Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

"Were they from a girlfriend?" he says.

I asked if he'd been stalking me.

And Rant says, "Pink." Still kissing my forehead, smelling and tasting my skin, my closed eyes, my nose and cheeks, he says, "Two dozen. Nancy Reagan roses mixed with baby's breath and white little-bitty carnations."

They were a gift, I tell him, from a nice middle-aged couple I sometimes work for.

Shot Dunyun: The doctor at the clinic calls me a week later—really just a lady from the clinic calls—and says I need to come back at my earliest convenience. She won't go into any details about my blood work. They get that bullshit smile in their voice, and you know it's not good news. The billing department just really needs full payment before you croak. So I go, and the doc says—it's rabies. No shit, rabies. He gives me the first of the five injections. He won't promise that I'll ever be able to boost another peak.

Right from the clinic, from the pay phone in the waiting room, I phoned Echo and told her to never, never, ever let Rant Casey put his mouth on hers.

Echo Lawrence: Kissing my mouth, Rant tells me my showerhead is brass instead of chrome. From the smell and taste of me, he says I sleep on goose-down pillows. I have a coconut-scented candle I've never lighted.

Lew Terry (Property Manager): The only occasion I entered Mr. Casey's apartment was with our standard twenty-four-hour notice to enter premises. Rumor was, he kept pets. My first look around, I didn't see nothing. A mattress on the floor. A telephone message machine. A suitcase. In the closet, hanging, are those blue coveralls that were the only clothes you ever saw him wear. Clean or dirty, Casey smelled like poison.

If somebody says I took anything, there was nothing to take.

Echo Lawrence: I didn't let Rant kiss me because he smelled my food. I kissed him after seeing how gentle he treated this huge fugly spider. As we sat there in the backseat of the Eldorado, he unzipped the pocket of his coat and reached one hand inside. He opened his fingers to show me the biggest monster spider. Slowly turning his hand over, he watched the spider crawl from the palm to the back, perched on the big veins.

Both of us looking at this monster spider, I say, "Is it poisonous?"

Shiny, not hairy. Legs thin as eight jet-black hypodermic needles, the spider bends all eight knees, lowering itself to touch Rant's skin.

This spider looks as ugly as I feel.

And Rant says, "I call her Doris."

Lew Terry: It's there, in the back of Casey's closet, lined up on the floor, I find the jars. Different sizes of mayonnaise and pickle and spaghetti-sauce jars, clear glass and washed out. At first they look empty, but I unscrew one lid. There's nothing inside, but when I go to put the lid back, on the underneath side of each lid sits a huge black spider. Huge, grizzly bastards.

No matter what anybody says, I didn't take anything. Not money or anything.

Echo Lawrence: Our breath fogged the car windows, but, watching that spider, neither of us could breathe out. The moment Rant breathed, the spider had bit him. He inhaled, and I inhaled, and Rant said, "Roll down your window."

I opened the window.

Leaning across me, Rant stuck his hand into the night air. Shaking the spider into the bushes next to the car, he said, "Good night, Dorry."

Leaned across my lap, his hips pressed into mine, I could already feel the effects of the black widow spider venom.

Todd Rutz (Coin Dealer): About the same time the Casey kid was selling me coins, I met Lew Terry. Terry used to bring me a few good specimens. If I recall, a 1910 Indian Head quarter in extremely fine condition. A 1907 Liberty Head quarter in AU-50 condition. Nothing spectacular, but I bought them. It wasn't until the police interviewed me that I found out Terry and Casey lived in the same apartment house.

Echo Lawrence: As Rant's lips move down my throat, I challenge him to smell what type of birth control I'm on.

As his lips move down my chest, Rant says, "None. You had your period thirty-four—no—thirty-six hours ago."

When I said "down my throat," I meant on the outside.

Todd Rutz: This Lew Terry character, it's obvious he's a born Nighttimer. Pale. His face and hands clear as the skin he was born into. Always he wore the same oily-brown trench coat and a knitted kind of brown stocking hat pulled down too far.

Echo Lawrence: "Besides," Rant says, "why would a virgin use birth control?"

Todd Rutz: One night in my shop, this Terry character offers me the Liberty Head and the Indian Head and tells me he needs to see fifteen hundred dollars out of the deal.