Free Streets on Fire by John Shannon Page B

years. Though his first marriage had gone under to it, he wasn’t really an alcoholic; he’d given up cold turkey one day just to prove something to himself. He’d also given up drugs and tobacco and beef and even the hard-edge mystery stories he’d once loved. It was all a matter of making it damned clear to your ego, or maybe it was your id, that gratification was not in charge. But now he wondered if it might not be a good time to ease up a little.
    He sighed and shut the fridge door. There was Marlena’s note again. He wasn’t sure what he thought about her spending so much time with the Open Doorites. They had her contributing to some pretty dubious Central American missionaries, probably a front for the CIA and the local oligarchy. And then there was all that energy the Doorites exuded. Like most people who’d grown up in the suburbs, Jack Liffey was generally uncomfortable with people who believed things with that much enthusiasm.
    For a brief time after coming back from ’Nam he’d fallen in with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and he’d seen a lot of fervor running out of control, not unlike religious fervor. He’d only had a Good Conduct medal to toss back over the fence toward the Federal Building, but he’d watched as a lot of pretty sharp guys ended up hypnotizing themselves into believing some pretty strange radical stuff: dire conspiracies, imminent revolutions and some pretty dubious street thugs as leaders.
    It had all left him with a bad taste for enthusiasm. And it brought back one of the few words of wisdom from his father that he had ever taken to heart: When you want to decide which square of the gameboard you’re going to next, ask yourself, can see more clearly from there?

SIX
The Secret Language of Cars
    It was the biggest truck parking lot she’d ever seen, the big square unhitched trailers lined up side by side like an endless brick wall paralleling the highway. Here and there, a rig was backing up to attach a trailer and pull it away.
    “This must be where they breed,” Maeve said.
    “Or come to die,” Mary Beth suggested. “Maybe it’s like an elephant boneyard.” She was getting into the spirit of things.
    Across the narrow highway there was a long saloon with a neon sign, flashing even at noon: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. ALL NUDE. TRUCKERS WELCOME .
    Maeve nodded to the sign. “I think breed is closer.”
    As they rested on their bikes, she studied the old-fashioned swing doors of the saloon, but no one came or went, and she could hear faint music with a strong beat. Maeve was curious about these sex-tinged places. She knew the shuddery excitement of having a boy touch her body a little bit or peek at it, but she couldn’t imagine anything but horror in strutting around with your clothes off in front of a bunch of hooting men—if that’s actually what went on in there. Movies only hinted at it. She couldn’t really believe places like that were real.
    Mary Beth was studying the saloon too.
    “You ever let a boy see you undressed?” Maeve asked.
    “Sort of. Last year I played a game with this jerk from school, but when it got to the important stuff he cheated and wouldn’t show me his.”
    “It’s just skin,” Maeve said. “Tell them to go buy National Geographic .”
    Mary Beth laughed at the quip, but that wasn’t exactly Maeve’s attitude. Actually, she was pretty confused about the subject, all in all. One day she’d shown up in Mar Vista unannounced and walked in on her dad and Marlena with the radio going loud. They’d been on the bathroom rug and they had their mouths in places she couldn’t quite believe, something she’d thought was pretty much theoretical, and they seemed to be having fun doing it. She thanked whatever stars there were that her dad hadn’t felt compelled to have a little “talk” with her afterward.
    They pushed on again in the bright sun, and before long they turned off the highway and pedaled into downtown Fontana to begin