Lippe Simone - Blank

As she opened the door the heat poured in like liquid and she knew that the wreckage must be on fire. There was no safe path between the cars so she climbed onto the hood of a sport utility vehicle. A man behind the wheel appeared to be either in shock or irrationally absorbed by whatever was on the radio. She stepped up onto the roof and saw that she was at an intersection of two downtown city streets which she recognized as somewhere in Hollywood. In four directions for as far as she could see — which is a long way in the flat, low-rise expanse of downtown Los Angeles — was calm and quiet chaos. It was the biggest pile-up she could remember but, of course, it was also the smallest.

There was no fire. The oppressive heat was in the air and it was coming from everywhere and it lay like a resin over the city. It only added to the desert, frontier-town atmosphere, soundless and immobile and indifferent, as though Honor was entirely alone in a city of 13 million people. There were no sirens. There was little sound at all apart from idling engines and dripping fuel and the occasional clunk of vehicles settling into their correct level between wreckage and road. The people in cars remained in their cars and those on the sidewalk stood still and silent and stupefied, uninterested in the spectacular city-wide collision that had just transformed their streets.

Honor slid down the side of the jeep and onto the bed of a pickup truck and then hopped onto the sidewalk. She looked into the eyes of the bystanders and none of them looked back. They looked simultaneously disengaged and distressed, like they’d been asked to explain an impenetrable piece of abstract art.

She looked for anyone who might still be plugged in and chose a man with a briefcase in his hand and a phone to his ear and said “Are you talking to someone? Are you calling 911?” He didn’t look at her or react in any way so she took the phone from him.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” she said to no reply. She dropped the phone in her purse and tested the man’s resolution to remain dumb by reaching into his inside jacket pocket and taking his wallet. She was momentarily but thoroughly terrified when he looked her square in the eye but his expression didn’t change and he continued holding his hand to his face and struggling with the puzzle of the unseen artwork. The moment passed and Honor took what cash there was in the wallet and put it back where she found it.

“Thanks” she said. “I’ll pay you back when I see you. Promise”. He didn’t appear to mind. Nor did the dozens of witnesses and Honor looked around at them and involuntarily giggled something between anxiety and elation. She was in a crowd of people but it was as though she was invisible. She was the only conscious person on the street, in the city, maybe even on the planet, and she was seized by a deep and broadening craving to take advantage of the situation.

She took an apple from the shopping bag of a woman in line at a bus stop and a watch off the wrist of a tourist with suitcases in his hands. She continued along the sidewalk in this fashion, helping herself to a sun hat and a pair of sunglasses and so much cash that she stopped counting and then found her attention seized by much greater opportunity. She was standing at the entrance to a luxury car rental dealership.

Honor recognized the cars only and intimately the moment she saw them as she staggered through the lot like an Idaho tourist on Fifth Avenue. She settled immediately on a green convertible Jaguar XK but then rejected it because it was green and next to a white 1969 Mustang fastback with chrome trim and hood-mounted air intake. Then she knew she had to have the new model matte black Corvette with racing options but it turned out to have an automatic transmission so she moved on to the orange Maserati Gran Turismo before spotting her new ride, a red Ferrari 458 with a seven-speed gearbox and rear-mounted V8 engine and a top speed of over 200 mph. She went into the rental office to make arrangements.

For a dealer in luxury automobiles the office was distinctly modest and would have been if it traded in used gardening tools. It was a single-story concrete-block garage with a plate-glass office added during an economic downturn. Inside the office the one wall which wasn’t window was asymmetrically decorated with posters of fast cars on mountain roads. There was a single filing cabinet and a desk behind which sat a tanned, chisel-faced mannequin of a man in an Armani suit and a state of complete detachment. His finger was coiled into the handle of a chipped coffee mug and he watched the smoke rise from a cigar in an ashtray set in the center of a little tire on his desk.

“Hi.” Honor said. “I’ll take the red one, please.”

The mannequin just watched the smoke as though it really needed watching and Honor looked about for car keys. There was nothing on the desk but the ashtray and a stack of rental contracts bound with over-used paper clips. The filing cabinet was locked so she slipped a paper clip off one of the contracts and straightened it out and fit it gently into the keyhole, angled it down, then up again and then down and to the right and the lock popped out of the drawer. Inside were plastic folders with owner’s manuals, trinkets, maps and keys and each had a little tab indicating the car to which it belonged.

The Ferrari fit like it had been built around her, as would be expected of a car that costs roughly the same as a nice house near good schools. The engine growled like a grizzly bear announcing happy news over a megaphone and grew exponentially louder with the slightest touch of the accelerator and Honor trilled an anticipatory giggle. She tapped into second gear, brought the bear up to a modest 3000 of the available 9000 RPMs, and released the clutch. The car slithered out of the parking lot and onto the sidewalk of Santa Monica Boulevard.

Honor turned north at the first opportunity, drawn by what she assumed would be less cluttered plains upon which to set the Ferrari free. She turned again when the sidewalk disappeared and found herself having to slow to slip between the tourists stood like chess pieces on the slippery tiles of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. When the crowd thinned she brought the car very near its top speed before power sliding onto the ample middle turning lane of North Highland in time to avoid the palm trees that seemed to grow in an instant out of the sidewalk.

The middle lane was relatively clear and she raced up the slight incline in fifth gear. The carnage was less dense and dramatic here and most cars had merely bumped into one another and were waiting to run out of gas while their occupants waited for nothing at all.

Honor continued to climb the hill and select more and more secluded roads until she found herself on a perfect country surface with no cars or pedestrians and thick forest on either side. She was finally going 200 mph and only slowing slightly to take the sharp turns as though on a tether. Then she knew where she was. With no memory of having been there, Honor recognized this ideal countryside road as the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens and the high wire fence as the back of the North America reserve.

The crossroads at the top of the hill was blocked by a 60 ton bulldozer with a deep concave universal blade and ripper attachment on the back, so new that the tracks still reflected the sun. Thirteen feet high and banana yellow and wrapped around at least 450 horsepower, it made a Ferrari feel fragile and frail and wholly inadequate, like an origami tiger. Whatever its other strengths, no Ferrari was going to knock a hole in the elephant enclosure.

Starting a newer model bulldozer is much like starting a new car or a truck, if you have the keys, and even more so if you don’t. Honor prised loose the dashboard with the Ferrari key and stripped the ignition wires with a pair of nail clippers. On the first touch the machine barked once before settling into a solid rumble like it was chuckling in anticipation of what it and Honor were about to do together.