Thalo Blue

by Jason McIntyre

  And just as this half-face becomes fully clear to her, the head turns. It is a taut and jerky movement, sudden. Shock or fear. A swathe of gold hair flies across the vision, flies like the face has been hit again, and that hair bounces into sight. It is straggled and dirty, but its color is unmistakable. Under its film of grime, there is a healthy sheen to it, maybe from an overhead light—or a window.

  It’s not entirely new for Hannah to be sitting at a crossroads like this, to be planted out in the world, under pressure. It can’t exactly be called déjà vu because she’s never straddled this precise patch of asphalt, no, but just the same, she has been here before.

  A burst of a horn, short and stiff, pulls her out of the Grasp. She is yanked away from it, back inside her old white Rabbit, rusted and sputtering at the now green light. How long had the Grasp held her? Only a moment, but long enough for the light to change; long enough to make a row of enemies in the line of cars behind her.

  Startled, Hannah pops the car into first gear, and pitches forward. But the Grasp has shaken her. It feels like she’s thirteen again and that leaves her foot emptied of blood, her shoe now just a tied-off bag filled with air and floating above the clutch. Her older brother, Richard, taught her to drive standard, used to come by and pick her up at Mom’s on Saturday and spend the entire day with her. Rich never failed to point out that it took her far longer to get a handle on how to shift than it had taken her brother Nic, whom he had also taught. She rode the clutch, practically slept on it, Rich would say, would grind away at it until that awful burning stink of it would stay in the cab with them for blocks.

  Little Richard’s criticism didn’t go unheard. It’s in here with her now as she thinks of him rolling down the window, not just for fresh air, but to make his point. Her foot is the opposite of heavy, unsteady and feather-light, overcompensating in the other extreme. She lets the engine shudder and quit, after a single lurch forward of maybe half a foot. The Grasp and her forced concentration have gotten the better of her. She knows that she has to get the car moving but wants to avoid that awful smell when the clutch wears against the engine, wants to forget Richard’s annoyed look and his comment that she’ll be buying him a new transmission.

  Hannah is not good under pressure. She psyches herself out. The vision has put a real scare into her. Beta would say, “The truth is, honey, you choked.”

  She feels her face go red. She glances half-heartedly toward the threshold of the intersection to her left, at the traffic sitting idle there, but makes no eye contact with the drivers and their passengers. Her shoulders lock and she hopes that none of those somebodies can see how embarrassed she is. She looks away quickly, back to her own black steering wheel. “Stumble then rise,” she says out loud, but under her hitched breath and through closed teeth. “Stumble then rise.”

  The horn blasts again. This time it’s longer, bleating. And in the brief interim before she gathers herself back up, puts her foot all the way down on the clutch again and leans forward to turn the key, she looks in her rearview mirror to see what’s behind her, to see who is so impatient. The radio in the Rabbit is off now— a minute before the stall, her tinny speakers were singing to her: a song called “Adrift,” this year’s big summer hit. Now, though, the radio is quiet and Hannah can only hear the putter-grind of the other engines. Behind her is a grey Westfalia van and, in the mirror, she can see the driver, a scruffy late-twenties-or-early-thirties man banging his open hands on his steering wheel. His passenger, a startled-looking woman who winces away from him, is about the same age as Hannah.

  Hannah shakes off the sight of them, just as she tried to shake off the picture of that face with blood trailing down its cheek. Under her breath, she says to the nameless man behind her in traffic, “You wanna be a bastard, fine with me.” Hannah feels her foot on the clutch again. It’s not a lifeless helium balloon anymore, but there’s still a shaky hesitation. She presses the clutch and turns over the engine. But by now it’s too late. The light has changed from green back to red. Sitting with her limp foot still on the clutch, she can only watch while the two rows of cars to her left drive past. Again she avoids their gazes.

  Now we’re going to sit through two reds, she thinks. This is really going to piss Mr. Westfalia off. The heat is still in her cheeks and Hannah moves her eyes to the rearview.

  The girl in the passenger seat has cropped blonde hair and a flushed face—-the van is close enough for Hannah to see the young woman’s arms crossed on her chest and her blatant gaze out her passenger window. The girl is staring at the number one highway’s adjacent overpass or even at something beyond it but she’s definitely looking far away from the man in the driver’s seat. He’s yelling at her. Still freaking out over me? Hannah thinks.

  No, she decides, in a spark. He is yelling at her. You can be entirely separate from a situation, walking down the corridor of a shopping mall or heading for the salad bar at a restaurant, and you can hear only a snippet or see only a second of an exchange between two people you’ve never met, but you know. You know as well as anyone else who’s overheard or witnessed. You know that there’s something wrong there.

  And here, behind her in traffic, inside the Westfalia van, there is something wrong. And it has nothing to do with Hannah stalling her car while the light changes back to red.

  Finally. The light turns green.

  But before Hannah can drive off and at last round that troublesome corner onto Old Island Highway, the Westfalia catches her attention in the rear view again. It pulls forward, nearly close enough to rear end Hannah’s Rabbit. It misses her back bumper though, veers around her car, and drives right up onto the curb beside her on the right-hand side, one set of wheels tracking through the thick green grass. Hannah lets her car sit dumb and still. The van’s front end angles down from the boulevard, then the rear axle dips, tilts, and settles back onto asphalt. The van avoids scraping the Rabbit, manages to swerve around it and veer left into the intersection. She sees it pushing by her windshield now, a dirty gray blur. She cranes her neck down and cocks her eyes up to get a look at that mean-man driver. As he passes, he glowers at her, shows his teeth and whiskers and his middle finger before grabbing the wheel with both hands and finishing his chaotic flight around the corner. Hannah hears the howl of the little van’s engine and sees a thick blue-gray haze bursting from its tailpipe as her side view of Mr. Mean Man’s ride becomes a back view.

  The snippet of blonde hair and the swipe of bloody eye relax their grip on her. But it has not left. She blinks fast as if in REM sleep. She tries to let the brutal image run off her thoughts like rainwater, but it still floats at the forefront. And so does the sight of the girl in the passenger seat of the van. The two visions run together, overlap, become confused.

  To Hannah, the girl in the van hadn’t just looked upset as she stared off to the overpass, or the sky, or the tall, shaggy evergreens.

  To Hannah, she had looked scared.

  <> <> <>

  Old Island Highway is the photocopy of a thousand commercial thoroughfares in any major city on the continent. On both sides of the broad gorge, colourful signage brags about deals on furniture, wholesale prices on granite countertops and fast food combo deals, all under ten dollars, all ready now, now, now. Just drive thru. Just swipe your card.

  A shiny new casino begs drivers to come in and throw money at an adrenaline rush. A chain restaurant-pub asks for your VISA number in exchange for insight, epiphany, and Good Times With Good Friends™. An RV lot touts its summer lease deals (“No Money Down!”) and a handsome package that includes no-charge air on all fifteen-foot units until August thirty-first.

  Not seeing any of that, still flushed, and not knowing when the decision had been made, Hannah tears off after the gray Westfalia van, which has, with only a horn blow and a middle finger, heaved her self-doubt up from the basement.

  In her VW Rabbit, she launches around the corner onto Old Island Highway, the one where she saw those eyes flowered by blood
and a welt, the skin that looked like that of a wax mannequin’s, and the stroke of blood running down to meet the corner of lips that looked nearly swollen.

  She catches up to the Westfalia. It’s as if that flight around her was all the guts the little van could muster and now it’s tired, pooped really, ready for a nap and a hideaway from the heat. Maybe the mean-man driver is still yelling at his lady. Maybe he doesn’t have enough brain power to lecture her and drive like a jerk at once.

  All the other cars that sat through a green and two reds at the Craigflower intersection have bullied up and around her, spreading into the other lanes. Through her open windows, she can hear their engines roar and see them glaring at her as they pass. One irked bastard in a light blue Chevy with a torn fabric roof decides to inch up on her Rabbit tail. He’s so close in her rearview mirror she can see that his eyes are green and that his face is pock-marked and unshaven. He’s angry and hunched over the wheel like a race car driver, one hand on his steering wheel, the other just closing the microphone flap on a cell phone.

  At the back of her neck, it’s as if someone has dabbed ice water. Prickly cold crawls under her scalp at the base of her skull and gracelessly down her spine to the small of her back.

  This is when she gets her stupid brainwave. And, later, after it’s all over, that’s really how she’ll think of it: stupid.

  And then she does it.

  The Westfalia’s brake lights offer little contrast in the mid-afternoon sun. But the van slows and they switch on, as mean-man driver squeezes a pedal, as mechanisms under the belly of the vehicle let worn pads in turn squeeze the brake drums. They need to be replaced, those pads, lest they grind completely down to metal and start chewing through the drums. They’ve already gotten shabby and the brakes squawk. Maybe Mr. Mean Man’s been busy with other things.

  Hannah slows. A semi blows by her in the left lane, blasting hot air in her face. Then a city bus does the same, deafening her as it passes. She eases her right foot against her own brake pedal, pops in the clutch with her left. Both her feet are in full working order again. There’s electricity in them now. In her hands too. She’s surging with force. She is no longer made up of separate parts. Instead, her body is one fluid entity. As that light blue Chevy with the torn roof comes up tighter on her backside, she inches up on the Westfalia, which is slowing for the next light. The gray van’s brakes stop squealing when it comes to a full halt. She pops the clutch, and the Rabbit lurches forward a foot, just as it had done less purposefully at the last red light. This time the lurch pokes the Rabbit nose right into the ass-end of the Westfalia van. The Rabbit hiccups onto the van’s bumper.

  A joggle.

  The two bumpers mingle violently.

  The van waggles, teeters forward on its shock absorbers.

  Keys bang against steering column, against each other.

  Through the van’s dirty back window, Hannah barely sees two darkened heads of hair bop and jerk with the force she has wreaked. Mean Man driver is going to be pissed.

  <> <> <>

  The girl is trying to calm him, trying to calm Mr. Mean Man. She’s younger than Hannah thought before, maybe twenty or twenty-two. She’s pretty, beautiful really, but she’s aging fast. There are circles of gray under her eyes, darker than even the Westfalia van. Her hair is striking blonde, shoulder-length, but looks unwashed and greasy.

  In the heat haze, Mr. Mean Man is more than pissed. He is older than she thought, maybe mid- to late-thirties. Early forties, even? He is hollering. His face is pink. Crow’s feet tread around eyes that can’t quite be blue and can’t quite be green. They’ve gotten out of the van, he and Unwashed Hair Girl, and now the three of them, Hannah included, stand like soldiers at an impasse, their two vehicles kissing nose to ass. Around them, in the asphalt heat-haze, other cars swarm, their drivers gawking at the accident like patrons passing a cage at the zoo in golf carts, easing forward and around them, then getting up to speed and aiming for the next barred habitat. This light has changed back to green now too and the blue Chevy with the ripped and weathered roof which had stopped short in time, barely missing Hannah’s tail bumper, is still behind her Rabbit. He’s swearing and has his flasher on, trying to get into the other lane, but no one is letting him in. Not yet. He’s making another call on his cell phone.

  The sun, harmful and alert, is bearing down on Hannah, making her sweat. She feels sticky. Her sunglasses are balanced on her head, plastic legs behind her ears and tangled in her golden hair. Her face is still red, not coming down a shade, certainly not now that she’s in the open sun. She’s apologizing copiously, wanting Mr. Mean Man and Hair Girl to know how sorry she is, what an awful and stupid accident it was. Blue Chevy Man finally darts out with a quick roar of his six-cylinder engine. Someone lets him in only because they don’t want to have an accident themselves. He’s off. And now he’s sharing the good news with someone on the other end of the cell.

  And Hannah is getting an Eli’s napkin from the passenger floor of her car and a pen from the glove box, pushing aside three or four of those tampons. Beta would freak out on Hannah if she found these plastic applicators but Hannah likes them better and keeps a few small secrets from her housemate. Hannah is trading personal information with Mean Man, writing hers out on half of the paper napkin, across the hood off her Rabbit, tearing the napkin in two and handing it over, then having Hair Girl write theirs down on the other half for her. Mr. Mean Man has calmed, but still squints angrily against the bright light with his colorless eyes. Hair Girl has put a tentative arm around him, soothed him, as he finally begins to list off address and phone number and license plate number and insurance provider so she can write it on the napkin for him. Look, she’s saying to him, there’s barely a scratch. She’s pointing to the bumper of his van, and he’s following her eyes and her hand as she squats and wipes at the dirty chrome scratch on the white enamel bumper, revealing a long, thin scrape and an indent the size of a dollar coin. The Rabbit’s bumper is in much worse shape. It’s completely crumpled at its apex and will be dragging on the ground and throwing up sparks by the time Hannah reaches her driveway.

  Now, the blue Chevy is lost up ahead in the sea of cars, heading for home. It’s full-out rush-hour now, a little after five on a Monday. Everyone is grinding their teeth in anticipation of Home. All over the island, drivers battle one another to get their car parked in the driveway and brush off the tedium of a long work day. Feet up, air conditioning, a cold drink, freedom for one short evening.

  Mr. Mean Man is under his own control again. Hair Girl has the napkin with Hannah’s particulars—Hannah’s pertinent information, Beta might have called it. Hair Girl is clasping Mean Man’s hand in hers, fingers laced, one of hers, then one of his, and so on. She’s pulling him back towards the driver’s door, left slightly open, tottering in the hot breeze. Hannah is still apologizing. Hair Girl, tries to keep Mr. Mean’s temper from flaring up again. She’s saying, it’s okay. Really. These things do happen. There’s not much damage. We’ll see what the Insurance People have to say.

  Mean Man is doing something odd now. He’s looking back at Hannah. He’s smiling, a wide grin of yellow teeth, crooked, one of them a sickly black like it was badly capped or just rotten clean through. His grin is wide and toothy, like two rows of healthy, bulging corn on the cob, coated in butter, but with that one black kernel staring out and ruining the glossy effect. He’s saying something as he grins like an idiot. As Hair Girl yanks him back, he’s saying, Drive Careful.

  Drive Careful?

  <> <> <>

  Tan is another of Hannah’s housemates, and she’s the one who had started all of this by dragging Hannah to the Carlton Club in Esquimalt last Saturday night. Esquimalt is close to the ship yards and the club attracts navy men who gyrate to top forty hits until two, then try to trade their Pertinent Information with the easiest girls they can find before last call. It had never been Hannah’s intent to have a good time at the Carlton’s genuine ‘buck-a-drau
ght nite,’ but she had surrendered to Tan’s pleas out of steep boredom and sheer curiosity.

  Tannis had been flirting with one of the navy guys on the dance floor, under the hollowed roof of supports, speakers and strobes, all painted black and trimmed with reflective streamers and giant beer posters. She’d been bumping and grinding against him in a playful, girlish way, not as a sexual come-on. But the smile on sailor man’s face, and the bulge in his jeans, suggested that he was looking forward to a little more than just close-up bumping and grinding, after she had a few more drinks and followed him back to his place near the base. Tan wasn’t thinking anything like that, of course. She was just having a laugh.

  Tan had downed a few by then, mostly girlie drinks, as Hannah’s big brothers might have called them, stuff like cherry whiskey and Dr. P. Mr. Bumper-Grinder had ordered them two at a time for her and called them “Dr. Cherries”. He even made up a song about them: “Doctor Cherry Popped-er Cherry, Doctor Cherry Popped-er Cherry!” and he wailed it as he circled her under the hot lights on the dance floor. She was definitely feeling it, all that sugar mixed with all that booze, mixed with all that heat. And, like some, when Tannis is feeling it she runs off on philosophical tangents.

  This time, after coming back to the table from the dance floor with the Bumper-Grinder, she sat down with Hannah and one of his navy buddies, both of them crew cut and impeccable, in short sleeve silk shirts, not even sweat-stained at the armpits, despite the closeness of the Carlton that Saturday. She was going off about her cat, Devil. Tan was saying that, under the guidance of her older and wiser housemate, Beta, she had let Devil go wild, let him run off to find greener pastures elsewhere, in the wide-open throes of personal and political freedom. Beta had said it was demeaning to keep any creature, cat, dog, woman, otherwise, under lock and key. Telling it where to pee, what to eat, that was wrong. According to Beta, that was “Post-modern Subjugation of Female Powerlessness”–-one of a handful of expressions she would toss out like Tic-Tacs whenever she got in one of her moods.