Charles Casey's body was not recovered at the scene. The couple he killed, their names were Larry and Suprema Lawrence.
Irene Casey: By the last snapshot that Buddy sent home, you can tell that crippled girl, she's not sanding and refinishing a baseball bat. That thick pink club she's rubbing on with sandpaper and steel wool, and staining with shoe polish and old tea bags, it looks exactly like some giant's sex thingy. A girl like that, with a gimp arm, making herself a dirty, bigman thingy…It's a stretch to see that girl as the mama of my future grandbabies.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Strange as it sounds, emergency service personnel continue to channel Tina Something the gory details of each drive-time accident. Everyone with a government letterhead will deny this, but it's true.
It's all connected. The I-SEE-U Act. Team slamming. Night versus day. Graphic Traffic. Our tax money was the springboard for what eventually became the Party Crashing culture. The pool-car boys, those unsung engineers, their study recommendation split this country into day and night. And they brought us the number-one-rated daytime radio program in this market.
Echo Lawrence: Yes, fuck, yes. The name on my dad's tombstone is Lawrence Lawrence. That's not funny. But Waxman did kill Rant. Sure, he's got great teeth, but the man's evil.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): Beyond evil.
23–Love
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): The minute Rant comes to me asking what model car has the biggest backseat, I could tell where he was headed. My advice was, I told him to get a car with dark upholstery.
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Forget it. Our first time alone, I asked Rant what he really wanted from me. Did he plan to go around with me, then take me home as a fugly club to beat on his parents? Was dating a deformed cripple his last act of teenage rebellion? A surefire way to freak out the folks down on the farm?
Or was I some erotic fantasy? Was sex too boring with normal girls, people with two arms and legs that matched, mouths that could kiss back? Was fucking me some one-time goal in the great scavenger hunt of his sex life?
Or was I just the only girl he knew in the big, bad city? His mentor. A guide into the Nighttimer life. Was sex his way of clinging to me because he was too afraid to be alone in this scary new world?
Sitting in the backseat of that Eldorado, I really let Rant have it with both barrels. We'd parked next to some bushes, away from streetlights, but it's never totally dark in town. I can remember Rant wore his blue bug suit, and smelled toxic. None of this sounds very romantic.
Shot Dunyun: Part of my job, renting bullshit peaks to idiots, is to boost a few myself and stay familiar with the various current titles. For that couple weeks, all we got from the distributors were defective transcripts. I'd be boosting a dessert peak, and the taste track would cut out. A thick slice of chocolate cake would become a mouthful of sticky, greasy pulp. It smelled like chocolate, but in your mouth the cake was nothing but gummy texture. Trapped at home during curfew, one day I boosted my favorite porno peak, and none of the vaginas smelled like anything. The transcripts weren't the problem. My brain was the problem.
Echo Lawrence: Sitting in that Eldorado, Rant looks at me until I stop talking. He waits about two traffic lights' worth of silence, then he says, "What did you eat for breakfast yesterday?"
No cars go past. The street's empty. Rant's eyes float in the shadows. His black teeth, invisible.
Yesterday? In my kitchen, I have frozen waffles, but when I go out to Tommy's Diner I order the hash. I tell Rant, "Cereal." I say, "No, wait. French toast. No…cinnamon toast…"
Rant's hand slides across the seat until his fingers touch mine. He lifts my hand to his face, his lips touching my knuckles, he sniffs, eyes closed, and says, "Wrong." He says, "Yesterday, you had rolled-oat granola with maple sugar and pumpkin seeds, vanilla yogurt, and dried cranberries…" And of course he's dead-on.
Shot Dunyun: Most boosted peaks are bullshit compared to even the slowest night spent Party Crashing, spending time in a car with people and music and snack food, always in a little danger. On a secret mission to meet more strangers. Real people. A road trip to nowhere.
Nonetheless, I'd been boosting peaks since I was in diapers. My parents used to port me to infant-enrichment peaks. Half my childhood I spent plugged into babysitting peaks. As a transcript artist, not being able to plug in would make me the equivalent of a blind painter or a deaf musician. Beyond my worst nightmare.
Echo Lawrence: Rant lifted my hand toward me, saying, "Smell." And I leaned forward to smell, nothing but my skin, my soap, the plastic smell of my old nail polish. His smell of insecticide.
With my head bent down to meet my hand, Rant leans close to put his nose in my hair, his lips at the side of my neck, under my ear; he sniffs and says, "What was for supper two nights ago?"
My fingers still tangled with his fingers. His breath against my neck. With his lips and the warm tip of his tongue pressed wet on my pulse, the heartbeat in my neck, I say, "Turkey?" I say, "Lasagna?"
And Rant's warm breath, his whisper against my ear, he says, "Taco salad. White onions, not yellow or red." He says, "Shredded iceberg lettuce. Ground chicken."
My nipples already getting hard, I ask, "Light or dark meat?"
Shot Dunyun: A head cold can distort how a peak will boost, the same way food never tastes the same when you're sick. It must be I was catching a cold. But a week later, with no runny nose or sore throat, I still couldn't plug in and boost a good peak. By then, I was picturing a brain tumor.
Echo Lawrence: Kissing my eyelids, Rant whispered, "You should throw out those roses…"
He had never been to my apartment. Back then, Rant didn't even know where I lived. I asked him, "What roses?"
"Were they from a boyfriend?" he says.
I asked him to tell me the color of the roses.
"Were they from a girlfriend?" he says.
I asked if he'd been stalking me.
And Rant says, "Pink." Still kissing my forehead, smelling and tasting my skin, my closed eyes, my nose and cheeks, he says, "Two dozen. Nancy Reagan roses mixed with baby's breath and white little-bitty carnations."
They were a gift, I tell him, from a nice middle-aged couple I sometimes work for.
Shot Dunyun: The doctor at the clinic calls me a week later—really just a lady from the clinic calls—and says I need to come back at my earliest convenience. She won't go into any details about my blood work. They get that bullshit smile in their voice, and you know it's not good news. The billing department just really needs full payment before you croak. So I go, and the doc says—it's rabies. No shit, rabies. He gives me the first of the five injections. He won't promise that I'll ever be able to boost another peak.
Right from the clinic, from the pay phone in the waiting room, I phoned Echo and told her to never, never, ever let Rant Casey put his mouth on hers.