One More for the Road by Ray Bradbury Page A

Confess.”
    â€œNo confessions!”
    â€œWell then, what almost happened? Are you guilty, innocent, asking for mercy?”
    â€œShut up and drink your gin,” said Conway.
    â€œThanks, I will. In celebration.”
    â€œCelebration?”
    â€œOf the fact you now have the new number. The old one was a freebie. The new, if used, will cost fifty bucks. Tomorrow night, another new number, will run two hundred.”
    â€œMy God, why?!”
    â€œYou’ll be fascinated. Hooked. Not able to stop. Next week, eight hundred. You’ll pay.”
    â€œ Will I?!” Conway cried.
    â€œSoftly. Innocence rides free. Guilt costs. Your wife will question your bank balance.”
    â€œShe won’t! It won’t happen!”
    â€œLord, you’re Joan of Arc run amok. She heard voices, too.”
    â€œGod’s voices, not phone-sex whispers.”
    â€œTrue, but still she died. Waiter! Keep the drinks coming. Agreed?”
    Conway jerked his head.
    â€œWhy so mad?” Smith asked. “We haven’t started lunch and—”
    â€œI haven’t been told things!” Conway said.
    â€œAll right, all right. Are you ready?”
    Smith drew on the tablecloth with his knife, and talked to the lines.
    â€œAre you familiar with the storm drains under L.A., the dry tunnels that channel our rains, our floods?”
    â€œI know them, yes.”
    â€œUncover any manhole on any major street, step down in tunnels twenty miles long, all heading for the sea. All of a rainless year it’s empty as a desert runoff. You must walk to the ocean someday with me, under the civilized world. Bored?”
    â€œContinue,” said Conway.
    â€œWait.” Smith moistened his lips with his martini. “Imagine that every night at three A.M. the doors of every house on the block, every block in the tract, opened and shadows, men in their middle years, walked into the street and lifted the storm drain lids and stepped down into darkness, eh?—and moved toward that far sea they could not hear. But then it sounded louder and louder as they walked closer and closer with more shadows, all heading toward that surf at three in the morning, inhaling, exhaling, murmuring, sighing, and as they moved, as the fever from their faces lit the storm-drain walls, no need for lights, the fever does it, and the men find more tunnels in motion, a flood under houses, and the city asleep above, not knowing the surge of shadows yearning for a warm sea, whispering, wanting, in love with what? A crazed internet of flesh and blood.”
    â€œInternet, no. Crazed? Yes!”
    â€œBut this is real! Not laptop films. Hungry men, rushing, whispering, elbows knocking, shoes scuffing cement, on, on, until they find that far shore on a night with no moon and dawn a salvation a million miles off, but no one wants saving as they flood the shore of that hot sea and stand, trembling, eyes wild, by the thousands, watching volcanic waves burn the shore.”
    â€œWhat,” said Conway, “are they doing there?”
    â€œDoing? They swim that roaring furnace, that suction, to drown, inhale, exhale out, far out. You heard it last night. So you had to come. The hairs all over your body jumped. Your mouth eats cold steel, gasps flames, right?”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œLiar!”
    â€œNo,” said Conway. “What are those voices?”
    â€œHomeless libidos, love-starved wannabees.”
    â€œ What love is starved, what do they wannabe?”
    â€œTogether.” Smith stirred his drink with his little finger. “To be wildly together.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œBy its sound, can’t you guess? To be part of that lost soul circuit. To throw themselves in that sea of lust. Ever read Thoreau? He said most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
    â€œSad.”
    â€œTrue. Ours is the sad, desperate channel that brims Venice with unclean floods of driven men. Remember that