The Drive Read online

  ‘Why isn’t it called Café Trevor?’ I asked him.

  He just shrugged. Whatever. I bought an orange juice from him. Also, I bought a postcard with a picture of the Welcome to Trevor sign on it. I sat down at one of the tables and drank my juice. Afterwards I lit a Lucky Strike and started scribbling on the postcard.

  Beatrice.

  On my way. Met a Slovakian girl in the town of Trevor. She had green hair and a waterbed. It was a bad scene. I’m through with girls. Not just European girls, but all girls (except you, obviously – but you don’t really count, you’re more than a girl). I’ve been making a lot of vows lately and I think I’ll add that to the list: no more girls. I’ll see you soon, hopefully in San Francisco, hopefully with better stories to tell.

  From Trevor, in Trevor.

  The postcard had pre-paid postage. I dropped it in a nearby mailbox, then got my map from the car and brought it back to my table. I studied the land to the south, tracing my finger along various routes. If I really wanted to avoid girls, I’d need to avoid all those places that girls typically inhabited, including towns and cities. I’d have to pick the most isolated stretch I could find, a barren part of America. I’d drive into it alone, a man in the wild.

  As soon as I’d decided that, and begun to fold up my map, I heard a distant drone – like the humming of locusts. It got louder and louder, crescendoing into a roar. People on the sidewalk stopped to look down the street. Coming towards town, dragging a huge dust cloud, was a motorycle gang. They were all riding identical bikes: black-bodied choppers, crawling along low to the ground, with chrome handlebars that quivered like antennae.

  I stood up. The kid from the coffee shop came out to see, too.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked him.

  ‘The Cobras. Bad-ass dudes.’

  The Cobras were all dressed in jeans and leather jackets and black boots. Most of them also had on those little hard-hat helmets, with the chin straps dangling loose. They shuddered along in a single row, like a raging centipede. Their faces were completely blank and impassive, except for the one at the front. He led them slowly through town, turning his head back and forth as if he was looking for something. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses – so dark they seemed to swallow up everything. As he drew level with us, he glanced at me and did a double-take, as if he’d recognised me. He slowed down. We gazed at each other.

  ‘Don’t stare, man,’ the kid whispered.

  ‘I know that guy.’

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be the same biker I’d tried to bulldoze back in Vancouver. He sneered at me, then gunned the engine and snarled off, burning a wheelie. The others roared after him. They tore down the main street, en masse, and turned into the Toys R Us parking lot. People around me shook their heads and scurried away, hurrying in the opposite direction. I stared after the bikers as the kid started rearrranging his chairs.

  ‘What could they want at Toys R Us?’ I said.

  The kid snickered, and pointed to the table where I’d left my visor. ‘Maybe they want one of those.’

  I picked it up. Protectively.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ I said.

  chapter 29

  Somewhere south of Trevor I saw a sign for a town called Sprague. It seemed so bizarre that I unfolded my road map while I drove to check. I thought I might have imagined it. But it was there, all right. Sprague existed. I covered the ‘S’ with my thumb, so that only ‘prague’ remained. My head was still leaden with vodka and I stared at those letters for a long time, trying to decipher what they meant, what they represented. Then the wind rushing past my window caught the map. It flapped up in my face and started fluttering ferociously, like a giant paper bat that had flown into my car. I swerved back and forth, swinging from the shoulder to the centre line, before I managed to shove the bat-map aside and straighten out.

  The thing is, it was the day I should have been flying out to Prague. Somewhere, in another dimension, a different version of me was landing at the airport, and clearing Customs, and striding into Arrivals. Zuzska would be waiting for me there, in one of those hard-backed airport chairs. She would stand and stretch, languid as a cat, and make her way over to me. She would kiss me and call me stranger and ask me if I’d missed her. Then she’d tell me where we were going, what we were doing. She always had a plan, Zuzska did. The last time I’d visited, in February, she’d driven me straight to her place – one of those Soviet-era apartment blocks – and taken me upstairs to the roof. The night before, she had flooded one corner with water and let it freeze, creating a personal ice rink for us.

  She’d held up two pairs of skates: white retro figure skates for her, and old-school leather hockey skates for me. I was almost as excited about those skates as the ice rink.

  ‘Your set were my father’s,’ she said, ‘so they might be a bit big.’

  We strapped on the skates and glided around up there, twelve storeys in the air. Her building was outside Prague proper, and from the top we had views of the entire city. We skated until evening, then stopped to watch the sunset. Of course, since it was Zuzska, we had to watch from the edge of the roof, within inches of the hundred-foot drop to the parking lot. I stood behind her, gripping her hips, dizzy with love and vertigo, as we gazed out together. The frosted towers and snow-capped spires glowed violet in the dying light. She explained that they called Prague the golden city, the mother of cities, the city of a hundred towers.

  ‘Who calls it that?’

  ‘Mostly travel ads, to lure the tourists.’

  ‘It worked for me.’

  She turned to face me, looking up. ‘Will you ever move here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I kissed her. Her lips felt cold and hard as marble. ‘One day.’

  She shrugged and pushed off, gliding away from me. I watched her curl in a circle, one leg stretched out behind in a figure-skater pose, her body forming a perfect ‘T’ shape. There was a crescent-shaped crack in the ice between us, like a grimace on a frozen face.

  At the next exit, I turned off and took a detour through Sprague. On the way in I spotted a stone archway, with the town name painted on the crosspiece. From there I rolled on to First Street. It started with what might have been an abandoned gas station – the sign stripped, the tanks paved over. The next block was just a gravel lot, filled with rusty trucks and tractors. I passed a three-legged dog, which hobbled along after me, and a brick garage tagged with a snarl of graffiti: Love hurts. There was also a tavern and a tackle shop, both closed down. The only tower was a decrepit water tower, tottering on rickety stilts, like a broken-down satellite.

  At the other end of the drag was an Art Deco building – maybe an old movie theatre – with its windows boarded up. Sitting on the kerb out front was a teenage girl, who looked about fifteen or so. I stopped in the middle of the road and waved to her.

  ‘Do you live here?’ I called.

  She stood up. She was wearing acid-washed jeans and a Misfits sweatshirt, with the hood cinched tight around her face and her hands buried in the pouch. She peered at my car.

  ‘Are you a cop?’ she asked.

  ‘No. The cops might be after me, though.’

  She sighed, and pulled out a pipe she’d been hiding in her pouch. The bowl was still smouldering and I could smell the bud. She took a long hoot and said, ‘Yeah – I live here.’

  ‘Sprague looks pretty fucked.’

  ‘It is fucked, man.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  I stayed there, with the engine idling. She sidled closer. I think she expected me to ask for directions. Instead I asked her for some weed. She didn’t have enough to sell me, but she let me take a toke from her pipe – one of those psychedelic glass pipes. I took a hoot and held it and thumped my chest with a fist, feeling the tickle. It was bad weed – stale and dry.

  ‘I’m supposed to be in Prague right now,’ I said, coughing.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  I told her it didn’t matter.

  I
left the interstate at Sprague and headed south on Highway 23. I passed other towns, with names I can’t remember. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was concentrating on the road and trying not to think about Zuzska. It wasn’t easy. Whenever I blinked, or turned my head, I’d catch a glimpse of her in the corner of my eye, the corner of my mind. She’d taken her place in the passenger seat again. I refused to acknowledge her, so she started pestering me.

  I don’t know why you cancelled your flight.

  I didn’t answer. I just kept driving.

  If you hadn’t, we could have made up, made it work.

  I glanced at her. She was wearing her green dress – the one in a soft cotton fabric with elastic shoulder straps. I loved that dress. She looked so fucking sexy in it that I actually felt sick with longing, as if my stomach had been slit open.

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  But instead you stop talking to me and take off on your big trip. What’s the point of all this? She gestured at the passing landscape. You’re not going to get me back, you know.

  ‘I don’t want you back.’

  So you’re doing it out of spite. Like a child.

  ‘Think what you want. I don’t care.’

  To spite me. To spite yourself. She twisted a strand of hair around her finger, in that way of hers. What is that saying? That English saying? You would cut off your nose to spite your face. That’s you. We don’t have a saying like that in Czech, because it is so stupid.

  I told her I didn’t care. I called her kurva, a whore.

  She shrugged. Isn’t that what you found so attractive?

  At one point I began to feel dizzy and had to pull over. It was partly my hangover, partly hunger and exhaustion. I sat with my forehead resting on the wheel and sweat dripping off my nose. I stayed like that for fifteen or twenty minutes, taking deep breaths. I might even have dozed off. I had moments where that happened – where my body remembered that I wasn’t feeding it, and tried to shut down. Then at other times I’d feel fine. A little light-headed, maybe, but generally fine.

  Poor pig-boy, I heard Zuzska’s voice, whispering in my ear. You should eat.

  I started the engine again. ‘I told you I’m not eating.’

  Later in the day I crossed a bridge over a creek bed, dry and cracked and split down the middle by a thin trickle of water. On the far side lay Oregon. The border was marked by a sign, in the shape of the state: Welcome to Oregon. We Hope You Enjoy Your Visit. Somebody had blasted the sign with buckshot.

  Oregon looked pretty much the same as Washington, except less developed and more arid. Me and my Neon drifted along through forests of ponderosa and western pine. Every twenty or thirty miles I came upon a rest stop or gas station. The gas stations had posters in the windows, or banners above the awnings, advertising guns and ammunition and hunting licences for sale. It was hunting season, apparently. Other than those places, I didn’t see any buildings or communities. I was sticking to my latest vow and avoiding civilisation and people of all kinds – especially the female variety. The back roads and backwoods were the best place for that. There weren’t any girls at all out there. Except for the one that kept appearing beside me.

  I don’t like these woods, she announced at one point. All the trees look dead.

  She was right – the trees did look dead. Their bark was going grey and the needles had turned stiff and yellow, like the hair of a corpse. But I wasn’t about to agree with her.

  ‘Please stop talking to me. Please go away.’

  She placed her foot on the dash, flashing a bit of calf. Don’t you like the company?

  ‘Not yours.’

  But you miss me, don’t you? You miss your one true love.

  ‘I don’t love you. All my love’s turned black with hate – like a burnt soufflé.’

  She pretended to be shocked, raising her eyebrows and covering her mouth with a hand. She was a great actress, Zuzska. I don’t believe you. You don’t really hate me.

  ‘Right now I do. I hate you so much I could kill you.’

  You couldn’t kill anything.

  ‘Yes, I could.’

  I pointed my finger at her, like an imaginary gun. I tried to imagine it, too. Having her in my power, at my mercy. I pulled the trigger.

  ‘Bang. Just like that.’

  She let out a little shriek, and vanished.

  chapter 30

  The pines outside my window grew thinner and thinner, smaller and smaller, until they lost their needles and shrivelled up and disappeared entirely. I’d left the woods and reached a low, rolling plain of brush and scrubland that stretched south to the horizon. On the other side – way out there – I saw a mountain with twin peaks. It was so far off it appeared almost translucent, like a frosted shard of glass jutting up through the troposphere.

  At the edge of the plains was a gas station. I pulled in to fill up. In the parking lot, gathered around a couple of pickup trucks, was a group of men. They were all dressed in camouflage jackets and hunting hats. I was careful not to look at them as I filled up my tank. I could hear them, though, talking and laughing. I thought they might be talking about me, and laughing at my visor. I took it off and tossed it on the back seat. Then I figured they were just talking and laughing, in the way guys do. The longer I listened, the more alone I felt.

  After I paid for my gas, I ambled over to their circle. There were half a dozen of them, all smoking and drinking Pilsner. An open cooler sat in the bed of the truck, next to a gun rack laden with hunting rifles.

  They parted to make room for me.

  ‘Get anything today?’ one asked me.

  He had thin legs and a big chest, which he kept puffed out like a bird’s. His hat sat low on his head, so the brim shielded his face.

  I shook my head. ‘No. Not me.’

  ‘Bagged us a couple of bucks.’ He jerked a thumb towards the truck. Draped across the hood were two deer, splayed out on their bellies – as if they’d run a long way before collapsing in exhaustion. ‘Nice, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Nice.’

  Since they were all smoking, I got out my smokes, too, and my grandpa’s lighter. I couldn’t do that trick – the one-handed Zippo flick-trick – but I’d been practising striking it on the thigh of my jeans. I tried that. It didn’t work. I dropped the Zippo in the dust. I bent down to get it, then flipped it open and fiddled with the flint. They were all watching me.

  Finally I got the cigarette lit.

  ‘Can I see that lighter?’ the pudgy guy asked.

  I handed it over to him. He studied the service number on the side.

  ‘My grandpa was a peacekeeper,’ I explained.

  He nodded, satisfied, and handed it back.

  ‘My uncle went to ’Nam,’ he said. ‘Hell of a thing, that. Never got over it.’

  They all murmured agreement. For a while, they talked about how messed-up Vietnam had been, and told stories about all the terrible things that had happened over there. Like how this guy had got his dick cut off and stuffed in his mouth. Then one of them said that the shit going down in the Middle East wasn’t much better, and that the army was no place to be.

  ‘I tried to enlist,’ the pudgy guy said. ‘But they rejected me because of my feet. I’m pigeon-toed, see? That’s why they call me Pigeon.’

  We looked down at his feet. His buddies must have known all about his pigeon toes and his nickname, but they looked anyway. And it was true. His toes angled slightly inwards.

  ‘People with pigeon toes can run fast,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I told them!’ Pigeon threw up his hands, exasperated. ‘See? This kid knows. But the doctor wouldn’t sign off on my medical. I could have been a sharpshooter!’

  They all agreed. Apparently he was a good shot, this Pigeon guy. He’d been the one to kill the first deer that morning. He started bragging about how he’d shot it from half a mile away. That was far for a rifle, I guess. All the other guys nodded along. In the middle of his story, though, I heard a
familiar drone in the distance, zeroing in on us. The dust cloud came next, and then the biker gang, streaking out of the woods like a long black snake. They didn’t stop for gas. They just rumbled on towards the lowlands, their chrome handlebars flashing in the sun. Pigeon and the other guys stared at the ground, at their beer cans, at the sky.

  After they were gone, Pigeon didn’t finish his story. Nobody spoke for a bit. We stood around, spitting in the dirt, until one of them said, ‘Fucking bikers. Think they’re so tough.’ That seemed to make everybody feel better. They got out another round of beers, and offered one to me. We cracked the tabs open together, the sounds echoing each other.

  Pigeon pointed at my licence plate. ‘You a Canuck, huh?’

  ‘That’s right. From Vancouver.’

  ‘Down here for hunting season?’

  ‘I don’t have a gun.’ I fiddled with my pull tab. ‘I’ve never shot a gun, actually.’

  They all gaped at me.

  ‘You’re shitting me,’ one said.

  ‘No – really.’

  ‘Hell,’ Pigeon said. ‘You should give it a try, boy. Otherwise you’ll never get any hair on your chest. You know what they say – a man’s not a man until he’s fired a gun.’

  I’d never heard anybody say that before, but I guess it’s an American thing. ‘I want to go to a shooting range, somewhere along the way.’

  Pigeon burped. ‘Who needs a shooting range? Come shoot with us this afternoon.’

  ‘I’d suck too bad.’

  ‘So what? We’re not going after no more deer. Just picking off a few pheasants for kicks, with the handguns. Up in them woods.’

  ‘So long as he doesn’t shoot his own pecker off,’ one of them said.

  Pigeon chuckled. ‘Think you can manage that, boy?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  chapter 31

  In the back of his Jeep, Pigeon had about a dozen attaché-style steel cases. He opened them one by one. Each case contained a different handgun, either a revolver or a semi-automatic.