Chapter 3: Sugar
In Your Gas Tank
If
only I could say that everything's OK
Take a good look and look the other way
Frustration, hell who needs it anyway
I'd rather sit back and just smoke cigarettes
And be the one with the loudest mouth
"Hey, little girl, want some candy?" Spike sneered as he hung his head out the side of his ship.
"Get bent," Faye snapped back, refusing to even stop to talk to him.
"All right, see ya," he shrugged.
Faye screamed inwardly at her situation. "Wait, hold up!" she shouted. He stopped taxiing as she climbed very ungracefully into the cockpit, elbowing him in the back of the head a few times as she did so. "I hate you," she grumbled.
"You're welcome."
***
It had been a very aggravating ride through the gate. Neither of them spoke, but they silently fought with each other quite heatedly over the radio. At one point, Faye had insisted they leave it on commercials, slapping his hand away anytime he made a move to change it. This was just to be annoying. Just like she was quite positive that Spike did not listen to "God Talk" in his spare time on the All Jesus station. By the time they had touched down in upstate New York, they were just about out of gas and just about out of patience. Spike, as an experiment of sorts, looked at her expectantly when the fuel tank spat out their bill of 340 woolongs. "What?" she snarled.
"Nothing," he sighed as he swiped his card pointedly in the machine. "I gotta take a piss," he announced as he turned towards the service station.
"Yeah, well I'm starving. I'm gonna go pick up some snacks or something. You want anything?"
Spike looked at her as if she had just proposed, or something equally ridiculous. "Do I want anything?"
"Yeah. You know. To eat?" She said in a "duh" tone of voice.
"Uh...yeah. How about a cherry pie?"
Faye nodded and then sauntered off to the convenience store. Spike shook his head in utter bewilderment. Faye. Buying him an artificially flavored fruit treat. Had the world gone topsy-turvy?
Spike was quite engrossed in reading a dirty limerick written on the side of the bathroom stall when he heard a very unsettling whistling sound, followed by an earth shattering crash. The force threw him sideways into the stall, and he came frightening close to snagging himself in his zipper. He took a second to recoup from that horror before he nervously peaked outside. He knew what he was going to find. With the way his life worked, there was no other possibility. He removed his hands from his eyes to see a huge, smoking meteor settled quite nicely in the middle of his ship. There was a huge crowd gathered neatly around the wreck, each with looks of sympathy on their faces. "Poor bastard," Spike heard someone mutter. Spike himself felt there was no appropriate way to react to the devastating scene in front of him, so he stood staring at it open mouthed, wondering if this had anything to do with taking the All Jesus station in vain. He then seriously considering dropping to his knees and weeping, right in front of everybody, when Faye sauntered casually next to him, chomping quite loudly on a Twinkie. She looked the scene up and down, glanced at Spike, then flipped the snack cake in front his face and said, "It was 2 woolongs."
He looked at her for a second with a pained expression before he silently paid her and sulked off to go cry in his cherry pie.
***
Spike took in a shaking breath when he read the invoice. "This is every cent I have. This is it. All of my money and then some." He couldn't believe it. They had just had such a nice bounty too. He swore when they got it that he would be good this time. That he would try to budget slightly. That we wouldn't blow it all on tequila and the old air hockey table in the bar. That was two days ago. "Do you have anything, Faye?" he asked futilely.
"I just spent the last of it on my Twinkie," she said as she gulped down the last bite.
"Ok. So why don't we just lay down and die?" he tossed the bill into the air. "We have no funds, no ship, and we just ate the rest of our food. And where do you have to go again?"
Faye licked some cream filling off of her fingers. "Arizona."
"Ari...Jesus! How do you expect us to get there? Click our heels together three times?"
"Well, we would only be out of funds if you used them to fix your ship," she said plainly. "We could just leave it here and then get Jet to come back for it."
"That'll be 125,000 woolongs," the repairman said gruffly.
"Wait. For just leaving it here?" Spike asked, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation.
"Yeah. You're taking up space that could be better used by paying customers. Pay up or we'll have it towed."
"And how much would that cost me?" Spike grumbled.
"Considerably more," the man replied, smiling. He had Spike by the balls and there was nothing he could do about it.
Faye looked at Spike and shrugged. "So, if we paid the guy to keep it here, how much would we have left?"
"76K," he sighed.
"Pffht. That's plenty," Faye waved him off.
"Says the woman who just spent her life savings on five year old sponge cake."
"I'll be careful," she tugged on his arm. "You aren't seriously thinking about leaving me, are you?"
"I'm seriously considering calling Jet and having him pick me up, yes. If that means I'm leaving you then so be it," he yanked his arm out of her grasp.
"Spike, please," she ran in front of him, pleading expression in her eyes. "This means a lot to me."
"You're an independent woman," Spike shrugged. "I got you to Earth, you can get yourself the rest of the way," he said as he brushed by her.
"Come on, Spike," she whined, running in front of him again. "I need you," she said softly. When the jaded look on his face indicated he wasn't buying it, she sighed and said, "Ok. I need your money," in a tone much more appropriate to the old Faye. "Same difference."
"Tough," he shrugged as he made is way to the pay phone.
***
"I told you, Spike, I have things to do this weekend," Jet said into the phone, choosing to leave out the fact he was taking a bubble bath while drinking expensive beer at the time. "Important things."
"Jet, I'm totally fucked. I'm not gonna have enough money to drag the wench to Arizona and barely enough to fix the ship."
"But you would have enough to hang out there until I can get you."
"Well...yeah, but..."
"So I'll see you then."
"Jet!"
Click.
"Son of a bitch," Spike muttered into the phone.
"Come on, Spike," Faye cooed from her spot perched on a top of a garbage can. "It'll be more fun than hanging out in this hell hole all weekend. It'll be like...an adventure."
"An adventure you say? Well, golly gee whiz, Faye. When you put it that way, I just have to say yes!"
"Really?"
"Fuck no."
"Spike," she rolled off the garbage can, practically groveling at his feet. "Pleeeeeeaaassseeeeeeee."
"I said no, Faye," he struggled to walk as she grabbed on to his right leg.
"Don't make me embarrass you," she warned.
"Oooh. I'm shaking in my boots."
Faye grinned evilly for a second before jumping to her feet. "You asshole!" she screamed dramatically before slapping him in the face. His cigarette went flying out of his mouth. "This was supposed to be a romantic weekend together and I have to catch you with that...that....whore!" She pointed over to some random woman who was trying to liberate a stuck candy bar from a vending machine. A small crowd began to gather as the woman started sputtering nervously.
"Me?" the woman choked as Spike attempted to silently communicate that Faye should be ignored. "I...I've never seen that man before!"
"Don't give me that shit, you hussy!" she snarled. "I caught you in the bathroom with him. Or do you give fellatio to every man you just meet?"
The guys in the crowd whooped in approval as the woman turned several shades of red. "I swear...she's lying. She's lying!" she was practically sobbing.
"Yeah right!" someone called out from the crowd. Spike sighed at the daytime talk show that was about to go down in front of him. Faye was in the wrong profession. She should be spitting out soap opera scripts, with the drama that came spewing out of her mouth. "And with our baby on the way, too," Faye twisted the knife. That earned Spike several boos and hisses from the crowd, as he just watched her performance with his arms folded.
"Girl, you're a do right woman, and you need a do right man!" someone shouted and she was met by a few hearty Amens.
"I am a woman with feelings and needs and I demand respect!" Faye shouted, hopped up on the energy from the crowd, and drawing a bit on the article she had just read in Cosmo.
"Testify, sister!"
"How about that woman?" Spike pointed to the poor girl Faye cast to play the part of the whore.
"I swear I have no idea what she's talking about," she sniffled, hand still inside the chute of the vending machine.
"If she had respect she wouldn't be scamming on a single mother's man," Faye said in return, adding a little finger and neck motion to it this time. Uproarious reaction from the crowd.
"How are you a single mother, Faye?" Spike sighed, exasperated. "I'm right here." If she was going to lie, at least be consistent.
"I don't see a ring," Faye snapped, holding her bare hand up for the audience to see. More booing and hissing. "So the way I see it, cowboy, you take me to Arizona or this is going to be your whole weekend. I have all sorts of pent up creative energy that I need to release." The crowd cheered her on, despite the fact none of them had any idea what she was talking about. People will start to cheer any declarative statement eventually.
"All right!" Spike gave up, mostly because he believed her. He had seen Faye's improvisational skills in action before, and it wasn't a pretty picture.
Faye grinned widely and then kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, honey," she said cheerily as she skipped out of the ring of people that had gathered around them. Spike and that poor, poor woman were left standing in the center of the circle, blushing sheepishly.
"All right, show's over," Spike muttered and the crowd reluctantly began to disperse. He walked over to the woman who was still standing besides the vending machine, totally dazed.
"I...I..." she sputtered.
"Don't worry about it," Spike smiled reassuringly. "She's got some problems, we forgot her medication...it's not your fault." He glanced over to the machine, which was still holding her Baby Ruth hostage. "May I?" he asked.
The woman shook her head as if snapping out of a trance, and then pulled her hand out from the machine with an embarrassed expression. Spike kicked the machine as hard as he could and about 19 Baby Ruths, plus a small bounty of other candy bars came spilling out. He grabbed some for his own long journey before handing one to the woman. "Sorry about that," he shrugged apologetically and then slunk off to locate his loose cannon of a partner.