The Drive Read online

  ‘Not really.’ He smiled, in an embarrassed sort of way, and handed back the tickets. ‘We received a terrorist threat yesterday, so I guess most people are keeping their distance.’ When he saw our faces, the guy added, ‘You can get a refund at the bottom if you want.’

  I asked Zuzska what she thought, but she said she wasn’t worried about terrorists.

  ‘Attagirl,’ the guard said.

  We had the whole observation deck to ourselves – except for this family of Sikhs who apparently hadn’t heard about the terrorist threat either. They were on the side facing Mount Rainier. We went to the opposite side, overlooking Elliot Bay and Olympic Park. The deck was exposed to the sky. Safety wires were strung crosswise around the perimeter to keep people from jumping. In places, though, there was a slight gap between the wires and the guard rail. It was a fairly bad design: a child could have slipped through. Or a skinny girl.

  ‘I bet I could get out there,’ Zuzska said.

  ‘I bet you could, too. Look – there’s a telescope over there.’ I tried to guide her away. In Italy, on Capri, she’d walked right to the edge of this hundred-foot cliff and stood there, on a crumbling outcrop, staring down. When it came to heights she was absolutely fearless.

  ‘Hold my bag.’

  ‘Zu –’

  She was already on her belly. She wriggled under the wire, soldier-style. There was a safety platform on the other side, about four or five feet wide. She stood up on it.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Zuzska.’

  ‘I just want to look.’

  She said it as if I was the one being unreasonable. I clutched her bag and watched her creep towards the edge. From there it was a straight drop to Seattle – over five hundred feet.

  As she peered down, I heard somebody cry out behind me, ‘Don’t do it!’

  It was that guard – the bowling pin guard. He rushed over, waving his arms. ‘It’s okay, man,’ I said.

  ‘Stay back! I’m trained to handle this kind of thing. Everybody stay back.’

  There was nobody around. Just me and him.

  ‘She’s only looking.’

  He wouldn’t listen. He shoved me to one side and held out his hands to her. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

  Zuzska had turned around. She gazed at me and the guard. She was only six inches from the edge. A low-lying cloud drifted by, wrapping her up like a shroud and obscuring the platform beneath her. For a moment it looked as if she was standing on air, on nothing.

  ‘However bad it is,’ the guard said, ‘it will pass. People care about you. People love you.’ He put his hand to his chest, over his heart. ‘I love you. Now come back, all right? Just come back and we’ll talk.’

  Zuzska stepped away from the edge. The guy kept encouraging her, convinced he was talking her down, and raised the safety wire so she could slip back under. When she stood up he grabbed her in a bear-hug. She looked at me over his shoulder, her expression poker-faced and priceless.

  ‘You’re okay now,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to jump,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I know you weren’t.’

  By that point the Sikhs had come over, too. Eventually two other guards showed up. They took Zuzska aside and gave her a real grilling. If she hadn’t been Czech, they probably would have taken her in, but it would be a pretty big hassle to charge a foreigner for something like that, and I guess they decided not to bother. Plus there was the issue of liability. They’ve changed the design of those safety wires since then, and I’m sure it was because of her.

  I’d reached the edge of the mist. Up ahead, long tentacles of fog snaked across the lanes and twisted between the other vehicles. Everybody was going slow to avoid crashing. I’d tried to stick to the highway and skirt around the city, but the mist was drawing me on, luring me in.

  From out of the haze a hotel materialised: the Harbourside Inn. That was where we’d stayed, after the Space Needle fiasco, as part of the package I’d booked. We got a suite on the top floor, overlooking the marina. There was even a private balcony. As soon as she saw that, Zuzska stripped down to her underwear and went to stand out there. The sun had gone down and against the night sky her body was slender and pale as a candle flame. I studied her and sipped the champagne I’d bought, feeling pretty damned romantic.

  ‘Come here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Rain is good for you.’

  I took the champagne out to her. We drank from those cheap hotel glasses and leaned against the rail, gazing down at the water. We could see the lights of various boats, bobbing above the waves like will-o’-the-wisps. When the champagne was gone, we had wild, feral sex. We did it all over the place: on the floor, the balcony, the dresser, up against the walls. Afterwards we collapsed on the bed, with the balcony doors open and a warm breeze curling the curtains. On the bedside table was a hotel pen and pad of paper. I picked up the pen and began drawing on her: tracing her ribs and ribcage, outlining her belly, her breasts, mapping the entire terrain of her body. As I did, I asked her, ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘While we were fucking?’

  ‘When you were standing on that ledge.’ I ran the pen up, encircled her nipple, and brought it back down to her solar plexus.

  ‘I was imagining what it would be like to jump.’

  ‘You’d fall and hit the ground and die.’

  ‘No. I would float. I would turn into vapour and float away like a cloud.’

  I stopped drawing, and imagined that. For her, I could almost believe it was possible. ‘What about me? How would I find you again?’

  ‘You’ll have to use your map.’ She stretched, arching her back, so that the body-contours I had created shifted and rippled like tattoos. ‘It’s the only map you’ll ever need.’

  I believed her at the time.

  chapter 18

  I didn’t tell my friends what had happened. It would have been like confessing that I’d been castrated. They’d never understood me and Zuzska, anyways. Most of them were involved in casual relationships that lasted for a few months. Then there was me, with my long-distance, long-term thing – a kind of romantic anomaly that seemed a bit unnatural, even suspicious. I knew exactly the kinds of advice they would have given me. They would have said to suck it up, that I was better off without that chick, that she had me completely pussy-whipped.

  The only person I could think to confide in – the only person I trusted enough – was Beatrice Carmen. She’d studied at the same language school as me in Prague. Zuzska had been her teacher too. The three of us had hung out together, along with the other students and expats and tutors that had made up our surrogate family in the Czech Republic. At one time or another, Beatrice had been a professional surfer, an actress, an animal rights activist, and a trauma counsellor for shell-shocked army vets. Then she got this job working at a women’s shelter in San Francisco. I called her up on Sunday morning, a couple of days after the wrap party.

  ‘Trevor,’ Bea said, as if she’d been expecting to hear from me, ‘how are you?’

  I was huddled up in bed with the last of my absinthe, cradling the bottle like a baby.

  ‘Not so good,’ I said. ‘It’s Zuzska.’ I couldn’t say any more. It was as if saying the words aloud would make it real.

  ‘I heard,’ Bea said. ‘She called.’

  That figured. If I’d done what Zuzska had, I would have wanted to confess it, too.

  ‘Talk to me, darling,’ Bea said.

  I told her about not sleeping. I told her that I was finding it hard to do anything, even simple things, like brushing my teeth or dressing myself. I told her that I’d been having murderous dreams and apocalyptic visions. I told her that I was drinking too much and thinking too much, that I’d started talking to myself like a schizophrenic. Eventually I ran out of things to tell her. On her end of the line, I could hear a metallic rasping sound.

  I asked, ‘Are you cooking?’

 
‘I’m making hash brownies. I’m being a pot-headed Julia Child for the day. I’ve even got my apron on.’

  ‘What’s the weather like there?’

  ‘Sunny. Twenty-three degrees. Offshore breeze of four knots. Low tide.’

  ‘Could you keep talking?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  She talked to me as she made her brownies. She told me a story about a psychology professor who had fallen in love with her in Baja, and followed her up the coast to propose. As I listened I stared at the photos on my wall. They were all from my year abroad. There was one we’d taken at a photo booth in the Perpignan train station. I was posing between Zuzska and Beatrice and they were both pretending to bite my neck, like vampires.

  ‘Bea?’ I asked. ‘Did Zu say anything about this joker?’

  There was a pause. That meant she had.

  ‘Is she in love with him or what?’

  ‘I can’t really talk about that, Trev.’

  I closed my eyes and burrowed my face in my sheets. They smelled like me.

  ‘Because you’re taking her side.’

  ‘I’m on both your sides. I love you both.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ I said. ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘You’re going to do whatever you need to do,’ Bea said, ‘to make things right. To make yourself better. Go crazy. Get drunk. Get high. Break something. Hell – break yourself. And remake yourself. Drop everything and get adventurous.’

  I opened my eyes and sat up, like a corpse coming back to life. ‘I’m thinking of going on a road trip.’

  ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Don’t think about it, do it. If you think too much, nothing will ever happen, nothing will ever change. Hold on a sec – I’ve got to pour this batter.’

  There was a clattering sound as she put the phone down. I listened to her humming and puttering about. I could picture her in her apron, with flour dusting her face and globs of batter on her hands. The sun would be streaming through the window, lighting up the scene like a snapshot from hash brownie heaven.

  Then she picked up the phone. ‘Where are you going on this road trip of yours?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  I didn’t want to tell her about my Nevada brothel idea. Beatrice was cool, but not that cool. Actually, it was the idea that wasn’t cool – so I saw no reason to share it with her.

  ‘Come visit me and Venus in San Francisco,’ she said.

  Venus was her new girlfriend – the one I hadn’t met.

  ‘Can you heal me?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you wounded?’

  ‘You could say that. I need a new heart.’

  ‘Like the tin man,’ Bea said.

  ‘Wasn’t that the scarecrow?’

  ‘The scarecrow needed a brain, and the lion needed courage.’

  ‘I need all three. Not to mention a new penis. Mine’s gone limp.’

  She laughed – this deep-bellied, lumberjack laugh. ‘Okay, honey. Come on down and we’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  I heard the creak of her oven door opening and closing, and Bea said, ‘Zuzska told me you’re not talking to her.’

  ‘Why would I?’

  I was still thinking about my trip, wondering if it was actually feasible.

  Bea said, ‘She’s pretty broken up about all this, too.’

  ‘I’ll call her eventually,’ I said. ‘When I’m ready.’

  chapter 19

  South of Seattle, the mist looked as thick and grey as sour milk. I couldn’t see the landscape, but I already knew what lay in that direction. I’d followed the I-5 out of Washington State before, with Zuzska. The previous year, we’d barrelled down in an old Chevy van to meet Bea and her then-girlfriend in Eugene, Oregon. Together, the four of us had roared south on the 101 – the famous highway that winds along the coast – and careened through Northern California, moving from campsite to campsite, consuming as much Americana as we could. We’d seen everything, done everything: sea lion caves and isolated surfing beaches, redwood forests and legendary vineyards, drunken dune buggy rides and Paul Bunyan’s colossal, forty-nine-foot statue.

  If I took that route, I’d be able to stop at those places, and retrace our steps. All I had to do was keep driving, and let the Neon continue deeper into the mist. It was getting thicker and thicker, caressing the sides of my car, slowly absorbing us. The other vehicles were now just vague shapes. Along the roadside, telephone poles rose up and floated past like the masts of long-lost ships.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, slapping my face.

  Through the fog, I spotted a turn-off east for the I-90. I reefed on the wheel, making an erratic transition on to the exit ramp. As I merged, another driver honked at me, but it didn’t matter – I’d broken clear. The mist fell away, withdrawing and retreating in the rear-view. I tapped the gas and the Neon picked up speed, as if relieved to be leaving Seattle behind. The sky was still cloudy, the air still charged with the static that precedes a storm, but at least we were heading in the right direction.

  A mileage sign swept by. We were 274 miles from Spokane and 262 miles from Cheney and 251 miles from Trevor. It gave me a little thrill, seeing my own name up on the sign like that. It had been the same when I’d passed through with my old man, all those years ago. I was about seven, I think. Mostly we went for the novelty value. There were stores in town with names like Trevor Grocery or Trevor Pharmacy or Trevor Gas Station. My dad took photos of me in front of all those places. Then, at Trevor Toys, he bought me a visor. The visor was made from clear blue plastic, with a rainbow headband and flashing lights all along the brim. I wore that visor everywhere: to school, to soccer practice, to bed. I even wore it in the bath. Part of the reason I wanted to go back to Trevor was to find a visor just like that one.

  ‘Trevor,’ I said, raising my coffee cup. ‘Get ready for the arrival of Trevor.’

  For about half an hour I meandered along, drinking whisky and huffing whippets. But the nitrous wasn’t having as much effect. The backs of my eyeballs ached and cloudy patches appeared in my vision, as if some of the mist from Seattle had infiltrated the car. Amid the haze of fatigue, I began to imagine seeing a female shape. I couldn’t help it. I pictured her sitting next to me, in the passenger seat, where she should have been. She was dressed in the same outfit she’d worn on our previous road trip: shorts and sandals and these Jackie Onassis sunglasses that were way too big for her but looked incredibly awesome. I turned on her.

  ‘How could you?’ I yelled, pounding the dashboard. ‘You cheating bitch.’

  She just smiled. She was pleased with herself, all right.

  ‘Who is this asshole, anyway? A Russian gangster? A shitty art fag? Who?’

  She shrugged, gazed out the window.

  ‘Does he tell you he loves you? Does he wake up early to sketch you while you sleep? Does he carry you home when you’re too drunk to walk? Does he know that spot at the nape of your neck where you like to be kissed? Does he have a bigger dick than me?’

  I went on and on like that, grilling her ghost and getting no answers. To shake her, I tried to focus on the bad times, the arguments. One of the things we’d argued about on that trip was food. Zuzska hated American food and American restaurants, but I always wanted to stop and eat.

  ‘I won’t eat that pig slop,’ Zuzska would say.

  ‘Zu-Zu,’ I’d say. I knew she didn’t like it when I called her that, and she knew I knew it – which was exactly why I called her that. ‘We’re going to have to eat some time.’

  ‘I don’t have to eat.’

  ‘Everybody has to eat.’

  Usually I would drag her to Taco Bell or Wendy’s or A&W. Once I even took her to Hometown Buffet. It was filled with frighteningly fat Americans – the kind who spill out of their own clothes and overflow the edges of their chairs and seem to jiggle and roll when they move. Strung above the buffet tables was a limp vinyl banner: $10 Mother’s Day Special.

  ‘I’d
forgotten it was Mother’s Day,’ I said.

  ‘We barely celebrate Mother’s Day.’ She stared at the other diners the way you might stare at overfed animals in the zoo, with a mixture of pity and disgust. ‘It’s like Valentine’s Day – one of those capitalist holidays that we didn’t even have before 1989.’

  ‘We never celebrated it, either,’ I said, ‘since I didn’t have a mother.’

  ‘Poor boy.’

  But she said it sarcastically – still pissed I’d lured her in there. At the buffet, she only served herself a small plate of salad. I loaded up with ribs and fritters and coleslaw. I ate all that in about five minutes and then began picking lettuce off Zuzska’s plate.

  ‘Yours wasn’t enough?’

  ‘I’m just sharing.’

  ‘By sharing you mean taking.’

  I took another piece. Deliberately.

  ‘That’s how we do things in my family. I guess you Czechs aren’t into that, either.’

  Zuzska stabbed at her salad as if she wanted to kill it. ‘It’s because of your stepmom. She pampers you more than any real mother would. Do you want me to pamper you, too?’

  She always had to overanalyse things.

  ‘I just wanted a bit of salad.’

  ‘Here.’ She shoved the salad plate towards me. ‘Help yourself.’

  I grabbed a handful, stuffed it in my mouth, and stared her down as I chewed. Lettuce leaves were sticking out between my teeth. A slice of cucumber dropped out and splatted on to the tabletop.

  ‘You’re just like them,’ she said, gesturing at the other diners. ‘A big pig.’

  From then on, whenever she wanted to tease me, she’d make these little piggy noises at me, and call me pig-boy. I could almost hear her making them right then as I drove along.

  ‘Is that why you did it?’ I asked. ‘Because you got sick of me being a pig?’

  In the passenger seat, her phantom seemed to nod.