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Show Acting Alone Page 68 been assuming that he was dead on the inside, emotionally a corpse. Just like all his artsy friends. But he was actually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, heartbroken when he rolled alone into Kansas. He felt that traditional brick of pain right there where your heart is supposed to be smooshed between your lungs. Textbook, storybook heartbreak, right down to the quick. The quick, not the dead! The only thing that kept this from being a joyous moment of serendipity (whoopee, I'm not dead inside after all! I'm actually a person, a man, a young man!, etc., etc.) was that he was heartbroken. He wanted his Shanny bad. He drove very slowly, as in a funeral procession. Rolling into town at about 3:00 a.m., Sam came almost face to face with Bouncy at the twenty-four hour Mini Mart. Bouncy was all by himself, buying his customary Maalox, and if he saw Sam he didn't show it. The worldclass kickboxer looked wide-eyed and wrapped up in himself, sort of quietly amazed at the lake of fire in his sleepless gut. He began drinking the Maalox before even paying for it. He wiped a creamy antacid drizzle off his chin and actually sighed, quietly, all by himself. After Bouncy had gone, the last glint from the silver rivets in his black leather vest having receded all the way down the dark street, Sam emerged from behind the dairy case with his Make-a-Shake. The all-night counter person, the basic curly wet rodent type, tried to establish fellowship with Sam, groveling and giggling like all twenty-four hour clerks, chirping, "Any person who buys Makes-a-Shakes at this hour must be all bad!" Looking into this rodent's human eyes, Sam suddenly realized how lone- |