“Look,” Krypton patiently, “you get some on the end of your finger, right, then you close off one half of your nose, a-and—”

“It’s cocaine!” the girl’s voice rising to an alarming intensity, “is what it is! It’s heroin! You’re dope fiends! and you’ve kidnapped me! Oh, my God! This is a, don’t you realize, it’s a Red Cross Clubmobile! It’s the property of the Red Cross! Oh, you can’t do this! I’m with the Red Cross! Oh, help me, somebody! They’re dope fiends! Oh, please! Help! Stop and let me out! Take the truck if you want, take everything in it, but oh please don’t—”

“Steer a minute,” Bodine turning around and pointing his shiny pistol at the girl.

“You can’t shoot me,” she screams, “you hoodlum, who do you think you are, hijacking Red Cross property! Why don’t you just—go somewhere and—sniff your dope and—leave us alone!”

“Cunt,” advises Seaman Bodine, in a calm and reasonable tone, “you are wrong. I can shoot you. Right? Now, you happen to be working for the same warm and wonderful organization that was charging fifteen cents for coffee and doughnuts, at the Battle of the fucking Bulge, if you really wanna get into who is stealing what from who.”

“Whom,” she replies in a much smaller voice, lower lip quivering kind of cute and bitchy it seems to Slothrop, checking it out in the rearview mirror as Bodine takes over the wheel again.

“Oho, what’s this,” Krypton watching her ass, “what have we here,” shifting under its khaki skirt as she stands with long legs braced for their rattling creaking 60 or 70 miles an hour and Bodine’s strange cornering techniques, which look to be some stylized form of suicide.

“What’s your name?” Slothrop smiling, an avuncular pig.

“Shirley.”

“Tyrone. Howdy.”

“Tra-la-la,” Krypton now looting the cash register, gobbling Hershey bars and stuffing his socks with packs of smokes, “love in bloom.” About then Bodine slams on the brakes and goes into a great skid, ass end of their truck slewing toward an icy-lit tableau of sentries in white-stenciled helmet liners, white belts, white holsters, a barricade across the road, an officer running toward a jeep hunched up and hollering into a walkie-talkie.

“Roadblock? What the shit,” Bodine grinding it into reverse, various goodies for the troops crashing off of their shelves as the truck lurches around. Shirley loses her footing and staggers forward, Krypton grabbing for her as Slothrop leans to take the handgun off the dashboard, finding her half-draped over the front seat when he gets back around to the window. “Where the fuck is low now? What is it, a Red Cross gearbox, you got to put a nickel in someplace to get it in gear, hey Shirley?”

“Oh, goodness,” Shirley squirming over into the front between them, grabbing the shift, “like this, you drip.” Gunshots behind them.

“Thank you,” sez Bodine, and, leaving rubber in a pungent smoking shriek, they’re off again.

“You’re really hot, Rocketman, wow,” Krypton lying in back offering ankle and taped cocaine bottle to Shirley with a smile.