Road Trip
by Libby Cudmore

“What the hell are those?” I ask when I open the door, pointing to the black rubber clown shoes Roderick’s wearing in place of his usual boots.  Through the randomly-placed holes I can see his dingy white socks.  I roll my eyes.

“These?  They’re just gardening clogs.  Dizzy got them for me, she wears them all the time at work.”

“Dizzy’s a broad, she can get away with wearing stupid shoes, her whole life is made up of stupid shoes.  You can’t.  Men wear boots, dress shoes if necessary, and sneakers if he’s a ballplayer, but only on the field.  Those, my friend, are unacceptable.”

He snorts. “Since when did you become such an advocate of high fashion?  They’re comfortable, that’s all that matters to me.”

“Why don’t you just go out in bedroom slippers and a bathrobe?”

Roderick shakes his head.  “You’ll be sorry when you’re scraping mud off your boots for the thousandth time.  I’ll hose mine off in the bathtub and they’ll be dry by morning.”

“You’ll be sorry when Lee laughs your clown ass right out of his office,” I mutter, starting the car.

*     *     *

“I’ve never been up to Derris Falls,” I comment, taking a long drink of my Styrofoam coffee and leaning on the photo-op railing.  Below us the falls tumble and churn and roar the infinite river into suicide.  The night’s fog hides the abyss the way smoke hides the ages of broads in bars.  I hate admitting it, but Roderick was right about the mud.  “In thirty-one years I’ve never driven half an hour to check this place out.  Never really thought about it, I guess.”

“Eh.” Roderick shrugs.  “You see it better in pictures—isn’t that how it always goes?  We see stuff on the big screen so many times that the real thing just doesn’t compare.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s awe-inspiring, but in the end, it’s just rocks and water.”

“Yeah,” I agree.  “Still, it’s too nice of a place for a scumbag like him.”

“That’s true, but his body’ll be pulverized by the time he hits bottom,” Roderick says.  “It’s dirty, but it’s perfect.  Now let’s get this over with.”

I toss my empty cup into the garbage can and follow him back to the car.  Roderick pops the trunk and orders, “Grab the feet.”

We lug the body back to the cliff and roll it over the fence, watching for only a second before the fog swallows our crime.  We look over the falls for a minute more before I slap the railing and stand up straight.  “You want to go for a beer?”

“Yeah, sure,” Roderick answers.

“I’ll buy, but there’s one catch,” I say while we walk back to the car.

“What’s that?”

I shake my head and laugh. “You’ve got to put on some other shoes.”

BIO: Libby Cudmore is a regular contributor to Hardboiled and Pop Matters, and her recent publications include A Twist of Noir ("Props" was a 2nd Runner Up for the July Bullet awards) Pulp Pusher, Inertia, the Southern Women's Review and Shaking Like a Mountain.  Her work is slated to be published in upcoming issues of Eastern Standard Crime, Thrilling Detective, Battered Suitcase and the anthology "Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts" (with Matthew Quinn Martin).  Previous publications include Crime and Suspense, Sage of Consciousness, the Subway Chronicles (Essay of the Year 2004) and Long Story Short (Author of the Year 2004)