volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

met his comeuppance, and they would gasp, cheer, and the room
fill with applause.
“Sir?”
Roy can’t hear a thing, his head is so filled with applause.
Suzie takes another bow.
(What a night that must have been, ’way back in ’75, at the
Shibuya Public Hall in Tokyo, Japan!)
“SIR?”
She with dancing teeth and galloping eyes and slipstream hair
is windmilling a hand.
People are starting to stare.
But they had been taking peeks at Roy ever since he walked
in carrying his Safeway bag weighted with a foil-wrapped
something, maybe a bomb, and staring and staring at the menu
like a space zombie.
The applause dies away and Suzie says her thanks and Roy
notices the girl’s windmilling hand with its gold Promise Ring
and charm bracelet.
“SIR?”
(It is not easy for her to call him “sir,” but she is paid by the
hour to do her master’s bidding, and her master would bid her
know that Roy’s money spends just as well as the guy’s with the
cool leather jacket, and that either way he—the master—would
be laughing all the way to the bank.)
“WhatcanIgetforyoutodaysir?”
Roy shrugs. He is uneasy in this place, but his dopaminedeprived
frontal lobe screams out for its daily ration of
C 8 H 10 N 4 O 2 .
He reaches up and with one free, fingerless-gloved hand
expands the bands of his cheap headphones so he can hear
himself speak, so he can modulate his voice, so he can say—
“Double-tall Americano. Please.”
Unlike the Yuppie Scum before him, Roy had not forgotten to
utter the Magic Word.
The girl’s frozen mask of forced cordiality asks,
“Want that Misto?”
Roy is gripped by panic—he has no clue what she’s talking
about.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY