The Big Finish by James W. Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

that?”
    “It’s my name.”
    The clerk swiped the electronic keys through the magnetic machine while X counted out the bills for one night at the Comfort Inn.
    “You mind my asking how you came by it?”
    “He picked it up at Raiford,” Pixie said. “You know, the state prison.”
    “Oh, you were a bad boy. Did some time.”
    “What do you care?”
    Pixie said, “Growing up, he had a normal name, but he hated it, hated the family that gave it to him. X-88 came to him while he was locked up.”
    “You guys in a gang?” the clerk said. “Crips, Bloods, like that.”
    “Fuck the Crips,” X said. “Bunch of degenerates.”
    “So what are you?”
    Pixie said, “We’re straight-edgers, hardline vegans.”
    “Really? Like what? You beat up meat eaters?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Man, you’ve made my day. Pixie and X-88, hardline vegans.”
    “Yeah?” X said. “And what’s your name?”
    The old man standing behind them huffed. He came around to the counter and planted a hand on it.
    “You mind having this personal chat after you’ve checked me in?”
    “Be just a minute more, sir. I’m not quite finished with these guests.”
    “You were telling us your name,” Pixie said. Challenging her, claws out, the way she got when a woman circled too close.
    “My name,” the clerk said, “is Varla.”
    “Varla,” Pixie said, doing a dry spit like she had a hair on her tongue.
    “Named after a Harlem chanteuse,” she said. “A notorious pansexual.”
    “What the hell is that?” X said. “She was into kitchenware?”
    The clerk smiled at X.
    “My namesake was into anything and anybody that struck her fancy.”
    The motel clerk reached up to brush her bangs away from her eyes. Molecules of her morning shampoo broke loose. Nutmeg and honeysuckle.
    “Hey, come on,” the old man said. “I just drove six hundred miles. I’m a priority member with a reservation and I want to get in my goddamn room.”
    X-88 turned to the man.
    “Mister,” X said. “You ever been subjected to great bodily harm?”
    The man took a few seconds to absorb the nut-crushing presence of X-88, then he sighed, shrank back, picked up a brochure of local amusements from the counter, and started paging through it.
    Varla handed X the keys in a paper folder, counted out his change.
    “In case you’re interested,” Varla said, “I get off at nine.”
    “You talking to me or Pixie?” X said.
    Varla smiled, her voice going husky and slow.
    “I believe I’m talking to both of you.”
    He and Pixie got in the car and moved it to the parking spot outside their room. Number 112, first floor, on the far end away from the interstate. Pixie was quiet, fuming. Chin tucked, eyes mooning like a child who’d been slighted by a playmate.
    “You didn’t need to tell her anything about us,” X-88 said.
    “She made me mad.”
    “We can’t be leaving a trail, people remembering us.”
    “I know, I know. But the way you were looking at her.”
    “What am I supposed to do, wear a blindfold around pretty girls?”
    “You thought she was pretty?”
    “And you told her all that about my name, the vegan stuff.”
    “She pissed me off, I couldn’t help it. She was making fun of us.”
    “I’m used to it,” he said. “Doesn’t bother me. I’m proud of my name.”
    He parked, took the suitcases and overnight stuff out of the backseat. Carried them inside. Pixie tagging along.
    X-88. Yeah, it was true. He’d acquired it during his five-year sleepover at Florida State Prison. And Pixie was just repeating what he’d told her. He hated his family, hated the name they chose for him. So shortly after he arrived at Raiford and started hanging with the straight-edge crowd, that new name came to him one night lying awake.
    The letter X was the edger insignia, they tattooed Xs on their chests or arms or anywhere they could reach. Started in the punk music scene, where Xs were marked on the backs of the hands of underage drinkers so the