The Drive Read online

  Rummaging around beneath his table, he came up with a pack of those circular dime-sized batteries. He popped two into the little compartment on the side of the headband, then tried the switch again. The lights across the brim began flashing, like a big rainbow grin.

  ‘How much?’ I asked, reaching for my wallet.

  He wanted twenty bucks, but I was so eager and grateful that I gave him thirty. As he handed the visor over, I noticed a kid standing next to me. He must have crept up while we were fiddling with the visor. He was wearing ripped Jams shorts and a T-shirt daubed with ketchup stains. No shoes. He stood gazing at the toys, with this Tiny Tim look on his face.

  ‘Where are your parents?’ I asked him.

  ‘Dad’s at work,’ he said.

  ‘What about Mom?’

  He shook his head. He was a single-parent latchkey kid, like me.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school or something?’

  ‘It’s summer.’

  He went back to staring at all the toys. I couldn’t just let him stand there. I pulled out my wallet again. It was bristling with bills. I still had most of my camera money. I’d hardly even spent anything on gas yet. The Neon was great on gas.

  ‘What do you want, kid?’

  He looked at me. Doubtfully.

  ‘I’m not messing with you. It’s on me.’

  He pointed to an X-wing fighter. I paid the guy and he handed it to the kid. The kid stood there, holding it, as if he expected me to take it away, or tell him there was a catch.

  ‘Go on. Go play with your X-wing.’

  He scampered off. The old man winked at me. I thanked him and pulled on my new visor, and wandered around the rest of the market. I stopped at a stall called Trevor Video Bonanza, and bought Bea a copy of The Wizard of Oz, since we’d been joking about it on the phone. But as I moved off, perusing the remaining stalls, all these other kids in grubby clothes started coming up to me. Word had got around: the guy with the visor was a soft touch. He would get you anything you wanted – like Santa, except in the middle of summer.

  ‘Mister,’ one said, ‘I want some Construx!’

  ‘Buy me this G.I. Joe, will you?’

  I fled the market, hurrying back towards Main Street. A cloud of street urchins followed, swarming after me. I’d become like the Pied Piper of Trevor or something.

  As I rushed by the hunchbacked newsie, I called out, ‘Where can I go that these kids won’t follow?’

  ‘A bar,’ he said.

  I saw one up ahead: the Trevor Watering Hole. The hunchback was right: the kids didn’t follow me inside. Through the window, I could see them on the street, milling about and looking a little lost without me.

  chapter 26

  ‘Nice visor.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I like your visor.’

  A girl said that to me, in the bar. After escaping from the kids, I’d decided to stay for a while, and get drunk. It was a sports bar, but not the kind you’d expect to find in America. It had hardwood floors, ceiling beams, and smelled of mildew, like some of the beer halls I’d visited over in Europe. Instead of the usual pictures of baseball stars and basketball players, the walls were decorated with photos of figure skaters, gymnasts and cross-country skiers. Behind the bar hung an ice hockey jersey, signed by all the members of the Slovakian team.

  I’d been drinking alone in there all afternoon. Then this girl appeared.

  ‘Do you really like it,’ I said, ‘or are you just making fun of me?’

  ‘No – really. I like it so much that I’m going to buy you a drink.’

  She asked me what I was having, and I held up my beer bottle. I’d been nursing the local microbrew – Trevor Pale Ale – but it tasted watered-down. The girl knew it, too. She pushed my glass aside, waved the bartender over, and ordered two Stolichnayas instead. She said the name differently from how I would have, tasting each syllable on her tongue, using the correct pronunciation. The bartender seemed to recognise her. He tilted his head to her and murmured something in a language that sounded faintly familiar, faintly European.

  ‘Are you Slovakian?’ I asked her.

  She smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘My girlfriend was Czech. But we broke up.’

  ‘Good. We hate the Czechs. That’s why there is no longer Czechoslovakia.’

  When the vodka came, she sniffed her glass first – as if it were a flower – before taking a sip. Then she nodded, satisfied. ‘So sweet and clear. Like water.’

  She slid on to the barstool next to mine. She wasn’t big, like a lot of the girls in that place. She was thin, with a lean, long face and a lean, long body. Her hair was long, too. It hung straight down to her waist. It looked slightly damp, as if she’d just got out of the shower.

  ‘You’re not from this town,’ she said.

  ‘It’s that obvious?’

  She pinched the brim of my visor, and pulled it down over my eyes.

  ‘This gives you away. Don’t you know that saying, about being in Rome?’

  I looked around. All the other guys were wearing runners, faded jeans and tucked-in T-shirts – like extras from Footloose. Then there was me, with my blue visor and tank top.

  ‘I can get away with it,’ I said, pushing the visor back up, ‘because this town is named after me. Or I’m named after it, or whatever. Basically, my name is Trevor.’

  ‘And Trevor’s come all this way, just to visit Trevor.’

  She was teasing me, but you could tell she liked it, too.

  ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘you stand out even more. The rest of the chicks in here are either in mini-skirts or leotards or crazy leggings, and rocking hairstyles twenty years out of date.’

  She laughed. She was wearing a blue dress, sleek and shimmery as water, with straps that tied up at the nape of her neck. She told me that she was allowed to be different, but that it might get me in trouble.

  ‘Don’t worry, though,’ she said, ‘I’ll look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need looking after.’

  ‘All men want to be looked after. They want mothers.’

  ‘I never had a mother,’ I admitted. ‘She died when I was a baby.’

  ‘That’s so tragic, Trevor.’ She reached up to pat my cheek. Her palm felt cool and damp. ‘My little Trevor. I’ll spoil you rotten – starting with another round. Mother’s treat.’

  Two more vodkas appeared on the bar. I couldn’t remember finishing the first one. I’d been drinking at a steady canter all day, but this girl wanted to gallop. She took her vodka straight, without ice. Between each round, she would rinse out her mouth with water. They stocked a lot of exotic vodkas, and she insisted I sample them all. We drank like that, sitting at the bar, until the jukebox started playing. The first tune was some hit country song with a boot-stomping beat. A few people whooped and got up to dance. She took my hand.

  ‘Come on, Trevor. Dance with me.’

  ‘I can’t dance.’

  ‘You can dance. Mother will show you.’

  I had to obey her. She led me on to the dance floor, and I discovered she was right. I could dance. She made it easy. We twisted and turned together. In my arms she felt slim and slippery as a reed, swaying along to the music. After a few songs she made a drinking motion and went to get us more vodka. I stayed out there, shuffle-dancing on my own. At one point I accidentally bumped into the person behind me.

  ‘Looks like we got a live one here.’

  It was this guy wearing a jean jacket, straight out of the eighties. He had a bunch of friends with him. They were all wearing jean jackets, too. It was an entire jean jacket gang.

  ‘Nice visor, buddy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Your girlfriend bought it for me.’

  ‘What did you say, gaylord?’

  They all crowded in around me. The guy started bumping at me with his chest, like a belligerent sea lion. That made me laugh, so he shoved me, and I shoved him back. Then he grabbed me by the collar and was about to
deck me when she reappeared, sliding between us to break it up. She had a glass of vodka in each hand. She flung one in the guy’s face. I don’t mean the vodka, either. I mean the whole glass. It bounced right off his forehead – bonk – and clattered across the floor without breaking. She bared her teeth at him, ferret-like.

  ‘This is my new friend,’ she said, ‘and you’re leaving now.’

  She didn’t have to say anything else. The guy and his jean jacket gang melted away, like snowmen, and trickled out the door.

  ‘That was awesome,’ I said.

  She waved it off, as if it was nothing, and told me to keep dancing. So I did. A respectful space had been cleared for us on the dance floor. We danced for what must have been hours. Whenever I got tired, she’d say, ‘Don’t stop. Dance, Trevor. Dance.’ At one point, without my noticing, the music changed. It became jaunty and sad at the same time, like gypsy folk music. The other patrons were in a circle around us, clapping to the rhythm. She took one of my hands and raised it and twirled beneath it, pirouetting like a dancer.

  ‘Now you,’ she shouted over the music. ‘Your turn to turn.’

  I turned, making the bar spin, and it kept spinning even when I stopped. The walls and the dance floor and all the people around us blurred into a kind of kaleidescope. The only constant was her face, floating in front of me, like the centre of a spinning top.

  chapter 27

  Later the girl was holding me by the hand and leading me down the street. I stumbled along at her heels, still dizzy from all that vodka and dancing. I asked her where we were going, and she said that she was taking me home. I followed her past Toys R Us and out along the highway. There were no street-lamps, no cars. The only light came from the moon – a thin crescent poking up from the horizon like a splinter of bone. In the gloom her hair seemed to glisten green, as if she’d dyed it. The strands swayed hypnotically before me as we walked on and on and on.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I said.

  ‘Poor Trevor. Almost there, little one.’

  Finally we turned off at a gravel drive that wound up through a forest of willow and cottonwood trees. She murmured to me gently the whole time, telling me to watch my step, that she didn’t want me to hurt myself. Overhead the branches arched towards each other, blotting out the moonlight, and in the darkness I could no longer see her. She became a series of impressions: footsteps beside me, her hand in mine, the whisper of her dress, and a heady perfumed scent, citrus and sweet, like water lilies.

  At the end of the track we reached her house. It was built in the style of a European château, with faux-stone walls, a gabled roof, and matching turrets on either end. The yard was massive – about the size of a lacrosse field – and divided from the house by a sweeping driveway, where several pickup trucks and SUVs were parked. To reach the front porch we had to cross a wooden footbridge over a small moat or drainage ditch, filled with inky water.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You must be loaded.’

  ‘My family are here tonight,’ she said, and held a finger to her lips.

  ‘I thought it seemed like a lot of cars.’

  ‘We were having a gathering. Some of them had to sleep over, so watch out.’

  I didn’t understand what she meant until we stepped through the door and into the foyer. On the floor, lying at our feet, was a man-sized lump that looked like a carapace. I couldn’t make out the face or who it was, but I could see it rising and falling and hear the rhythm of its breath. We crept past it. In the hall, and the living room, there were more lumps – all breathing together, all shapeless and featureless. We had to tiptoe our way between them.

  ‘What are they?’ I whispered.

  ‘Shhh. They’re resting.’

  She led me down the hall to the room at the very end. It had an antique dresser in one corner, a four-poster bed, and a picture window with a view of the front yard and forest. I offered to sleep on the floor, like all the other guests, but she told me not to be silly. She was already undressing me. She removed my visor first and hung it on the door handle. Then my shirt slid off and my jeans fell away and I was left standing in my boxers. She guided me to the bed, and pushed me down on it. Beneath me the mattress rolled and sloshed and slurped.

  ‘Whoah,’ I said, popping back up. ‘I’ve never been on a waterbed.’

  ‘You’ll get a good sleep.’

  While she twisted the bracelets off her wrists and unclasped her necklace, I took a look around the room. On the walls she’d hung odd-looking charms, made out of wood and bark and bird feathers. I pretended to study them, but I was aware of her flicking off her shoes, peeling down her tights, shimmying out of her dress. She had a bony body. Her underwear was sleek and black, like her hair, and had a similar velvet sheen. She dived on to the bed, making it ripple, then rolled over and lay back and let her hair fan out across the pillows. ‘Come on,’ she said, beckoning me over. ‘Come to Mother.’

  I took my visor from the door handle and put it back on.

  ‘You don’t sleep in that, do you?’

  I posed for her, with my hands on my hips. ‘It’s my nightcap.’

  She laughed politely. I could tell it bothered her, but she didn’t say anything. I slipped on to the bed beside her and she drew the covers over us. They felt a bit clammy.

  I said, ‘I don’t think you dried your sheets properly.’

  ‘That’s just condensation on the mattress.’

  She reached over to dim the bedside lamp, and we settled down into watery darkness. I felt her wriggling around, heard the hiss of cloth against skin. She was naked now. And so was I. My boxers had vanished. I was stripped and limp and shivering. Her bed was so cold.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ve been having a little problem. With… you know.’

  ‘Shhh.’ She touched a finger to my lips. ‘It’s okay. We don’t have to do anything. Just this.’

  I clung to her, still shuddering.

  ‘You’re freezing, Trevor. But I’ll heat you up.’

  On my chest, I felt something sleek and soft. Her hair. She was rubbing it over me with her palms. The strands slid back and forth, up and down, in a slow-warming massage.

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said.

  ‘Sleepy-time for Trevor.’

  She started murmuring to me again, this time a sing-song lullaby in her own language. Her hair seemed to be under me, over me, all around me. I’d never held a girl with such long hair. It wrapped me up, enveloping me, soothing and comforting me, until I closed my eyes.

  chapter 28

  I was underwater and surrounded by seaweed. It covered my limbs, encircled my throat, and filled my mouth – choking me with cold. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or awake or in the middle of a waking dream. I thought my eyes were open but it was hard to tell because it was completely dark. The darkness seemed to be pressing in around me, pulsing like a heartbeat.

  I was still wearing my visor. I reached up, straining to raise my arm, and flicked the headband switch. The lights came on, warm and multicoloured, illuminating the room. I was in the girl’s bed, spreadeagled on my back and entangled in her hair. Locks of it, wet and water-heavy, covered us both in a kind of cocoon. A puddle had soaked through the sheets, which smelled of mould and mildew. The waterbed was leaking.

  I peeled strands of hair off my face, and bunches of it off my arms, my torso, my thighs. Each clump was thick and slippery as a snake, and seemed to slither away from my touch. It took a while to extract myself from all that hair, unwrapping my own body like a mummy. When I was finally free, I slipped away from her and rolled to the edge of the bed. My clothes lay scattered all over the floor. I gathered them up and crept towards the door, guided by the light of my visor.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She was sitting up. Her hair was soaked through, trickling down her throat, clinging to her shoulders and breasts. The damp made it glisten, and accentuated the greenish sheen.

  ‘Away from here.’

  She blinked and shielded her
eyes from the light of my visor, as if it hurt her. ‘But you need me to look after you, remember?’

  ‘I’ll look after myself.’

  I closed the door behind me. In the hall I manoeuvred around the lumps on the floor. They were still rising and falling, breathing and sighing. Even by the light of my visor it was hard to tell what they were, other than shapes that looked vaguely human. They could have been people in sleeping bags, or they could have been something else. Maybe her relatives all had hair like hers: hair to wrap you up, hair to hold on to you.

  Outside, I crouched to pull on my shoes. I still had my clothes in a bundle under my arm. I trotted down the drive, naked and shivering. Near the edge of the property I glanced back. At her window I saw a pale figure surrounded by a penumbra of hair that undulated as if underwater. She raised one arm. I couldn’t tell if she was waving goodbye, or beckoning for me to come back. I carried on into the woods, using the visor to light my way.

  The walk back to Trevor took me a solid hour. At the outskirts of town I stopped to pull on my jeans and shirt. By then the sun was a buttery bulge on the horizon. I’d dried off and warmed up a bit, and was just beginning to realise how truly terrible I felt. That vodka we’d been drinking had shrivelled up my insides. I had no piss or spit or bodily fluid left. It was as if she’d drained it all out of me. I needed a drink: pop or juice or water or beer. Anything.

  On the way in, I passed the Toys R Us again. My fairy godmother was setting up out front. She had a compact mirror, and peered into it as she smeared the pink make-up over her cheeks. When she saw me, she shook her head and made a clucking sound with her tongue.

  ‘I warned you, didn’t I?’ she said.

  I held up a hand. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  On the main street I found a coffee shop – Café Stanley. A tattered awning hung above the door, and a few plastic tables were arranged out front. The kid behind the counter looked almost as hung-over as me. He was cupping a foamy cappuccino between his palms.