The Stickmen Read Free Page B

for the entire
trek.
    “So what is this?” Garrett said, glancing at
her. “The silent treatment?”
    “Don’t talk to me, Harlan. Don’t say anything, ” she hissed back. “I’m just too pissed off at you
right now.”
    “I just spent a day and a night in that
medieval penal colony. The last thing I need is a stiff upper
lip.”
    “What you need is a busted lip, and a
head to go with it!”
    Garrett was appalled by her insensitivity.
“I guess you didn’t hear me. D.C. Jail? Me—in it? It’s not for
human beings, honey, believe me. It’s like that Oz show on
cable. Christ, you should see the creatures in there. One of
them tried to—”
    Jessica stopped and briskly spun around, her
shiny red hair aswirl. “Stop trying to make me feel sorry for you
’cos you had to spend the night in jail!” she shouted, fire in her
jade-green eyes. She grabbed Garrett’s shoulders and shook him like
a baby rattle. “What am I? Your personal bail bondman? Damn it,
Harlan! This is the second time I’ve had to bail you out of jail.
It cost me $500 this time!”
    “I’ll pay you back,” Garrett peeped.
    “That’s what you said last time, Harlan!
I’ve got bills too, and half of them are yours anyway!”
    Garrett caught his composure, calming down.
He tried to see it from her point of view…and began to see her
point. Whenever he was unemployed, it was always Jessica who helped
him out. And I’m unemployed a lot, he admitted. He sighed
and gently touched her cheek.
    “This time I will pay you back, baby,
I promise. Things could be worse, you know. At least I still got my
job with the Psi-Com Journal…”
     
    ««—»»
     
    The letter felt like a sheet of dead skin in
his hands:
     
    THE PSI-COM JOURNAL
    A Subsidiary of the Wentner Publishing
Group
    200 Madison Avenue
    New York, NY 10016
     
    Dear Mr. Garrett:
     
    Per our conversation, your complete lack of
ethics while under our employ have been deemed wholly unacceptable.
Therefore, you may consider this letter an official notification of
your termination.
     
    Glen Boyd
    Editor and Chief
     
    Aw, man, Garrett thought, staring at
the letter he’d just opened in his apartment. Wearing only his
boxer shorts, he walked back from the mailshot and fell back into
his disheveled bed. Kick me some more, God, will Ya? Why
not?
    He crumpled up the letter, and when he
tossed it at the waste basket…it missed. The shower hissed behind
him from his mop-closet-sized bathroom.
    “Who need the friggin’ Psi-Com Journal
anyway?” he voiced aloud to himself. “I’m too good for those
stuck-up jive neckbones.”
    When he reached up for his cigarettes, his
hand padded across his computer-laden desk and a clogged ashtray;
finally, it knocked over several empty beers cans. Eventually he
found his pack of generics but when he tried to light one, the
lighter wouldn’t work.
    Disgusted, Garret got back out of bed,
hunting for matches amongst the piles of books on his desk. Roswell Dead Witnesses, KGB Citations of Spontaneous Human
Combustion, MK-ULTRA Then And Now, Crash Perimeters and Grids:
Classified! and the like. Here, in the midst of Garrett’s
professional bibles, he found a matchbook from the 1720 Club, his
favorite strip bar.
    The matchbook was empty.
    Can’t pay my bills, can’t keep a job…can’t
even light a friggin’ cigarette…
    He stretched before the wide balcony window,
scratching his butocks through the blue boxer shorts. He didn’t
hear the bathroom door click open.
    “Doing what you do best, I see.”
    Garrett’s gaze snapped around, and there
stood Jessica, wet-haired from the shower, a towel draped around
her.
    “What?”
    “Standing in your shorts, scratching your
ass.”
    Garrett slipped his hands out of his boxers.
He winked at her. “Yeah, but you like my ass. You’ve told me
so.”
    “You don’t get it, do you? A relationship is
a two-way street, Harlan. It just seems the more I put into this,
the less I get.” Jessica huffed,