David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

J.D., even from shotgun, can see the solid line of the rural highway's broken line break up a bit, now.

"Thump it, kid. We're late. What are you doing? We're aiming for noon at the very outside I said. Here, I know. Take 'em in from the North. We'll shave ten minutes. But thump it. Pedal, metal. Go." He runs both hands through his hair, which is unaffected by hands.

DeHaven turns abruptly right onto something dismally tiny and shoulderless, something called 2000N that looks to Mark almost freshly invented: new tar and mint-white gravel that clatters maniacally on their big sticky tires and hot wells. The big twinned arches reestablish themselves, after a clump of wind-breaking trees, out Mark's own window. He sees them, not surprisingly, as an initial.

Sternberg's voice, shrill and barely controlled: "We're going North?"

"Pop's going to bring you guys in from the Northeast, to save time," DeHaven says, eyeing the red oil light. "Whole South part of Collision's fucking mobbed. Traffic beyond belief. Fuel trucks, chicken trucks, Coke trucks, tourists, concessions, meat trucks, blood trucks. You name it."

The car seems to roar louder the slower it goes. Sternberg thinks the roar plus the clatter of gravel might drive him mad.

D.L. sniffs. 'This car is louder than any Datsun."

"What is this with you and Datsuns?" DeHaven says, shooting his father a sidelong look and again removing his sweaty wig. Mark looks to J.D., but Steelritter seems to have something on his mind.

"Datsuns are all hype," DeHaven continues — looking, once again, different and abrupt. "Chickenshit engines. Plastic and alloys. No steel. No soul. And you have to like take the whole engine apart to get at anything to fix it if it breaks down. Which it does. They're cars for what do you call them Yuffies."

"I think you mean Yuppies," Mark says.

"I mean Yuffies, man. Young Urban Foppish Farts, is what we call them out here. Yuppies without the taste for quality that's maybe a Yuppie's one redeeming quality. We've heard about Yuppies and Yuffies. Illinois isn't another planet, man."

And for the first time Mark can hear a Midwestern twang in DeHaven's sullen voice.

"Not to mention even credit cards, in terms of young fartness," J.D. says. "You all none of you have one lousy credit card? That's what Nola said, over at Avis."

"Credit cards aren't toys," Sternberg says loudly. Assertively. This can be explained very briefly. Sternberg's emotional state is now officially one of panic. And the panic is on top of the claustrophobia. Source of panic: the car's jouncing, and the almost prosthetically firm push of Magda's right breast — they're that close together — have given him the sort of erection that laughs at the restraining capacity of gabardine the way a hangover laughs at aspirin.

"Credit cards aren't toys, to be rushed right out and bought and played around with," he says aggressively, but with a kind of deliberate calm and adult gravity, the sort of tone you use when grandparents ask about plans for the future.

"We have use of my father-in-law's Visa card," D.L. says.

"But we pay the bill when it comes," adds Mark.

"Credit cards need to be thought about," Sternberg insists, hunched, hand a little too casual over his tented lap. Mark sees the anomaly in the gabardine, and Magda seems diplomatically to be avoiding looking down at all. Sternberg closes his good eye, looks deeply within, and battles all-out with an autonomic function that has always defied his will. And obversely. Basically, of course, what he tries to do is sublimate, and he does this the best way kids who don't do sports or abstract oils or major CNS depressants know how.

"Credit is political," he pronounces. "It's a tool of the elite. You use credit without thinking, you're unthinkingly endorsing a status quo."

"Oh, Jesus," groans DeHaven — also, interestingly, sublimating his fear of a different mechanical function, one out of his control. "Another one of these politically correct ones, Pop. We've had it to here with this correctness shit from alumni, the past few days."

"Ease off, boy."

DeHaven produces a blank dime of a frown, turns a half-human and half-Kabuki cheek to Sternberg's tight corner. "You are one of those correct ones, aren't you. Do you pronounce 'Nicaragua' without any consonants? Pronounce 'Nicaragua' for us."

"I told you to leave the kid alone, shitspeck."

In a development that turns out to be pretty dramatic, Mark brings the Ziploc bag (which he didn't forget and leave in the lounge, which gives one pause) out of his complex surgeon's shirt. J.D. sniffs the interior's air almost immediately. The blackness to their left, West, now covers a good half the sky, a lid over something set just on simmer. It could be his imagination, since he's pretty intent on what he's holding, but Magda seems to be looking at Mark with a kind of orange horror. As if in response to something dire.

"And of course that's a zit on your forehead, dude. What is that sumac shit? Can bet you won't be in the front row when they start shooting the thing, am I right?"

"Where do you live," Magda says.

Mark looks at her, half-confused. "Baltimore. North Baltimore. Hunt Valley."

She opens her mouth slightly.

"Everything's got political implications, for crying out loud," a disgusted J.D. aims loudly sort of halfway between DeHaven, who's wanting to kick somebody's ass on general rural principles, and Sternberg, who's hunched in his corner, sublimating like mad.

"Not anymore," D.L. disagrees firmly.

"Amen and varoom." DeHaven's grin becomes voluntary.

Sternberg, right on the edge, sees Mark's Ziploc, too. Magda has gone a bit yellow. Ideas now blow through Sternberg's high-pressure sleep-deprived head like chaff, a kind of beveled lattice of roses, oil, bodies, amber, sumac, hamburger, shit, Nechtr, Magda, sex, erections, will, and, yes, politics.

"You're full of it, Drew," Sternberg says. "Mr. Steelritter is right. Politics is everywhere. Except thank God in stuff like popular culture. That's why entertainment's so important. That's why TV's the total balls. When it's vapid. Like it's meant to be. Screw PBS. Right, Mr. Steelritter?"

"It is pretty much the only escape," Mark agrees quietly.

There are nods from everyone but J.D. and Magda. DeHaven has slowed the malevolent car a bit further.

J.D. turns, smoking, shaking his fine head, disgusted. "I don't know who of you's more full of what, kid. TV's not political? What about that "Hawaii Five-O" Nola said you two were watching all slack-jawed, so taken in you weren't even blinking?" Hiking an elbow onto the front seat's back to level a centered face and heavy cigar-supporting lip at Sternberg and Nechtr. "You saying there's no politics going on on that show?"

The boys' response is immediate and unanimous and negative.

"Pure entertainment."

"Like a blanket so old it's falling apart. Soothing."

"Like blowing bubbles with your saliva. Mindless. Fun just for the sake of fun."

"Especially in reruns, syndication, that you've seen before," Sternberg says, into it, feeling, feeling disembodied, other, flaccid. "Incredibly comforting. You know just how the universe is going to be for the next hour. Totally secure. Detached but connected. A womb with a view."

Steelritter just cannot believe the naïveté of these cynical kids. He'd trade looks with the older flight attendant in the rearview if D.L.'s slender head weren't in the way. D.L. and DeHaven are watching the odometer finally roll all the way over. It's exciting and gorgeous. There's a slot-machine feel about it, which they share, together, and know they share it. The oil light has settled into a kind of stuttered flicker, which is even more dreadful, if you know your oil.