He looked first at SylviaTheCunt, then at me, then at Leslie, then at Bran who was seeing and hearing this for the first time—which may have been why he hadn’t attended the burial ceremonies—and finally, at my right but Jimmy’s extreme left, Missy. She hadn’t spoken all day.
But I’d make book she knew what was coming.
Jimmy stared at us, and we stared back at him. He kept us waiting. I don’t know what the others wanted—vindication, protestations of love, vast wealth, security for their twilight years, remorse, the slam bang of gin and vermouth, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings—but all I wanted was to be turned loose. Tempest-tossed, righteous card-carrying wretched refuse, I merely yearned to breathe free. To sever the bond with Jimmy. I heard a sound. I’ll tell you what that sound sounded like:
On July 28, 1945, a foggy Saturday on the East Coast, Army Air Forces Lt. Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr. took off from Bedford, Massachusetts in a B-25 light bomber for La Guardia. Field in New York. A few minutes after 10:00 A. M. Lt. Col. Smith crashed his two-engine bomber into the north side of the Empire State Building at the level of the 78th and 79th floors.
On the 75th floor of the Empire State Building an office worker who had come in to do some extra work over the weekend heard a sound. A terrifying, ominous, hurtling-toward-him sound. He looked out the window to see, emerging from the fog, ten tons of screaming airplane rushing toward him at 225 m.p.h.
I sat staring, waiting for Jimmy to speak to us from beyond the grave. I heard a sound, rushing toward me out of the fog at 225 m.p.h.
This is how Jimmy died.
The story was in all the papers.
It was pried loose, finally, from one of the three culeros they pulled out of the other wreck. All three of them lived; one of them lost his left leg; one of them has no teeth. But that was Jimmy, not the crash.
Appropriately enough it was Halloween. That’s Bradbury’s favorite holiday; and it’s mine, and it was Jimmy’s. It was last week.
Jimmy had spent the evening at a party thrown by one of the two married couples who had been inside the black, plush velvet, upholstered ropes at the burial ceremonies. Huck and Carol Barkin. She’s an architect, he’s a writer. They were very close to Jimmy.
Around midnight Jimmy had left. He’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, perfectly sober and, in fact, had been drinking Perrier since ten o ‘ clock. That figures in the story.
He took a cold quart bottle of Perrier with him when he left, swigging it straight from the mouth to his mouth in the car. Then he realized he was almost out of gas, probably couldn’t make it back to the Valley and the ancestral manse, went looking for an open station on a holiday, near midnight, in Los Angeles where odd-even allocation is taken seriously.
He found a serve-yourself that was open, but they wouldn’t let him fill up because it was an odd-numbered day and he had license plates that ended in an even number. So he pulled off to one side and waited for the clock to run past midnight when it would be the next day and he could get pumped up.
I wasn’t there, no one was there in his head, but I know what he was like, and from the story the culeros told, it had to have happened like this. And even if it didn’t let’s see how well we can get inside the characters, let’s see how fluidly we can carry the action, let’s see if we can plumb the intricate motivations. This is called sensitive, creative writing; full of heat, Jimmy; pulling the plow, Jimmy; getting the powerhouse up to peak efficiency.
What we need is a good opening, a tough literary hook.
Kerch Crowstairs slumped behind the wheel of the Rolls Corniche, listening to the second movement, the Allegro appassionato, of Brahms’s Concerto in B-flat major. In the chopped and channeled Chevy beside him the raucous clatter of the Eagles banged uneasy counterpoint…
No, too esoteric. Not Hammett enough.
How about this:
He was distracted. Thinking about the past, the future, indefinite times and opportunities passing too fast for analysis. Under him the Rolls hummed softly, waiting for the light to change. Beside him three Chicanos in a decked Chevy raced their motor. Drag for pink slips, mister?
No, too diffuse. Not enough oomph.
I can’t do it, Jimmy. I can’t write like you! I can talk and think in your voice, because I can hear you… I’ve always had phonographic recall. But I can’t put it down in your bloodthirsty Visigoth way.
What happened was…
He filled the tank. He drove back out onto the street. He was listening to the classical music on KFAC-FM. He was smoking his pipe. He was sitting at the light, waiting for it to change, simply enjoying the cool night air and the pleasant music and the smoke rising from the pipe. The empty Perrier bottle lay on the passenger seat. A car pulled up beside him in the left lane. Someone spoke in the night. He was caught up in the gentle feel of the music washing over him, the sense of ease and leisure. He was relaxed. For once, he wasn’t on, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t hyper. He was feeling good; and he paid no attention to the voice. But it spoke again, louder, coarser, directed at him. He looked across. Two young men, late teens, maybe early twenties, in the front seat. Another one in the back seat, looked asleep. The kid closest to him yelled again. “Hey! Cabrón! What’re you smokin’ in the pipe?” The’ light changed. He took off. At the next light they raced up, gunned the motor, closer to his lane now. “Hey, man, de dónde? I ast you what the fuck you smokin’ in the pipe?” He stared ahead. He didn’t want any hassles. God, don’t these lights change? “Hey, mamador, you gonna answer me or I’m gonna come over there an ‘ whip your ass?” He lOOked at them. If Rich Garza or Pano Del Rio were here, they’d have just the right words to back these clowns off. But he was alone. “I’m smoking Essence of Asshole,” he said: “I’m smokin’ your mama.” And the light changed, and he hit it. They ran up his tailpipe to the next light. Jesus, how many lights are there before the freeway? As he screeched to a halt the one on the passenger side jumped out and came across to grab him. He dumped it into reverse, backed up three feet, threw open the door and knocked the silly sonofabitch flat on his ass. Then he took off through the just-changing light. Behind him the passenger was climbing back aboard as the driver decked it. They caught him at the next light and he thought about going straight through: the freeway was one street up. But now the adrenalin was pumping. He stopped at the light and grabbed the empty Perrier bottle. When the passenger got to his window he swung the bottle in his left hand with a flat, scythelike movement and busted out the guy’s teeth, emptied his mouth and sent him careening backward into the Chevy. Then he went through the light, turned sharp left, ran down the side street to the freeway entrance, hit the ramp doing sixty and was on the San Diego before the driver could load his buddy back into the trashwagon. ¡Huo de la chingada!
They caught him just beyond the interchange of the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways. He was in the fast lane, the number one next to the divider. He was doing seventy-five. The Chevy came up on the right and the berserk latino swung it over hard; lock to lock, maybe not—but hard. The Rolls took it just behind the door, slewed into the cyclone fence, scraped along throwing sparks back in a fan, then shot ahead as Jimmy floored the Corniche. ¡Puto pendejo!
Doing ninety, he cut out of the number one lane, slanted across the second, third and fourth lanes, and ran away. The Chevy caught up on the grade leading through the saddle of the hills to the Valley. The culeros rear-ended him. Hard; once twice three times. Jimmy braked, speeded up, cut in and out, but the Chevy was hot, it ran him down like a bulldogger. ¡Vatos locos!