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

attle cups and spoons, jazzed to have someplace to channel her
pep.
Roy looks around. His Sony has clicked off. Suzie has been
cheered offstage, and he doesn’t feel like flipping her over. He’s
heard the tape now far too many times.
Too much of a good thing.
Unlike the mass of the human population, muted earth tones
distress Roy. It makes him think of all the cardboard boxes he’s
lived in. How could people want to be surrounded by brown?
They probably have a bunch of different names for it, but Roy
calls it brown.
His gaze glazes over at the abundance of what his landlady
would call tchotchkes.
This is what the New World Order is all about—crap. Crap
piled on crap. Landfills filled with crap. People dumping last
year’s crap into the ocean to make room for this year’s crap that
will soon follow last year’s crap into the ocean to make room for
next year’s crap.
And how can people who are so politically correct wear so
much leather? Roy loses count of all the toasty, trendy leather
jackets and coats. Vaguely, he wonders how many kinds of
leather there must be in the world. He tries to visualize burly
men stripping the bloody flesh off freshly-killed carcasses so that
Yuppies can be warm and trendy.
Then he notices them.
There are two of them, and they sit at a table staring at him.
Yes, at him.
One has fine, straight black hair in a pageboy cut. The part
that divides her hair’s left from its right looks to have been made
with a laser. Her chocolate eyebrows are thick enough to provide
toeholds, if one wanted to climb her forehead.
And climb it men would, if she but asked.
Her skin is a shade of Mediterranean olive, not Seattle
tanning booth brown, like a stain from a swim in Lake Union.
And she is looking at him.
And smiling.
And so is her friend!
Her friend who has a rack that would stop an Amtrack express
100 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY