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Take me where I wanna goooo . . . .

Christ, yes, Hank pleads, inwardly. Take her. Don’t wait on my account.

Hank’s a real estate agent. He lives in Toronto, his ex-wife—as of gaining custody—in Buffalo. So far, this simple strategy has kept his visits down to a minimum. But last Sunday, fortified by five beers and the promise of three weeks vacation time, Hank drove down and demanded his fatherly privileges. A decision he has since come to regret.

Heavily.

In fact, further discussion on the Transformer notwithstanding, he’s beginning to seriously consider just turning the car around and—

— driving straight up the white line until he hits a truck.

What?

The disco singer croons on, her backup vocalists lapsing into a seemingly endless series of deep, orgasmic grunts. Behind him, Jeannie and Ronald have struck up a blessed truce, Transformer discarded in favor of comics and green Day-Glo Slime. Before him, the road falls away without a moment’s pause, smooth as a lidded eye. Around him, silence.

But Hank feels a sudden prickling of sweat. He grips the wheel, cold. His palms are wet.

And he couldn’t tell you why if he tried.

* * *

A quarter-moon sweats over Barrie.

Seven miles gone, police have just entered the last gas station Hank drove by while Jeannie and Ronald set up a steady whine, imploring him for ice cream, phone calls and trips to the little boys’ room. Officer Sam Woo throws the adjacent diner’s kitchen door wide, gun up. The owner lies slumped in one corner, holding a shotgun and wearing a big grin. Nearby, his wife Marie sprawls face down in a tepid pool of rotisserie grease, a stencil of Goofy staring from her discarded apron.

In the TV lounge of Toronto’s Gorman Manor, a halfway home for newly-released mental patients, a lanky man with grey hair works on a picture of Princess Leia in his Star Wars coloring book. Being very careful to stay within the lines, he gives her red eyes and navy-blue skin. His name is Myron Sokoluk, and he is Arjay’s father.

Forty miles away and closing, Arjay runs her tongue across her teeth.

There are no stars left visible to watch.

* * *

Jeannie Monkson shifts irritably. She has a whopping crick in her neck.

Glancing over her shoulder, she sees her brother Booger—a.k.a. Ronald Jerome Monkson—gearing up for yet another whine about how he’s so cold, or he really needs to pee, or can’t we stop for a burger? Like nobody else in the whole wide world was every chilly, or hungry, or waiting for a try at the next available john.

How’d you like a “mixed-fruit cocktail” instead, Boog? Jeannie thinks, taking mental sight on the back of his head. Kpow, kpow, kpow-pow-pow.

Nothing happens. She turns away, sighing disgustedly.

Fact is, there’s shit all to do on these trips with Dad except pick on Booger—no pun intended—and dream about Christopher Walken.

An utter hunk. Turns MY crank.

And The Dogs of War—what a bitchin’ flick! Good plot, great locations, and beaucoup de good-lookin’ babes dripping with sweat, up to their necks in mud. What else could you possibly ask for?

Real life pales by comparison.

Especially when the most immediate slice of that life involves being trapped in a rented Honda that stinks of stale cigarettes and egg rolls, out in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a man she hasn’t seen (or missed seeing) for the last five years, and a little brother she sees constantly every single day of her miserable existence.

Jeannie scratches idly at her cheek, testing the latest spot where she knows a pimple will sprout before morning.

Suddenly, she can draw the next three weeks like a map. A stream of lackluster events and petty annoyances, oozing inevitably toward the last big blow-up. Then a ticket home and a stiff good-bye at the station. With no parting gifts. With Booger weeping and drooling all over the seat near the window. With even the fa

intest possibility of a bus accident just stranding them in some roadside dive until Mom’s newest flame can drive them back home, where they’ll be grounded for three more weeks for causing her the trouble.

Booger stares intently at his left shoe, freckles swollen big as mumps in the dashboard’s light. In the rear-view mirror, Hank’s eyes seem the same red-shot shade of grey as moldy bologna.