Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

The beautiful Lida, for indeed she was the girl, had drawn the attention of most of the drivers in her general vicinity, but not all of it favorably, since her motion combined the slow and tentative with little spurts and jerks at oblique angles, as though she were riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time. The effect of Lida on her bicycle, combined with that of Vito nearby in his motorized wheelchair, was not only to fray tempers and risk accidents in an increasingly widening area, but was also to force a slowing of the traffic flow, an unwonted braking and deceleration leading to an increasing backup of traffic disgorging from the surrounding streets. Add Otto to the mix, obliviously backing into the very heart of the traffic while staring intently into the viewfinder of his camera, and you had the ingredients for possibly the worst traffic jam in the history of the world.

Checking his watch one last time, Andrew roused himself from his resting position, leaning against the large, dirty delivery van, and a bit awkwardly climbed up and into the van, seating himself with no air of familiarity at all behind the wheel. He started the engine, pulled gracelessly out into the traffic, and drove haltingly around the block, coming to a stop facing downhill on a long narrow, steep street.

On another street farther uphill, Sir Mortimer strolled with his baby carriage, into which the occasional tourist gazed with an expression that swiftly shifted from expectant pleasure to thorough bewilderment. Sir Mortimer stared down all potential inquiries, and continued slowly on his way, checking his watch.

Farther down hill, the silver-covered truck continued to struggle slowly upward, followed by the London cab containing Bruddy, who alternately tapped his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel and checked his watch.

Having shunted the freight cars that had been ahead of the two yellow boxcars onto another nearby track, Charles now manipulated the locomotive through the maze of tracks, watching the switches open and shut along his path, trusting in Jean and Renee to do their part up in the switching office. Looking up there, Charles occasionally caught a glimpse of Jean through the large windows, but Renee was out of sight. Undoubtedly she was distracting the employees at the farther end of the room, permitting Jean to get on with his task.

Which was taking too long, but there’d been no help for it; a lot of shifting and shunting had to take place before Charles could even get at those two yellow boxcars.

But now everything else was out of the way, the yellow boxcars were exposed at last, and speedily the little yard locomotive backed along the track — slide, slide , went the switches along the way — toward their destination.

Were they going to miss Avenue de Wagram again? “Jacques!” yelled the driver of the second truck, in useless rage and frustration. “Jacques, Jacques, what’s the matter with you?” And the driver was just starting to accelerate, determined to come up on Jacques’ left and remonstrate with him via the medium of obscene hand gestures, when all at once, directly in his path, a wobbly girl on a bicycle crashed into a doddering old man in a motorized wheelchair. The whole kaboodle collapsed virtually under his wheels, and the shocked driver stood on the air brakes, so that the truck, with every wheel locked, did two heavy, loud, bone-jarring bunny hops forward and came to an abrupt stop.

Ignoring the shrieks of horns and squeals of metal scraping metal from behind the truck, and unaware of the white Renault stopping on the right side of his truck just long enough to disgorge a passenger — Angelo — the driver opened his door and leaned out to see if the girl and old man were still both sufficiently alive to be yelled at. They were; in fact, both seemed to have been revitalized by their mishap, since the motorized wheelchair was suddenly zipping away like a Le Mans racer and the girl on the bicycle had abruptly learned everything about balance and speed, to judge by the manner in which she was hastening away. The driver released the open door in order to shake a fist at the departing miscreants, but all at once he found himself in midair. Someone — Angelo, in fact — had entered his truck cab from the right, and had given him a huge shove.

Truckdrivers were not meant by God to be airborne; at least not for long. This one soon found himself earthbound again, in a discouragingly hard and abrupt manner, and as he rolled over, shocked and disoriented, he discovered that his head was down amid a lot of automobile tires. Moving automobile tires.

Oh, no. Up he jumped, and looked around, and his truck was moving away!

“Hi! Hi!”

The former driver of the departing truck started to run after his machine, and was promptly nearly run down by a black Volkswagen convertible beetle. Then the damn Volkswagen continued to block him, because the driver insisted on stopping and making no-doubt-disparaging remarks to the former-truckdriver-now-pedestrian in German. The last straw; German.

And his truck was gone.

Checking his watch, Andrew put the delivery van in neutral, released the emergency brake, and stepped out to the steep cobbled street. Slowly, then more quickly, the delivery van rolled away alone down the street.

Checking his watch, Sir Mortimer walked around the corner, gave the baby carriage a slight shove, and stood observing the carriage’s trajectory as it bounced and trundled down the long steep hill.

Checking his watch, Bruddy accelerated the cab, angled out, rapidly passed the still-climbing silver-garbed truck, and then braked to a stop at the curb half a block farther up the hill; not far from an intersection. (A dirty white delivery van could be seen coming downhill, his way.) Bruddy climbed out of the cab and watched the silver truck slowly approach.

“Why, no,” Renee said, her smile glazing a bit, “the coffee isn’t too strong at all.” She sat on a desk, swinging her crossed leg, smiling and smiling and smiling.

Across the room, Jean watched out the large plate glass windows as a small yard locomotive trundled away out of the yards, bearing behind it two gleaming yellow boxcars.

The smile on Jean’s face was much more realistic than that on Renee’s.

Unaware of the awful twist of fate which had befallen his friend and co-worker, Jacques, the driver of the first orange truck, continued his frustrating, enraging but unstoppable circling of the Arc de Triomphe until, just about opposite the place where his cohort had come a cropper, Jacques, too, was forced to suddenly stand on his air brakes; too late. The stout German tourist looking so intently into his viewfinder gave out a sudden hoarse cry of despair, threw up his arms, and in a flurry of cameras he dropped beneath the wheels of the truck.

“Sacre!” cried the driver. “Merde!” And he leaped from the truck to run to the tourist, who sprawled moaning on the pavement next to the huge left front tire of the vehicle which seemed to have finished his career in amateur photography. “Are you dead?” cried the driver. “Do you yet live?”

“Aaaaiiiiiiiiiyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeee,” said Otto.

The driver sank to one knee beside his victim. “My poor friend,” he said, “I fear you have given your life for your art.”

Otto reached upward, feebly clutched at the driver’s lapels. “Ooooooooooh,” said Otto, tugging at the driver’s lapels.

“You want to tell me something?” The driver leaned close to Otto’s mouth. “Yes? Yes?”

Just behind the driver now was the big left front wheel of his truck and as he listened very carefully to Otto gulp and swallow and gasp, the big left front wheel began to turn. It moved, it rolled, it went away, shortly to be followed by the left rear wheel of the truck cab.