Free Sleeping in Flame by Jonathan Carroll

made. Do you have copies? Will you watch them with me? Can we fool around tomorrow, too? Can I have your telephone number? Will you be my friend?"
    She turned and stood in front of me, nose to nose, still making requests. I gently put my hand over her mouth and nodded yes to everything.
    The evening was nearly asleep by the time I left Uschi's apartment.
    Streets were empty, save for an occasional lone wolf taxi cruising slowly by.
    Vienna is a city where most people go to bed at ten o'clock. You rarely see anyone walking around past midnight, and those you do are usually going home.
    I stood in the doorway of her building pulling up my collar. Dog-tired, all I basically wanted was to go straight to bed. But a small part of me was still keyed up and demanded something more before calling it a night. A café down the street was still open, so I decided on a quick brandy there and then home.
    Walking that way, a figure suddenly loomed before me down the street. It took a moment to see that it was a man riding a bicycle. The bike was completely decked out in a mad, glittering jumble of streamers, mirrors, saddlebags, bumper stickers, antennas, and everything else. The man had a long
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    Rumpelstiltskin beard. He wore one of those round fur hats that cover most of the head and ears and remind you of wood-choppers in Alaska. Pedaling hard enough to make the bike sway from side to side, he came flying toward me as if death, or sanity, were right behind him. The street was quiet but for the whizzing sounds of the bike and the man's loud breathing. I was so tired that
    I didn't know whether to go left or right to avoid him. He kept coming and I kept standing there. As he got closer I saw more and more of his features. His face was lined and scored. A long, narrow stalactite of a nose hung above a mouth (he seemed to be smiling) full of dark teeth that went in every direction. I still hadn't moved when he was ten feet away and coming fast.
    "Rednaxela! Welcome!" he shouted as he passed within inches of my feet, so close that I could smell his garlic, sweat, and craziness. He didn't look back once he'd gone past; just drove straight up to the corner, a sharp right there and . . . gone.
    I looked at that corner awhile, then up toward Uschi's apartment, then at the corner again. It was time for Rednaxela to go home.
    3.
    I pulled the handbrake up tight, gave the motor one last goose, then turned it off. The Renault shivered and coughed, as if angry the trip was finally over. But Maris and I weren't. We had driven all night from Munich
    through a snowstorm straight out of _Doctor Zhivago_. What was worse, the car had no snow tires, heated only our feet (sort of), and the windshield wipers marched to the beat of a truly different drummer. Four times we'd had to pull off the dark and treacherous autobahn to scrape icy slush off the windshield.
    The last time, outside Linz, the car wouldn't start again when we climbed back in. Nietzsche said there are times when things get so bad you either laugh or go crazy. Another option is to sit in a cold Renault R4 that won't start and eat _Extrawürst_ sandwiches at four in the morning.
    The car was loaded to the gills with her things, which included seven large LEGO cities, a stuffed Russian crow, and a state-of-the-art Atari computer that looked like something the Pentagon used. The cities and crow made sense, but the computer was a surprise. It turned out she used it to sketch and design the cities before she built them.
    As soon as I got out, my neck and back felt as though I'd been hefting cement bags for the last nine hours. Bending over and touching my toes a few times, some of the hairier moments on the road came back to give me the creeps. I looked through the car window and saw she was doing stretches, too.
    "Remember how that border guard looked at your crow?"
    "It was the only thing that interested him. I'm sure he thought I had heroin or something inside.
    Walker, you know how much