"2:41 AM" the digital clock over the bar read. The place was full, but subdued. "Truckin'" was playing on the jukebox in the corner. The dozen tables were cluttered with beer bottles and leather-clad motorcyclists, many of whom seemed old enough to be drawing a pension.
"Since it's after hours, we have to make it a private party, or they can't serve the booze," Lucy was explaining. "So they start requiring some sort of invite after 2 AM. Since Mack's the bouncer tonight, he gets to make it Tattoo Night."
"Hey, kid," she said to the young man behind the bar. "Beer for me and th' man here."
"The usual, Luce?" he said, looking down on her from a generous height.
"Yeah, the usual. Nice jacket, by the way."
"You like?" He turned to display a ram's skull design on the back. "Got it for my birthday."
She reached up to pull up the collar and ruffle his hair. "Yeah, you look pretty sharp. Zuzu here?"
"Don't know, and don't care." He set up the beers.
"Stood you up again, huh?"
He frowned.
"You know you can do better than her, Bee."
"Of course, you'd say that." He bent way down to kiss her on the cheek.
"Oh, Rupert, this's my grandson, Byron."
"Yo," said Byron.
"Byron's majoring in psychology at UCLA."
"Luce," he said, darting a nervous look about. "I'm kind of in the closet about that, okay?"
"Hah," she said. "You're not thinking about changing majors again, are you?"
"No. Just that everybody starts telling me about their sucky love life when they find out."
"Do what your daddy does when they start in. Pull out the old watch and start charging 'em by the minute. That'll shut 'em up."
Byron smiled at her indulgently. "Always looking out for me, eh Luce?"
She hooked an arm around Giles' waist. "Nope. I'm a born busybody."
The rest of the Harley's Angels had appropriated two tables over by the jukebox. Giles spotted Angel in the back trying to place a telephone call. Cordelia stood close behind him, her arms drawn tightly around her body. She was staring with a glazed look at a pool game that was going on at the far end of the room.
"Yo, Luce!" Cordelia's motorcyclist pulled out a chair for Lucy. "Just in time, babe. You can settle a bet for us: Who was the quintessential poet of the French symbolist movement? I'm sayin' Baudelaire."
"No way," the bald, muscle-bound motorcyclist on the other side of the table growled. "Canard. Everybody says Baudelaire, 'cause that's all they fuckin' know."
Lucy smiled at them. "You boys are so mainstream."
"Oh right, like who the fuck ever heard of Canard?"
"There's a reason for that. 'Cause his poetry sucked, man."
"Yeah? Well, if Baudelaire were around today, he'd be writing for Hallmark."
The bearded man pounded his fist on the table, causing the beer bottles to jump. "You better be careful who you're dissin', E.T. ."
"Boys, boys," Lucy sighed. "Put that energy to use, puh- lease, and get something turnin' on the jukebox other than the Dead."
"Nothin' wrong with the Dead," the bearded motorcyclist grumbled, smoothing his tie-dyed muscle-shirt. "What's wrong with the Dead?"
"Nothing, Rio honey." She patted him on the shoulder. "I feel like cutting the rug a bit, okay?"
He smiled sweetly. "Sure thing, Luce. Anything you want." He jumped up, glared snidely at E.T., and hurried over to the jukebox.
Lucy sighed. "Dear man, but such pedestrian tastes."
E.T. snickered. "Got a couplet up the ass."
Lucy smacked him hard on the shoulder. "Evil. For that, you can get the pretzels."
Grinning lecherously, he leapt up to obey.
Rio came back to the table to the tune of 'Rock Around the Clock'. "Better Luce?"
She beamed at him. "Just what I was running around in my head, Rio. You and I are in sync, I think."
"To the beat of Baudelaire!" Rio said, lifting up his beer bottle.
Lucy leaned her head on his shoulder. "To good taste, Rio! And those who share it."
Rio growled and moved to kiss her.
"Not in front of the children, Rio honey."
Giles looked around the bar, but as far as he could tell Cordelia and Byron were the youngest ones there, and both were more than preoccupied watching the pool game.
"Rupert, why don't you see how your friends are doing?" Lucy said, with a cheerful sideways leer at her fellow motorcyclist.
"Of-of course." He walked across to the pinball machines, where Angel was still on the telephone.
"Triple A put me on hold," Angel explained. He looked at Giles again. "How did you get in?"
"Call a taxi," Giles said. "I'll put the charge on my credit card."
"We tried them first," Cordelia said. "They put us on hold forever, and then told us there'd be a two hour wait."
"I don't think they were crazy about the idea of sending a cab down here," Angel said.
"Gee, I can't imagine why," Cordelia replied.
"Angel, um -- I don't mean to be insulting, but . . . do you do this often?"
"What?" Angel blinked at him.
"Well -- the current state of affairs would seem to be potentially hazardous to your health."
"Look, I've got plenty of -- acquaintances -- I could call on, but most of them --" Angel shot Cordelia a glance, "-- let's just say I can't call them when I'm in mixed company."
"Skanky, you mean," Cordelia said. "You're not a drug dealer, are you? But of course, if you were a drug dealer you'd at least be driving a cool car. That worked."
"Lay off of me about the car, okay?" Angel said. "It was a loaner."
Giles dug through his wallet and handed the teenager a five dollar bill. "Cordelia, go buy yourself a soda, or a beer, or some cocaine. Yes?"
"Can I get an import?"
"Yes, yes. Whatever you want."
"You're not just trying to get rid of me?"
"Well, yes I am. Better take advantage of it."
"Give me another five, then."
He sighed, and pulled another five dollar bill from his wallet.
"She," Angel said, as Cordelia sauntered off, "is going to cost some poor soul a lot of money someday."
"Is somebody going to get back to you on the telephone? Eventually?"
"Of course they are." Angel looked miffed. "I'm a dues paying member. They're just really busy tonight. Why don't you go back and see what our friends are up to? I'll join you as soon as I line something up."
Lucy and Rio were engaged in some heavy petting back at the table. He spotted E.T. headed back with pretzels in hand and a smoldering look in his eyes. Giles decided to make a stop by the Men's Room instead.
Lucy's grandson was inside by one of the stalls, engrossed in inscribing a lengthy poem on the door. It was, of course, in French. Giles read over his shoulder for a minute. "Verlaine," he said finally.
Byron settled back on his heels to examine his efforts. He lit up a clove cigarette. "Suitable lavatory reading, don't you think?"
"I'm not going to get involved in these literary debates," Giles said.
Byron snickered. "You don't know my grandmother very well."
Rio came lumbering in, nursing a bleeding nose. "Hey kid, get me some toilet tissue."
"Gotta watch his left hook, man," Byron said.
"Yeah, yeah." Rio bent over the washbasin and slapped water on his face. He turned around, blinking, and snatched the wad of tissue from Byron's hand. "Caught me by surprise, is all." The poem on the stall door caught his eye. He paused to read it, the tissue jammed up against his nose. "Who did this?"
"Don't look at me." Byron tucked the fine-line marker behind one ear. "Verlaine is not my thing." He cast a significant look at Giles.
"You do this?" Rio demanded.
Giles glared at Byron. "I repeat, I am not going to get involved." He left the lavatory and moved back to the table. Delilah had finally come in and was seated with Lucy, E.T., and another motorcyclist. They had the look of people engaged in some major disagreement. He gave up and joined Cordelia at the bar. Fair sign the night was not taking a turn for the better when Cordelia became his conversational best bet.
"Look at this," Cordelia said, waving her hand in front of him "Just look."
"Your hand looks fine to me," he said tiredly, climbing onto a bar stool.
She gave him a pitying look. "Twenty dollars for a bottle of nail polish, and it's chipping the next night."
Rio eased himself down on the stool next to Giles. "Hey, man, I'm sorry I came down on you like that. Let me buy you a beer."
Byron came around to the other side of the bar. "Usual, Rio?"
"Yeah, and get my buddy here whatever he likes."
Giles glanced at Cordelia's bottle. "I'll have whatever she's having," he said.
"I had no business jumping to conclusions like that," Rio continued. "I mean, you don't even look like a Verlaine man."
"What does a Verlaine man look like?" Cordelia said, gazing over at him curiously.
"Real skanky, kinda shrimpy, with a mean shifty look in his eyes." He looked back at E.T. . "Fights dirty." He pulled back to study Giles. "Course if you are a Verlaine man, I don't mean nothin' by that. You know Reverdy?"
"Not personally, no," Giles muttered, peering intently at his beer bottle label.
Rio shifted ponderously to pull a small leather bound book from his back pocket. "You'll like this. Just listen. . ." He took a pair of huge-lensed spectacles from his jacket pocket, propped them on the bridge of his nose, then carefully opened the book to a place marked with a dirty twenty dollar bill:
"Lève-toi carcasse et marche
Rien de neuf sous le soleil jaune
Le der des der des louis d'or
La lumière qui se détache
sous les pellicules du temps
La serrure au cœur qui éclate
Un fil de soie
Un fil de plomb
Un fil de sang . . ."
He shut the book with a satisfied grunt. "Now what do you think of that?"
"What a pansy," said a short muscular man at the end of the bar.
Rio rose slowly. "You like to repeat that?"
"Lame symbolism. The guy's a pansy," the man repeated. "And that romantic trope with the corpse. Combined with the light motif. Jesus, the fuckin' Dadaists could run rings around this guy."
"The Dadaists," Rio tucked the book back in his pocket, "never knew nothin' about symbolic resonance."
Giles picked up his beer and headed back towards the jukebox. Perhaps he could expend some time studying the selections.
Cordelia showed up at his elbow. "Good, let's put some decent music on." She scanned the playlist. "Who are all these guys?"
"Actually," Giles said, "Most of them are before my time."
"Real ancient stuff then."
Lucy pulled her chair around. "Rupert, honey, plug the box and punch up some young Elvis."
"You don't think some Dead wouldn't go down nice now?" Rio said, as he rejoined the table.
"On top of Bill Hailey?" E.T. laughed. "You're tone deaf, Rio."
"I'm in a retro kind of mood," Lucy said with a sigh and a long stretch. "Elvis is so . . ." she shivered. "He reminds me of young Rimbaud. Such bad boys --"
Giles fed a quarter in and punched up a James Brown song.
"-- and a rebel in our midst," she continued, grinning at him.
"Oh, yeah, he's real bad," Rio sneered.
"You never know about the quiet ones, Rio," Lucy said. "Which makes 'em particularly bad. You'd know that, if you weren't so . . . loud all the time."
"Oh, yeah?" Rio pulled his chair around. "You tell us then, bad boy, who your favorite symbolist poet was."
"I think perhaps he favors the Russians," Delilah said with a small smile. "He has the look of an Annensky man."
"Leave the boy be, guys," Lucy leaned back in her chair and smiled at Giles. "One's literary tastes should, after all, be between one's self and one's conscience."
"I read a good poem once," Cordelia volunteered.
"Not the Russians," another Harley's Angel opined. "Not with all that tweed."
"Brits never did a damn thing for the symbolist movement," Rio said. "I mean, who the hell could he favor from home?"
"Now you wait one damn minute --" Giles began.
"It's fine if the man wants to put personal chauvinism above good taste," Lucy said graciously. "We're all literate people. We can judge by whatever standards suit us."
Rio snorted and drank down the rest of his beer. "Well, semi-literate, anyways," he drawled. "Cause there's those who mistake sententiousness for profundity. And those --" he waved a pinkie at Giles. "Who think that any damn poem is just as good as the next."
"Nothing at all wrong with being open-minded," Lucy said.
"Oh, of course," Rio smirked. "And lots of people pretend to be open-minded, when really they don't do any damn reading at all."
Giles stepped forward and yanked the motorcyclist out of his seat by the back of his jacket. "Mallarmé had a finer grip on the symbolic sensibility than Baudelaire ever began to understand," he said tightly, shaking the man for good measure.
"Like hell he did." Rio grabbed Giles by the lapels.
"Giles." Cordelia was dragging at his sleeve. "What are you doing?"
"Hey, hey!" Angel was suddenly interceding. "What's going on here?"
"Don't you just love men who can get passionate about literature?" Lucy said to Delilah.
"Can't you two stay out of trouble tonight?" Angel said irritably.
"It's not my fault," Cordelia said. "I don't know anything about French poetry."
Lucy stood up and pushed Giles and Rio apart. "Come now, boys." She smiled charmingly at Angel. "Go back and finish your call, honey. We're just having a little academic discussion."
Angel backed off. "No fighting. Okay?"
"Civilized debate, dear," Lucy said.
Giles sat slowly down, still glaring at Rio.
The motorcyclist turned to his girlfriend. "Mallarmé, huh! You tell him what the lame fuck Mallarmé has on Baudelaire. Nothing, right?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Well, if you go beyond an undergraduate understanding of his work . . ." She patted his hand. "Don't fret, Rio, honey. Baudelaire is a perfectly respectable muse."
"Oh, we all know how respectable Baudelaire is." E.T. grinned. "Rupert here has you by the balls on this one, Rio man."
Rio gritted his teeth and fixed Giles with a simmering glare.
"What the hell is that?" Buffy exclaimed. "Xander, slow down."
"I thought we were going home," Xander whined. He pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Buffy hopped out and moved cautiously towards the small car parked just ahead of them.
Xander got out to look for himself. "Oh, no," he said. "Buffy, you can't be sure."
"Angel sometimes drives this car."
Xander took another look at the Volkwagen. "He actually let you see him drive this?"
"Don't say anything. Besides he only borrows it from someone." She circled the car, looking for damage.
Xander trudged dejectedly back to the BMW.
"Where to now?" Willow said cheerfully.
"Further on down the road, I guess," Xander replied. "We sure didn't pass them on the way down."
Buffy got back in. "They couldn't have gone far on foot." She began to rummage around on the dashboard. "Doesn't Cordelia have anything other than Cibo Mato CDs in her car?"
"I could go for some country about now." Xander poked around in the pile on his side of the dashboard. "Oooh, Blues Brothers. We've got the sunglasses, and it's night. That reminds me though, we ought to gas up soon."
"First things first." Buffy pointed him down the road.
"Hey man, like how far back do you think we should be hangin'?" the vampire behind the Cadillac's steering wheel said.
"Like, how far back do you feel safe hangin'?" Kaylee said. She lit up another toke.
"Oh, about Tijuana would be a good hang," he replied. "I've got the munchies. Anybody else got the munchies?"
"Well there's nothin' along here," Kaylee said. "Have to wait until the next truck stop. What're they doin', man?"
"They're lookin' at that Bug parked on the side of the road. Think they're gonna 'jack it?"
"If they do, they're shit blind."
"They say Slayer blood is a trip," the driver said, licking his lips.
"You wanna try that gig you go ahead," she said. "But give me the car keys first."
"Bet we could take her together. Bet we could kick her ass."
Kaylee sniffed at the joint, then passed it to Viola. "I gotta call Spike."
They watched the Slayer get back in the BMW. "Hey Kay," the driver, Boyce, said. "If the Slayer and Xena got in a fight, who do'ya think would win?"
"Slayer would kick her ass," Viola said.
"Yeah, but Xena does all those cool flips 'n stuff. And she's got kick-ass weapons."
"Callisto could take the Slayer," Viola said decisively. She flicked the toke out the window. "Callisto's a goddess."
"But Xena can take Callisto," Boyce said.
Viola scowled. "Well, yeah."
The red BMW pulled out into the road again. Boyce started following them again. "Hey Kay," he said.
"Yeah?" she said disinterestedly.
"If Spike and Jackie Chan got into a fight, who would win?"
"Jackie would kick his ass," Viola said.
"But Spike's a vampire. He's ten times stronger than Jackie."
"Yeah, but Jackie's got all these cool moves 'n stuff."
"Ooh, did you see that time in 'Rumble in the Bronx' where he kicks this dude --"
Kaylee reached over and grabbed the wheel. "Com'on guys, pay attention. If we lose them, Spike will kick all our asses."
"Spike knows some cool moves," Viola continued. "A friend of mine saw him take on the Slayer."
"Yeah, but he got his ass whupped, didn't he?"
"He knows some cool running away."
They all giggled.
"That's why he's still around, guys," Kaylee said.
They all giggled again.
"How long are we supposed to follow these dudes?" Viola said finally. "I've really got a case of the munchies."
"Until they stop somewhere so we can tell Spike where they went," Kaylee said.
"Hope they stop somewhere with lots of juicy young dudes." Viola licked her lips.
"Hey!" Boyce said. "Look at that place with all the motorcycles. Bet there's some spicy stuff in there."
"Keep your eyes on the BMW, Boyce," Kaylee said.
The BMW suddenly cut across the road to stop at a Taco Bell.
"There, see?" Viola said. "Tell Spike they've gone across the border, and let's go eat."
"Works for me." Kaylee whipped out her cell phone.