Rant

big Tree Night.
    Echo Lawrence: Earlier, when I say I let Rant “ride in my backseat,” that’s not a euphemism.
    Neddy Nelson: You know how great Rant was? You know what he did when they dropped me off at my building, just before curfew? Anybody tell you Rant flips me a gold coin, saying, “For your next wheels…”? Can you imagine my surprise when the coin shop offers me ten grand for that 1884 Liberty Head dollar? Was there ever a guy so generous? Without Rant Casey, you think I’d be driving another car so soon?
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: That, I believe, was the squandered remainder of Rant Casey’s Tooth Fairy fortune.
    Echo Lawrence: When Shot said “rabies,” I thought he’d said “babies.” The results came back negative, thank God, but I think I asked for the wrong test.
    25–The Patsy
    Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): Depends on if you believe that deformed girl or you believe the police, but their first night together was the same night Buddy was supposed to have killed that lady. The one owned the little pet store, that Libby woman.
    Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): What’s to love most about Party Crashing is how close it matches real life. I mean, a drunk driver doesn’t care that you’ve been painting for years and your first gallery show opens next week. How bogus is that? The fifteenhundred-pound elk, the one standing in the shadows at the edge of the road, ready to jump, it has no idea that your baby is due next week.
    The greasy brake lining or the cell-phone talker… The loose lug nuts or drowsy truck driver…
    It doesn’t matter for crap that you’ve got three years of sobriety or that you finally look good in a two-piece bathing suit or you’ve met that perfect someone and you’ve fallen deeply, wildly, passionately in love. Today, as you pick up your dry cleaning, fax those reports, fold your laundry, or wash the dinner dishes, something you’d never expect is already stalking you.
    Officer Romie Mills ( Homicide Detective): Edith Libby, the victim, was five-foot-eight, 128 pounds. Her body was discovered during the morning curfew sweep in an area bordering on both Nighttimer and Daytimer districts. The cause of death wasn’t readily apparent. Nor were any injuries evident. The location in question was not surveyed by the existing system of street cameras.
    Shot Dunyun: That bullet or drunk driver or tumor with your name on it, the way I tolerate that fact is by Party Crashing. Here’s one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can’t control. I’m dancing with the inevitable, and I survive.
    My regular little dress rehearsal.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): Any idea of Progress depends on not looking at the past too closely. It’s undeniable that the streets are less crowded than they were before the inception of the I-SEE-U curfews, but society will always have to manage a certain amount of resentment among people who feel short-changed by their immediate circumstances.
    Lynn Coffey ( Journalist): You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you’ll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote. Nighttimers had become that—an effective and efficient method to sweep the slave class out of sight.
    Forgive me, but after two decades of reporting on local politics, I guess I’ve earned the right to finally tell the truth. And the truth is, no Nighttimer has ever been elected President.
    Officer Romie Mills: Wade Morrison was another story. Age: twenty-four. A born Nighttimer. Middle of one night, he collapsed, just as dead as the Libby victim. Granted, we weren’t treating these deaths as homicides per se, not until they began to form a pattern.
    Lynn Coffey: It’s still segregation, only not by space—the backseat of a bus or the balcony of a movie theater. It’s segregation by time. Go ahead, call it a social contract, like speed limits or building codes, but it’s still living on the graveyard shift. One clock tick past that curfew, and you’ll find out just how equal you are.
    The fallback argument is that Nighttimers can always leave an urban area and live in a rural district not subject to the I-SEE-U Act. But that takes money. Plus, the majority ofjobs and education opportunities are in cities.
    Officer Romie Mills: With the Morrison killing, we had testimony that the