"Un-fucking-real!"
Joe balled up the newspaper, took a bead on the bright blue sky and hurled the missile of good news straight at the sun. Street passersby turned to stare at him, and he shouted, "I got a fucking guardian angel!" and let the ball fall into his hands. Running with it like a halfback with a hot short pass, he headed straight for the motel and Anne.
She was sitting up in bed, smoking, when he came through the door and smoothed the headline out on the sheet in front of her. "Read it," he said. "Bad news and good news, but mostly righteously good!"
Anne put out her cigarette and read the front page; Joe sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how the fuzz had got it so wrong and why Rice offed himself there. Watching Anne read, his old song obsession did a brief boogie reprise: "… and death was a thrill on Suicide Hill."
Anne turned to the second page, and Joe got curious about how she'd react to the story on her old boyfriend and his death. He'd had her on decreasing coke use for two days now, and she was probably as close to being a normal woman as she ever would be. Would she have the soul to grieve for the crazy motherfucker?
Putting down the newspaper, Anne lit another cigarette and said, "Wow, I thought Duane was just a car thief. I think that stuff about Stan being a bank robber is phony, though. I think we were together on Monday when that bank was robbed."
Joe couldn't tell if she was being cagey or straight. "You were probably stoned," he said. "He probably split for the heist, then came back."
Anne shrugged and blew smoke rings, then said, "Wrong, baby, but who cares? Also, the paper says Duane shot Stan. That's wrong. I was there. Duane stabbed him."
Joe tingled at her mistaken certainty-it meant he could ditch her with a free mind. "Cops screw up sometimes," he said. "Or they work things around to fit the evidence they got. Sweetie, what do you want to do?"
"You mean in general? And about us?"
"Right."
Anne blew a string of perfect rings and said, "I like you as a boyfriend, but you're too uptight about dope, and too macho. When we first got together, you weren't so bad, but the more I get to know you, the more stern you get, like you think violence and manhood are synonymous or something. But basically, I want to be with you, and I want to get back into music. I think we're a wave. We last as long as we last."
Joe bent over and cupped her breasts. "What about Rice? He righteously loved you."
Anne caressed the hands caressing her. "He was a stone loser. And you know what's sad? Karmically he betrayed himself, because he said suicide was for cowards. That's sad. How much of Mel's money have we got left?"
Thinking R.I.P. Duane Rice, Joe said, "We're almost broke, but I've got a buddy holding a guitar of mine, and we can get at least three bills for it. So let's move."
"Is it okay to be out on the streets?"
"I think so. We got some kind of weird guardian angel, and I want to see if the old neighborhood still looks the same."