My nose is pressed against the window in the bat's crotch, fingers dug into the hump of fatty foam that runs around its perimeter, fog patches covering the rime of ground-in filth that I've allowed to accumulate on my parents' spotless windows. Where the frick is Stude? # The man has cometh. Clop-clip, clip-clop, Stude the Dude, as long as a dangling booger, and his clapped-out nag Tilly, and the big foam cart with its stacks of crates and barrels and boxes, ready to do the deal. "Maxes!" he says, and I *know* I'm getting taken today -- he looks genuinely glad to see me. "Stude, nice day, how's it?" I say, as cas and cool as I can, which isn't, very. "Fine day! Straight up fine day to be alive and awaiting judgment!" He power-chugs from the perpetual coffee thermos at his side. "Fine day," I echo. "Fine, fine day." Like he's not in any hurry to get down to the deal, and I know it's a contest, and the first one to wheel gets taken. I snort and go "Yuh-huh." It's almost cheating, since I should've had something else nice to say, but Stude gives me a conversational Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free. "Good night to tricky treat." I concede defeat. "I need some stuff, Stude." Give it to him, he doesn't gloat. Just hauls again from Mr Coffee and pooches his lips and nods. "Need, uh, spool of monofilament, three klicks, safety insulated. Four litres of fix bath. Litre, litre and a half of solvent." "Yeah, okay. Got a permit for the solvent?" "If I had a permit, Stude, I'd go and buy it at the fricken store. Don't pull my dick." "Just askin'. Whyfor the solvent? Anything illegal?" "Just a project, Stude. Nothing to worry." "What kinda project?" "Art project. Fun-fricken-tastic. You'll love it." "'Cause you know, they tag the shit with buckyballs now, one molecule in a million with a serial number and a checksum. You do something stupid, I get chopped." I hadn't known. Didn't matter, my parents' house was legally mine, while they were up confabbing with their alien buds on the mothaship. "No worries." "That'll be, uh, sixty-eight cents." "Thirty." "Sixty, firm." "Fifty-four." "Fifty-eight." "Take it in trade?" "Fricken Maxes! Tradesies? You're wastin' my time, lookin' for bootleg solvent, looking for trade and no cash? Get fucked, Maxes." He starts to haw-up Tilly and I go, "Wait-wait-wait, I got some good stuff. Everything must go, moving sale, you know?" He looks really pissed and I know it hard now, I'm gonna get *taken*. I hand him up my bag, and he does a fast-paw through the junk. "What's this?" he asks. "Old video game. Atari. Shoot up the space aliens. Really, really antisocial. Needs a display, but I don't got it anymore." I'd sold it the month before on a bored day, and used the eight cents to buy good seats behind home plate at the Skydome and thus killed an entire afternoon before Judgment Day.