Why do bunnies run in circles?

So much for small talk.

As much as it killed the professional mood, BigWig’s revelation created a whole new one. It was like the floodgates had opened, as this beautiful woman began telling me her whole life story, or at least the parts of it that related to Rabbits. Dwyer’s eleventh hour declaration had made something inside Uncle Dick snap. The 26 year old had been visiting friends and family before leaving to take a job at Steve Wozniak’s CL-9. Richard Carruth had graduated top of his class as an Electrical Engineer, and was seemingly a savant with RF technology. He had quite the bright future ahead of him, at least until that broadcast. After that he became obsessed, never leaving for the west coast, and spiraling down into an obsession with all things Rabbits.

Little Hyzenthlay had adored her uncle, who was by all accounts a warm and caring man prior to his descent into madness. He cultivated her natural affinity with technology as an asset to his search for the “answer”, ruthlessly abusing her hero worship for his own ends over the course of the next five years until his disappearance in August of 1992, just prior to Hyzenthlay’s junior year of high school. In March of ‘93 she had received a postcard showing the Seattle Space Needle with only one word on it in block printing. “ENDGAME”. A week later Uncle Dick’s bloated corpse was fished out of the Puget Sound, the same day that Hyzenthlay came across a new version of The Circle listing ‘Californiac’ as the winner of VI on a BBS.

It was inevitable that she would follow in his footsteps. Just as it was inevitable that I would fall under the sway of The Game myself, even without the allure of her beauty to draw me in.

Somewhere in the middle of her soliloquy she’d begun crying, and I had moved across to her side of the table and put my arm around her shoulder, following an instinct to comfort the damsel in distress. After she’d finished, she snuggled up close to me, laying her head on my chest and just softly sobbing for several minutes while our coffees grew cold. Not knowing what else to do, I just held her.

Finally she pulled herself together and drew back from me. “Sorry about that.” She reached for a napkin to clear the tears and running eyeliner from her cheeks.

“Nothing to apologize for. I’m… flattered that you decided to share that with me.”

She chuckled, sniffed back a last tear, and like a striking snake kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you for putting up with my crazy.”

I looked at her, small and ****, and wondered why I had been so intimidated by her. I briefly thought of pressing the advantage, but my better self overruled my lizard brain and I just hugged her for a second instead.

While she repaired herself in the bathroom I went to see Bob about a ride home.

How to explain Bob? Gods, it’s been almost twenty years since I last saw him. Since I last saw any of them. Eric. Brian. Ross. George. Ron. My bridal party at my ill-fated first marriage. What am I saying? All my relationships are ill-fated. Mostly because of the fallout from ‘96.

Bob was one of my best friends. His family was bizarre to say the least. His parents were divorced, yet he, his sister, and his mother all lived in that house in the middle of nowhere with his father, a disabled drunk with a mill pension. In all the years I knew Bob I’d never met his father. It wasn’t until after I left town that it all came out how his Dad had had a stroke and his mother had basically spent years torturing the old man who had abused her and her kids so badly. Bob claimed he never knew about it.

Suffice to say that Bob was kinda fucked up. He used to talk to his car, his oilskin duster, and the dog chain he wore around his neck, calling them all “Precious”. Now this was about six years before Peter Jackson ruined Tolkien’s books, to put it in perspective. The thing about Bob and The Precious Collective was that to even the casual observer it was pretty clear that his animism seemed to have an effect. That Ford Escort wagon almost seems to bend reality when Bob was behind the wheel, and at times it seemed like it drove itself. Sometime I might tell you how I saved his life, but that’s a story for another time.

I walked up to the table where he sat stirring the thirteenth packet of sugar into his coffee, one of his black clove cigarettes dangling from his lips. “Bobby? You up for a drive?”

He leveled a calm look at me, his brown puppy dog eyes slightly bloodshot, and I wondered when the last time he had slept was. He simply replied “Leroy and Murray say you aren’t going home tonight. No more than two.”

At this point I was fairly used to Bob-ese, so I interpreted that as ‘yes’. The fact that Leroy and Murray were the names of the imaginary aliens that he spoke to on a regular basis played a little into that understanding. What was disturbing is that they were usually pretty accurate. This might say something about Bob’s lack of self esteem and his powers of observation.

BigWig was waiting for us at the counter. She’d snagged the check when I wasn’t looking and had paid my tab.

The 1994 Escort wagon was a cramped vehicle for a grocery getter. With 88 horsepower it didn’t get much torque, and only got about 18 per gallon in the city. Or at least that’s how they were supposed to work. Like I said, I dabbled in the occult as a kid enough to know that it was probably all bullshit, but Precious was almost enough to make me believe. I’d witnessed her do well more than the 112 mph that the manufacturer claims is her top speed, and Bob was able to coax a lot more miles out of that tank than should have been possible. But while it seemed like it could cut across space when it was moving, it was most definitely not bigger on the inside. Basically just a stretched out hatchback it could seat four comfortably, five legally if they weren’t too modest, seven illegally by packing two people in the trunk, or four generations of a Vietnamese family.

BigWig and I were in the trunk. As Bob turned on to Chesterfield and the Sammy Hagar belted out the last lines of ‘Dreams’, BigWig, who had for the duration of the ride been huddled into herself in the corner seemed to come to a conclusion. She reached out her hand and grabbed mine, looked at me for a second, and then leaned in close. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”

I grinned wryly, Bob’s (or Leroy and Murray’s) prescience once again proven. “Of course.”