T. Boyle - Budding Prospects

“Phil,” I said, half to myself. “Yeah, Phil,” as if I’d stumbled across the solution to a baffling puzzle.

Vogelsang took hold of my hand and pumped it in a congratulatory way, Dowst showing all his long gleaming teeth now, the girl fighting to keep the corners of her mouth from curling into a smile. I felt as if I’d just come back from sailing around the world or whipping the defending Wimbledon champ. I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no, but already Vogelsang was lifting his half-empty Moosehead bottle and calling for a toast.

He had an arm round my shoulder, zombies disintegrated on the TV screen as heroes lobbed grenades at them, the cold voice chanted money in my ear, the smell of musk, of conception, of semen and the dark essence of the earth fired my nostrils, and then he flung up his hand, bottle clenched tight, like an evangelist called to witness: “To the summer camp!”

There was nothing in my early upbringing to indicate a life of crime. I wasn’t beaten, orphaned or abandoned, I didn’t hang out on street corners with a cigarette in my mouth and a stiletto in my pocket, I wasn’t mentally disfigured from years in a reformatory or morally and physically sapped as a result of shooting smack on pigeon-shit-encrusted stoops in the ghetto. No: I was a child of the middle class, nurtured on Tiger’s Milk and TV dinners and Aureomycin until I towered over my parents like some big-footed freak of another species, like a cuckoo raised by sparrows. I knew algebra, appreciated Verdi, ate veal marsala, sushi and escargots, and selected a good bottle of wine. My record, if not spotless, was tainted only by the most venial infractions. There had been the usual traffic violations, an unfortunate incident on the steps of the Justice Department during one of the Washington marches, and a fine for carrying an open container on the streets of Lake George. But that was about it. Certainly, like any other solid citizen with inalienable rights, I broke laws regularly — purchasing and consuming controlled substances, driving at a steady sixty-five on freeways, fornicating in water beds and hot tubs, micturating in public, knowingly and willingly being in the presence of persons who, etc., etc. On the other hand, I didn’t litter, extort, burgle, batter, assault, rape or murder. At thirty-one, endowed with the cautiousness and conservatism of maturity, I could arguably consider myself, if not a pillar, then at least a flying buttress of bourgeois society.

Still, two hours after Vogelsang had left, and despite a weariness that verged on narcolepsy and a steady blinding Niagara of a rainstorm, I was on my way to Lake Tahoe to take my first irretrievable steps into the lower depths.

At four a.m. I pulled into a truckstop and sat hunched over the counter on a cracked vinyl stool, spooned up grease and eggs, listened to moronic country-inflected yodeling from the jukebox, and drank eight cups of coffee that tasted of death and metal. The rain had stopped, and I watched myself in the dark, water-flecked window for a moment, my face lit by neon and the flashing lights of semis, and saw that my eyes glared and cheeks bristled with the look of criminality. Or tiredness. Then I left some money on the counter, stumbled out to my rust-spotted Toyota, and drove on up the hill to where dawn was flaring over South Tahoe.

I missed the turnoff for Cherniske’s place, everything uniform at this altitude, snow on the ground like a fungus, trees as alike as a forest of Dixon pencils. Without thinking, I swerved to cut a U-turn and was nearly annihilated by a California highway patrolman doing about ninety on urgent business. The thing that saved my life — and the patrolman’s — was the supersiren with which the CHP car was equipped, the sort of deadly, heart-seizing klaxon fire trucks use when approaching intersections. I was halfway through my illegal U-turn, horizontal to the flow of traffic and already obstructing an entire lane, oblivious to sirens, lights, the possibility of runaway logging trucks, when the klaxon slapped me like an angry hand. My foot went to the floor, tires squealed, brake drums clapped like cymbals, and the Toyota lurched to a halt as the CHP cruiser careened past the front bumper, inches to spare. As he passed, the patrolman gave me a quick sharp look of murderous intensity — a look that said, I would shoot you here, now, no questions asked, as automatically as I would shoot a rattlesnake or a junkyard rat, but for this appalling emergency that requires my dedication, bravery and expertise — and then he was gone, a pair of taillights skidding round a corner in the distance.

Mortified, I pulled the car round just in time to avoid the shrieking ambulance for which the cruiser had been running interference, humbly shifted gears, signaled, and swung onto the wet glistening blacktop road that snaked through the trees to Cherniske’s place. Almost instantly there was a thump, the wheel was jerked from my hand, and the car veered wildly for the shoulder and a clutch of nasty russet-barked pines. I’d been driving since I was sixteen and, groggy though I was, rose to the occasion, snatching the wheel back and regaining control without missing a beat. Calmly, almost clinically, I noted the cause of my minor emergency: there was a groove in the road. A deep insistent gash that seamed the right-hand lane like a furrow, as if some absentminded sodbuster had neglected to lift the plow blade while rumbling home on his tractor. I would have thought nothing more of it but for the fact that the groove seemed to be going in the same direction I was, turn for turn. I followed it down Alpine Way to the end, left on Lederhosen Lane, left again on Chalet Drive, and then, amazingly, into Phil’s driveway and right on up to the bumper of his sagging ’62 Cadillac.

Phil’s house — a two-story chalet/cabin/condo/duplex — was silent, the windows dark. It was seven a.m., and the early light had been absorbed in a low ceiling of ropy cloud the color of charcoal. I swung out of the car and examined Phil’s Cadillac: it was pitched forward like a crippled stegosaur, tail fins in the air, and the right front fender and a portion of the hood had been crumpled like tinfoil. Looking closer, I saw that not only was the tire gone on that side, but the brake drum and wheel as well. The car was resting on a sheared splinter of axle, from the apex of which the groove raveled out up the driveway, down the blacktop road, and out to the highway. The engine was still warm.

No one responded to my knock. This was no surprise: I hadn’t really expected a formal reception. At this hour, Phil and his assorted roommates would be entering the first leaden phase of deep sleep, having closed the bars in California and roamed the casinos of Stateline, Nevada, until dawn. The door was unlatched. I stepped in, sleeping bag under my arm, thinking to curl up on the couch, wake when they did, and put my proposition to Phil over breakfast. It was colder inside than out, and the place had a familiar subterranean smell to it — a smell of underwear and socks worn too long, of stale beer, primitive cooking and a species of mold that thrives under adverse conditions. The shades were drawn, but there was light enough to distinguish generic shapes: TV, armchair, couch, bicycle, lamp, log. I groped my way to the couch, unfurled the sleeping bag and sat down.

This was a mistake. As my buttocks made contact with flesh and bone rather than Herculon and Styrofoam and I began to intuit that the couch was already occupied, a quick lithe form jerked up to shove at my chest, rake my face and gasp a few emphatic obscenities. “Nooooooooo,” the voice — it was feminine — half rasped, half shrieked, “I’ve had enough. Now get off!" I found myself on the floor, muttering apologies. Then the light exploded in the room as if it had come on with a blast of noise, and I was staring up at a tableau vivant: the girl’s white naked arm poised at the lamp switch, her furious squinting eyes, high breasts, the lavender comforter slipped to her waist. “Who the hell are you?” she hissed.