kissing and hugging us, our heads and hands. There were some bad things too, when I hated him for an hour or two to overnight or at least till I fell asleep, but these were outweighed by the good.” He looks at the car and passenger’s smiling and making a motion with his hand for him to roll his window down. Why, he thinks, something wrong? Looks at his door and one by Margo right in back of him. Everything seems okay, both flush with the frame and locked. “Margo, yours I know, but Julie, your door closed tight and locked? — I can’t see from here, the seat,” patting the one next to him and she says yes. Instrument panel hasn’t lit up that anything’s wrong. Maybe one of his tires is low — doesn’t feel it or that he’s got a flat. His seatbelt or some other thing could be hanging out of one of their doors — that’s happened. No, both seatbelts on his side are all right, he sees by checking his and quickly swiveling around to Margo. Julie’s he can’t see and it’d be too complicated to get her to check, though it could still be something hanging outside — coat sleeve, doll leg — well, last one not out of his — but like that. Passenger’s still looking at him and when he sees him looking back he motions to roll his window down. What is it, he mouths, something wrong? “No, nothing, I only want to say something to you.” Years later, but certainly not before the first or second year after it’d happened, since during that time he didn’t speak to anyone about it, he said to someone “So why the fuck did I roll my window down? Guy had said nothing was wrong so why didn’t I ignore him and go on or drop back or do anything to get away from them? I knew I didn’t like their faces. They weren’t nice faces. And this feeling about their faces didn’t come from after what happened that day either. They were sort of hard-boiled almost mean and kind of sly faces, especially the passenger’s. No, his was definitely mean and sly and much worse. It was disgusting, evil, thoroughly repulsive. Putrid. I didn’t read into his face well then because I wasn’t really looking at first and my feeling about people when I first met or saw them then was, well, everybody’s all right till they prove or someone else has proven it otherwise, but I can see it now. Evil also because he was trying to pass off that mean, sly, repulsive, putrid face as kind and helpful and nice, your gentlemanly next-door car passenger, and for a few seconds, after I’d had this much better instinctive bad reaction to or at least was skeptical about his face, I fell for it. The driver’s face was just go-along-with-anything-no-matter-how-evil-or-wrong, and look what that pig went along with. Die, you dirty bastard, die, die, and I hope by now he is dead from a knife or gun somehow and not just brain-damaged let’s say from some guy’s beating or clubbing, for what pain’s that if you don’t know it? But even better, some other evil bastard slowly and painfully clubbing his head and face at whatever prison he probably ended up in, till it killed him. The passenger was hopeless, bent or geared for the kill from the outset — something — for mayhem, rottenness, destruction, the game, intent upon it, which sounds fancy that ‘intent upon’ and ‘mayhem’ and ‘outset’ and ‘geared’ and ‘bent’ and so forth, or maybe that’s all of them, but that’s what he was. But the driver could have stopped him or just stopped it. He had control over the wheel. Unless the passenger took the gun off me and put it on him, or first put it on him and then me, or had two guns, one for him and other for me, and ordered him to stay close to our car, which he never would have done. They were buddies, for Christ’s sake, not that anything like friendship or that sort of thing would have had any hold on him. But he still wouldn’t have pulled a gun on the driver, for to do it means he might have to use it and if he did where would that have left the car? Off the road, smashed into one of those median barriers or a bus or truck on the other side. But I’m losing it, I’m losing it here. What I was saying was that the driver could have gone on, dropped back, done anything to pull his pal away from alongside us. So to me — nah, what’s in it to say that one was as bad as the other, et cetera. One killed, one could have dropped back or charged forward, either could have done something not to kill my kid, neither did. Life’s slime, they can’t be seen inside of or explained. But when the passenger asked me to roll my window down, to get back to before, I sensed something was wrong with his asking, for everything seemed okay with the car and us. Yet I still rolled it down — you figure it. Actually, I thought I’d maybe misinterpreted what he’d said that nothing was wrong and he only wanted to speak to me, and thought maybe he’s saying something’s wrong but nothing that important now but what I’d definitely want to know about for later. A brake light not working, for instance. Well, that I’d want to know about right now, though if one works maybe it’s not so immediately bad if the other doesn’t, but anyway it wouldn’t be something you’d signal or want to speak to a guy on the road for, is it? or maybe I’m wrong. But something — I just don’t know now what. Back directional signal not working or just that I didn’t signal when I changed lanes. Or better, as an example, that my exhaust pipe was hanging by a thread or one of my hubcaps was ready to come off — those would be things to know about right away. My mistake was an honest one, I’m saying, though where’s that get me today? Sly and slippery as they both looked, passenger more than driver, to be very honest I was thinking more of the safety of my kids and driveability of my car and also what it might cost if something like a hubcap flew off and got lost or the exhaust pipe hit the ground and smashed. And how else do you find out if your brake light and back directional signal light or one of those other things isn’t working — forget that I wasn’t signaling, for I always do — except through someone behind you on the road who sees it or when you take your car in for a tune-up or service and with the oil change they give you a twenty-point checkup as part of it as they often do. Or if you think to check the brake lights and so forth yourself because you’re taking a long trip — halfway across the country to Des Moines or whatever’s halfway across, which I of course wasn’t doing — or up to Canada as we’ve done. For those trips, to Nova Scotia and so forth, I always give the car a thorough check-through if I haven’t taken it in for a lube job recently, or even get a tune-up if it’s around that time for one or a few thousand miles before, and they do it. So, I thought this guy might know something I didn’t about my car and should find out, and rolled my window down. I never should have, I don’t know what I should have, but that for sure isn’t what I should have done. Which of course goes so much without saying, that it’s one of the dumbest things to have said, even if the same thing that happened to us could have happened if I hadn’t rolled the window down.” The passenger already has his window down and says “Hiya, Harry,” and he says “I’m not Harry, you must have the wrong person, is that all it was?” slowing down and looking at him and the road back and forth, and starts rolling the window up, thinking it was a mistake and this guy could mean trouble. Their car slowed down with his, maybe doing fifty now, and the guy’s smiling and says “You’re not Harry the hairy monster, or is it Hairy the harried monster? Is ‘harried’ a word? — tell me, I’m a little thick,” and he says, window half rolled up, “I think it is and I’m neither of those guys.” The girls are laughing; must have heard some of it about Harry and hairy and thought it funny. “Quiet down, kids,” he says and the man yells to them “Yeah, kids, cool it, pipe down, do what your hairy Uncle Harry tells you to or you’re in deep hot water with me.” “I’m their father, not their uncle, and if you don’t mind, please don’t threaten them. And really, it’s dangerous talking to another car while driving and staying so close like this, so I’ll see ya, okay?” and speeds up even if he thinks they’ll speed up with him, but he has to try it, and maybe they won’t or maybe they’ll shoot past him, the guy giving him the bird as he passes, and be on their way. They stick with him and he has his hand on the handle about to roll the window rest of the way up when the guy yells out, their cars just a few inches apart, “Oh it is now, Harry, oh is it, dangerous you say, talking to not a person but to another car, right? Well, my fucking Harry or hairy, and you are hairy, very faggot-fucking hairy, it’s as simple as all this, so