Vineland Read Free Page A

his yoga phase last year hustled Zoyd into buying for a twenty that Zoyd hadn’t really enjoyed discretionary use of. At last all was set. Van Meter flashed Mr. Spock’s Vulcan hand salute. “Ready when you are, Z Dubya!”
    Zoyd eyeballed himself in the mirror behind the bar, gave his hair a shake, turned, poised, then screaming ran empty-minded at the window and went crashing through. He knew the instant he hit that something was funny. There was hardly any impact, and it all felt and sounded different, no spring or resonance, no volume, only a sort of fine, dulled splintering.
    After obligingly charging at each of the news cameras while making insane faces, and after the police had finished their paperwork, Zoyd caught sight of Hector squatting in front of the destroyed window, among the glittering debris, holding a bright jagged polygon of plate glass. “Time for the bad,” he called, grinning in a nasty way long familiar to Zoyd. “Are you ready?” Like a snake he lunged his head forward and took a giant bite out of the glass.
Holyshit
, Zoyd frozen,
he’s lost it
—no, actually now, instead Hector was chewing away, crunching and slobbering, with the same evil grin, going “Mmm-mm!” and “
¡Qué rico, qué sabroso!”
Van Meter went running after a departing paramedic truck hollering “Corpsman!” but Zoyd had tumbled, he was no media innocent, he read
TV Guide
and had just remembered an article about stunt windows made of clear sheet candy, which would break but not cut. That’s why this one had felt so funny—young Wayvone had taken out the normal window and put in one of these sugar types. “Euchred again, Hector, thanks.”
    But Hector had already vanished into a large gray sedan with government plates. News-crew stragglers were picking up a few last location shots of the Cuke and its famous rotating sign, which Ralph Jr. was happy to light up early, a huge green neon cucumber with blinking warts, cocked at an angle that approached, within a degree or two, a certain vulgarity. Did Zoyd have to show up next day at the bowling alley? Technically, no. But in the federale’s eyes there’d been a glint that Zoyd could still see, behind the one-way auto glass, even as the nightly fog rolled up over the great berm and on toward 101 and Hector was driven away into it. Zoyd could feel another hustle on the way. Hector had been trying over and over for years to develop him as a resource, and so far—technically—Zoyd had hung on to his virginity. But the li’l fucker would not quit. He kept coming back, each time with a new and more demented plan, and Zoyd knew that one day, just to have some peace, he’d say forget it, and go over. Question was, would it be this time, or one of the next few times? Should he wait for another spin? It was like being on “Wheel of Fortune,” only here there were no genial vibes from any Pat Sajak to find comfort in, no tanned and beautiful Vanna White at the corner of his vision to cheer on the Wheel, to wish him well, to flip over one by one letters of a message he knew he didn’t want to read anyway.
    Â 
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Z OYD made it home in time to view himself on the Tube, though he had to wait till Prairie finished watching the 4:30 Movie, Pia Zadora in
The Clara Bow Story.
She fingered the material of the lurid print dress. “Crazy about this, Dad. Fresh, rilly. Can I have it when you’re done? Use it to cover my futon.”
    â€œHey, do you ever date logger types, fallers, choker setters, that sort of fellow?”
    â€œZoy-oyd. . . .”
    â€œDon’t get offended, is it’s only that a couple of these guys slipped me their phone number, see? along with bills in different denominations?”
    â€œWhat for?”
    He did a take, squinted closely at his daughter. Was this a trick question here? “Let’s see, 1984, that’d make