Chapter Three: The Adventures of Ted Nugent and Fruitcake
"You're disgusting."
Tom, because he had decided he felt more like a Tom than a Billy for now, took another large bite out of his burger, letting relish and mustard drip down his fingers. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he'd gotten to the tiny restaurant and smelled the food cooking. Man, his stomach had growled.
"And you're a fruitcake, Fruitcake," Tom said through a mouthful of bread and beef. The kid was sitting across from him, making a face at his eating habits. He'd been studying the kid's features most of the time they'd spent sitting here, and still nothing came to mind. Maybe they really didn't know each other. Then again, he hadn't known his own face in the mirror. All he did know was that he was one hell of a looker. Not bad at all.
"Hey." He waved to the waitress as she passed by their table. She smiled back â well, of course she did. Who wouldn't smile at him?
"Are you even paying attention to me?" Fruitcake's whiny voice cut in. He really did sound like a fruitcake when he talked that way. Tom congratulated himself on a well chosen nickname.
"Of course I'm not paying attention to you," Tom told him frankly. "Why the hell would I pay attention to you?" He made a point of staring back over at the waitress.
Fruitcake sighed, looking a little frustrated. He hadn't actually eaten much of anything since they'd arrived. The only thing he'd ordered was a cup of coffee, and even that looked untouched.
"You going to drink that?" Tom asked, nodding to it.
"I didn't realize you cared," Fruitcake grumbled. He picked the coffee up, held it for a few moments while he frowned pensively, and set it back down.
"I don't care," Tom said, "It's just that I paid for it, and I hate to see my hard earned money go to waste."
Fruitcake snorted. "Oh yeah, I bet it was hard earned all right. You probably stole it!"
"Hey! Not so loud!" Tom hissed. Fortunately, no one was really listening to them.
"What am I supposed to think?" Fruitcake complained, not lowering his voice much at all, "I can't even remember who I am! And where's my wallet anyway? Maybe you mugged me," he finished, eyeing Tom bitterly.
"I did not mug you," Tom said defensively, "How come your pictures are on half the fake IDs if I mugged you? Why the hell were you in my motel room if I mugged you?" Damn, he'd gone and brought that up again.
"You seem pretty comfortable with the whole idea of being criminals," Fruitcake grumbled, not mentioning anything about the motel. Maybe he didn't want to talk about it either.
Tom swallowed the last of his breakfast before responding. "The way I figure, there are worse things to be."
"Like what?" Fruitcake asked dejectedly. It seemed this whole criminal thing was really bothering him. "What if we murdered people? How can you be okay with that?"
"Hey!" Tom held up a hand to stop him. "No one said anything about murdering people! All we found was a couple fake cards. We're probably just con artists or something."
"Oh, great, con artists," Fruitcake said sarcastically, "All we do is defraud innocent little old ladies out of their money, then." He let his head drop to the table with another heavy sigh.
"Why does it have to be little old ladies?" Tom wondered. It was almost like the kid was intent on finding the most depressing scenario possible. At that point the waitress came to give them their bill, so he dropped the subject.
He cuffed Fruitcake on the shoulder to get him up, and after paying the two of them left the restaurant. He didn't fail to notice that the kid hadn't taken one sip of that coffee. In fact, Fruitcake moped for most of the drive back to the motel. He looked so miserable that Tom actually started feeling bad for him.
Until he started talking again, that is.
"Maybe you kidnapped me. . ." the kid murmured, mostly to himself, but seeing as it was rather silent in the car Tom heard it.
"What?" he said irritably, "Why the hell would I kidnap you? You're the most annoying person I've ever met!" This kid's theories just kept getting more ridiculous.
Fruitcake glared at Tom. "I'm annoying!" he repeated indignantly, clearly thinking otherwise. "What does that make you?"
Tom shrugged lightly. "Me? I'm amazing."
The kid went silent, scowling at the dashboard. Tom glowered at the road. He didn't know why, but he felt pretty offended. Fruitcake seemed pretty quick to jump to the conclusion that Tom was the main bad guy behind all this. Not to mention, the silence building in the car was slowly driving him insane.
"Don't we have any music, or something?" Tom demanded finally.
"I don't know," Fruitcake grumbled. "It's not my car," he added spitefully.
"Well, check, will you?" Tom said, gesturing to the glove box. Fruitcake obeyed, somewhat to his surprise, and before long he pulled out a worn box of cassette tapes. The kid stared at them incredulously.
"Cassette tapes? Cassette tapes? What are we in, the eighties?"
Tom shifted uncomfortably. There was something odd about that statement, like they'd had this conversation before. Was he remembering something?
Fruitcake started rifling through the tapes and checking the labels. The disbelief in his voice kept escalating with every name he read out. "AC/DC? Metallica. . . Led Zeppelin. . . Black Sabbath. . . What kind of music is this?"
"Hey, if you don't like it you can start walking," Tom told him impatiently, gesturing to the door. As hard as he tried to concentrate on it, the fleeting moment of familiarity had faded away. Nothing came to mind. He recognized the band names, but that was it.
"Just put something on," he told Fruitcake.
With a resigned sigh, the kid plucked out a tape at random and popped it in. As soon as the music started up, Tom felt a lot more at ease. He had heard this song before. He might even be able to sing along. . . if he could just remember how the lyrics went. They lingered at the back of his mind, just out of reach.
"AC/DC," he said with a grin, finding he could at least place which band it was.
"Whatever," Fruitcake muttered.
Tom shrugged and turned the music up. He could faintly hear Fruitcake complaining, something about it being too loud, so he turned it up even louder.
"Hey! Will you stop that?" Fruitcake practically shouted in an effort to be heard, "We still have to figure out who the hell we are! Turn it off!"
Tom responded without really thinking about it. "Sorry, Sammy. I can't hear you, music's too loud."
Almost immediately Fruitcake shut the music off. This was followed pretty quickly by Tom pulling the car to a dead halt at the side of the road. What the hell? How dare the kid turn off his music? That wasn't supposed to happen. Tom knew it, without really knowing how he knew it.
"Why did you call me 'Sammy'?" Fruitcake demanded.
"Why the hell did you turn my music off?" Tom retorted. Only then did it occur to him that he really had called Fruitcake 'Sammy', and he couldn't explain why. It had seemed like a normal reaction at the time.
"Do you remember something I don't?" the kid went on, yanking the cassette tape out of the player before Tom could put it back on. "Do you know who I am? Have you been lying to me this whole time?"
Whoa. Calm down. "God, you're paranoid," Tom said. "Why would I pretend to lose my memory? How exactly does that help me in any way?"
"I don't know," the kid said. After a moment he slouched in his seat, looking defeated. "Why did you call me that if you don't remember anything?"
Tom paused, considering. "You seem like a Sammy," he decided. As soon as he said it, it was true. Sammy the Fruitcake. It was completely fitting.
"So you think my name is Sam?" the kid said slowly. "I don'tâ"
"Not Sam," Tom interrupted, "You are definitely not a Sam, Sammy."
"What the hell?" the kid griped, "Why should you get to decide? You know what, I don't feel like a Sam, or a Sammy."
Tom smirked. "Now you're going on about your feelings? Fruitcake. . ."
Fruitcake ignored him. "I think my name's. . . John," he said finally.
Tom didn't have much to say to that. He just gave the kid a skeptical look.
"What?" Fruitcake said defensively, "Why can't my name be John? It's better than Sam. Plus, I think I've heard it before," he insisted.
Tom didn't think that comment merited a response. Seriously, who hadn't heard the name John before?
"Hey, don't look at me like that! Okay, all I meant was I think that's my name. It sounds right. It's John. . . and something that starts with a 'D'. . ."
"Doe?" Tom volunteered snidely. "Because if you're gonna say 'John Doe', I'll smack you."
"Dean," the kid blurted out suddenly. Something lit up in his face, "I think that's my name â John Dean."
"You're name is not John Dean," Tom said derisively. It was the stupidest name he'd ever heard.
"How would you know?" the kid snapped, "You don't even know your own name!"
"Sure I do," Tom said. It was complete bullshit, but he didn't care. Possibly under the influence of the music, a name had popped into his head. "I'm Ted Nugent."
The kid gaped at him, incredulity written all over his face. "You are not Ted Nugent," he said finally.
"And how would you know?" Tom challenged.
"First off, I don't even think you can play guitar," Fruitcake said.
"Hey!" Tom complained, "You don't know if I can play guitar! I bet I play a very mean guitar."
"Well, if you can be Ted Nugent, I don't see why I can't be John Dean," the kid grumbled.
"No," Tom said with a note of finality. "You're either Sammy or Fruitcake. Since I'm feeling generous I'll let you pick."
"Why?" the kid cried. This time is really was a whine. He was practically pouting.
"I'm leaning towards 'Fruitcake' myself," Tom told him, enjoying every minute of it.
The kid glared at him. "Sam, then," he bit out.
"You mean Sammy," Tom said cheerfully. Then he snatched the box of tapes from newly-crowned Sammy and began looking through them for some music to put on. "You know, I wouldn't have pegged you for someone who knew Ted Nugent."
The kid looked like he was thinking. Must have been hard work. "I think I know the music you listen to, which means I probably know you, somehow. Or I used to, anyway."
"Well, I hope you know me. You were in my goddamn motel room."
"Do we have to assume that everything's yours?"
Tom grinned and started up the car again. "Of course everything belongs to me. I'm the older one here, clearly I've got seniority."
"Oh right, because that makes sense," Sammy said. "Jerk."
Tom's response was nearly automatic as he turned the music back on. "Bitch.
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By the time they reached the motel again it was getting hot out. Eventually, despite all their frequent disagreements, they had decided that they needed to go through everything in the car and the motel room thoroughly. Hopefully there would be something, somewhere, that would give them more of a clue as to who they were.
"I'll take the car," Ted announced the instant they arrived. He had decided by this time that Ted Nugent was by far cooler than Tom Scholz.
The kid muttered something along the lines of "whatever" and headed for the room, where he stood fumbling with the keys for a few seconds. Ted went round to the back of his impala and popped the trunk open.
No sooner had he done so than he slammed it shut again, eyes wide.
"What's wrong?" Sammy asked. He must have heard, or caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. Now he was staring at Ted expectantly.
"Uh," Ted cleared his throat to stall for time as he made up an excuse. "Nothing in there, except an old lunch I must have forgotten about. . . months ago."
It seemed to work. The kid's face screwed up in disgust. "Dude, that's gross." He turned, and finally getting the door to the room open, disappeared inside.
As soon as he was gone, Ted leaned heavily against the trunk of the car. "Who am I?" he whispered to himself. Making sure there were no other people in sight, he gingerly propped the trunk open again. There could be no mistaking what he saw this time.
Nearly any weapon he could think of, any weapon he could name, was in there. Guns, and lots of them, different makes and models: handguns, shotguns, a couple rifles, an old revolver. Knives, sheathed and in different sizes: daggers, hunting knives, military knives and even a machete. Under all that there were a few sharpened wooden stakes, a crossbow, a crowbar, several boxes of ammunition and gasoline.
He shut the trunk again. This was not good. Actually, he was pretty sure that this was as far from good as it was possible to get.
Well, con artists seemed pretty unlikely at this point, he thought bleakly. What kind of con artist kept an arsenal in the trunk of their car?
"Maybe I'm some kind of black ops special forces military guy," he told himself. It was a pathetic, feeble excuse, even to his own ears. More likely, he was some kind of mass murderer.
"Hey!" Sammy's head poked out the door, and he held up something excitedly. Ted vaguely registered that it was metallic and shiny. "I found a phone!" the kid said excitedly, "I mean, I think it's my phone! I own something!"
"Yeah," Ted said distractedly. Another thought had just occurred to him. If he was some kind of killer, what did that make the kid? Obviously they worked together, if the fake IDs were anything to go by.
"Check your pockets, maybe you have one," the kid was saying. He had flipped his phone open and was going through it like it was a new toy. Some of his excitement faded after a moment or two. "I don't remember any of these names. . ."
Once again, he vanished back inside the room. Ted glanced at the car uncertainly. Did he really want to know what else was in there?