FILLMORE'S FREAK JUICE
PART THREE
Fillmore continued to stare at Sally. After what had seemed like an hour he finally blinked. Slowly and stupidly. First one eye, then the other. "Uh… huh?"
Sally took a deep breath, steeling herself to speak. A monarch butterfly drifted past the bus's face. His eyes latched onto it, trailing its lazy flight pattern. A silvery thread of saliva dangled from his slackened bumper.
"Fillmore," Sally spoke up. Fillmore reverted his stoned gaze to her face. "Listen, about last night…" It took her a moment to realize that he was not making eye-contact with her. He seemed to be once again fixated on her headlight. Looking down, she saw that the butterfly had landed on her hood. Fillmore was mesmerized by its bright orange color. The Porsche growled and swatted it way with her antenna. The sudden loud snap jolted the hippie to attention.
"Wha - ?" he blurted out. His normally sleepy eyes were suddenly as wide as all outdoors. "What about last night?"
"You and I need to have a little talk about - (sigh) - about what happened between us last night," Sally said levelly.
At this, Fillmore relaxed, resuming his dull stare. "Ohhh." His lips continued to frame that single syllable long after it had ended. Sally wondered if he'd ever had a bug fly into his perpetually gaping mouth. Another slow blink, then: "Um, what happened?"
Sally made a high-pitched little sound somewhere between an irritated sigh and a hiccup. Curse that infernal freak juice for sapping the sense out of both of them! First she had to go and make a complete ass of herself, and now him? Was she going to have to spell it out? She closed her eyes and shook her hood. He was not making this easy for her. Not at all.
"You tell me, Fill," she said distantly. She'd never called him anything short of his full first name before, but then, an impromptu night of drunken sex with the bus practically ushered the informality from her. She opened her eyes and stared back at him blankly. Her face was unreadable. "You're the only one of us who remembers what happened. I, on the other tire, suffered a total blackout, only to wake up -" she gulped audibly, "- in your bed."
"Oh yeeaaahhhh…"
"FILLMORE!" barked a gruff voice behind Sally. Startled, she spun around. Irritable as ever, Sarge approached his hippie neighbor with a scowl. "What in Ford's name have you done with my spare tire this time?"
Fillmore blinked. "Huh?"
Sarge growled. "Where… is… my… spare?" he demanded, speaking very slowly and enunciating every syllable for the bus's benefit.
Fillmore turned his front tires outward in the vehicular version of a shrug. "Iunno," he mumbled, staring at an oil spot on the ground. "Why? S'not on your butt?"
Sally watched Sarge's bumper twitch. "It's missing," he hissed through gritted teeth.
"Welllll… maybe Mater took it."
"Uh huh. Or maybe YOU did and you just conveniently forgot! Wouldn't be the first time."
The Porsche sensed a full-blown argument in the making and thought it best to leave them to it. "I'll come back later," she murmured to Fillmore as she started to back away.
When he heard her speak, Fillmore's face lit up. "Oho! So you're the one who took it!" he declared, jabbing a tire at her.
Sally braked. "What?"
"Sally didn't take my spare!" Sarge intervened on her behalf. "She's far too sensible to do such a thing." She smiled appreciatively at him. "Even if she did go a little overboard last night," he added quietly. Sally heard this and paled.
Fillmore chuckled. "Aw, you're just jealous 'cuz she totally ditched you for me."
Sarge snorted. "I didn't care to partake."
"You can't fool me, man. I saw the way you were watchin' us last night."
Sally turned even paler while Sarge remained staunchly indifferent. Not to be discouraged, the bus grinned and gave her a clumsy nudge. "This gal's good, man. Groovy good. You dunno what you missed."
Sally was on the verge of passing out. Or freaking out. She wasn't sure which would happen first, but she wasn't going to wait around to find out. As she put herself in reverse again, Sarge noted her sudden pallor with a raised brow.
"What's the matter with you?" he inquired. "That freak juice give you a bad hangover?"
Sally shook her hood, and in doing so, she both heard and felt something heavy bump around inside her trunk. No longer suffering from her organic fuel crash, whatever it was, despite it's size and weight, failed to give her the nasty hoodache it had earlier. Since she couldn't recall putting anything in her trunk recently, she popped it open to see what was in there now.
Sarge's gasp made her even more curious. Unable to see past her hood, she asked him what he saw. But the Jeep did not answer. Instead, she felt her front end dip under his weight as he reached into her trunk and pulled out the offending object. Sally shut her hood and echoed his gasp. There, lying on the ground between them, was Sarge's spare tire.
Yeah, Porsches have rear-mounted engines and trunks in front, just like VW's. Them Germans is weird. XD Sorry for the ridiculously long wait. More to come much sooner, I hope.
