T. Boyle - Talk Talk

A truck blasted by, sucking all the air with it, and the car shook on its springs. Her face twisted. Her hands flew at him and she was signing angrily and forcing out the words at the same time: “Shit,” she said, “shit, shit, shit! Just go, you idiot, you jerk, you-” But he was already gone, the door slamming behind him, and he hadn't walked ten feet before he broke into a sprint, as angry as he'd ever been-murderous, crazed-but for all that glad to be out of the car and away from her.

The whole thing-the whole fiasco-cost them maybe twenty minutes, half an hour, he couldn't say. He jogged back to the car with a gallon can that was as heavy and awkward as a cannonball, and then he left a strip of rubber burning on up the freeway to the next exit so he could double back and fill up the car, and he had to ask her for cash because they wouldn't take his credit card and he was in no mood for an argument. And then, without discussion, without debating whether they should call the cops with a description of the car, fill out a police report, drive to the hospital to see if she needed stitches or sit down to some breakfast, some nourishment, bacon, eggs, Tabasco, coffee for Christ's sake, they were hurtling up the freeway, uselessly, hopelessly, and the Jetta hardly rattled at all when he hit a hundred and left it there.

Neither of them spoke. He felt strangely calm, beyond the law, beyond the grasp of the pedestrian drivers in the slow boats of their sedans and convertibles and pickups as he blew by them, shedding their quick startled looks of bewilderment and outrage, hammering the car from one lane to another, using one pedal only. The day was clear now, sun glancing off the hoods of the line of cars and trucks stretching off into infinity, the roadside a blur of golden-brown vegetation and the searing intermittent flashes of aluminum cans hidden in the weeds. He was sweating. His fingers ran loosely over the wheel, attuned to the slightest variation, manipulating it with all the finesse and superior hand-eye coordination he brought to his PlayStation, and what game was he playing now?

Twenty minutes into it, twenty minutes after he'd pinned the accelerator to the floor, she spoke for the first time since they'd left the gas station. And what she said was, “Take this exit-U.S. 50, to Lake Tahoe. He's going to Lake Tahoe, I know it. I feel it. Pull off, pull off!”

Why would he go to Tahoe? He was running, and he was on I-80, heading east-he was going back to New York, obviously. To hide out. To get away from them. They'd been to his house, they'd knocked on his door, and now he was running. “That's crazy,” he said.

Her face floated there, inches from his, and it was clear that she wasn't concerned about reason or logic or even likelihood. “Just do it.”

“Shit, why not just use a Ouija board?”

“Do it.”

He took his foot off the accelerator and it was as if they'd been flying ten feet above the roadway and come crashing to the ground. Everything was moving in slow motion. Cars began to overtake them. Signal lights flashed. People's faces cohered behind planes of glass. He was on a highway, he could see that now, the sun in his eyes, tires rippling beneath him, the air conditioner wheezing in his face. An SUV slid by on the left and two kids, brother and sister, waved to him from the rear window as their dog-some sort of terrier that looked as if it were wearing a false mustache-popped up between them. And then, and he didn't know why, he merged with the traffic heading for Tahoe.

And what was it-luck? Fate? A fine-tuning of the music of the spheres? He couldn't say, and all his life he'd remember the moment, because when they came up on the first exit, right there, as if it had been parked purposely in front of the family restaurant with a FOR SALE sign scrawled on the side window, was a Bordeaux-red Mercedes, dealer plates attached.

MADISON SLEPT the whole way to Sacramento, past San Quentin and over the bridge, through Richmond, Vallejo, Cordelia and Vacaville, the hot chocolate gone cold, the éclairs untouched. He'd kept the music low so as not to wake her-a reggae mix he'd downloaded himself, mostly Marley, built around live and studio versions of “Rebel Music,” a tune he couldn't get enough of-and that was a real onus because he felt so loose and liberated, so purely on fire, and he wanted to make his new top-of-the-line Bose speakers just burn with it. But Madison asleep was infinitely preferable to Madison awake, and he restrained himself. And though he wanted to open the car up, see what it could do, he kept to the inside lane and held it at seventy-there'd be plenty of open road on the way down to Vegas and across the high desert, heading east. He saw himself for a moment then, a snapshot of the future, purpleedged clouds closing over the claws of the hoodoos and the dead dry mountains, Natalia asleep with her head in his lap and Madison silent in back, the beat driving the speakers and the unbridled horses under the hood all pounding in unison. Who was that masked man? Was that a jet or just thunder?

He was feeling good. Better than good. He laid a hand on Natalia's thigh, where the skirt rode up over the dark silk of her stockings. “You know what I want to do, first thing, when we get there?”

She was reading a magazine, her hair thick and shining as she bent over it, her features alive. “What you always want to do?” she said, giving him a coy sidelong glance.

“That's for tonight.” He slid his hand down, gave her knee a squeeze. “No, I want to go straight to the pool and then the hot tub and the sauna, sweat a little, and then get a rubdown-a massage, twin massages, you and me. How's that sound?”

Her smile was for him and him alone, the sharp perfect cut of her lips, down-dwelling and in-dwelling, pure invitation, pure lust. “Will we not eat first?”

“And then cocktails,” he said, running on ahead of her, “early cocktails, maybe even a piña colada or something in the massage room, dress for dinner, of course, best place in town, and then over to Stateline to hit the blackjack tables.”

“And Madison? What of Madison?”

A glance to the rearview mirror: a pickup there, half a dozen cars behind that, spread out across the roadway, a big off-white eighteen-wheeler gearing up to pass on the left. “Oh, hell-I don't care, we'll load her up with videos and get one of those in-hotel babysitters. We're celebrating, right? No expense spared? This is a vacation, baby, and we'll make it last as long as you want-”

“Yes,” and the smile began to fade though she tried to keep it intact, “and that will be when we arrive in a new home, yes, a house in the forest, a house all to ourselves-and Madison is enrolled for her school. That is when the vacation will finish.” She paused, glanced beyond him to the road and addressed her words to the windshield: “It is a nice house?”

“You've seen the pictures, are you kidding me? It's class, pure class. Two acres, it sits on. With a pool. And a built-in bar.”

“Nicer than the condo?”

“You kidding? It's like an estate.”

“And this option to buy?” He watched her lips as she formed the words; she always homed in on the central proposition, infallibly. “You will exercise it if I like the place-“we” will exercise it, yes? In my name too?”

She was making her bid, and he couldn't blame her. He didn't mind. Sure, why not? He'd need to turn over the profit on the condo, anyway, and he had a few things going, this scheme Sandman had outlined for him, for one thing, and he might get lucky at the tables-in fact, he knew he would. He could feel it, the whole trajectory of it, up, up and up. He couldn't lose. And there was the car-he'd get clear of that, pick up another one. Two cars, a new Z-4 for her, and something for him too, not a Mustang, though-and not a Harley either. “Right,” he said. “Yeah, of course. And you're going to love the shopping-there's no place in the world like Manhattan.”