Free Roadside Bodhisattva by Paul Di Filippo Page A

way.”
    “I’m not shitting you. Yasmine’s mom was real active in the hardcore scene back in the late ‘eighties, when Yasmine was about ten years old. Know what her screen name was? Pookie Arizona!” Sue barked a sharp laugh. “But she burned out and came back here, back to where she grew up. She took her minor daughter away from all her California friends with her, of course, and Yasmine’s never forgiven her for that. Then, just when Yasmine got old enough to leave her mother and go back to the land of her dreams, her mom got sick with aids. Yasmine had to stay with her to take care of her. There was no one else. That was almost ten years ago now.”
    “Jesus.” I didn’t know what else to say.
    “Yeah, that about sums it up. But Yasmine’s still a bitch in my book. And who knows if the move back here wasn’t ultimately the best thing for her? Yasmine’d probably’ve ended up screwing on videotape too. At least this way she kept her health and looks. What you can see of ’em through all that makeup. But anyhow, if I were a guy planning to pork Yasmine, I’d still make sure I wore two condoms.” Sue stood up. “Well, enough dishing the dirt. We’ve both got work to do.”
    “Sue, you have an iPod? I thought maybe you’d like to swap some files later. With me, that is.”
    “Why not? If nothing else comes up.”
    I watched her walk away. Then I went to find Sid.
    I spotted a paint-splattered dropcloth laid out on the ground near one of the cabins, and heard noises of metal dragging on wood. I turned a corner and there was Sid. He was standing on a small ladder, using a scraper on the cabin’s wooden gutters. He was working so energetically that flakes of paint sprayed through the air like snow.
    “Kid A! You’re now officially vice-president of Hartshorn Painting. Grab a scraper, and start attacking any goddamn peeling patch you see.”
    I picked up one of the tools. “Gee, Master, which end do I hold?”
    Sid laughed loud and long.
    I got to work a few feet away from Sid. I didn’t want my hair full of his scraping crud. Sid kept up a line of chatter. He seemed to have a endless supply of stories and opinions. Lots of the stories featured a moral of some sort, I noticed. Oh, he didn’t come right out with the lesson in so many words. He was too subtle for that. But I could see the messages poking through, like elbows through a ripped flannel shirt. After all, I had grown up with all kinds of parables and sermons, teachings of every kind, from tricky ones to straightforward ones, ones that snuck up on you days after you first heard them and ones that hit you over the head immediately. If Sid thought he was gonna slip something past me, he didn’t know who he was dealing with.
    As the sun got higher, the day got warmer. Now it was the morning chill that seemed like the faroff dream. We moved around the cabin, leaving its walls a patchwork of bare spots and untouched ones where the old paint clung better. If possible, the work was even more boring than washing dishes.
    “Are we gonna scrape every single cabin before we can paint even one of them?”
    “You bet. No point in setting up all your brushes and turp and shit just to pack it away and get your scrapers out again the next day.”
    “Ever heard of variety being the spice of life?”
    “Ever heard of Henry Ford and the invention of the goddamn assembly line?”
    “Forget I even asked.”
    “Consider it done.”
    Noon rolled around at last, and I got ready to head back to the diner. That was when the cop car arrived.
    The cops here drove navy-blue cruisers with gold seals on the doors. This one pulled into the lot near the office, and kept on coming, until it came to a stop right next to us, half on the grass.
    Sid got down off the ladder. He wore that same dopey expression he had put on for Angie yesterday at the pumps. He moved slow and easy toward the car, hands hanging loose at his sides, and I followed.
    The door opened, and the