Chapter 37: Chapter Thirty-Seven--Lola Can't Hold A Tune
“Yer feller is yeller, with a beer beller!” Lola sang at the top of her lungs, her tinny voice bouncing around the cab of Kalvyn’s truck.
The only radio station we could get to half-assed come through was country. If we went out to the road—which I'd promised not to do—we could get two more. Neither of us knew any of the songs, so we made them up as we went along, injecting the horrible lyrics with so much twang, I was shocked our ears didn’t bleed.
My head ached. Either my injury, or the three rounds of warm beer, who knew. Catching up to Lola, who’d put a fair size dent into our liquor supply, wasn’t something I wanted to do.
“I don’t know how to follow up with that one.” I giggled.
“And yer dog ranned away through them prairies and you sawed it runned for three days!”
I collapsed against the door. “That doesn’t even rhyme.”
“Ahh, is it supposed to?” She slapped her knee to the beat. “I’m not rapping.”
“I have no clue.”
She switched off the radio, bouncing in her seat. “I gotta go pee,” she slurred.
“We have to stay in here until dawn, remember?”
“I can’t,” hiccup, “hold it until dawn, have you lost your ever lovin’ mind?”
“Sometimes I think so,” I mumbled. “But we can’t. That bear was seen too close to here.”
Unfortunately, fear hadn’t flickered in her eyes, as I’d hoped. Damn her ostrich complex.
She crossed her legs. The bouncing intensified. “Would Kalvyn want me to pee in his truck?”
Why did Logical Lola have to make an appearance now? “Probably not.”
“Do you want to be the one who has to tell him I did? Because I ain’t going to.” She went to slap my arm and missed. “Dude, listen. Like, really, listen. The bathrooms are right over yonder,” she waved in the general direction, “like a cartwheel I couldn’t do right now, even for a million dollars, away. We will stumble down yonder with yer big ass shotgun, and if the bushes rustle, we’ll shoot it. No big.”
“And if the…bear…seeks up on us?”
“Dude, it’s a bear! It’s like the size of a tank. Ain’t no bear creeping around in the dark.”
She’d pester me until I relented. I meant for hours. That’s if she’d wouldn’t jump from the truck and make a run for it. What did I do? Let her pee in my jaguar’s vehicle? Clean it up in the morning? Ew. Couldn’t very well let her go by herself.
Worse, talking about it, now I had to go too.
“You have to be quick,” I said. “After this, you’re totally cut off. Like for the rest of the week.”
She pointed at me, well, three inches to the right, but how specific did she have to be? “You totally suck monkey balls, you know that? But I take comfort that you won’t remember tomorrow anyway.” She went for the door handle.
“Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“The internet.” She tossed me a grin over her shoulder.
“Then you’re cut off that too.”
“Ahh, no. What would I do without my multiple porn subscriptions?”
“You don’t have porn subscriptions.”
“That you know of.” She kicked open the door. “Let’s do this before I explode. I promise, it won’t be pretty if I do that.”
“Kalvyn’s going to kill me.”
“Then he should’ve thought about putting a Porta Potty in the flat bed. I don’t have a dick to stick out the window, and pee down the side of his truck. Not that I would want to. The automatic windows might cut it off, and that, chickadee, would be a damned shame.”
I put my head on my knees and bit off laughter. “We need to get out more.”
“Hello!” She stumbled down the decent drop to the ground. “We’re in the great outdoors.”
“Shh. Rule one, don’t talk. Rule two, shut up.”
She snickered. “Sounds the same to me.”
I slipped out of truck, careful of my gun. I met her around back. “Noise tends to let predators know you’re out and about.”
“Right.”
I hooked my arm through hers to keep her steady and prevent wandering, as we weaved down the road. The night stayed silent, just how I liked it. My gaze panned everything. How weird that every Colbane campsite was without a single light. From here, we couldn’t see the other sections of the campground, nor hear anyone. As if we existed in a vacuum.
By four a.m. we still hadn’t seen hide or hair of either shifter or hunter. That’s the only reason I’d been so easy to convince. Despite the beer, or how much of a pushover she mistook me for, Lola couldn’t sway me. Not if my hackles had risen.
The faded brown facility sat on a slight incline, a brightly lit beacon in the darkness. Lola staggered into the only working stall. She hummed tunelessly to herself as I waited. We traded places.
I turned before closing the stall. “Wait for me.”
She saluted. “Aye, aye, Cap’n Kat.” She fiddled, bumped into something. “Oh, what’s that?”
Her sandals slapped across the concrete floor, and outside. Crap. I plastered myself against the stall, forgetting I had to go in the first place. The lights flickered. Bad horror movie material, much?
“Lola?”