Homework assignment #3. Remind me I forgot to post #2 here.“Well I think I drive better when I’m stoned.”
He looked up at this comment, at the two young waitresses who huddled next to one another at the far end of the empty Formica counter, speaking in hushed, giggling tones.
The growl and gurgle of an engine shook the diner like a tiny earthquake. He peered through the dingy, rattling windows to see a Camaro pull up and the engine cut out, leaving only the tinny sound of a faraway radio to fill the room.
A pair of rednecks walked in and sauntered a long-legged stride to the register. One ordered chicken-fried steak, the other a piece of lemon meringue pie. To go. Suddenly on their best behavior, the girls parted their circle and got to work.
The waitress at the register leaned forward, showing the men her adolescent cleavage. They grinned, all half-toothed smiles and stringy hair.
He stirred his coffee and cringed, unable to look away, like a car crash. Classic late shift, these girls, barely out of high school, come to practice their seduction skills like apprentice Lolitas.
As he stared, he met one of the men’s ugly faces. He looked away quickly and concentrated on his BLT, boring holes into the stale white toast. The hiss and sputter of grease soon wafted in from the kitchen and the men sat down on cracked vinyl stools. The other waitress appeared in front of him, coffee pot in hand, steam rising from its orange lip.
“You need a warm up?”
He nodded. Fresh tar was added to old.
One of the men kept staring at him, snickering to his friend.
“Hey, that yours?”
The older of the two men motioned over his shoulder to the black sports car parked outside, the only other car in the lot. He took a sip of coffee, burning his tongue and throat and nearly dropping his cup.
The men cackled.
“Now that car’s pretty nice. Bet you wouldn’t want anything happenin’ to it, huh?”
He kept his head down, biting his tongue so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. He hated himself for his silence, for his inarticulacy.
The ding of the order up bell rang out like mercy.
“Order’s ready, boys.”
The men glared at him one more time as they turned away. He glanced up again at his waitress, who stood nearby, the dirty rag in her hand. When their eyes met, she winked.
The lights flickered as a nearby circuit flipped over. Squealing tires broke the silence and a beer can hit the window with a thud. A primal scream.
Without breaking her stare, he threw five dollars onto his plate, landing in the ketchup. The stool shuddered with a small creak as he got up and backed out towards the door.
Once outside, a gust of air fill his head, finally able to breathe. He heard the rush of traffic in the nearby artery, sweeter than the sound of the ocean in a seashell. He realized he’d had his hands tightly clenched while he was inside. Jangling the keys in his pocket, he started to feel his blood run faster, feel it pour through each vein and vessel. He walked briskly, lit by the neon of the diner’s sign, a blinding white. By the time he reached his car, he was nearly running.
His breath ragged, he fell against the automobile, laying his hands along the roof and running them along its hood. Smooth and sleek and black, he imagined its musculature, like a living thing, as it slinked down the road, gliding taut against the cracked, pulsating asphalt.
He caught his breath and opened the door.
---
He stalked through the neo-Gotham of Koreatown. The cars inched down the street like slow data across a screen, and he felt heat coming into his face, irritation burning like an entire matchbook lit and left to smoulder on the sidewalk. He swerved into the left-hand lane, flashing his highbeams at the Camry in front of him.
The car tapped its breaks.
Fuck!” he screamed, a blinding rage overcame his senses.
He cut into the lanes of on-coming traffic, gunned the motor, swerved back in front of the sedan and screamed down Wilshire, past Western, past Vermont, past the dance clubs with no signs, the nondescript tofu houses and karaoke bars. He griped the steering wheel tighter and released his hands, relaxing. Past the Taquarias and meat markets of Rampart and MacArthur Park. He felt the cloud start to lift off of his head.
The motor purred as the car idled at a stoplight. Downtown stood before him. Like all night-dwellers, the city came alive after midnight, the skyscrapers shimmered as the heat of the afternoon rose, standing stark against the purple-black sky, like a sticker he could almost reach out and peel off the landscape. As the light turned green, he smiled, turned up the stereo, and sped towards the halogen mecca.
Merging onto the 110, he shifted smoothly from fourth to fifth gear, feeling the power of the motor move beneath him. He was now a hunter. As he weaved through the sparse, late-night traffic, he imagined a thousand immediate and bloody deaths spilled out onto the road -- the slaughter of innocents. His heart quickened and his foot became heavier, the speedometer climbing past seventy, seventy-five, eighty, to a cruising speed of ninety.
Ten lanes formed glowing rivers as cars disappeared and reemerged from pools of shadow and light cast by orange street lamps, as if every quarter mile were a clandestine operation. Fellow cars became casual encounters, a lover he would sidled alongside for a moment and then left behind.
He relished the quick thud-thud of the tires hitting the lane markers, each time twin shudders shot up his spine, quickening as the dashes flew by like stars at warp speed.
The car maneuvered through the narrow corridors, through the high walls of the Harbor freeway, searching, searching. He spied a Camaro chugging along in the slow lane, winking with one taillight knocked out, the plastic loose and jagged. Curiosity piqued, he cut across four lanes of traffic and squinted into the rear window. Two heads bobbed back and forth.
Jackpot.
Highbeams flashed a blinding white. The Camaro retained its speed.
Another flicker.
The Camaro slowed without breaking. He flashed the lights again and laid on the horn, provoking the older car like a screeching bat. A head turned on the passenger’s side.
If this was war, these were the shots across the bow.
Blocked on the left, he threw the car onto the shoulder and sped ahead of the Camaro, pulling directly in front and tapping his breaks. The Camaro slammed on its breaks, fishtailing.
Anger pumped through one side of his heart, fear through the other. Adrenaline coated his veins and nerve endings, thick like cough syrup. He felt abuzz, electric with the constant driving power underneath him. Every word he could never say to another’s face he could act out in flashes of light and the turn of wheels. In his car he was untouchable, king of the road.
He tucked himself back into the fold of cars, hiding behind an 18-wheeler, keeping one eye firmly planted on the rearview. He watched as the Camaro recovered and was soon behind him, trying to merge two cars into one.
Trapped, he bolted across the wide double lines to the carpool lane, taking the ramp to the 105 freeway. The cars played a game of cat and mouse down the interstate, out for blood, bolting past the millions of oblivious, as every cop in the city attended to more important matters.
---
He lay splayed out on the sand, the sound of the restless ocean lapped against his ears, and jet fuel from the intermittent airplanes that took off over Dockweiler beach stung his nose. He gazed up at the stars, faded from the orange city lights that ringed the horizon. A steaming pile of wreckage sat fifty yards away, all flashing taillights and crumpled metal, two bodies battered and bruised, their souls had become loosed. The sirens of the police cruisers and ambulance still a memory far into the future.
His throat was sticky-dry, unable to swallow, unable to breathe. He had sensed the danger in his actions, the seriousness of his adversaries, yet he could not stop himself. He had been caught in the grip of this rage, the world colored through it, pulled to breaking point. He had been giddy with it, like a kid tearing through a box of Lucky Charms, reeling from the sugar high. Not a muscle had twitched in his face as they hurtled down the road, faster and faster towards its end.
Flung to the soft whiteness of sand near the shore, he was now unable to move. The king dethroned, like the loser of a chariot battle, left to drown in a trample of hooves and choke of dust.
The crash had been one of the loudest sounds he had ever heard, his bones still vibrating with aftershocks. Now all was quiet as he counted the seconds between each incoming tide, wondering when the one that would carry him out to his watery grave would come. How many seconds to count until then?
He had been sure that revenge would taste sweeter than it did -- romantic, like chocolate with rosewater or that it would have at least a bit of tartness, like raspberries. Instead it tasted metallic, like a licked battery or chewing gum foil. Studying the night sky, it dawned on him that this must be what death tasted like, like the particles that make up the shimmering stars that played out far above him, like tiny specks of blinding white.
