Full Dark, No Stars

“Do you want a hair extension?” Elvid asked, giving him a critical once-over. “I ask because yours seems to be thinning.”

“And wil soon be gone,” Streeter said. “I’m on chemo.”

“Oh my. Sorry.”

“Thanks. Although what the point of chemo can be…” He shrugged. He marveled at how easy it was to say these things to a stranger. He hadn’t even told his kids, although Janet knew, of course.

“Not much chance?” Elvid asked. There was simple sympathy in his voice—no more and no less—and Streeter felt his eyes fil with tears. Crying in front of Janet embarrassed him terribly, and he’d

done it only twice. Here, with this stranger, it seemed al right. Nonetheless, he took his handkerchief from his back pocket and swiped his eyes with it. A smal plane was coming in for a landing.

Silhouetted against the red sun, it looked like a moving crucifix.

“No chance is what I’m hearing,” Streeter said. “So I guess the chemo is just… I don’t know…”

“Knee-jerk triage?”

Streeter laughed. “That’s it exactly.”

“Maybe you ought to consider trading the chemo for extra painkil ers. Or, you could do a little business with me.”

“As I started to say, I can’t real y be a prospect until I know what you’re sel ing.”

“Oh, wel , most people would cal it snake-oil,” Elvid said, smiling and bouncing on the bal s of his feet behind his table. Streeter noted with some fascination that, although George Elvid was pudgy,

his shadow was as thin and sick-looking as Streeter’s own. He supposed everyone’s shadow started to look sick as sunset approached, especial y in August, when the end of the day was long and

lingering and somehow not quite pleasant.

“I don’t see the bottles,” Streeter said.

Elvid tented his fingers on the table and leaned over them, looking suddenly businesslike. “I sel extensions,” he said.

“Which makes the name of this particular road fortuitous.”

“Never thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right. Although sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence. Everyone wants an extension, Mr. Streeter. If you were a

young woman with a love of shopping, I’d offer you a credit extension. If you were a man with a smal penis—genetics can be so cruel—I’d offer you a dick extension.”

Streeter was amazed and amused by the baldness of it. For the first time in a month—since the diagnosis—he forgot he was suffering from an aggressive and extremely fast-moving form of cancer.

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh, I’m a great kidder, but I never joke about business. I’ve sold dozens of dick extensions in my time, and was for awhile known in Arizona as El Pene Grande. I’m being total y honest, but, fortunately for me, I neither require nor expect you to believe it. Short men frequently want a height extension. If you did want more hair, Mr. Streeter, I’d be happy to sel you a hair extension.”

“Could a man with a big nose—you know, like Jimmy Durante—get a smal er one?”

Elvid shook his head, smiling. “Now you’re the one who’s kidding. The answer is no. If you need a reduction, you have to go somewhere else. I specialize only in extensions, a very American product.

I’ve sold love extensions, sometimes cal ed potions, to the lovelorn, loan extensions to the cash-strapped—plenty of those in this economy—time extensions to those under some sort of deadline, and once an eye extension to a fel ow who wanted to become an Air Force pilot and knew he couldn’t pass the vision test.”

Streeter was grinning, having fun. He would have said having fun was now out of reach, but life was ful of surprises.

Elvid was also grinning, as if they were sharing an excel ent joke. “And once,” he said, “I swung a reality extension for a painter—very talented man—who was slipping into paranoid schizophrenia.

That was expensive.”

“How much? Dare I ask?”

“One of the fel ow’s paintings, which now graces my home. You’d know the name; famous in the Italian Renaissance. You probably studied him if you took an art appreciation course in col ege.”

Streeter continued to grin, but he took a step back, just to be on the safe side. He had accepted the fact that he was going to die, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do so today, at the hands of a

possible escapee from the Juniper Hil asylum for the criminal y insane in Augusta. “So what are we saying? That you’re kind of… I don’t know… immortal?”

“Very long-lived, certainly,” Elvid said. “Which brings us to what I can do for you, I believe. You’d probably like a life extension.”

“Can’t be done, I suppose?” Streeter asked. Mental y he was calculating the distance back to his car, and how long it would take him to get there.

“Of course it can… for a price.”

Streeter, who had played his share of Scrabble in his time, had already imagined the letters of Elvid’s name on tiles and rearranged them. “Money? Or are we talking about my soul?”