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“You know where I’ve never been?”
Mac swirls his straw in his drink consideringly--and then his eyes blow open wider than is strictly physically possible. “Atlantic City?”
“Atlantic City, baby!”
“Road trip, baby!”
“Road trip, b—well. Let’s not both say baby, I’ll say baby and you can pick som—anyway. But woo, yeah, road trip, yeah!”
~
The car’s gearbox is fucked, but that doesn’t matter. Dennis is confident—nay, certain —that nothing’s gonna stop this road trip. He’s gonna celebrate his 42nd 31st in style, with his best bud, in Atlantic City: the standardless man’s Las Vegas.
And the road trip part’s gonna be awesome too; just Dennis, on the road, hands at wheel, warm breeze in his hair, his best bud at his side.
“Of course, I’ll drive,” says Mac, and that’s their first hurdle.
Forever a man to be reined in, is Mac. Which is fine, because Dennis is a man who proudly, brilliantly, will take responsibility of someone else’s life. He’s no socialist, but good taste and advanced social talents are gifts Dennis is willing to share with all.
“Oh, Mac,” Dennis sighs, smiling, “oh, Mac, oh, Mac, oh, Mac.”
Mac looks like he’s counting.
That’s-- what? --okay, fine. “The point is, Mac, oh, Mac, the point is that I , as the handsomest and debatably tallest man in our duo, will drive. I will drive, and you will sit beside me.” He pauses. “Like a good boy.” That ought to convince him.
“Ohh, okay, so, like, I’ll be the bodyguard. Bodyguard can’t drive, ’cause otherwise if some bad guys try and fuck with us, I wouldn’t have the time to park safely and also deliver a balls-chopping karate move to their collective ’nads. Right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, nice!” Mac says brightly, and hops in the passenger side.
The car is all packed, the windows are open, the day is warm and bright, Mac’s let himself be convinced into being in a great mood, and Dennis is driving. It’s already shaping up to be a pretty great day!
~
The car breaks down a mile out of Philly.
Which is fine, of course.
“How can this be fine? This sucks! This is so not badass,” Mac whines from the passenger seat, looking like a weird, petulant, muscular manbaby. It’s hot, and they’re both sweating, and, despite the assurances they’ve both stammered out, neither of them actually knows how to fix a car.
Dennis wipes his forehead, and gives himself a couple seconds to charge up a winning smile. “It’s fine, Mac,” he says, “because I am confident--nay, certain--that nothing is going to stop this road trip. We’re going to celebrate in style!
Convinced, Mac hollers, “Road trip, baby!”
Ugh. “Have some class, Mac, thanks,” Dennis says with a grimace, and dials for the triple-A.
~
The great thing about the AAA is that they promise timely, helpful service, to get you back on the road in no time.
The sucky thing about the AAA is that it’s a bullshit organisation of bullshit liars who spout lies, and also don’t own any clocks, and force good, innocent people like Dennis to wait for indecent amounts of time like thirty five minutes.
“It’s fiiine,” Mac says.
“That’s easy for you to say, Mac, you aren’t the man of this car. You don’t have the responsibility, the weight on your shoulders of guiding both yourself and another person to the awesome gawdy delights of a birthday in Atlantic City. There’s actually a lot of stress involved in that, actually , Mac!”
“Oh, just—c’mere,” Mac says, and presents Dennis with a peeled apple.
Dennis takes it, and holds it for a moment before taking a bite. “Did you—did you prepare this before we came?”
Mac’s grinning. “Yeah, in case anything bad happened! You know what they say.”
Dennis smiles down at the peeled apple. Yeah. He’s glad he invited Mac.
Especially over Dee, who would’ve brought an energy far too intense and chaotic and squawky to this car journey, or Charlie, who would’ve disappeared as soon as they reached Atlantic City and probably turn up six weeks later on the news along with a headline like ‘Notorious Rat Man Strikes Once More.’ And he wasn’t gonna take Frank, especially when he could just take Frank’s wallet and cut out the middleman.
Yeah.
Yeah. Mac’s definitely the sanest of the gang, aside from Dennis, of course.
“I think the saying is: an apple a day is worth two in the bush.”
“That’s not the saying.”
“No, yeah, no, that’s it.”
~
“ Thirty nine minutes! This is an outrage!”
When Mac thinks back to it later, he’s not sure whether the final straw was informing Dennis that it had actually been forty one minutes, or if it was Mac’s [very reasonable] request to do a two-man reenactment of Die Hard II to pass the time. Either way, it was pretty unreasonable of Dennis to rip the wing mirrors off of Mac’s car and throw them into the open back of a passing lorry.
~
At fifty two minutes, Dennis is so incensed he decides to call the gang for help.
“They’ve forced my hand in this, the triple A,” he mutters angrily, as he dials. “They have forced my hand.”
He stands there, in the sunshine, dramatically: a hand on his down-tilted hip, his phone at his ear, scowling into the distance as the call beeps on and on.
And goddamnit.
Dee doesn’t answer.
“Probably, uh, doing, uh, probably sitting in her nest, probably, huh, Dennis?” Mac says, and laughs so hard he leans back and slaps his knee. Dennis won’t dignify Mac with an answer—although he will smirk, because a poorly cobbled-together joke about Dee being a bird is still a joke about Dee being a bird. And that’s top comedy.
“Fine,” Dennis says, and stoops even lower. He taps the number labelled Yurfre n Chlal y (inputted, of course, by the man himself, Dennis’s friend “Chlal-y”), and waits as it rings.
Goddamnit even harder. Charlie doesn’t pick up, and Dennis is positively outraged. Never has he, in recollection, been so disrespected as to experience two ( two! ) consecutive unanswered calls.
“Call Fr—”
“Mac, so help me god, if you say what I think you’re going to say I will track down that lorry, grab those wing mirrors, run back right here and slap you with them.”
Mac nods, consideringly. And then suggests, “Oh, hey, what if you call Frank?”
Dennis settles for a glare.
~
Mac eventually takes what he describes as ‘an executive decision’ and calls a taxi. They’ll just head back, he says, keep this whole mess on the down-low, and come back tomorrow for the car. They’ll go to Atlantic City another time, he says. After all, he says, the stupid fuck , it’s not really Dennis’s birthday, is it.
Dennis tells him, “Fine,” and sits glumly at the side of the road.
It’s only been a couple hours, but the sky’s starting to dim and go grey. Which, you know, whatever. It’s a little chilly, but the taxi will be here soon.
~
The next obstacle Dennis faces in his journey to get to Atlantic City isn’t so much an obstacle as it is two strange teenagers in grey hoodies getting out of their car and mugging them.
“Give him your wallet!” Mac hisses from where he crouches behind the car, clearly visible, looking like some kind of scared frog man.
Jesus. “Thanks, Head of Security,” Dennis quips back at him, incredibly cleverly and handsomely, and then turns to deal with these two jackasses. “Listen, kids. I’m not about to give you this wallet,” he says. “I mean, it’s my dad’s. You know? You understand? I’d feel bad. I mean you two, doing what you do, you probably don’t even have dads, right? So you couldn’t possibly understand. You’ve been shortchanged in life. Ha! Shortchanged? Get it?”
The next next obstacle Dennis faces is a bleeding nose and no wallet.
The next next next obstacle Dennis faces is a taxi driver who adamantly refuses to take them. “What kind of taxi driver are you?” Dennis says, calmly, and definitely not in a screechy way at all.
“Yeah, what kind of taxi driver doesn’t take passengers?” Mac says, less calmly.
“I don’t take passengers without any money!” she says.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Mac says. “I have money!” He grabs his wallet out of his back pocket, opens it, and then sighs. “Ooh. Jeez,” he says, and chuckles uncomfortably. “Do you take, um, chewing gum?”
She looks like she wants to hiss at him. Dennis feels the same way.
“You had your wallet with you?!” Dennis shouts.
“Yeah,” Mac says, incredulous.
“I got mugged!”
“Yeah, but,” Mac says, shifting from foot to foot, “I thought mine had money in it.”
“Mine had money in it! Two thousand dollars worth of money in it! Cash!”
“Why… Why do you have two thousand dollars cash in your wallet?”
“Well, I don’t NOW, do I, Mac?”
The taxi speeds off into the distance, and leaves Mac and Dennis, stranded along the side of the road, definitely not celebrating, definitely not in style.
~
It’s 2.55am. The world is asleep, blackness chaptered only by the yellow streetlights, which are few and far between, and Mac and Dennis are cold, and hungry, and tired.
They are still a mile outside of Philly.
“I think I might die tonight,” Mac muses quietly, sat in the driver’s seat with his legs swung out the door.
“I think you might too,” Dennis says.
Mac sighs behind him; Dennis is sat on the ground, leaning against the car.
He feels tired, and the sky is all sparkly and shit, right now. Wide open space, all around and above them. It sucks so much. If they were in Atlantic City, right now, they probably wouldn’t even be able to see the sky. Light pollution. That would be so nice right now.
“Man, I just. I just wanted to do something nice for me. For once in my life. I’m such a selfless person, you know what I mean?”
Mac nods, and touches Dennis’s shoulder, but just barely, before pulling his hand back to his lap. He’s quiet for a second, and then says, “Aw, yeah, dude, but it doesn’t… We can still, like… Here.”
And he hands over a big, gorgeous-looking sandwich. Wrapped in clingfilm, perfectly toasted and soggy. Woah. It smells awesome, even cold. That’s--that’s really nice. Mac’s looking at him, eyes bright, and sits back with a happy, satisfied look as Dennis takes it.
“It’s pretty beautiful out here, isn’t it?” Mac says.
Dennis lets out a heavy breath. “Yeah.”
Mac’s kind of right. It is kind of beautiful.
“Yeah,” Mac says softly. He sucks in a deep breath, thoughtful, and then he adds, “I so should’ve been one of the guys doing the moon landing. Can’t believe they picked those boring-ass boneheads over me.”
Dennis goes cold.
Finally, he manages to utter out, “What?”
“Hm, well, I. I know I was kind of young but I think I would’ve aced it. You know, it really gets to me that I wasn’t even considered.”
Jesus.
Oh, sweet good Jesus.
Interesting how Mac was right though, earlier. It seems there is a very good chance that Mac might die tonight.
“You know, Mac,” Dennis purrs quietly, “the moon landing was—” Oh, screw it. “Mac. You were born in 1977. There’s no goddamned way that you would’ve been considered.”
There’s an obstinate silence. “ Why? ”
“Because the moon landing happened, like, ten years before you were born!”
“What?” Mac laughs and shakes his head. “Ten years? Dude. Come on. Educate yourself.”
“Educate my-- Mac! Do you--you don’t even know what you’re talking about! You think you should’ve been considered for the moon landing!”
“Yeah,” he says incredulously, “I do.”
“You were born in 1977!”
“How is that even relevant?”
“You weren’t alive!”
“I would’ve aced it , Dennis. Tell me I wouldn’t have aced it.”
“That literally isn’t—Mac, I’m gonna skin you alive.”
“What, what then, what’s your point?”
“My point is , Mac, that the moon landing happened in the 60s.”
The following silence is not contemplative, or embarrassed. It is very, very, very hurt.
“I can’t believe you’d even say that,” Mac mutters, looking down at his lap.
A new kind of oh sweet Jesus . Interesting.
“And anyway,” Mac says, seeming to recharge himself with his new line of argument, “It didn’t happen in the late 60s. It happened in 1975.”
“Again, Mac, two years before you were born! And that’s not even true! Where do you hear these things?”
“From Charlie!” Mac says, emphatically nodding, as though that proves his point. “Charlie went to college, you know.”
“Oh god, is this that bird law thing again, because it’s bad enough him saying it--”
“It doesn’t matter, Dennis! What matters is that you don’t believe in me!”
Dennis could so easily rise up and win this argument, but he’s tired and disillusioned from the day, so he says, “Nah, I, I do believe in you, man.”
There’s another silence—indignant, this time—before Mac says, “ Do you? ” in the squeakiest, rudest voice Dennis has ever heard.
“Yes!” Dennis says, and sighs angrily. He’s taking the high road tonight.
The next silence is softer, and, when he glances back, Mac’s looking at him, his big, stupid, nice eyes all wide and stupid and nice. “Really, dude?” he asks, and that look of Mac’s is so annoying, it always makes Dennis’s chest go all tight and fluttery, and Dennis shakes his hands in frustration.
“Yes, dude, fine! Fine.” So it’s settled. He goes to take a bite of the sandwich, when he hears Mac continue.
“Say it.”
“What?” he asks, alarmed, and looks back at Mac.
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say that I should’ve done the moon landing.”
What? Oh, sweet Jesus. Dennis glares at the moon.
“Dennis,” Mac says slowly, coaxing him. “Say I should’ve done the moon landing.”
The thing is that Dennis is a wise man, a kind man, a good man. Definitely the kind of man to take the high road and stick with it. What he will not do, however, is tell his forty-fucking-one-year-old friend that he could’ve (let alone should have ) ‘done’ the moon landing.
“Dennis,” Mac says again, elongating the word like Dennis is a goddamned five-year-old.
“No!” Dennis says finally, definitely not snapping. “No, Mac, I will not saying you should have ‘done’ the moon landing! You’re forty-one!” And then, for emphasis, “Mac, you’re forty one!”
He hopes that’ll get Mac to lay off.
Mac does not lay off.
“I can’t believe you, dude!” Mac says, voice much higher than it was a moment before. “I can’t believe—I so could’ve done the moon landing. Are you kidding? Have you met anyone with moves as badass as me?”
“That’s not one of the qualifications you need to go to the moon!” Dennis shouts.
“Uh, yes it is!” Mac shouts back, and stands up. “You are so not supportive of me, dude!”
Feeling angry, Dennis stands up too. “I am supportive of you, Mac, but I have a brain!”
“Well, I have a brain too, Dennis, and I have more than that: I have muscle. That’s why I’m the brawns of the group and the looks and the brains. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’m the brains now too. You’re just the looks."
Outraged, Dennis stares at him, his mouth agape. Not that Mac has gotten under his skin at all, but, “ How dare you?! ” he hisses. “I’m much smarter than you, and you know it!”
“Uh, clearly not, dude. Which of us knew you can’t eat apple with the skin on it?”
Well, he has a point there. But that doesn’t matter. Anger roils under Dennis’s skin so incredibly it’s a wonder he hasn’t totally exploded. That would be awesome. But he hasn’t, so he figures, okay, okay, he can reel this back in, he doesn’t have to let this fight escalate the way they normally do.
It’s time to take the high road.
“1969,” Mac mutters, bitterly. “It’s not my fault you can’t count, Dennis.”
“YOU ARE A FOOL,” Dennis shouts, and slaps Mac across the face with the back of his hand.
Mac slaps him back, and shouts, outraged, “You’re the fool!”
“NO!” Dennis booms, long and furious. “I WILL SLICE YOUR SKIN FROM YOUR BONES AND I WILL TOAST IT, AND THEN I WILL EAT IT. I WILL EAT A HOT PANINI OF YOUR SKIN AND GUTS, MAC. I WILL PLUCK YOUR EYEBALLS FROM YOUR SKULL AND EAT THEM LIKE AMUSE-BOUCHES. AMUSE-BOUCHES! I WILL NOT HESITATE TO CANNIBALISE YOU, YOU INFURIATING MORTAL MAN.”
The roar rings against every possible surface and bounces right back at them, echoing without end. Dennis has never looked so sinister. With bloodshot eyes, he stands still in one place but shakes all over, baring his gritted teeth, his veins nearly popping from his forehead. Silhouetted in front of the artificial yellow of the street lamp, Dennis looks like he’s freshly risen from Hell. He looks ready to kill.
“Uh. It’s pronounced mush-bush,” Mac says.
The following roar bursts upwards into the night sky like a firework.
~
So they agree to call quits and try again in the morning.
The nearest motel is less than twenty minutes away on foot, which is fine. However, they are, to Dennis’s clipped anger, forced to share a room. Two beds, thank god, but it’s bad enough having to sleep in a motel, let alone having to share a room.
Dennis has only ever spent nights in motels with women! Beautiful, busty, blonde women. He has never spent a night in a motel for a non-sexual purpose. And he’s damn near livid that Mac has dragged him this low.
Dennis, a classy man, spending a night in a motel that isn’t based in Atlantic City—it doesn’t bear thinking about.
“We do have another room available,” the receptionist says, but that’s moot. They only have Mac’s wallet at this point, and, for some reason, Mac doesn’t use credit cards. He tells Dennis, zenly, that he could never trust “invisible money."
“Unless, of course, it’s Frank’s credit card, of course. He can get in debt with Heaven as much as he likes, of course, but I’m not that stupid. No sir, I prefer to use real, human, American, earth money, thanks very much.”
Dennis very nearly punches him right there and then, but the smirking receptionist would be witness to the assault, and Dennis really doesn’t need any more police inquiries going on around him, thank you very much. Instead, he stands there, damn-near trembling with rage, and calmly (totally calmly) fishes out Mac’s wallet and pays for the shitty two-bed motel room.
“Have a good night,” the receptionist purrs, and that’s the second time tonight Dennis nearly kills a man.
~
There’s two beds, but Mac asks Dennis if he wants to share anyway--because of the cold. Dennis emphatically says, “ No ,” and curls up in his tiny, terrible bed, feeling very miserable and very pissy.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Mac wandering over behind him to his own bed, and hears him getting in.
Right. Well. That’s it, then. Evening over. Everything kaput.
And then Mac breaks the rules, and talks, which he’s totally not allowed to do when Dennis is in a mood and at risk of sounding whiny, and says, “You know none of this is my fault.”
It’s quiet, and Dennis lets it stay quiet. He’s not clear on if he owes Mac a response, and, anyway, it’s all stupid, and Mac isn’t talking anyway so as far as Mac knows, Dennis is sleeping and therefore didn’t hear Mac say that, meaning that Dennis is, obviously, still in the right.
But he nods, anyway, because.
Well. Who knows.
Mac’s weird like that. Makes Dennis feel honest like that.
And then Mac ruins it, because Dennis can hear him getting out of bed, and assuming the position to pray. But Mac’s just terrible like that. Just the most terrible person in the world. Just completely terrible and impossible to be around at all. Oh goddamnit.
“Dear God,” Mac begins, and oh my god, oh my fucking god, is he ten? Is this man a literal ten year old?
Dennis has a knife in his bag. Maybe this would the best time to use it.
“Please tell my good friend Dennis that I’m really sorry for messing up his birthday. I wish it was better and those random accidents like the gearbox and the money stuff didn’t happen, although I will again point out that there’s no need for me to apologise because neither of those accidents were my fault.”
He pauses, and continues brightly.
“Dennis is a good guy who deserves nice things like going to Atlantic City, baby, and a road trip, baby, on his birthday, baby. With me, his best friend, who really cares about him. So much. Because. Well.”
There’s the teeniest of pauses, barely noticeable, but it’s the break in Mac’s will, whatever that will might be. His voice continues, lower and quieter, but still audible.
“I really do care about him so much. He’s the best. And I don’t know if he thinks I’m the best, but that’s okay. Because. He should be happy.” He coughs, and says loudly, “Best regards, Your loyal subject and defender, Mac. Amen.”
Dennis sighs to himself, and closes his eyes. Okay. That was--he doesn’t know. It was okay. It was fine. It was weird.
It felt weird.
And, now, even weirder, Dennis has a huge, inexplicable desire to sort of do something to Mac now?
He can’t describe it: basically, he kind of wants to, like, walk up to him and put his arms out wide and then close them around Mac? And have Mac’s arms enclose around Dennis?
What is that… Is that a thing? It must be a thing, right?
Anyway. He wants to do that thing. Which makes no sense at all.
Whatever. He’ll deal with this in the morning, talk to Mac in the morning. Maybe he’ll do one of his “apologies” and they can move on, and things can be cool again, and nice. Maybe Mac will say more of that nice stuff.
Is it a sex thing?
It could be a sex thing.
~
Dennis sleeps a broken sleep, jolting awake every few hours to a cold and unhappy bedroom.
It’s on the third time that he sighs and listens to that dumb inner voice. They used to do this at college, when it was cold. So it’s not that weird. It’s also a survival tactic, he believes, used by penguins and also by stupid people who try to live in mountains. Oh, and it’s not gay. Probably.
He slips into Mac’s bed, pulls the duvet over them both, and curls up in the warm space beside Mac. Mac’s sleeping, snoring, but he snorts loudly and reaches over and touches Dennis clumsily, says, “Oh, it’s you,” and mumbles something incoherently about karate skills before dozing off again.
Dennis smiles, and snuggles in a little closer.
~
Back at the bar, a day later, they agree to lie to the gang about what actually happened on the road trip-not-road trip (baby).
Dee scowls at all the money they (apparently) won and tries to get them to invest in her new business (which turns out to be a charity for Martina Martinez, Dee’s wildly terrible performance art), and Charlie whines at Mac for not being invited, and Frank asks them many questions in excruciating detail about if there were any strippers there, what they looked like, and did they mention him.
As the evening passes, everyone seems to file out, and that fun, arrogant pretense is redundant now, because it’s just Dennis, and Mac, at the other end of the bar.
“Okay, so are we actually gonna go to Atlantic City next time?” Mac asks. “Because, and no offense, that was the coldest night I ever spent in my whole fucking life. What kind of motel doesn’t have heating? I wasn’t gonna say this but if you wanted to sue them, I would probably join you.”
Dennis grins and takes another sip of his beer.
Wherever he goes, as long as Mac is with him, it’ll be alright. Yeah.
It’s always alright with Mac. Even if Dennis sometimes does want to skin him alive.
Of course, what he says is, “Let’s go to Las Vegas next time and spend all of Frank’s money!” Cheering, they grab a couple more beers, and settle in for a night of drinking and chatting, just the two of them, at Paddy’s.