I Am A Terrible Driver
“Hey, man. I just think I should tell you, I’m a terrible driver,” I say.
Tim shuts the passenger door and says, “That’s ok. My girlfriend’s a bad driver, too. I’m still alive.”
“Fucking bitches,” I say as I put the car in first and nose into traffic. I drive east on Central toward the mountains. “You know, sometimes I think the phrase ‘castrating bitches’ just isn’t descriptive enough, you know,” I say. “It’s like, yeah. The Erinyes were wicked bitches, but—” I pause to beep the horn in three long bleats.
“Jesus christ,” Tim says. “What the hell are you doing?”
A heavy man walks across the street. He looks as if he is propelled by an stuttering source of power. Even though he doesn’t come to a complete rest at any one moment, it seems as if he pauses frequently to rally his strength. His sweat slicks and shines on his visible skin as he crosses no more than five feet in front of us in the middle of the crosswalk. He has the light.
“Fatass has to move his fat ass,” I say.
“He’s got the walk signal,” says Tim.
“Shut the fuck up. Don’t tell me how to drive. You’re the one who needs a fucking ride. Your nigger Jew of a girlfriend took your guys’ car so you’re kind of stuck with me,” I say.
“Fuck you,” Tim says. He reaches for the doorhandle to get out. He fumbles the door open. As it unclicks and he reaches back across his body to unbuckle his seatbelt, I shift back into gear and gun the engine. The heavy man walking in front of us turns with reflexes you wouldn’t have suspected his big frame possessed and looks directly in my eyes as my car’s bumper scoops him from the knees up and onto the hood. His body describes a brief, graceful arc through the air and lands in a small crater in the middle of my car. The heavy man makes a wounded-looking sound with mouth. I reach out and turn up the radio, then lean and reach across the car to close Tim’s door.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say. The heavy man slides off the hood and returns to his feet like a ball of paper uncrumpling. “See, he’s fine,” I say. The light changes and I steer around the heavy man. I give him a jaunty three-tap salute with the horn.
Tim looks around the car. He looks any place but where I am. “Holy christ! That man, he could be hurt.” He puts his seatbelt back on and stares straight down the road. It’s one of those blinding blue days where the light seems to hurt your fillings. There’s little traffic. Each car we pass is light up in a nimbus of unavailability, hidden by the light.
We’re aside a half-fixed up blue Chevy. I tilt my entire upper body as I turn the wheel into the car. It feels languid and satisfying as when you cut a lemon and feel the knife edge poised to break the thick, pitted skin. Before the bitter citrus spume. The cars connect as a light nudge. The blue Chevy, though, steps on his breaks and overcorrects. I see him in the mirror fishtailing. I think he hits a light post.
“Did you see that fucking Mexican with his piece of shit car? What a fucking wetback,” I say. I try to make Tim look at me. I reach over and nudge his shoulder with my half-closed hand. Tim flinches and doesn’t turn. “Well, whatever. Now maybe he can get his car fixed,” I say.
We continue east on Central and turn toward I-25. There are no cars around us, now. A roadrunner herk-jerks across the street. I gun the engine, but the roadrunner is a little faster. I decelerate and scan the horizon, but there’s nothing, emptiness in front of us. I start to sing. The radio plays “Wheel in the Sky.” I look over to Tim, but he’s at sea. He looks green.
I take the next exit, thinking briefly I can run down a crossing guard. He scuttles quicker than claws back to the curb. It’s the time children are let out of school. They’re all on buses. The walkers are just now being released. The city tries to protect itself, but I see its seems. I see how it comes apart. Driving across it, I see how it is poorly secured—a buttress pro tem—against the everyday malevolence and terror one proud defier. I think, It’s no wonder Lucifer was cast down. One is all it takes against the many who are so dispassionately connected. I turn onto fourth and glide.
“This is your stop, right,” I ask. He nods. We’re in front of one of those profoundly thick post-war office buildings. The kind they built to withstand a nuclear blast. Its doesn’t sit on the ground so much as rise from it. Glass is constantly, slowly melting. Big, old panes of glass are noticeably thicker towards the bottom. This building melts up. Its futurism-loving architect couldn’t kill the joy of naturally rising bodies. The specifically organic fight against gravity. The living conquers the dead, massive spheres.
I pull up to the curb and scrape the front passenger tire hard against the curb. There is a pop, and I wonder if I have all the pieces to the jack.
“You really are a terrible driver,” Tim says.
