“He was the forgotten Beatle.”

  Puddin’ tidied herself in a way that indicated our activities were over. “Okay, you got what you wanted,” she said. “Fork over the hash.”

  “Please take a reasonable amount,” I said. “You didn’t seem to enjoy what I was doing. And now my back hurts.”

  Puddin’ wasn’t listening. She fished in her backpack and sighed. “After all that, I’m out of rolling papers. We need to use our wits, like on that TV show. Bow down for me.”

  I did what Puddin’ said. She climbed on my shoulders and told me to get up so she could disable the smoke detector. I noticed again that her thighs smelled elegant, like a funeral parlor.

  “Okay, let me down,” she said.

  I did.

  “We need two butter knives and a plastic milk jug,” she said.

  “Where are we going to get that?”

  “What about that little brick building on the side of the interstate? What is it, an office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they must have a break room or a kitchenette.”

  “My supervisor’s over there,” I said.

  “I’m not asking for the world,” said Puddin’.

  “What’s your plan?” I said.

  “Have you heard of hot-knifing?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t worry about my plan.”

  I returned to the main building and tried the handle, but the door was locked. There was a slot where you could slide your ID card and get in, but I didn’t have an ID card, so I pressed a gray button I saw.

  “Who’s there?” said a voice.

  “A maintenance worker,” I said.

  There was a pause during which I suppose I was scrutinized by unseen eyes, followed by a buzzing sound from within. I pulled on the door and it opened for me.

  I could find no way of avoiding the supervisor’s office. I breezed by. She was in there, with her blinds open, talking on the phone and laughing like it was the most ordinary day in the world. She didn’t seem to see me. I went down the hall, looking in doors until I found the empty break room.

  Over by the sink, someone had left the coffeemaker on with just a swallow of coffee left in the bottom of the pot. As a result, a hot black crust had formed. I turned off the coffeemaker as a courtesy, then began rooting through drawers for butter knives.

  “You there!” someone shouted.

  I cracked my head on the corner of a low-hanging cabinet. For a second all I could think about was the dizzying pain, then I turned to face the supervisor. My head smarted so much that there were tears in my eyes.

  “Have you delivered the package?” she said.

  “No ma’am.”

  “Then you better have a pretty good reason for abandoning your post.”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. I’m looking for an orange. Otherwise I might go into a swoon, as we discussed earlier.”

  “Didn’t your friend bring you your medicine?”

  “No ma’am, I’ve seen no one. I’m utterly alone.”

  She gave me a hard look that lasted forever and I thought the jig was up.

  “Okay,” she said. “Some people keep their lunches in the refrigerator, in paper bags. Find what you’re looking for and get back where you belong. If you’ve screwed this up you’ll be extremely sorry.”

  She split. I grabbed a handful of stainless steel butter knives—seven or eight—and made a beeline for the tollbooth.

  Puddin’ had a little fire going in the wastebasket, and a dirty old license plate laid flat across the top like a little table. It said “New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment” and it was just wide enough so that it didn’t fall into the fire.

  “I forgot the milk,” I said, “but I got a load of knives.”

  “Forget the milk. Grab that bullhorn and hand it to me. I just need one knife now.”

  The tollbooth was getting smoky.

  “This doesn’t seem smart,” I said. “How’s the ventilation?”

  “You worry too much.”

  “I almost got caught. She’s on to us. We have to watch our step. I think the jig is up.”

  “Getting away with things is the norm,” said Puddin’. She held the blade of her butter knife against the license plate, heating it. “Think about it. All you see on TV is when somebody gets caught at something that society has told us is wrong. But that’s just one percent of the time. The other ninety-nine percent never get caught. People just don’t care, or they don’t know what they’re seeing. It’s a mathematical certainty that you’ll never get caught at anything.” She placed a small clump of hash onto the license plate. I stood there watching her, the megaphone in my hand. “I’m telling you, doing bad stuff is as safe as flying in an airplane. Come here.”

  Puddin’ explained how to put the megaphone over the wastebasket, where to put my mouth, and when to take a deep breath and hold it.

  The effect was like being shot in the chest with a hollow-tipped bullet of happiness. I can wholeheartedly recommend this method of consuming hash to any man, woman or child in the United States.

  Puddin’ grinned. “It’s an instant high,” she said. “I’m glad we didn’t have the rolling papers. Now it’s my turn.”

  Puddin’ showed me how to smash the hash between the red-hot butter knife and the red-hot license plate, producing the wonderful smoke. She, too, breathed it in through the small end of the megaphone. We took several turns apiece and it was just the most pleasant morning you can think of. We got very wise and our heads opened up and that little tollbooth seemed like a universe of space.

  Puddin’ told me she could hear what the radios were playing in cars a hundred miles up the highway.

  “What’s so great about maple trees?” I said. “Let’s start a business where we make syrup out of pine trees.”

  “Let’s call Prince on my cell phone,” she said. “No, let’s go to his house and throw rocks through his windows until he comes outside. It’s a three-day drive to Minneapolis from here. I’ll call India and she’ll come pick us up. We’ll sell the rest of this hash on the way and then we’ll have enough money to make your demo.”

  “What demo?” I said.

  “You need some ambition,” said Puddin’. “Prince can help you.”

  I became aware that a horn had been honking for some time. Puddin’ started to say something about something but I held up my hand to shush her. We listened. It was amazing, because I realized that every honk of the horn was filled with literally millions of tones and overtones and undertones, some that the human ear was not meant to hear, but suddenly I could hear every layer. It was everything at once. It destroyed all the symphonies and concerti ever composed.

  “A car horn is a perfect machine,” I said. “I’m glad the band broke up.”

  I got to my feet and looked out the window. I realized that glass is just a slow-moving liquid. I saw the Volvo station wagon. There was a handsome man inside. He reminded me of Hamlet. Intense. Even from the tollbooth window I could tell that his eyelashes were really nice and luxurious.

  “You’re like the me that could have been, if everything had worked out good,” I said. I suppose it was the hash talking.

  Hamlet blinked at me and I started freaking out because I thought I could hear the soft sighs of his eyelashes.

  “Let me get your hash,” I said.

  I looked down at the hash. A lot of it wasn’t there anymore. The rest of it we had stepped in, and tracked all around the tollbooth, or sat in, or rolled around on. It was a terrible mess.

  “One minute,” I said.

  I crouched down and asked Puddin’ to put the hash back together again, the way she had promised. Then I popped back up.

  “We’re getting it ready right this second,” I said. “Thank you for your patience.”

  I noticed that there was a long line of angry cars behind Hamlet. I noticed that he was getting something out of the glove compartment.

  “How’s it coming, Puddin’?” I said.

  I looked behind me to see Puddin’ crawling out the door of the booth.

  I ran out after her.

  We hauled butt across the paths of three other tollbooths and into the weeds on the wilder side of the highway. We pushed through a stand of scraggly saplings and went up the embankment to a chain link fence that neither of us was in the mood to climb. We kept following the fence, hoping it would end, but it never did.

  “Stop,” said Puddin’. “I know that Waffle House.” She took out her cell phone and called India. “I’m on a hill overlooking the good Waffle House,” she said. “You have to come get me. Bring wire cutters.”

  Soon I found myself lying in the back of India’s van with her sheepdog. I looked into his warm black eyes and it was like I could see his ancestors.

  “We should have brought that hash with us,” said Puddin’, who was riding up front. “I could really go for some more hash.”

  “Let’s go to my stepmom’s,” said India. “We could drink her gin while she’s off at spirituality training.”

  India is just seventeen, and I made it clear that I did not condone underage drinking. But I thanked her for her offer of hospitality and said that perhaps Puddin’ and I would have a drink if she and her sheepdog didn’t mind. Her sheepdog barked, which we humorously pretended was his way of voting “yes.”

  India’s stepmom lives in a big mansion full of furniture. We went over and drank some gin in the garage. I suppose the alcoholic content of the gin caused me to become lax, because I noticed that at some point India had become drunken as well.

  Puddin’ and India got silly and started talking about a movie they loved, called Hook. They had a bunch of fun telling tales of how Dustin Hoffman would eat a head of garlic before every scene just to get a certain reaction from his co-stars, in a method acting sense. They giggled and squawked about it until I could tell what they were really signaling to each other: that I had bad breath. Why not just come out and say it instead of making an inside joke? It got on my nerves. I didn’t tell them I was on to them but I left them snickering and noticed it was dark outside.

  My car was back at the tollbooth place so I walked home, about four miles. I live with my parents in a subdivision called King Arthur Courts. I guess I got turned around a few times. Everything in a subdivision looks the same. That’s why Puddin’ hates America. When I finally made it home I noted with some curiosity that there were several plates broken on the kitchen floor. I guess there were some other irregularities as well, which I somehow overlooked at the time. I went back in my parents’ bedroom and got on the internet.

  I Googled myself, which is a little tradition I have. As usual, there was an archival list that mentioned me in conjunction with my old high school’s lacrosse team. This always struck me as hilarious because I never was on the lacrosse team. The supposedly infallible internet is not so infallible after all.

  Believe it or not, there is a man with the same name as mine who runs a petting zoo in White Knob, Idaho. I always enjoy visiting the petting zoo’s web site and clicking on “Recent News.” Usually there is no recent news. Once I sent the other “me” an email about our coincidental similarity of names, but I have never heard back from him. It occurred to me that he might even be dead.

  I was amusing myself in this fashion when I heard the sounds of my father creeping through the house.

  “Hello? Hello?” he was saying. “Junior, is that you?”

  I greeted him in the hallway.

  My father is a portly man with a big, fine head of bushy gray hair. He is around sixty years of age or so, I believe.

  “Where’s Mom?” I said.

  “She’s at the hospital. Two men visited us tonight. They said you owed them fifteen thousand dollars. When we expressed our astonishment, they hit me in the breadbasket five times, knocking the wind out of me. They also twisted my arm behind my back, harshly. These same gentlemen gave your mother two black eyes and kicked her down the front steps. She has a concussion and perhaps some other problems, perhaps a broken back. She’s being kept overnight for observation.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I said.

  “I hate to think you’ve gotten mixed up with these kind of men,” said my father.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars doesn’t sound right,” I said. “I think someone is trying to pull my leg.”

  “Maybe it was fifteen hundred. They broke my false teeth,” said my father. “This is my spare set, and they don’t fit me right.”

  “They should deduct two hundred dollars right off the top,” I said. “I never received my two hundred dollars. I’m going to make Mom a get-well card using PhotoShop. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

  “That sounds thoughtful,” said my father.

  “That means I’m going to be in your bedroom for awhile,” I said. “Undisturbed.”

  “Be my guest. I can’t sleep anyway,” he said. “I’m too worked up.”

  “Watch some TV,” I suggested.

  “They urinated on the surge protector and now the TV doesn’t work anymore,” he replied.

  I then left my father to his own devices. Once I had secured my parents’ bedroom door I looked up India’s MySpace page and masturbated to relieve myself of the stress. Afterward I sent an email to Laura Bush via the White House web site, briefly outlining the events of the day, which is a hobby of mine.

  COURAGEOUS BLAST:

  The Legacy of America’s Most radical Gum

  CONRAD HATCHER, Project Manager:

  Look. We all knew we had something awesome. The suits didn’t know. They were all like, “Whoa!” They were like, “Dude!” I didn’t care what they said. I was all up in Wayne Goodwin’s face. I was all like, “Dude, we’re going to make a gum that’s like, radical and everything?” And he was all like, “Whatever.”

  WAYNE GOODWIN, VP—Marketing:

  I suppose I had some misgivings of a practical nature. But I think you will find that overall there hasn’t been a more enthusiastic supporter of the gum, in terms of letting those guys explore, you know, and find their level. I sensed from the very beginning that we were on to something quite important here. The undiscovered country, if you will. Uncharted waters. Here there be monsters. Bracing, exciting stuff. Danger, Will Robinson! Wonderful stuff. Fearless.

  BRAVO JONES, Logo Designer:

  Conrad is a risk taker. I will give him that. We’ve had our differences, as is well documented. But I like to give credit where credit is due. It’s something I do naturally. I’m a truth teller. A lot of times that freaks people out. I always say, “Look, I’m just being honest.” You know, “You’re fat, you’re a pig,” or whatever. My attitude is, take it or leave it. But don’t put me down for telling it like it is. For example, at the first meeting with Conrad I say, “Hey, what’s the name of this gum?” Because at that time the gum had no name. I mean I can do a lot of things, and do them fantastically well, but I’m not a miracle worker! Am I? Maybe I am. Otherwise I honestly believe there would have been a gum in the stores with no name on it. And that would have blown people’s minds. Not in a good way.

  CONRAD HATCHER:

  It sounds funny, but it’s really not. I was, like, looking at the package and all of a sudden I was like, “Hey.” You know what I mean? I was like, “What’s in there?” I was trying to get inside the customer’s head or whatever. So I was like, “What’s in this package of gum, dude?” And then I was like, “I don’t know, but it better be gum.” Like I was answering my own self. Weird. Like I was having two parts of the same conversation, but there’s only like one of me there. So I was just like, It Better Be Gum.

  WAYNE GOODWIN:

  What we were doing with It Better Be Gum was throwing caution to the wind. I mean, why not? It seems easy in retrospect, but at the time it was a truly courageous vision. There’s a lot of talk right now about courage and whatnot, but whenever I’m pressed for a definition I just say, take a look at It Better Be Gum. Try to place yourself in what was really a gum vacuum at that time, and imagine It Better Be Gum bursting forth like some sort of courageous blast of dynamite. That’s courage. To create something out of nothing. Which is what we do every day in this business. And I fully credit Conrad with that. He was the one with the forethought to say, “Who cares if it’s a chewing gum or a bubble gum?” You know. “We’re not going to tell people. We’re not going to give them that crutch. Let them decide for themselves whether to chew it or blow it. And hey, maybe we can make it where they can swallow it.” Because before that, you know, no one was allowed to swallow gum. That’s a discredited way of thinking now, and yes, I suppose Conrad is principally responsible for that, for what I would call a sea change in the way Americans engage with gum as a recreational snack.

  STANLEY BOUNCE, Gum Aficionado:

  They test marketed It Better Be Gum in Texarkana. I don’t know where else. All I know is, me and my friends were the only people putting it in our mouths. Like, “I dare you to put this in your mouth!” Because after you spit it out there was still like this greasy feeling and this weird bitter taste. And when I went number two it burned! But I didn’t associate that with It Better Be Gum. I just thought there was something wrong with me. Then my friend Glen was in the bathroom for like, forever, and I was like, “What’s up?” And he was like, “Every time I chew this gum I get like, the runs.” And I was like, cool.

  SARA SPOONER, The “It Better Be Gum Girl”:

  The gorilla in the commercial was super sweet! He would sit in the corner and go “Uh, uh, uh!” I think he was trying to talk to me! That was super sweet. There wasn’t a mouth on the mask where the gorilla could talk out of, so it just sounded like “Uh, uh, uh!” to me. But he acted super sweet. He waved to me and everything. Like, “How are you?” Or, “Good morning, Sara!” But he didn’t use words to express it. Just “Uh, uh, uh!” It made me feel bright and cheerful. That was sad when he died.

  CONRAD HATCHER:

  When the monkey man died I was like, “Whoa!” I was like, “Heavy, dude.” I was like, “What the fuck?” I was like, “Who’s going to be the monkey man now?”

 

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