Aces, Fruits & Ingots.

Louella looking out the no-one-can-look-in glass. Everything inside the car defined. Everything outside blurring. Towns appear and disappear. Endless dual-carriage and fields. There is motion. There is none. There is heat. Burning Spear on repeat.

There is no sickness.

No one spoke as they drove west.

They stayed the night at a clean hotel in Meredith. Dizzy and Lemons playing the machines in the bar. The wheels turning lines of mismatched aces, fruits and ingots. They drank brandies, though neither much were drinkers.

You must be from London, says the barmaid.

Why so, says Dizzy.

Well, you’re so fast.

This tickles the boy.

Louella stayed upstairs in the room, soaking in a long bath, the water to her chin. She can’t remember when she last bathed. The hot water holds her form. Louella pulls back the duvet, climbs in; the sheets hold her form. She sleeps.

*

Following morning the roads begin to narrow. Dizzy drops down through the gears. He and Lemons behind dark shades. The sea, a palm trick, appears from the left. Sparkles like diamonds, Lemons says. The road wound around the coast and, rising to a plateau above the tree line, beyond a golf course, the sea again, and then a finger of land pointing out into the jewelled water. They never seen the like. The black car rolled into town.

Why’s everyone look so loose?

Maybe they high already, says Dizzy. Maybe they heard we coming.

Louella rises for a moment from her half-life on the backseat, thinks she must be dreaming; nothing ever looked this good.

Maybe they just happy, she says.

Lemons laughs at this, presses play.

In the rim on the passenger side, packed tightly, the thing that will bring them diamonds. The thing that will ruin everything.

The game is to just keep moving.

*

The wheels stopped turning.