So at seven tonight, the mayor of Our Fair City™ got a call from a Girlfriend, and the sirens went off.  I get that, but what’s with the fucking curfew?  Is Tiffany Marie going to trip on another overpass?  Will Angela Faye strand a man on a rooftop when she realizes she’s taken the wrong guy again?  Chances are, none of that is going to happen.  Whoever the Girlfriend is tonight, she’ll materialize, smile and pose for the drone cameras, walk a few blocks, and grab her guy.  It’s probably a guy, they’ll probably disappear, and the curfew will be over.

    But again, the Girlfriends are nice and gentle these days, aren’t they?  So why the fuck even have a curfew?  Why can’t I head on over to Springer’s Gulch like I do every Wednesday night?  I swear, this mayor is a cuck.  Or a scaredy cat.  Probably both.

    8:45, and instead of the exotic dancers with my homeboys, I’m stuck watching the damned hockey game downtown.  The only people in the stands are the arena workers and the few fans who had shown up when the sirens went off.  I’m about ready to just turn off the TV and call it a night when my phone rings.  It’s one of the homies, so I answer.  “Yo, Cory!  Are you as bored as I am?”

    “Probably not, Darrin,” he answers.  In the background, the sounds of pulsating music are mixing with that of a large crowd.  I’d think that he’s at Springer’s if so many of those voices weren’t so high-pitched.  Of course, he immediately disappoints me:  “I’m here at the Gulch.  Kurt and Rene are here too.  What happened to you?”

    “The fucking siren went off when I was getting in the car.  You’re all dicks.”

    “Yeah, but there’s nothing to enjoy.  A few families had to come in.  The girls all had to get dressed.  They’re here, but they’re off the clock.  With all the little kids in here, the bar isn’t serving anything but water and soda.  I sure hope Amber Lynn gets done soon.”

    “Amber Lynn?  That hard-ass?  Christ on a cracker, the night just got worse.  Fuck this shit!  I’m heading over there right now!”  Without waiting for a response, I pressed the red button on the phone and headed out.

    Here’s something I forgot to point out:  Cory, Kurt and Rene are local celebrities in their own right.  They’re all “Dates.”  That’s the term everyone uses for those men (and maybe two dozen women) who’ve been to the Girlfriends’s home world.  When I was a kid, Dates were abductees, and they never came back here.  The year I got to grammar school, though, was the year Dates started coming home.  By the time I graduated from high school, men were actually volunteering to be taken by Girlfriends.

    Weirdly enough, that’s why Panama City has fallen apart.  The city council there did everything in its power to keep Girlfriends out, and that worked out way too well.  By the time I graduated from Florida State, college-age men stopped going there on spring break, too.

    On the other extreme, Our Fair City™ did everything it could to entice Girlfriends into coming here on vacation.  Back then, the infamous Tiffany Marie loved coming here.  I was too young to appreciate her charms, but at “just” 294 feet tall, she was positively petite.  Somehow, Cory, Kurt and Rene managed to talk her into adopting them as Dates.  Sweetheart that she’s turned out to be, she let them come back home after only three years. [For what little it’s worth, Tiff vacations on Gary Beach these days, and she’s not nearly as interested in new Dates.]

    Usually, the fastest route from my house to Springer’s Gulch might as well be fucking Daytona.   (Or fucking Indy.  Use whatever damn racing oval you want.)  It involves a 15-mile detour on tollways around half the city, regardless of the time of day.  At night, the problem with the more direct route isn’t Downtown.  It’s all those trashy nightclubs in the Condo District that generate the traffic jams.

    But with the curfew in effect and nobody driving except me, the direct way is the fast way:  get on the Turnpike, take that down to the First Street interchange, and shoot through Downtown on First, all before going back past the Condo District along the six divided lanes of Thompson Drive.

    Of course, whatever the city did on nights like this, the county did.  Except for a state patrol unit parked on the median, the only car on the Turnpike was mine.  Oddly, the officers inside didn’t even bother clocking me.

    The approach to the toll-collection gantry right before First Street brought back a horrible memory.  The very first Girlfriend attack — back when they were real attacks — took place at the toll plaza that used to be here.  Half a dozen tractor-trailers were lined up to pay their tolls when Candee grabbed each one, tore the the trailers off and tossed them a quarter-mile away, and stuffed the cabs in her purse.  And then, because she could, she trampled several cars and booths before disappearing.  It wasn’t much better for those of us at the back of the line, because the sunlight that bounced off her pantyhose practically blinded us.  Damn, that was some shiny pantyhose.

    Candee’s other tollbooth attacks were outright atrocities, but you knew that.  Rumor has it that she would be rotting in jail if some other Girlfriends hadn’t literally blown her up first.

    By now, Girlfriends have visited many, many cities, but ours is the only one where not one of them has ever set foot downtown.  Sure, a few people live there, and there are plenty of hotels, but the Girlfriends who come here have always been more interested in the Condo District, the array of oceanside residential towers that drives even them dizzy.

    Taking the fastest path from my house to Springer’s Gulch means driving up Thompson Avenue just past the edge of the Condo District.  Which, in turn, means taking the First Street exit off the Turnpike, then taking that across Downtown to its end at Thompson.  Once you’re on Thompson, the evidence that Girlfriends have come calling is overwhelming.  As elsewhere, Girlfriends here used to have the nasty habit of simply grabbing would-be Dates from their apartments through the patios.  It wasn’t obvious right now, but during the day, you can see which blocks of apartments had to be completely rebuilt.  Most patches are between the 15th and 25th floors of these condos.  Some were made as low as the tenth floor, and the highest is on the 32nd floor of Paradise Tower North.  (Of course Bunny was responsible for that.  Nobody’s taller than Bunny, and I’m not sure anyone’s bustier, either.)  It’s damned lucky that all that grabbing — 33 instances committed by 21 Girlfriends — didn’t bring any of these condo towers down.

    What did bring one of them down was that incident six years ago, when Tiffany Marie pressed Angel Jayne against the façade of Paradise Tower South.  The sole known casualty was a cat who jumped in terror off its 24th-story balcony, but the impact of that kiss left the whole damn building so unstable, the city had to implode it after only a week.  Paradise South’s 750 residents were left homeless.  In its place, the Muffin Cat Museum, named after that fucking cat, just opened two days ago.

    Tiffany Marie’s still a frequent visitor.  She loves this town, and people here genuinely like her.  Hell, I almost like her.  But she’s also the mega-klutz we all thought she was six years ago.  Just a month ago, she tripped on a shallow overpass (clearance: 11’ 6”), and her fall took out the checkout stands of a newly constructed grocery store that had been due to open the next day.

    As for Angel Jayne?  She made only one appearance anywhere after The Kiss, and rumor now has it that she’s in jail for forgery or something.

    On most trips to Springer’s, I never cross the city’s monorail lines, but tonight, I crossed them three times:  once on First, two blocks from the Turnpike, and twice on Thompson.  The first Thompson crossing neatly divides Downtown from the Condo District.  The last one, two miles away, runs along the Central Causeway overpass.  Once I cross that, the Gulch was just three more blocks away.  (After the Gulch, you’re in the Shorewood District.)

    As drove past the light right after the first train crossing, it hit me that I’d been the only driver on the road all this time.  Not one police car of any kind had followed me, even though I’d blown several reds on First.  In maybe two seconds, things stopped me from thinking about that oddity.

    First, there was that telltale gust of wind.

    Second, all the lighting behind me suddenly went dark.

    And then came the impact.