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"Your ass, and my face, fucker!" I whoop, for good measure.

"Did that make sense.. at all?" Travis asks, chuckling throatily. He steers with one lazy hand, too, that asshole! Always trying to play it cool, Mr. Big?

"If you don't think so, I'm gunna vote 'no'." Bill finishes his smoke, and butts it out on the stone ashtray. It's grey, and hefty. It looks big enough to crack a skull, from where I'm sitting.

"It's unanimous: this guy is fucking wasted."

"Have a Rose! Fuck off!" I loll around in my seat, testing the strength of the seatbelt. I laugh, quietly at first, hysterically, then, finally, maniacally.

"I'm starting to think we may need to gag this joker." Travis steers gracefully around a wide turn, his arm sweeping the steering wheel in a lazy circle. We start heading in to residential territory.

"Fuck yeah." Bill looks at his pack of smokes -- John Player's, actually -- as if trying to decide if he wanted another one. I'd be tempted; I don't know if smoking would make this any worse. I don't know if Bill would share. All I know is that I quit, 7 years ago, and right now I sure want one.

"Fuck what? Fuck you..!"

"Yeah, right, buddy. I'll get fucked. Right after we're done fuckin' with you." Bill grabs a baseball cap out of the glove compartment.

As if reading his mind, Travis says, "Cop," to no one in particular.

I'm flying high, and the hired hands are getting busted for a dead taillight, no doubt. Hot shit. The cops pop out of their cruiser, and saunter over, joking between themselves. Cop 2 laughs at Cop 1's witty shit. Unbeknownst to us all, Cop 1 is likely moonlighting as a comedian, at the local sports pub, on Talent Night. I'm rambling in my head pretty good about Cop 1's brilliant career in comedy -- his rise to stardom, his addiction to drugs to keep him funny, and his downfall from cancer -- when the cops come over to the driver's door.

The thing that penetrates the warm womb of my thoughts just now is, "Is that gentleman in the back high?" I can hear a nervous chuckle come from Bill. "Officer: it's like this, our chum back there, Joe, called us from a payphone, and begged us to take him home. Honestly, it was a nightmare finding him." "Well, you get along with that -- and get that signal light fixed, okay? You fellas have a better day, tomorrow."

"Waaaaaaaait!" I sing. "I'm being kidnapped!!"The cops walk away anyway, probably never hearing my cry.

What could the cops of this town do? This town is run, bought, and infested with addicts of all spectrums. If you can't crack down on people up high, why bother the little guys? Why listen to one, like now, when they could actually be being kidnapped, but are too high to be believed? Why start cracking down on the two dashing gentlemen, helping their asshole friend by taking him home, in their unremarkable little VW Bug? Sometimes the world's problems are too big to rescue high people from presumed paranoia. Sometimes, all you can do is nab some purse-snatchers, and hope to hell that you slow him down from accessing his usual drugs, at least for a little while. Our system is horribly ineffectual, but at least I'm not witnessing Stallone astride his Justicemobile Bike, and his Judge Dredd creds. I guess.

Hm.. where am I now? I'm not in the car, I'm not outside. Where did I get to? Did I escape? Oh, I get it. I'm in the dungeon. Torture chamber. Basement of screams. Villainous lair, where the villains are chillin' with their killin's; where villains make villainous faces after concluding villainous chases. Yes, indeed. Indeedy-do.Doo-dah-day. What?

"What? What do you mean, 'what'? What part of, 'you're fucked now, and I want to know where the money is' escapes you?" Travis is all red-faced, and I start wondering what conversation I've found myself in. "I mean, besides the fact that you're 4 Daisies over the requirement for being at this picnic?"

"You'll never catch me, coppers!"

"Useful. Now: focus. Where is Jimmy's money? Or, rather, let's cut to the chase. Where's my money?"

"I always win at Cops & Robbers. Dodgeball, too. D'you know that? Dodgeball, too." I say this, with the soberest face I can manage at the time. What, and where this money is, I have no idea, so I'm winging it.

"Are you trying to break my face with that look? It ain't working, lemme tell ya," Bill says, squatting beside Travis.

"I'm the little train that could -- could fail -- I fail, even at failing. I failed everything. I, am a failure. Le me tell you." I flop around, feeling ropes and a stiff, solid chair.

"How 'bout no. Focus, shithead: our money, and lots of it. Where did you put it? It's not at your drunk-ass little apartment. It was hard getting in, past all the cops. Something to do with a dead hooker. Friend of yours..?"