The Crown Vic listed hard to the right, rear tire gone to ribbons, axle settling into the gravel like something accepting its fate. Detective Rust Cohle stood at the open trunk and considered its contents: one oily rag, one traffic cone folded in half, and an absence where a spare should have been. He lit a cigarette with the unhurried precision of a man who understood that hurrying had never once improved a situation.
Marty Hart stood six feet away, jacket off, shirt translucent with sweat, watching his partner like a man timing a bomb.
RUST: Entropy.
MARTY: What.
RUST: Every system degrades. Cars, men, civilizations. The tire was never going to last. Nothing is. We just pretend otherwise because the alternative is unbearable.
He let the trunk lid fall. It closed with a soft, damning thunk.
MARTY: Rust. Are you telling me we don't have a spare?
RUST: I'm telling you that the spare was never ours to begin with. We borrowed this car from the void, Marty. Now the void wants it back.
Marty ripped off his tie and whipped it against the fender.
MARTY: The void didn't borrow this car last Thursday, Rust. Bertrand did. Bertrand from vice. Who I am now going to kill with my hands.
RUST: Bertrand is just entropy wearing a clip-on tie.
MARTY: I swear to God, if you say one more metapsychosmic—or whatever the hell—I will roll this Crown Vic into the bayou with you in it and file the paperwork under Acts of God.
It was at this moment that the rear passenger door swung open and a third man emerged.
Detective Ric Flair had been riding in the back seat for reasons that remained, even now, unclear to both detectives. On loan from Orleans Parish for reasons Rust nor Marty were fully briefed on. Something about a witness statement. Something about a favor owed to the sheriff. The details had gotten lost somewhere around mile marker 40, right about the time Flair started ranking the top five limousine services in the Gulf Coast region.
He snapped the Motorola shut and clapped his hands once, loud and sharp, like a man calling a meeting to order.
FLAIR: Boys. Gentlemen. Let me tell you something.
MARTY: Please don't.
FLAIR: Hope is not lost. I made a call. My man Leon—the finest limousine operator this side of Shreveport—is en route as we speak.
Marty squinted at him. The sun was doing something cruel to his patience.
MARTY: You have a limousine driver. On standby. In the Louisiana swamps.
FLAIR: Marty, I have limousine drivers in nine states, two territories, and a guy in Osaka who owes me from '87. You don't become the Nature Boy by hitchhiking.
RUST: What's the catch.
Flair's smile widened. It was the smile of a man who had been waiting for someone to ask.
FLAIR: Leon's a professional. Standards. Traditions. You want to ride in the limousine, you dress for the limousine.
MARTY: What does that mean.
FLAIR: Robes.
A cicada screamed somewhere in the distance. The heat pressed down like a hand.
MARTY: Robes.
FLAIR: Nature Boy originals. Hand-stitched. Breathable satin. Leon won't let anyone in the vehicle without one. It's not a rule, Marty. It's a philosophy.
RUST: You're saying we can't be rescued unless we dress like professional narcissists.
FLAIR: I'm saying you can't ride in style unless you commit to the aesthetic. There's a difference.
MARTY: No. Absolutely not. I am not putting on a sequined bathrobe in hundred-degree heat just so we can cruise through the swamp looking like Liberace's fever dream driving through a Bass Pro Shops catalog.
Flair shrugged. His shrug contained multitudes—sympathy, resignation, the quiet confidence of a man who knew how this would end.
FLAIR: Then I hope you enjoy the gators, Marty. I'm told they find Dockers very approachable.
Forty-five minutes passed. Nobody spoke. Rust smoked and watched the tree line the way he watched most things—like it was evidence of something he’d already figured out and found disappointing. Marty paced a groove into the gravel shoulder. Flair sat on the hood of the Crown Vic, legs crossed, entirely at peace, occasionally murmuring “woo” to himself like a man keeping time with his own heartbeat.
At the forty-six minute mark, Marty kicked a rock into the ditch and said, quietly, to no one in particular: "Fine."
Flair didn't gloat. He didn't need to. The universe had already gloated on his behalf.
The limousine appeared on the horizon like a mirage that had decided, against all odds, to be real. Diamond white. Gold 100-spoke elbows catching the dying sun. It pulled up alongside the Crown Vic and stopped with the easy grace of a yacht docking.
Leon emerged from the driver's side. He wore a tuxedo that fit like a second skin. He opened the rear door and laid three robes across the leather seat, then turned to Flair. They performed a handshake that involved at least four distinct movements—clasp, slide, fist bump, something with the elbows—executed with the precision of men who had rehearsed it without ever once practicing. Whatever these two had been through together, they had come out the other side speaking the same language. No words were necessary. None were offered.
LEON: Gentlemen.
FLAIR: Leon! See, Marty? This is class. Take notes.
The robes were distributed. Marty's was silver and pink and blue, the word WOOOOASIS spelled out across the back in sapphire gemstones. Rust's was midnight blue, FIGURE FOUR FEVER curling across the shoulders like cigarette smoke frozen in silk. Flair's was already on—had perhaps always been on, spiritually—black with gold butterflies catching the light. Simply: Nature Boy.
They robed. Marty with the energy of a man attending his own funeral. Rust with the detachment of someone who had long ago accepted that dignity was just another lie we tell ourselves.
