Free When Pigs Fly by Bob Sanchez Page A

Trust me, I have every intention of purchasing this item.”
     
    The old woman shook her head and pushed her cart past them. She must have been fifty easy, though her legs weren’t bad-looking except for those very close veins. “Your brains are fried,” she mumbled. “What a disgrace.”
     
    A couple minutes later she stood two people ahead of them in the checkout line, and she looked back at them with suspicion. Ace smiled and waved the bottle— See? We’re paying . He tried not to let on, but he itched like hell.
     
    When it was their turn to check out, Ace reached down on the floor and came up with the bottle in his hand. “That old lady just dropped this,” he said. “I better go bring it to her.”
     
    “What is it?” the clerk asked. “Let me see.”
     
    Ace flashed it quickly. “Old lady. Fixed income. Gotta catch her.”
     
    “Wait a minute—”
     
    “She can’t afford to lose this. Be right back!”
     
    Later, Ace and Frosty were back at their apartment, a little winded from running. Frosty took half-melted Hershey bars from his pockets, then opened the bottle and started putting lotion on his face. Soon he’d gotten all green and minty-smelling, like a Saint Patrick’s Day mud bath. Ace flipped through a Rand McNally Road Atlas, looking for the best way to Arizona. The book was really set up stupid, because Arizona was in the front, Massachusetts was in the middle, and the places they had to go through were all over the damn place.
     
    “I see how it works,” Frosty said, pointing. “I think that’s Connecticut there.” He took a pair of scissors and some tape, cut the pages out and taped Connecticut to Massachusetts so Route 84 lined up on both pieces. “Next is New Jersey, I think.”
     
    Ace wasn’t too sure about Frosty’s approach, with all these pages taped together like a kite’s tail. How were they gonna fold it?
     
    “We could stop at Graceland,” Frosty said hopefully. “Catch the King.”
     
    “On our way back we’ll do that. Yeah, we will.”
     
    Next to last page on the kite posed a problem.
     
    “New Mexico,” Ace said, picking up the bottle. “What if we get stuck there, our car breaks down or something? We don’t speak New Mexican.”
     
    “Plus the passports we don’t have,” Frosty added. He traced a fingertip across his forehead, and a green drop splatted on Arizona. “Isn’t this stuff supposed to dry on the skin?”
     
    Ace just noticed that Frosty had stolen mint-flavored milk of magnesia, but he didn’t think he should upset his brother when they had decisions to make. “We should probably fly,” Ace said. “Get this job over with.”
     
     
     
    Logan Airport in Boston was just a hotwired Honda away, and eventually they found themselves at a ticket counter. The cute ticket agent looked at them like they had just dropped in from Pluto for a week in Disneyland. Ace scratched his crotch whenever he figured nobody was looking, and Frosty scratched everywhere all the time—his neck, his forehead, both ankles and all four cheeks, pretty much all the body parts known to man.
     
    “Sir,” the agent said to Frosty, “are you gentlemen able to fly?”
     
    Ace said, “If we could fly, we wouldn’t need an airplane, Miss.” To that, Frosty nodded and the agent smiled.
     
    “Neither of you looks very well. This is a long flight. You might want to get your rashes treated before you fly.”
     
    “Thank you for your consideration, Miss, but we have to get that flight. Urgent business. Our mother is terribly ill, and we have to go see her.”
     
    “I’m so sorry. Will this be MasterCard or Visa?”
     
    “We’re strictly cash people.” Ace laid out four hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
     
    “May I see a picture ID, please?” They handed over their driver’s licenses. The ticket agent inspected them but she didn’t return them. Instead, she called over some guy in a blue airline suit who looked like a pilot for the