“Deal,” Jake said, not sure if his Dad was playing the same game he was, or if his father knew his son was playing at all.
“Any chance I can borrow a car?” Jake asked, pushing the envelope. “I need to put mine in the shop for a few days.”
“You feeling responsible?”
“Always,” Jake answered. What he didn’t want to be called was irresponsible by a man who was the definition of the word. He deserved more than that. Eighteen months of dragging his mother to the hospital. A year of making every meal, doing all the cleaning, all the shopping. Six months of carrying his mother to the bathtub, bathing her, giving her medication. Responsibility was something he understood more deeply than his father ever would.
“Stop by the house and Camille will have the keys to the Porsche ready.”
“Your new car?” Jake asked, feeling a fleeting twinge of guilt. “Dad I can’t.”
“Sure you can, Jake. Just remember it has about three hundred fifty more horsepower than your Subaru.”
“Okay. I’ll be careful.”
“Atta boy.”
As Jake walked out, his father smiled. He could control anyone, but his son was easy. His son was just like him. As the elevator doors began to shut and Jake turned to press the button, the unmistakable sound of a particular bell attached to a particular key ring still in Jake’s pocket let out a “ding.” For a split second that lasted entirely too long, Jake’s eyes met his father’s.
Chapter 27
Camille answered the door with a smile, and Jake fell back into immediate infatuation. There was just something about his father’s domestic help. A spiritual connection that transcended current circumstances. Before Jake could ask, Camille reached into the pocket of her blue apron and produced the keys to the one hundred thirty-one thousand dollar automobile.
“I believe you have come for these?”
“Thank you,” Jake said as Camille placed the keys in his hand. “How have you been?”
“I’m good, Jake. How about you? How’s work with your father?”
“Work with my father?” Jake asked pensively. “Something tells me you already know the answer to that question.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Jake.”
“In that case, I guess there is no reason to tell Reina thank you.”
“Like I said, Jake, I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Camille repeated.
Both knew the conversation Jake wanted to have wasn’t going to take place. He smiled. Camille smiled. And with a silent understanding, Jake stepped off the porch. “I’ll open the garage door for you,” Camille said, as Jake walked down the stone path in front of the house.
Jake sat in the car, still safely parked in the garage. He rubbed his hand across the top arc of the wheel, depressed the clutch, and ran through the gears of his father’s candy-apple-red Porsche 911 Turbo convertible. He turned the key in the ignition with a mix of excitement and trepidation, and the four hundred forty-four horsepower engine came to life. Jake felt the vibrations rumbling through the seat and immediately understood German automotive engineering. With wheels still frozen to the pavement, one thing was already clear—the beast was built for business.
He eased the car into reverse and down the driveway. The large ceramic brakes were powerful, and the sudden grip of the brake pads on the rotor pushed his skull into the headrest at the end of the driveway. Definitely not the Subaru, he thought. Jake chugged out of his father’s neighborhood in first gear, the engine purring, begging for more.
Jake toured the winding roads near Georgetown Pike and cruised the quiet streets of Great Falls that were a dime a dozen among the woods that overlooked the Potomac on the Virginia side. At the entrance ramp to the GW Parkway, Jake needlessly checked the blind spot over his left shoulder, and punched it. The difference between a decade-old, four-banger station wagon with all wheel drive and a German sports car was measured by Jake’s white-knuckled grip on the wheel. He hit fifty before shifting out of second and passed eighty-five with the turbo kicking in. A hundred and ten was fast enough to scare him for the day, and he settled into the traffic at an uninspiring seventy mph in a car that cost more money than he had made thus far in his life. He turned the radio up, looked for someone to impress, and kept pace with the lower forms of automotive life.
He zipped across the Key Bridge against the evening rush hour traffic, thousands of cars straining to ooze out of the city on every available road. He made one trip down M Street and turned a few heads at a safe, almost-stalling speed of twenty-five. Just another young entrepreneur, lawyer, or son of a diplomat showing his worth. He turned toward home. One stop and then it was off to see Kate. Enough was enough. He missed her. He needed to tell her the truth. What better way to make a lasting impression than in a Porsche, he thought. It should have been the car company’s advertising slogan.
Jake turned left just beyond the fire station and drove by the sparsely populated parking lot on the far side of the three-story brick structure. Kate’s Lexus was there, next to the lone picnic table where they had had lunch weeks before. Jake was tired of calling, tired of leaving messages, tired of thinking that he had lost his girlfriend because of an annoying Turk named Hasad and his ambition with two strippers. Kate may not have wanted to see him, but he was giving her no choice.
A block from one of the main traffic arteries, the fire station stood in relative isolation. A string of small shops lined the street across from the station, next to a library that had been slated for destruction in favor of a more modern, more audacious building to store books. Jake paused at the stop sign, took a last look around for other cars or pedestrians, and hit the accelerator. The car lunged forward and picked up speed until the thirty-six hundred pounds of moving metal was halted by the laws of physics.
The eight-man fire-and-rescue team inside the station sat down for dinner for the third time. A two-alarm house fire had interrupted their first attempt at a hot meal. An octogenarian with a system full of Viagra and a twenty-three-year-old wife kept them away from their plates for a second time, as normal dinner hours for the rest of the world flew by.
The unique sound of crunching, twisting metal is rarely heard by fire and rescue personnel. They deal with the aftermath—the bloody faces, the missing limbs, the unidentifiable remains in an unidentifiable car. The accident scenes they knew were filled with screams of hysteria and cries of pain.
With the crash in their front yard, the firehouse sprang into action. There was no need for anyone to call 911. No need for a dispatcher to give them the address. The accident had come to them. As the professional men and women of the life support and rescue team prepared for work, the question on everyone’s mind was whether or not to get in the truck. The fifteen-foot doors to the station opened and the rescue team poured out across the driveway to the concrete utility pole. The candy-apple-red Porsche was still a Porsche, but its status as a legal street racer was going to depend on a very good mechanic.
Kate’s supervisor, the resident expert on accident extraction, reached the driver’s side first. He surveyed the damage to the inside of the car and calculated the possible injuries and potential exit strategies. The steering wheel rested within inches of the victim’s chest. The deflated remains of the car’s airbag hung like an unrolled condom in the space between. Another airbag dangled from the ceiling above the door. Hidden beneath the encroaching dashboard, the condition of the victim’s legs was unknown. He flashed his ever-ready penlight into the eyes of the victim and gauged his alertness. The victim looked back with lids wide open.