedom by pointing a meaty finger in Vance's direction. So Vance stashed the tickets and laid low. Petty conflicts such as this one were the norm for Bone Harbor winters. If you weren't in school, and Vance certainly wasn't, then why not break some laws? Like Ronald Reagan used to say: “If you aren't committing a crime, then you aren't trying hard enough.”

Vance could hear the Wolves at his door and felt the Escort Service was his last hope to make money from nothing. If it failed then he would have to take his chances in Mexico with me. Naturally, he liked to keep doors open to two completely different plans at the same time. It was Weasel ethics, and I wholeheartedly approved. So, until Vance was sitting across from me in a Mexican bar, holding a Mexican beer, wearing a Mexican straw hat with a Mexican whore on his lap, I assumed I would be making the journey alone, if at all.

Vance knew he had limits; he just didn’t respect them. Unemployed, unmotivated and without school to occupy his hours, Vance created his own tests. I was different. I never drove. I didn’t own a car. I didn’t need to go anywhere. I biked places. That was my thing. Bicycling and dreaming of Game Six. If I went anywhere it was in the passenger seat. So when Vance called me at 1:30 in the morning and asked me to go out with him, I went. I always said yes.

Tell us about letting Vance in as your Guest. Remember? Tell the story about when Vance ruined the Celebration graduation. Remember the smell of the booze in the back of the bus?