Free The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore

about it?”
    “The police report says that you had a drunken argument with another driver on I-9, that you screamed out threats and profanities, cut him off repeatedly, and waved a gun at him through the window.”
    Sometimes, after drink, I am prone to spontaneity. “He cut me off first, grinning at me with a sorry-ass moustache. After riding my bumper for twenty miles.”
    “But the rest is true? You were a drunk and disorderly rageaholic?”
    Alcohol is one of my tripwires, oversensitizing me to the bad behaviour of strangers.
    “And exceeding the speed limit,” Volpe continued, “by over forty miles an hour?”
    Velocity is the ultimate drug and rockets run on alcohol. “Possibly.”
    “And the pistol?”
    “Brooklyn’s.”
    “Brooklyn carries a piece?”
    “A Walther .38. The brand favoured by James Bond.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “An anatomically correct plastic version.”
    “The kind that can pass through metal detectors … Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nile, a water pistol? I wonder who gave her that.”
    “She asked for one for her birthday. I got her top-of-the-line.”
    “Did you know that killers get their early training with water pistols?”
    “Oh, please. I must have had a dozen when I was a kid. Didn’t you?” I couldn’t imagine Volpe having a childhood.
    “Did you ever once think of the repercussions? On an innocent, impressionable young girl who may never fully recover from this incident? Ever think of that?”
    “She was in hysterics the entire time. Egging me on. Not just to catch the guy, to force him over, but to shoot him in the face. Which I did. When the cops pulled me over, she couldn’t answer their questions because of a laughing cramp. And when we arrived at her mother’s, she told me—and I quote—‘That was the best weekend of my whole life, Uncle Nile, can we do it again next weekend?’ Did she mention that to her mother? Perhaps her mother forgot that detail.”
    Volpe heaved another sigh, long and loud. “Do they have Internet up there? Up in … central Quebec?”
    “How’d you know …” I stopped because I knew. “No, they don’t have Internet up here, not yet. Or colour TV.”
    “They don’t?”
    Who was putting on who? “No, it’s prehistoric up here. You’ve never been? The Flintstones was shot up here.”
    “What are you doing there anyway, smart-ass?”
    Three things—nervousness, alcohol and Volpe—could turn me into a smart-ass. “Not a lot.”
    “Why does that not surprise me? Why does that not surprise me one iota? You remember, Count Slackoff, what your father used to say about you?”
    Let’s see, what would the old man have said about me? That I was an arrested adolescent who’d end up arrested? That all my classmates had passed through the gates of adulthood except me? “No. Refresh my memory.”
    “‘He wants to have his bread and loaf too.’”
    “Very amusing, that. Thanks for reminding me.”
    “And that ‘childlessness will condemn you to—’”
    “‘Childishness.’”
    “Exactly. God, what a wit that man had. I could never keep up with him. Must have been lots of fun being around him.”
    I nodded. “A riotocracy of merriment.”
    “He had the energy of six men.”
    And I the energy of a sloth.
    “And you the energy of a sloth.”
    “Once again, Mr. Volpe, thanks for reminding me.”
    “One of the seven deadly sins, that.”
    “So I’ve heard.”
    “Did you ever forgive him?”
    “For …?”
    “For what he did to you in Paris.”
    “Yes, of course.”
    Awkward silence as we both listened to his AM radio: “Trouble in Paradise” by the Crests. “Did you get your shots before you left?”
    “For …?”
    “I don’t know, whatever they have up there. Mad cow? Hoof and mouth? Swine flu?”
    “They don’t breed animals up here. They’re cannibals.”
    “Always the wiseass. Listen, whatever you do, don’t speed, don’t drink, don’t get stopped by the cops. You get stopped, you’re