Freaky Deaky Read Free

in . . . well, it’s been awhile.”
    “I bet you still know how.”
    Skip grinned at her again. “I bet I do too. But see, we hardly ever use that kind of high explosives.”
    They were at Mario’s in midtown Detroit, waiting for their dinner order among white tablecloths and oil paintings of southern Italian villages: Skip drinking vodka, eating the breadsticks with a pat of butter stuck to each bite; Robin smoking, sipping red wine, watching Skip through tinted glasses.
    “War scenes, like mortars and shells exploding? We use black powder, squib it off electrically. For the kush shot, or any time you see a car go over the cliff and explode? We put three or four gallons of gasoline inside in plastic bottles wrapped in primer cord and then fire it by remote control. Push a button, like you open your garage door.”
    “I park on the street,” Robin said.
    “Like you used to. I remember there was Daddy’s garage door and Mommy’s garage door and Miss Robin’s garage door, side by side attached to a big house in Bloomfield Hills.”
    “Did you know Mother drove me to prison?”
    “I didn’t think you could do that.”
    “All the way to Huron Valley. She bought a gray pinstriped suit for the trip. She and the judge were hoping I’d be sent to Alderson—Christ—West Virginia, but Daddy talked to somebody in the Justice Department.”
    “That was nice,” Skip said, “had you close to home.”
    “I was hoping for Pleasanton, in California. Get some sun.”
    “You see your folks?”
    “Daddy’s gone to heaven, he had a coronary. Mother, I hardly ever see, which I’m sure you can understand. She’s on a round-the-world cruise. That’s what she does now. She takes trips.”
    “Your mom was a trip,” Skip said, “had that sarcastic way of speaking. You do it better.”
    “Thanks a lot,” Robin said. She blew her smoke at him and took a sip of wine.
    “I rode a government bus down to Milan,” Skip said. “I don’t know where my mommy was. This bus had heavy wire over the windows in case we got loose of our handcuffs and leg irons. Me and a half a dozen Hispanic brothers with needle tracks up their arms. I thought, The fuck am I doing with these dudes? Man, I’m political. I should be going to one of those country-club joints like where they sent those Watergate assholes, but I guess they thought I was ba-a-ad.”
    “You were,” Robin said. “I think it was blowing up the Federal Building that pissed them off.”
    “Yeah, but hell, the money they kept when we jumped bond, it would’ve paid to fix up the damage, wouldn’t it? Some of it.” Skip was chewing on a breadstick, crumbs in his beard. “Man, when they brought us up that second time, if they’dknown even half the gigs I was into . . . I mean those years living underground.”
    Robin said, “Living out there with the great silent majority. I know why they’re silent, they don’t have a fucking thing to say. I got into shoplifting just for something to do. One time I even stole a bra.”
    Skip said, “I was living in a commune near Grants, New Mexico, with these leftover flower children bitching at each other, bored out of my skull. I went up to Farmington and got the job as a TV repairman ’cause, you know, I always had a knack for wiring up shit. This one day I said to myself, Man, if you’re a wanted criminal then how come you aren’t into crime? That’s when I moved to L.A. the first time.”
    “You ever look for your picture in a post office?”
    “Yeah, but I never saw it.”
    “I didn’t see mine either,” Robin said. She leaned in closer, resting her arms on the table. “When I finally got your number, and your service said you were in Detroit . . .”
    “Couldn’t believe it, could you?”
    She said, “You know, you haven’t changed much at all.”
    Skip said, “I may be a half a step slower, but I still have my hair. I lift weights when I’m home and I think of it.”
    “I like your