The intense cold combined with an equally intense wave of relief and I began shivering almost uncontrollably. Teeth chattering enough to shake my entire field of vision, I plopped into my car seat and hauled the creaking door shut behind me. I twisted the key in the ignition viciously, and as the engine coughed itself to life I leaned back in my seat and carefully gripped the steering wheel. I nodded once in the direction of the plastic cat figurine* hanging from the rear-view mirror and pressed the accelerator hopefully. The Pinata groaned its disappointment at being forced back onto the freeway; ignoring it, I resumed my northward drive toward home.
    I gave not a single thought to waiting for the promised replacement cop to arrive. There was, after all, a dismembered body and a stolen coffee pot in the back of my decrepit Pinata hatchback–both barely hidden beneath an emergency blanket. I knew the policeman had probably noted my license plate number, so I’d certainly be notified of his displeasure eventually; but by that time, hopefully, I would no longer have such shocking cargo to explain.
    So I returned to wrestling with the unfulfilled death wish my Pinata wanted to share with me. It was either a death wish or it simply loved the concrete wall rushing past the passenger-side window and wanted to give it a great big crashy hug. I was now beginning to get a headache from the cycles of stress the last hour had embodied; my morning routine is usually far more…routine. None of that mattered now, though, because I had finally reached the 11 Mile exit, mere minutes from my home.
    I rolled up the ramp and onto the surface street. 11 Mile road was beginning to see congestion as the first wave of morning traffic awoke and began its inexorable crawl toward points uninteresting. I picked up my cell phone from the passenger seat and glanced at the time. 5:00 am. If the evening had gone normally I would still have an hour or so left before bidding Chuck goodbye for the day and going off-shift; instead, I was heading home early and Chuck was coming with me, albeit in pieces. My mind wandered to my brief, bizarre conversation with the confused man named Bananas who had called me on this phone moments ago. Snorting dismissively, I pocketed the Nokia in the breast pocket of my jacket, realizing too late that in so doing I had applied a surprisingly even coat of sticky, strawberry flavored goop onto the poor device. I cursed and moved to wipe my hand on my pant leg, which itself was crusty with the same crap. Crap.
    I navigated 11 Mile road for a half-mile or so and turned in to my aging subdivision. Most of the homes here, mine included, were built in the halcyon days of the 1950′s during the height of the baby-boom. Happy, newly minted nuclear families made up of white middle-class men just home from the war, the women who had awaited their return and the children they subsequently produced lived here then. Daddy, in those days, almost certainly worked for one of the “Big Three” car companies: “Furd,” “Comprehensive Motors,” or “Weepsler.” Mommy stayed home and experimented with Jello molds while cleaning the house in high-heel shoes and pearls while junior (or little miss) studiously learned the American way from similarly white middle-class public school teachers. Or so the legends go, at any rate.
    A few of us still made a living of sorts in the factories of those aging oligarchs of American industry. The rest of these small bungalows were now occupied by a far less cheery crowd of retirees, renters, single mothers and lower-income families eking out an existence on Walmart wages and government supplemental income. This was the new American way–one you needn’t learn in school.
    As I drove the last quarter mile to my house I noted that yet another “For Sale” sign had joined the dozen or so already decorating my street. Cut-backs and layoffs were tearing the rug out from under many of my fellow automotive workers these days. I felt a foreboding sense of shared fate as I read the new sign in front of a tiny bungalow so much like my own. It read, “Detroit Palatial Realtor, ask for Cindy! FOR SALE.”
    Rumors had been dire at the plant lately: new Expulsions were sitting on showroom floors for want of customers interested in land-yachts. Furd was being forced to buy-back the unsold inventory. The center console deep-fryer and hydroponic glove compartment** were not enough to stem the tide of newfound sensibility which was driving consumers toward more economical small cars. The line “must never stop,” but it just might. It just might. And how long after that would I be putting up a sign inviting interested parties to “call Cindy” or “ask for Ruth” or “count on your realtor/friend Ashel Hasseed”?
    With a rueful shake of my head I dismissed those maudlin thoughts out of hand. Those were the worries of a man who didn’t have a literally bloody mess on his hands. Its all well and good to brood about possible layoffs when that’s your biggest problem, but when your best friend’s bisected corpse cuddles a stolen coffee pot in the back of your car you have more pressing concerns. But now I was home.
    My home, identical to every other around it in all but the color of the vinyl siding, sat fairly close to the street and was only separated from my neighbor’s house by the bare width of my driveway. House, driveway, house, driveway; we lived shoulder-to-shoulder in this neighborhood. Narrow, six or seven carlengths long, the driveway terminated at the door of a single-car garage set some twenty feet behind the house.
    I pulled the Pinata all the way up to the garage door and turned the ignition to off. I was then treated to ten seconds of post pardem spluttering, followed by a very final sounding wheeze and silence. From its resting place, the hatch of the little car was only a few steps away from the back door of the house. Springing from the car, I quickly climbed the two steps to the back door, unlocked and propped it open. Warm air spilled out as I reached in to turn on the ceiling lamp immediately inside, illuminating the stairway down into the basement as well as the narrow archway leading to my cramped kitchen.
    I turned back to the car and popped its hatch. Throwing back the thin silver sheet of emergency blanket, I spared myself only a few seconds to survey the carnage it hid. Breath puffing in my face, I glanced around to assure myself that no one was watching me. First, the coffee pot. I grabbed the steel urn and lid, turned, and in a few steps I’d set it on the kitchen floor. Next, I grabbed Chuck’s pelvis and dangling legs. Heavier than it looked, I dragged his lower body down the stairs by the belt into the basement, Chuck’s workboots bouncing and scraping the whole time. I then worked my way past the furnace, which squatted like Atlas beneath the weight of my little world, and dumped my charge in the corner there, hidden from the stairwell by the aforementioned furnace. I ran back up the stairs and into the back yard.
    My neighbor–uh, Bob-somebody, I think–apparently taking his trash out, was stirring in his yard two houses away. A rush of fear came over me, intensifying the damn headache, and I forced myself to nonchalantly exchange nods with him while pretending to busy myself with my own garbage cans next to the back door. An eternal dozen seconds or so passed by and Bob-somebody finally trudged up his steps and into his home.
    I didn’t relish another such delay, so I rushed then, reaching into the car and dragging forth Chuck’s torso. I tried not to look at his pitiful face or his pink, be-couriered tongue as I held him close in a rough embrace and back pedaled up the steps into my home.
    Down the stairs again, past the furnace, and I plopped the remains of Chuck atop his legs and ass. I paused there, staring down at the dimly lit pile of robot coworker.
    Well, Chuck, I thought, I’m hiding you, just like you asked. Your tongue got me this far. What next? No answer was forthcoming and the silence was broken only by the furnace kicking in, obedient to a thermostat shocked by the sudden loss of household heat. Oh yeah, the back door was still open.
    It was only a moments work to close up the Pinata’s hatch as well as my back door. Deciding not to go down into the basement again for now, I trudged through my house, stripping myself of sticky, sweaty clothing as I walked. Through the kitchen I went, down the short hallway and into the bathroom; by the time I twisted the knob marked “H,” releasing torrents of water into the tub from my calcium encrusted shower head, I was completely nude and covered with gooseflesh. My head throbbed as I stepped into the tub and hung my head with exhaustion and pain in the stream of steaming hot water.
    I stood there and watched dispassionately as clots of red syrupy Chuck-blood ran around and down the drain. What would I do next? Should I tell someone? Who? Could I…fix…Chuck? Was he dead? What should I do next? Would I tell someone? ….I realized then that I was thinking in circles.
    Seemingly on autopilot, I slowly went through the motions of washing my hair and body. After turning the water off, the burbling sound of the last few drops of water going down the drain were soon replaced by my own quiet breathing. I toweled myself off in silence and donned my bathrobe, looking into the mirror. I squeakily rubbed a circle out of the condensed steam so that I could peer through it at my own troubled, tired face. To bed, I suppose. Maybe I’d think of something when I woke up.
    But first I padded through the house to the front door, opening it to retrieve my morning newspaper. It was probably too soon for news of the factory shutdown to be in print, but you never know. I grabbed the paper from the hooks under the small letter box bolted to the wall outside my front door and began to retreat back into the house when it hit me. The letterbox! I turned back to it and, yes, there was something in there, propping the lid open.
    I hurriedly grabbed the severed cardboard head of Boba Fett from the mailbox with a shaking hand and held it before me. Oh, Boba Fett… The newspaper slipped from my numb fingertips and fell to the floor with a rustling thump as I leaned heavily on the door jam. Shit, Bruce?
    I looked up and down my street then, but Bruce was nowhere to be seen. There was no telling how long Boba Fett’s head had been waiting here for me; it may even have been there before I’d arrived home. I tried to calm my nerves, and was about to shut my front door when I noticed a certain pickup truck fast approaching from down the street. It was a small, white pickup, and when I last saw it there were two women aboard.
    Now there was but a single occupant. Boba Fett’s head hung loosely in my hand and I watched dumbly as the little truck pulled up into my driveway and stopped. I met the yellowed eyes of Gail Sayer as she stopped the engine of her Furd Paladin. There was a certain smugness to her sneer, and I shivered anew. Damn, but my head hurt.

* Hang In There!
** Do Not Attempt to Grow Marijuana in Glove Compartment.