Geoff Dyer - The Search

Top-floor windows glowed furnace-red but it was growing dark in the narrow streets. Walker glanced round and in the shadows behind him thought he detected a figure moving. When he looked again there was nothing. Dogs barked nearby. From behind, car headlights illuminated the street and flung his shadow up the wall of a building to his right. He turned down a one-way street and stepped into shadows. The car slowed by the NO ENTRY sign then continued on its way, perpendicular to the street Walker was now on.

He walked for a few blocks, past a grocery store — closed now — whose name he recognized from earlier on. If he was right, then Canal Street, at the edge of the Quarter, was only five minutes away — though in which direction he was not sure. A car slowed to let him cross the road. He gestured ‘thanks’ and stepped out from the sidewalk, trying to see the driver behind the dark windows. The car turned the corner after him. He trotted across the road, walked briskly to the next right. The instant he was out of sight of the car he sprinted thirty yards, hoping that by the time it turned the corner he would have disappeared around another. When headlights swept the walls and filled the street he resumed walking. Up ahead was another one-way street. He trotted as soon as he was round the corner and was relieved to see that the car did not follow him. In evading the car, though, he had lost all sense of direction. He didn’t even know the name of the street he was in, the area was totally deserted: no cars, no shops, no passers-by. He wondered if the driver had been deliberately nudging him in this direction so as to intercept him a few blocks later. He looked up and down the street and began running back to the crossroads.

He was almost there when the street was again filled with the white lights of a car behind him. He heard the car accelerate. No longer attempting to disguise his urgency, he sprinted to the crossroads. He ran to another one-way street where a sign said closed — roadwork and this time the car trailed him into it. The street was so narrow that there was no sidewalk, just enough room for a car. After running thirty yards he could see no side streets between himself and the roadworks.

He was trapped. He stopped running, breathing hard. The car stopped. High up in the gap between buildings was a glinting catwalk of sky. He heard the car revving behind him. Up ahead, flashing yellow lights and black-and-yellow tape indicated where the road had been dug up. He began running again, knowing he would never make it that far. The car revved harder. There was a screech of rubber and the street was filled with the roar of the car accelerating, bearing down on him. The roadworks were a hundred yards away. He stopped, turned. Began running straight at the approaching car, into the white glare of the headlights.

The car was a wall of white lights and noise. He had to wait till the last possible moment, a split second before he was splashed all over the windshield, until –

‘— NOW!’

The word exploded from his throat. He leapt as high as he could, forcing himself higher, tucking his feet under his body, the bonnet rushing beneath him, the windshield — at the height of his leap now and the roof slipping by beneath him and then just clipping his foot, destroying his balance and sending him tumbling down the sloping back of the car.

He hit the floor hard, jarring his wrists, gouging lumps out of his palms and knees — but he’d made it, he’d made it. Not even winded. He looked up at the brake lights straining red as the car ricocheted from one wall to the next, trailing sparks and ploughing into the barriers and lights of the roadworks. With flashing hazard lights sprawled all around and one wheel still spinning in mid-air it looked as if both car and street had been ripped apart by a land-mine.

Walker was trembling uncontrollably, his knee was throbbing and cut, his palms bleeding. He had an impulse to sit down in the street and let someone bandage his cuts. Hauling himself to his feet took more effort than the jump. His strength had left him. He forced himself to trot to the end of the street and turn left, back the way he had come. It was only after he had put several streets between himself and the crashed car that he slowed to a walk. He was shaking so much he had to stop and rest for several minutes but, now that his panic had subsided, it proved surprisingly easy to find his way back to Canal Street. On Canal he hailed a taxi and gave the name of his hotel, clenching himself tight to control his shaking for the duration of the journey.

Seeing his ripped trousers, bloodied hands and ashen face, the hotel desk-clerk asked if he had been in an accident.

‘Not quite,’ he said, leaning on the lift button.

‘You need first-aid box?’

‘Could you bring it up?’

‘Si, si.’

Back in his room he took off his shirt and shoes and filled a bath. His trousers were stuck to his knee, swollen, hurting. He eased himself into the stinging water and lay soaking before floating them off. There was a knock at the door — the clerk — and Walker called out to just leave the box on the bed, everything was fine, thank you.

Luxuriating in the feel of hot water over his limbs, bruised but still intact, he went over the scene again and again: the car stalking him, the white charge of headlights, the flashing reflection of the windshield, the roof sliding beneath him, almost clearing it perfectly until he clipped his toe like an athlete hitting a hurdle and falling to the road in the wake of exhaust and noise. It was amazing that he had got away so lightly: grazes, gravel in his hands, a cut knee — but nothing, nothing really. .

It had been Carver in the car, he was convinced of that. He reached a hand out of the water and touched the chain Rachel had given to him. Smiling to himself, he thought of Kelly standing in the midst of devastation, naked except for the stone around his neck and his indestructible shorts. He felt elated, partly by the mere fact of survival, partly by the reappearance of Carver which was as reassuring as it was threatening. It meant he was still in the race, still on course.

He hauled himself out of the bath and reached for the towel. He climbed into bed, easing his knee gingerly between the sheets.

Tomorrow, first thing, he would head to Despond.

He arrived there at midday, his knee stiff and tender from the cramped confines of the coach. It turned out to be a grim desert town lacking any distinguishing characteristics — which made it all the more puzzling that not only had Malory come here but he had spent longer here than any of the other places he had been. There was nothing to detain even the most thorough visitor, but almost everyone Walker asked had some recollection of Malory. Slightly bemused by the suggestion that he might have left town, they said he was sure to be around some place — as if he had just stepped outside to get a bite to eat and would be back in a few moments. The prospect of being so close to Malory should have excited him but Walker felt oddly deflated, as if he hardly cared.

Each night he ate at the bus station diner and then went back to his motel room and watched TV. One evening a guy gnawing ribs at the bar suggested he try a rooming house over in the east of the city — Malory was living there, last he’d heard. Walker resolved to head over there the next morning but when it came to it he could not face the prospect of the long journey across town, seizing on the dull ache in his knee as an excuse. Later that week, when he did drag himself over, nobody at the boarding house had ever heard of a guy called Malory. He hung around a few more days and decided it was pointless to spend any more time there: Malory had left, he was certain of that. Tomorrow he would do the same.