Or you could get out and walk, hoof it to the exit and hope Ye Olde Ticker doesn’t just pop! like a water balloon dropped from a high bridge.
You close the cell phone. The pain in your chest, it’s ebbing. After three full nitro tablets, it damned well ought to be ebbing. Still—Christ on a crutch—why does it have to be this hot?
Pull in a breath, slowly, slow, there you go; now hold it, hold it, release slowly, just like that, good boy, control it, let it out, steady as she goes. Good. Think you can do it again? They say you can’t live without love, but as far as you’re concerned, oxygen might edge love out of the Number One slot, especially now—not that you’d turn down love were any to be offered, but this isn’t a good time to get depressed about your romantic life; or, rather, the lack thereof. So breathe, just breathe, and wait it out.
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
Man, it’s that last one, that third, uncompleted thump! that gets you every time, isn’t it? Not that it’s ever actually incomplete—that would mean you’re dead, in case you’ve forgotten—it’s that epic pause between the thu and the mp! that throws a wrench into the works. That pause, it’s been getting longer every time this happens. What was it this morning, something like seven seconds?
But you’re a tough guy, you’ll beat it, you can hold down the fort until this fucking traffic starts moving again because once that happens, the hospital exit is less than a mile away—hell, you can even see part of the sign up ahead. Way up ahead, sure, but you can see it, even through the haze of exhaust that’s causing the whole world to shimmer and swirl and stink.
You put the cell phone on your lap and reach into your pocket for the bottle of nitro tablets. Just In Case. Just to have them in your hand. This doesn’t mean you’re giving up, doesn’t mean you’re admitting that you made a mistake by choosing to drive your own ass to the ER instead of doing what the doctors said, calling an ambulance so you could lay back and enjoy the ride; no, this is just a little insurance, a minor safety blanket like that Peanuts character—what’s his name? Linus! Right. Just a safety blanket because Captain Action isn’t around to protect you anymore.
Captain Action? Jeez-Louise…how long has it been since you thought of him? Probably the only human being walking the Earth today who remembers when Captain Action was the hero. Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet? Wimps compared to Captain Action. Oh, how brightly and briefly his star did burn.
Okay, there it was, the mp! Better now. Keep up with the breathing and ignore the little lake of sweat between your man-boobs. Lean back your head, that’s it, and let yourself melt a little.
Captain Action would never have allowed himself to grow man-boobs. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Had to do it, didn’t you? Had to drive yourself to the hospital. Not a move that’s going to make your Highlight Reel anytime soon, but what’re you gonna do?
You’re going to breathe slowly with the cell phone in your lap and the teeny bottle of nitro tablets in your hand. You’re going to listen to the Thumpitty-thump-thump-thump! and make sure that third thump! doesn’t make a pause for the cause.
Only now there’s another sound, this one kind of…metallic.
Clatter-clatter-skit! Clatter-clatter-skit!
What the hell?
You turn and look out the window, blinking against the bright bursts of sunlight exploding from the chrome of the cars around and behind, and you try to make out whatever it is that’s making that noise.
Clatter-clatter-skit! Clatter-clatter-skit!
And there it is, rolling toward you, rolling straight as you please right down the center of the lanes, moving with more purpose and speed than any vehicle here has been able to muster in the last fifteen minutes, rolling along like it doesn’t have a care in the world, la-dee-dah, la-dee-dah.
A skate. Not a roller-blade—those have a line of wheels right down the middle; no, this is a skate, hard, firm, old-school, designed like a boot, two wheels in front, two in back, one of those rubber-stopper thingamajigs underneath the to use for a brake.
Clatter-clatter-skit! Clatter-clatter-skit!
You watch as the old-school skate comes rolling down toward your car, and you notice that there’s something not quite right about it, something a bit off, off-putting, even, and it’s not until the thing comes to a slow, squeaking stop right next to your car that you’re able to pinpoint what’s wrong.
There’s still a foot inside of it. You know this because you can still see part of the bone sticking up from the dark glop of meat and blood marking the spot where the rest of the skater used to be attached. Okay; this might be Highlight-Reel worthy, you admit it.
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
Oh, no—not gonna do this again. Huh-uh. No way.
(mp!)
Unscrewing the cap, you upend the nitro bottle and shake a tablet into your hand, raise the hand to your mouth, and slip the tablet under your tongue. Remembering to breathe slowly, natch.
All right, maybe there isn’t a foot still inside the thing. Maybe your nerves have just gotten the better of you, along with the heat, the stink, your job, the lack of any special someone waiting for you at the end of the day, the price of gas, Ye Olde Ticker, the man-boobs, roaming charges, no rollover minutes, needing to piss, all of the above, none of the above, a potpourri of frustrations big and small, who knows, who cares, what’s it matter in the bigger scheme of things, anyway when you can’t just call on Captain Action to speed in and save the day?
So take a second look, make sure.
You wait until the tablet finishes dissolving and that cool rush envelopes your skull, then you lean out the window for another gander. Nope, had it right the first time; that’s definitely a foot in there.
You close your eyes and lean forward, peeling your shirt from the seat and feeling Man-Boob Lake spill farther down your torso. You grip the steering wheel and place your forehead against the backs of your hands and close your eyes, fighting back the mild nausea that always hits you after a nitro tablet, only now it’s compounded by the memory—not to mention the smell—of what’s parked outside next to your door.
Think about
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
something else, fer chrissakes. C’mon, it’s not like your mind is a blank slate or anything, you’re a busy guy, a lot on the plate, things to see, people to do…wait, scratch that…things to do, people to see…that’s right, there you
(mp!)
go. Easy now, easy, easy, in, out, in, out, rolling your head back and forth, feeling the sweat squishing between your skull and hands.
Out there in the immobile sea of cars, somebody hits their horn. It sounds like an elephant fart. Some other car responds with a goose honk. A semi puts a stop to the conversation with a prolonged rhino belch.
God, you’d forgotten how much you hate cars, hate driving, hate it every time you have to climb into this future scrap heap and risk life and limb just to get from point A to point B and back again, all the while sputtering exhaust into the air, doing your part to help widen that hole in the ozone so people can have a nice surprise from time to time, like a hurricane, or tidal wave, or even a ninety-something-degree day in the middle of September with Fall only days away.
Inside a car parked in the next lane, a couple of kids start squealing. You roll your head to the right and open your eyes. Both kids have their faces pressed up against the windows, flattening out their cheeks. Mommy and Daddy have a car with air-conditioning that works, good for them.
“Lookit the skate!” the kids squeal. “Lookit the skate! Lookit the skate!” Bouncing up and down like it’s the most funniest, really excitingest thing they’ve ever seen. Mommy and Daddy are in the front seat, arguing about something, paying no attention. You want to step on all of them, grind them under your heel.
Okay, maybe not. Mostly, you just want the kids to shut up. Want the traffic to start moving. Want a cloud to crawl across the face of the sun. Want a body th
at works like a body is supposed to, not betray you in a series of sputtering little agonies once you turn forty-mumble-mumble.
The car behind you sounds its horn, startling you. You snap upright and glare into the rear-view mirror. It’s a fucking Isuzu. Isuzu—sounds like the name of some lesser god the Aztecs might have made sacrifices to. Guy driving it looks like a smug fucker, doesn’t he? Like all of this was designed just to inconvenience him. Boo-hoo-hoo. The golf course will still be there in half an hour, douchebag, so why not get on your camera-phone with wireless Internet and download some manners?
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
Please, no.
(mp!)
Good. You’re not going do it, not going to die stuck in traffic.
You flip open your cell phone once again and check the time. Twenty minutes now and nothing’s moved but the skate.
“Lookit the skate!” squeal the kiddies next door, this time both of them pounding on the windows to get your attention. “Lookit the skate!”
So you look at the skate. Some of blood that’s pulled atop the meat glop has begun trickling over the rim, spattering down onto the road. A thin rivulet of the stuff is snaking toward your left front tire.
And you remember why it is that you hate cars so much. You were seven years old. The family was driving back from the State Fair, had just gotten off the exit, in fact, home less than ten minutes away. Dad was bitching about this guy on a motorcycle who’d been riding your tail for the last five minutes, and Mom, bless her, she was trying to calm him down, telling him to let it go, it had been such a nice day, why let some fool on a Harley ruin it for everyone. Then she turned around and smiled at you, sitting there in the back seat with the grandest single item you’d ever had in your possession, your prize, the item against which all other prizes won would be measured and come up lacking, the Holy Grail of All Things Cool, a stuffed Captain Action almost as big as you were. You’d won it at one of the game booths, tossing rings over the tops of milk bottles. Nobody thought you had a chance, but you’d done it, you’d won, and won big, your heart filled with so much pride and happiness you thought it was going to burst right out of your chest, the happiest day of your kid life. You smiled back at Mom and said, “Captain Action will make him go away!” And your Mom laughed, then Dad looked back, quickly, and said, “That’s all right—you tell Captain Action it’s the thought that counts.” You giggled, then sat up and turned Captain Action around so that he was pointing his silver ray gun out the back window, and you said, “Zapow!” because you always figured that was the sound Captain Action’s ray gun made when he fired it at the aliens and bad guys and henchmen, Zapow! was a sound that told everybody this was serious business, it was time to surrender or prepare to meet your maker (even though, so far as you knew, Captain Action had never killed an enemy, only wounded them because heroes worked that way, they Only Wounded), so it would “Zapow!” a third time, and that’s when the guy on the motorcycle swerved to the left and zoomed ahead of you, flipping up his middle finger at Dad as he sped by, not looking ahead toward the intersection, which was kinda dumb because how could you tell what might be coming around the corner if you didn’t look (especially when you were going as fast as the guy on the motorcycle), but you did look, and you saw the big semi making the wide, wide, wiiiiiide turn before anyone else, even Dad, and you opened your mouth to say something but Mom, bless her, she’d seen it, too, and she gripped Dad’s arm and said, “Look out, Henry!” and Dad hit the brakes and the car squealed as it slammed to a stop and that’s when the guy on the motorcycle decided to turn and look in front of him but by then it was too late; he hit the front of the semi and his motorcycle went one way and he went another and something flew off and bounced against the road, bounced once, and then came slamming down on the hood of the car, causing Mom to scream and Dad to shout “Don’t look! Don’t look!” but you’d already looked, already seen the metallic-blue helmet skid right up to the windshield and it might have been funny except for the wet streak it painted right up the middle of the hood and the way the visor had been ripped off so you had a nice clear view of the guy’s head still inside of it, and you wondered why it was that the helmet and head weren’t stopping…
…it was two days later, in the hospital, Mom sitting beside your bed and crying, parts of her face bruised, other parts bandaged, that you listened to a doctor explain how it was that, sometimes, a person in the middle of experiencing a wreck will see everything happening like it was in slow-motion. “The mind can produce its own kind of trauma to protect you during times of physical trauma,” the doctor had said. You didn’t quite understand some of the words he used, but Mom, bless her, would stop him and translate for you just to make sure you understood. The helmet and head, they hadn’t been slow at all; they’d flown back toward the car so fast and hard that they’d smashed right through the windshield. “If your daddy hadn’t pushed me down,” said Mom, “I might have been killed.”
Captain Action had been destroyed when the helmet shot through the back windshield, taking off his head, as well.
It had only taken half of Dad’s head…and even with that, most of it wound up splattered over your clothes. It had glanced off your shoulder on its way by, snapping part of your collarbone. You spent almost a week in the hospital. Mom held off having Dad’s funeral until you were released.
Standing there by his grave, waiting for the priest to finish saying the final prayers, that’s when you decided that cars and trucks and motorcycles were your sworn enemies, that you hated them, that they were evil and mean and ugly and nasty and horrible and you’d never ever-ever-ever get in another car for as long as you lived. (Even then you knew it was a silly vow to make because, after all, you’d ridden to the funeral in a car, and would have to ride back in the same car, only to get out of it and climb into Aunt Eunice’s car because she’d given you and Mom a ride to the church, but you needed to swear something because Dad was down there, he was dead with only half his head, and it had been such a nice day for everyone, too….)
It was nearly a full year before you could ride in a car without cowering in fear every time another vehicle sped past on the other side of the road, blinking, wincing, holding your breath, your stomach in knots as you waited for the sound of shattering safety glass and the scream of twisting metal and the hot spatter of fresh blood to cover your face.
“Lookit the skate!”
You snap up your head—when had you rested it against the steering wheel again?—and look out once again.
The mind can produce its own kind of trauma to protect you during times of physical trauma.
But this isn’t your mind playing any trauma-tricks on you. That skate is real, it is there, just like the remnants of the foot inside of it.
Fucking cars. Instruments of death, all of them. Why did you ever give into the pressure to get a license? You’d been perfectly happy, taking the bus or—God forbid!—walking places. But if a man were going to be a success in this world, he had to have his wheels, and not just a good, solid, dependable set of unadorned commonplace wheels, oh, no—a man had to have a snazzy car, an expensive car, a car that would make other cars envious because it made them aware of their own inferiority, their shortcomings, their motorized mediocrity.
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
Please, no.
(mp!)
So you bought into it, didn’t you? That whole “He Who Dies With The Best Toys Wins” mentality that everyone said went out of fashion in the Eighties but in reality only dressed itself up in more conservative clothing and Machiavellian language; people weren’t “fired” anymore, they were outsourced. Call it whatever you wanted to, it all boiled down to the same thing: the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the in-betweens, they killed themselves on a day-to-day basis just to keep running in place. The ‘tweens, they got the high blood pressure, the irritable bowel syndrome, the angina. The ‘tweens found themselves never judging those who were richer or poor
er than they were because, well, hell, they had no idea in which direction they were headed themselves, so it wouldn’t do to make enemies on either side of the economic scale and
(Thumpitty-thump-thump-thu…)
Please, no.
(mp!)
Calm down. You need to calm down. So you do the cell-phone flip once more. Twenty-five minutes. It feels like you’ve been stuck in here all day. Damn good thing you filled up the tank last night. Still, there was no telling how much longer you might be stuck here, so maybe you ought to just shut it off for a while, until things started moving again…of course, with your luck, the second you turned off the engine, whatever was causing this congestion would magically disappear and all the cars would start lurching ahead and you’d turn the key and the damn car would stall out, you know it, so you’ll just let it idle for a while longer, see what happens.
Your clothes are drooping on your body, soaked in sweat. The kids over there are still bouncing and squealing and pointing. And the Isuzu behind you is smiling.
What the—?
The mind can produce its own kind of trauma to protect you during times of physical trauma.
Goddamn thing is smiling, you can see it. The metal of its front is starting to curl upward at the edges. You can hear the low screeeech of everything twisting itself into place. Looks like the goddamned Cheshire Cat.
You glance at the kids next door to see if they’ve noticed, but they’re still entranced by the skate. The trail of blood slithering from beneath its wheels has grown thicker, more defined, forming a straight red line from the skate to your car, almost like an arrow.
The Isuzu has a wide, shit-eating smile. One if its headlights winks at you. The Ford Gargantua—or whatever the hell kind of urban tank that is—parked in the lane next to Smiley is starting to giggle, its grille shaking, headlights narrowing as it tries to hold it in, but it can’t anymore, and lets fly with a laugh and a smile, and now both it and Smiley are bouncing up and down, just like the kids, and chuckling it up, and a couple of horns sound again—a belch and a sneeze—before a few other cars start chortling, mocking you.
Destinations Unknown Page 17