Free The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman Page A

had
nigger-lipped
it, and, as much as she disliked that term, and her brother, she couldn’t help thinking that every time it happened. Did that make her a racist? She hoped not, she didn’t care for racists. Her mouth was really full of spit tonight; she tried catching the excess with the back of her hand, but it didn’t work, and a strand blobbed out onto the table, pooling near the crumbs from the fried chicken she had eaten earlier. Luther handed her a napkin. Thought about it. Handed her a second.
    â€œThank you,” she managed. She glanced at Peggy to see if she had noticed her predicament, but her cousin was drooling, too. Drooling and smiling at Luther. She felt like smiling, too, so she did. “Sorry,” she said.
    â€œNothing to be sorry about. Everybody niggie-lips a ciggy from time to time.”
    He plucked her drenched cigarette away, tossed it into the street, smiled again with his blurry teeth. He was drooling a little, too. How strange! Three droolers drooling away at a sidewalk table outside Honey’s Bar and Grill. She laughed a little despite herself. She had been too hard on Luther Nixon. He offered her a Marlboro. She took it, suffered him to light it.
    â€œThe way you’re feelin’, that’s called bein’
charmed
. Least that’s what I heard someone else call it and it stuck. You didn’t charm so easy ’cause you’re kind of a cunt. This other’n fell off like a fat man off a pony. Know who doesn’t charm worth a good goddamn? Injuns. I once rolled up on some wigwam gas station and country store, this was out in the desert some’ers, an’ this buck said, ‘Nothin’s on the house ’cept for family and you don’t look Comanche to me—you gonna pay for that gas or what?’ This’s after I looked him in the eye and told him itwas on the house—I ain’t paid for gas since I was takin warm shits. So I beat the fuck out of him with a can a’ tomaters or something, just beat him till one of his eyes bugged. Don’t think I kilt him, but if he wins a spellin’ bee that’ll be a neat trick.”
    â€œWere you going to show me a trick?” she said. She felt like a four-year-old at a party, a very lucky four-year-old at whose table the clown had chosen to sit. She became aware of pressure in her bladder, wondered how much trouble she would get in if she wet herself, decided not to.
    Barely.
    â€œRight!” Luther said. He lit a cigarette for himself, then plucked a toothpick from the porcelain bee holder that smilingly offered a belly basket of toothpicks from its post between the salt and pepper shakers.
    â€œWatch! It’s magic.”
    He checked to left and right to make sure nobody else was watching, then took a deep drag from the cigarette and held it. He displayed the toothpick as if inviting inspection, then, smiling all the while, poked it into the tough meat of his trachea.
    The women gasped, delighted. Luther removed the toothpick, discreetly sheathed the bloodied end in a napkin. A drop of blood started rolling down his neck, making for the collar of his too-tight shirt. Now he strained, blowing first a fine, grapelike cluster of bubbles and then a plume of smoke from the prick in his windpipe. It sputtered and stopped as the hole closed and went away entirely. He caught the runner of blood with a napkin and wiped his throat clean as though nothing had happened.
    â€œThat’s terrific,” Barb allowed, crying a little at just how rare and terrific it was.
    â€œYeah,” Peg echoed. “Really groovy.”
    â€œGroovy,” he said. “Fuck, how I hate that word. I never want you to say it again.”
    â€œOkay,” Peg said, smiling and starting to drool again. Luther wiped her chin, then licked his hand, staring straight at a waitress who saw the whole thing. She wrinkled her mouth in distaste and hurried a teetering plate of rib bones