Echo's still leaned over, with both arms buried up to the shoulders in engine, her face cheek-to-cheek with a valve cover, when Tina Something comes to stand behind her, saying, "Hey, whore!"

Rant's planted both elbows on a front fender, peering under the hood at Echo.

The auctioneer's saying, "Do I hear twenty-five? Twenty-five dollars…?"

And Tina says, "You, stop calling bogus fouls on me." Talking to Echo's butt, Tina says, "You foul me out and I'll phone in fake shit on you."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: With their Christmas lights extinguished, the Tree Cars become black, shaggy, scratchy…monsters. The soft tinkle of swinging glass and crystal drops, a faint clue. A team might drive past any dark hedge or bush only to see it blaze into a hundred colors in their rearview mirror. A squeal of tires, and that mass of sparkling light and color will sideswipe their vehicle and again vanish into the night.

Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer is saying. "Twenty dollars? Can we start the bidding at twenty…?"

And from inside the engine compartment, her face still against the firewall, Echo says, "Forget you. I don't even know your current plate." Still giving Tina nothing but ass, Echo goes, "How do I call fouls on you if I don't know your plate?"

The auctioneer says, "Twenty! I got twenty. Do I hear twenty-five? Who wants to bid twenty-five…?"

Rant watches Echo, still propped on his elbows, leaning into the fender. Me, I'm still watching, out-cording so I can live this at home later.

Tina says, "Hey, Day Boy…" To Rant, louder, she says, "You, with the black teeth! Day Boy!"

Rant looks up. His shirtsleeves rolled back to show the bite scars on his forearms.

And Tina says, "Has your girlfriend told you what she does for work? How she makes the cash she spends on wheels?"

Rant says nothing. Just from habit, I spit. Spit again.

One of Echo's arms pulls back, out of the engine compartment, the elbow bending to show a hand. The hand stuffs an adjustable crescent wrench into one back pocket of her pants.

And to Echo's ass, to the wrench poking out of her pocket, Tina Something says, "Your girlfriend you like so much, she fucks for money." Tina crosses her arms over her chest, leans back, and yells, "Your little girlfriend is a gaddamn whore."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The day following a Tree Night, the streets sparkle. They gleam. Gold and silver strands of tinsel flicker and flutter in the wind. Shattered glass ornaments crunch under passing tires.

Shot Dunyun: The auctioneer is saying, "…I have twenty-three. A bid of twenty-three dollars. Going once…"

Echo steps back, stands, and turns to look at Tina.

And Rant says, "Is that true?"

The auctioneer says, "…going twice…"

Echo twists her head to both sides until her neck pops, and she says, "Is what true?"

Rant says, "What she said." He says, "Are you really my girlfriend?"

And the auctioneer says, "Sold!"

21–Echo

Canada Mercer (Software Engineer): My wife and I hired Echo Lawrence after a dinner party. A couple we knew, the Tyson-Neals, had just given birth to their first child, and the baby's needs kept interrupting the meal. After the mother had disappeared to tend it for the umpteenth time, the father remarked, "I'm glad we experimented with three-ways before we started a family." With a newborn, he said, they'd never have the time and privacy necessary to experiment with bondage and vibrators and police uniforms. But now all of that was behind them, so they had no regrets about this baby. They seemed very happy.

As we left that dinner party, Sarah and I felt so far behind the curve. Here we were considering a child of our own, and we'd never even tried anal. We'd never even discussed a three-way. A few days later, we phoned the Tyson-Neals and asked how they'd met a woman who'd consider intimacy with a couple. They knew a young lady who worked with no one except couples our age. A Nighttimer girl who'd be happy to come to our apartment after the curfew.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Forget it. The police never found the fucker that smashed into my family. The last I remember of my parents, we were driving. We were always driving. My mother always drove a gray car that came with her job, so covered with dents it looked like tinfoil someone had balled up and then tried to press smooth. As an infrastructure engineer, my mother always lectured me on service flow rates: Level of Service E versus K. She'd stop in the middle of an overpass so we could look at the roadway below with the traffic passing under us, and she'd quiz me about Hourly Volume and the Peak-Hour Factor of measuring traffic flow.

I was asleep across the backseat of that gray car when someone smacked into us, head-on.

Sarah Mercer (Marketing Director): When she arrived, the young woman had what I'd call a withered arm. One of her elbows was crooked, bent a smidgen, and that hand seemed stunted. The fingers curled into the palm, and she never used them to grasp or lift anything. Her leg on that same side was shorter, and she seemed to swing it from her hip with each step, walking into our living room with a pronounced limp.

She would've been very pretty if it hadn't been for a palsy or paralysis that seemed to leave the left side of her face slack and immobile. The poor dear, she'd come to the last word of a sentence, then stop with her mouth gaping open, clearly trying to force out the exact word. It was agony, the effort it took to not jump in and finish her every thought. After a glass of Merlot, she told us her handicaps stemmed from a single brain injury, caused when her mother had struck her in the head.

Echo Lawrence: I do. I tell people that. My mom did hit me. So did my dad, but not the way I let people imagine. Well, technically, I hit them. At the pulse of the car accident, I came rocketing out of the backseat and hit them both in the back of the head. The officer at the scene never put this on paper, but I broke both their necks. My head slammed against my father's so hard it compressed my right temporal lobe. The tiny arm I have now is the arm I had when I was eight. My leg's grown, a little. The aphasia, when I struggle for words, that's a little put-on. I'll pretend the last word in a sentence is almost choking me to…and I'll pause…death. Like I can't quite force out the right…word. That tension makes people really listen to me.

The car that hit us was another gray sedan owned by the county traffic division, exactly like the one my mother drove. Dinged and dented all over. A head-on collision, and they never found the other driver. Sounds…wait for the word…fishy.

Sarah Mercer: The girl had grown up an orphan, dating anyone who asked. One of her boyfriends escorted her to a private swingers' club where people do their business in front of each other. He convinced her to have intercourse standing in the center of this club. Entered her from behind. She's the first woman to arrive that evening, so they have plenty of unwanted attention. To endure this, she shuts her eyes, tight. The entire time, her boyfriend holds her withered hand, whispering "Meine kleine Hure…" in her ear.

Secretly, she's flattered by all the attention, dozens of strange men bothering to watch. When the ordeal is finished, she finds her skin running with something more than sweat. She's awfully glad she kept her shoes on, because she's standing in a little puddle. All their sperm is dripping off of her. Grotesque as it sounds, apparently that evening did wonders for her self-esteem.