Echo Lawrence: Let me think. Rant bought me a LeSabre I couldn't total fast enough. He bought me a Cavalier that I rammed into the back of someone's Audi. Then he bought me a Regal that I swerved to trash the side of a Taurus. No, wait, there was a Grand Am in there somewhere. A Grand Am and a Cougar and a Grand Marquis. Oh, and the Lebaron that we caught on fire, trying to eat fondue during one game. Maybe that car shouldn't count.
Shot Dunyun: We're stopped at a red light when a scrap heap rolls, coughing and shivering, from a block behind us, heading to tag our rear end. You can hear the engine tappets knocking from a block away, the springs squeak, and the headlights flicker. The fan belt's squealing, and a stained mattress quivers on its roof. This monster creeps closer, but we're trapped in traffic, waiting for a green light.
The light goes green, and this monster behind us still drags itself along, crawling toward our bumper. Echo starts to gun the engine, but Rant tells her, "Wait."
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Young Rant was committing the most kind and gracious act of generosity.
Shot Dunyun: We sit through that green light, another red light, and half a second green before this sputtering, trembling old clunker—it just nudges our bumper and dies. Dies dead. The fan belt whimpers and goes quiet. Steam boils up through the grille, and the loose sheetmetal and chrome trim stop banging. The old car seems to sag down onto its axle stops, and the driver gets out. A kid, maybe sixteen years old. No shit. A kid by the name of Ned…Neddy…Nick, I forget.
Our car was a Caddy Seville. We had the room, so Rant offers the kid mascot position in the middle of our backseat. We were the first tag this kid ever made; I remember he was smiling so wide.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Another pleasant aspect of Party Crashing was the piñata aspect. We project the worst aspects of ourselves into the vehicles around us on the road. The drivers dashing past us, we imagine them filled with arrogance. The slow drivers we're trapped behind, we imagine them as controlling or infirmed.
The joy occurs when, with one nudge or scrape, that enemy vehicle bursts open to reveal stamp collectors, football fans, mothers, grandfathers, chimney sweeps, restaurant cooks, law clerks, ministers, teachers, ushers, ditch diggers, Unitarians, Teamsters, bowlers, human beings. Hidden inside that hard, polished paint and glass is another person just as soft and scared as you.
Shot Dunyun: With every Mercy Crash, Rant would try and not hit too hard. A bump here. A ding there. Flirting kind of hits. I remember he said his money had run out, and he couldn't buy us another car. He said the car we were driving, that Caddy, it would have to last for one more big Tree Night.
Echo Lawrence: Earlier, when I say I let Rant "ride in my backseat," that's not a euphemism.
Neddy Nelson: You know how great Rant was? You know what he did when they dropped me off at my building, just before curfew? Anybody tell you Rant flips me a gold coin, saying, "For your next wheels…"? Can you imagine my surprise when the coin shop offers me ten grand for that 1884 Liberty Head dollar? Was there ever a guy so generous? Without Rant Casey, you think I'd be driving another car so soon?
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: That, I believe, was the squandered remainder of Rant Casey's Tooth Fairy fortune.
Echo Lawrence: When Shot said "rabies," I thought he'd said "babies." The results came back negative, thank God, but I think I asked for the wrong test.
27–Tree Night
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Following enormous deliberation, we chose to use a real tree. We decided on a noble fir. Festooned in blue lights, and crowned with a glowing blue star. Fastened lengthwise along the roof of the Cadillac Seville, the tree resembled a blue comet: the big star bobbing above the windshield, trailing hundreds of dazzling blue sparks behind it.
Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): Do you think I'm an idiot if I say the best part of Party Crashing, what makes it best, is it's like this breaker? A circuit breaker? How about if your mom is yelling, calling you a lazy fuck, and you lost another job, and your friends from school, they have everything going, and you don't even have a date? What if it's a total toilet in your head, but out of nowhere—slam-bo! — somebody crashes into you, and you're better? Isn't it like a gift, somebody slamming you? Don't you get out of the car, all shaky and shocked? Like you're a baby getting born? Or a whole relaxing massage that happens in one-half a second?
Isn't Party Crashing like an electroshock treatment for your depression?
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The night Rant died, he wore a blue denim shirt embroidered quite enthusiastically, if not expertly, with a variety of rainbows and flowers. The shirt was quite a departure from his usual blue coveralls which reeked of insecticide. I seem to recall columbines, or a similar native flower species, stitched in purple, circling the collar. On the chest pocket, over his heart, an emerald-green hummingbird hovered, feeding from a yellow daffodil.
Lew Terry (Property Manager): The only other occasion I entered Casey's apartment was, one day I go down to the basement to clean out the recycling bins, and dumped there in the clear-glass bin is those jars I seen in his closet, only empty. No spiders. On the top of each jar, Casey's put the name «Dorry» or "June." On every jar, a girl's name.
The company where Casey worked, the exterminators said he'd quit. He wasn't so much killing bugs as he was just relocating them. Seeing how this was a vermin issue, I'm allowed to use my pass key and take a look. Was nothing left on the premises but his empty suitcase and those little dark lumps on the wall above the bed, no bugs or rats, nothing. The only thing out of the ordinary was a plain white egg, set in the middle of his bed pillow. And if anybody's saying I took that egg, it was the police detectives who took it. Since then, the county threatens to fine us, we have so many poison spiders. The crazy bastard must've set loose his whole friggin' collection.
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Picture it. We'd mixed hours of Christmas music to blast. For two hours before the ten o'clock window, teams cruised around, showing off their trees. Parading cars, streaming with silver icicles. Cars shaggy with gold tinsel and shaking off glass balls that popped in the street. People stood on every corner, wearing red hats with white fur trim, waving for places on a team, shouting and flashing skin to get a spot in any car really done up in lights and decorations. Hundreds of Tag Team wannabes dressed as Santa Claus.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? You'd cruise past a Santa Claus standing on some corner, and jolly old Santa would flash you his rack. Her rack. Tits on St. Nick. That's the kind of carnival that Tree Night turns into.
Echo Lawrence: There's no team loyalty for the two hours before the window. As everybody parades their decorations, people are climbing in and out of cars. Pit-stopping. Teams come together and dissolve. Just this mingling, mixing party that takes place in a milling sea of lit-up cars.