“Do me a favor,” I said, taking the cashier’s check from the envelope and handing it to her. “Hang on to this until I get back. No way am I carrying that on me.”
“I’ll keep it safe.” She slipped it into her purse. “Hey, when you get back, there’s a junior partner in my office I’d like to introduce you to. I think you and her would hit it off.” “What self-respecting lawyer would want to date a janitor?” She stared at me for a moment, then said: “I did. Once.” For a second, the ghost of Andy Leonard walked between us, then was gone. “I’m sorry I made that ‘social calendar’ crack,” she said. “Forget it.”
“No, no, I won’t.” She took hold of my hand. “I’m serious. You and I have lived here practically our entire lives, and in all that time I think I’ve seen you socially maybe a dozen times since high school, and even then it was by accident—bumping into you at a movie or a play or something. And you’re always alone. I think Kimberly would really like you. Come on, what have you got to lose?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on! She’s a redhead. You know you’ve got a thing for redheads. Dianne was a redhead.”
“—a redhead who divorced me, thanks for bringing that up. Why do you even care? I don’t mean that to sound defensive, I really don’t, but why piss away any brain cells worrying about my social life or lack thereof?”
“That’s a dumb question and I don’t answer dumb questions. Doesn’t matter, anyway, because I’ve already set it up. You’re going out with her Saturday night.”
“Oh, I am, am I?”
“Yes, you am.” She squeezed my hand, then let go. “Drive Miss Driscoll home, come back safely, and take a chance on my matchmaking talents.” “Okay, fine.” I gave her a quick hug and started walking toward the wagon, then turned back and said: “Thank you.” “You be careful, okay?” “Will do.”
It didn’t occur to me until a few hours later that she had said something about being careful three times during that conversation.
The keys were in the wagon, as was a very expensive Montrachet mahogany coffin containing Miss Driscoll’s body. A note from Dobbs was taped to the steering wheeclass="underline" Yes, she’s in there, but feel free to check in case you want to see what the inside of an $8,000.00 coffin looks like.
I decided to take his word for it.
I wondered if Dobbs had driven the wagon here, or if it had been one of the bulky shadows from last night, maybe one of their minions…or maybe the damn thing just materialized in the parking space.
You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.
This had gone way past weird.
People are listening.
Whoever was orchestrating all of this seemed to be two steps ahead of everyone else. A brighter man would have had the good sense to be paranoid. A brighter man would have realized that Barb had told him three times to be careful. A brighter man would have suspected there was something else she hadn’t told him. A brighter man would have known in the bottom of his gut that he was right smack in the middle of something really truly seriously goddamn scary.
Me, I took it far as “weird” and left it at that.
I started the meat wagon and turned on the radio. Our local radio station was just finishing up its morning news update.
“…died this morning at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, bringing the total number of deaths from Sunday night’s I-71 multi-car collision to seven.”
That little tidbit of information both registered and didn’t, as is the case with most things that come my way before noon. I scanned around until I found some music, then hit the road.
I have since come to the conclusion that my sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
6
I don’t like maps. All the lines give me a headache, and half the time I’m so busy trying to interpret the miniscule printing I either miss the exit I’m looking for or almost drive into a guardrail—or sometimes even another car whose driver was so busy trying to read his map that he didn’t see me coming.
Give me landmarks and I’m hell on wheels; give me a map and I turn into Forest Gump in Death Race 2000.
Can you tell that driving is not my favorite thing in the world? Oh, with short distances I’m okay, but the fabled American Road Trip? Inwardly, I shriek in horror. Aside from the monotony, it gives you too long to think about things, and eventually your mind starts either sorting through useless trivia or dusting off memories best left in cold storage. Or, at least, mine does.
I’m good for about four or five hours cooped up inside a car, and then I need open space, food, and a bathroom—and that’s the best case scenario, when I’m traveling with other people who can share the drive and conversation. (The last actual road trip I’d taken with another person was during the summer after high school graduation, when a bunch of us drove to Cleveland to see an Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert as our big pre-college blowout.)
Now imagine driving alone for well over a thousand miles with a corpse your only companion. A Hope & Crosby On The Road movie this was not.
I’d been traveling for almost 14 hours and it was getting seriously dark. I was tired, I was upset, I was hungry, the coffin and its passenger were creeping me out to the nth degree, I needed to stretch my cramping legs, I’d missed the rest-stop entrance a few miles back (I was busy trying to make out the TripTik printing under the dim glow of the dome light), my bladder was grumpy, and I was pretty sure that I’d gotten onto the wrong stretch of highway at the interchange, so I decided, fuck it, I was going to take the next exit and find an all-night gas station and ask for directions.
That’s right—ask for directions: I am not one these guys who feels genetically obligated to never admit that he’s lost. If I’m going somewhere I just want to get there, preferably not too far behind schedule, in one piece and with my sanity intact; if that means I have to endure some twenty-something kid behind the counter of a Sip & Piss laughing at me under his breath as he shows me the best way to get back to where I need to be, well…there are worse humiliations that can be suffered, even if I sometimes do feel like belting that kid one upside the head. (And I swear it seems like it’s always the same kid behind the counter, regardless of where you stop; personally, I think they’re being manufactured in some top-secret government facility dedicated to creating as many aggravations as possible for American drivers so we don’t notice that the gas prices always start to go up on Wednesday night, right about rush hour.)
According to my TripTik, the next exit—happy-happy-joy-joy—was twenty miles farther down the highway. If I was right and it turned out I should’ve taken the I-70 West ramp, then I was almost 25 miles away from where I should have taken the exit, which meant by the time I got back to where I needed to be I’d be about 50 miles in the hole.
I turned up the radio, which was tuned to a “classic rock” station, and was just in time to hear the DJ introduce The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” with the words: “Can you believe this song is older than I am?”
I wanted to reach through the radio waves and strangle the little fucker.
I don’t think of myself as being ancient (I’m only 44), but it still blows my mind that there are people out there who don’t remember when “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”, and even Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” were brand-new. Hell, half the DJs working these “classic rock” stations probably have no idea that “Smoke On The Water” tanked in the U.S when it was released as a single from the Machine Head album; it was only when it released as a single from Made In Japan that it became the monster smash—not to mention the first riff every kid learns to play once they get a guitar—we all know and pretend to loathe.