James Sallis - Drive

He was remembering a time not long after he’d come to L.A. Many weeks of scrambling to stay off the streets, to stay out of harm’s way and that of cruising sharks, scavengers and cops, scrambling just to stay alive, stay afloat. All was anxiety. Where would he live? How would he support himself? Would Arizona authorities suddenly appear to haul him back? He lived, slept and ate in the Galaxie, gaze ratcheting from street to roofs and windows nearby, back to the street, to the rear view mirror, to shadows back in the alley.

Then a great peace came over him.

He opened his eyes one day and there it was, waiting, miraculous. A balloon in his heart. He got his usual double hit of coffee at the mom-and-pop convenience store nearby, took up squatting space on a low wall before hedges entangled with food wrappers and plastic carry bags, and realized he’d been sitting there for almost an hour without ever thinking once about… well, anything.

This is what people are talking about when they use words like grace.

That moment, that morning, came vividly back to him whenever he thought of it. But soon suspicion set in. He understood well enough that life by very definition is upset, movement, agitation. Whatever counters or denies this can’t be life, it has to be something else. Was he caught in some variant of that abstract, subatmospheric nonworld where his mother’s life had simmered away unnoticed? Luckily, this was about the time he met Manny Gilden.

And now, from a phone booth outside the mom-and-pop convenience store, just as he did that long-ago night, he calls Manny. Half an hour later they’re walking by the sea out Santa Monica way, a stone’s throw from Warszawa.

“Back when we first met,” Driver said, “and I was just a kid-”

“Looked in a mirror lately? You’re still just a fuckin’ kid.”

“-I told you how I was at peace, how it scared me. You remember that?”

A museum of American culture in miniature, a disemboweled time capsule-burger and taco sacks, soda and beer cans, tied-off condoms, magazine pages, articles of clothing-washed up on shore with each thrust of the waves.

“I remember. What you’ll find out is, only the lucky ones are able to forget.”

“Sounds heavy.”

“Line from a script I’m working on.”

Neither spoke for a while then. They walked along the beach, this whole other demotic, bustling life, one they’d never know or be a part of, encircling them. Skaters, muscle men and mimes, armies of carefree young variably pierced and tattooed, beautiful women. Manny’s latest project was about the Holocaust and he was thinking of Paul Celan: There was earth inside them, and they dug. These people seemed somehow to have dug free.

“I told you my story about Borges and Don Quixote,” he said to Driver. “Borges is writing about that great sense of adventure, of the Don’s riding out to save the world-”

“Even if it’s only a few windmills.”

“-and some pigs.

“Then he says: ‘The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.’”

They’d come back around, to the parking lot. Manny walked to a forest-green Porsche and unlocked it.

“You’ve got a Porsche?” Driver said. Christ, he didn’t even think Manny drove. Way he lived, way he dressed. Asking if Driver could take him to New York.

“Why’d you call, boy? What did you want from me?”

“The company of a friend, I think.”

“Always a cheap treat.”

“And to tell you-”

“That you’re Borges.” Manny laughed. “Of course you are, you dumb shit. That’s the whole point.”

“Yes. But now I understand.”

The carpet store was doing good business.

Not that Warszawa was exactly slouching.

It was a typical 1920s bungalow, Craftsman probably, rooms opening into one another with no halls. Hardwood floors, large, double-hung windows. Three rooms had become dining areas. The largest was divided by a half-wall. In the next, French doors opened onto a brick walkway planted with morning glories. In the third, smallest room a family party was underway. Squarish people looking much alike kept arriving with stacks of wrapped packages.

Lace curtains framed open windows. No air conditioning or need for same here so close to water’s edge.

Bernie Rose sat at a corner table in the second room by the French doors with three-quarters of a bottle and half a glass of wine before him. The older man rose as Driver approached and put out a hand. They shook.

Dark suit, gray dress shirt with cufflinks buttoned to the top, no tie.

“Care for a glass, to start with?” Rose said as they sat. “Or would you prefer your usual scotch?”

“Wine’s good.”

“Actually, it is. Amazing what’s out there these days. Chilean, Australian. This one’s from one of the new Northwest vineyards.”

Bernie Rose poured. They clinked glasses.

“Thanks for coming.”

Driver nodded. An attractive older woman wearing a black miniskirt, silver jewelry and no stockings emerged from the kitchen and began moving table to table. Strains of Spanish that leaked through the kitchen door behind her caught a foothold. Driver still heard them as his companion went on.

“The owner,” Bernie Rose said. “Never have known her name, though I’ve been coming here close to twenty years. Maybe she doesn’t look quite as good in the outfit as she did back then, but…”

What she looked, Driver thought, was completely comfortable with herself, a quality uncommon enough anywhere, and one so remarkable in trendy, self-reinventive L.A., as to appear truly subversive.

“I can recommend the duck. Hell, I can recommend everything. Hunter’s stew with homemade sausage, red cabbage, onions and beef. Pierogi, stuffed cabbage, beef roulades, potato pancakes. And the best borscht in town-served cold when it’s hot outside, hot when a chill comes on. But the duck’s to die for.”

“Duck,” Bernie Rose said when a college-age waitress with varicose veins, Valerie, came to the table, “and another of these.”

“The Cabernet-Merlot blend, right?”

“You got it.”

“Duck,” Driver echoed. Had he ever in his life eaten duck?

Further squarish people with square wrapped packages arrived to be ushered into the third room. How were they packing them all in? The owner came by in her black miniskirt to hope they had a good meal and to ask if they’d please let her know personally should there be anything else they needed, anything she could do for them.

Bernie Rose replenished glasses.

“You’ve been on a roll, boy,” he said. “Cut yourself quite a swath out there.”

“I never asked for any of it.”

“We usually don’t. But it comes down on our heads regardless. Thing that matters is what you do with it.” Looking off at the other diners, he sipped his wine. “Their lives are a mystery to me, you know. Absolutely impenetrable.”

Driver nodded.

“Izzy and I’ve been together since before I can remember. Grew up together.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Tasting the duck, he wasn’t.

They knoshed down, dipped into the frosty pitcher of lemon-studded tea Valerie had set alongside.

“So where do you go from here?” Bernie Rose said.

“Hard to say. Back to my old life, maybe. If I haven’t burned far too many bridges for that. You?”

He shrugged. “Back east, I’m thinking. Never much liked it out here anyway.”

“Friend of mine claims the story of America is all about the advancing frontier. Push through to the end of it, he says, which is what we’ve done here at land’s end, there’s nothing left, the worm starts eating its own tail.”