A. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

"Couple of days," the painter says. "I could even stay over and work really late and really early and be done in eighteen hours."

Richard is saying no, but they don't want to hear no, and at a certain point he just steps aside and they come in.

"Do you have a check for me?" the color lady asks. "We always get the check before we start."

"But I don't want you to start."

"Why did you call me if you don't want me to paint?"

"When I called you the house wasn't falling down."

"It's not my fault," she says.

"No one said it was."

"Then why are you yelling at me?"

And on and on with no end in sight, until Richard says, "I have to go now," and goes outside, gets in his car, and drives up the hill. He drives to the top of the hill and watches. He watches thinking he'll see the color lady and the painter coming out of the house, but he sees nothing. He watches and watches, and then he drives away.

RICHARD is on his way back to Malibu, his second round trip of the day, and he's in a bad mood. Traffic. For the first time he understands what everyone is always talking about. He's on the 10 and he's just standing there, there's no flow. The highway is old and imperfect, the road is crumbling concrete, asphalt. Why are the highways in the East blacktop and the ones in the West asphalt? Does it have to do with heat, with creating a reflective surface, an ugly America? He's worn out, thinking about hard numbers, knocking the house down, the color lady not taking no for an answer.

Everything is not perfect, it is ugly, scrubby, scruffy, beige like it was bleached but got dirty. Even though it is a car culture, all the ones around him are lousy: old, rusted, late-model. He's behind the wheel mentally writing his treatise, his exegesis on Los Angeles and the car, when he realizes that he's hearing SOS in his head. SOS in Morse code, repeating. SOS. Dot, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash. Dot, dot, dot.

He looks at the car in front of him and could swear that the brake lights are flashing a distinct sequence — SOS, SOS.

The highway opens up, the speed picks up. The guy ahead of him changes lanes. The taillights show no signal except the continuing SOS, which never falls out of sequence, even during the lane change. SOS. SOS.

Someone is doing it. Someone is doing it and the guy doesn't know. Richard accelerates. The guy looks at him in his rearview mirror. Richard stares back. The guy glowers and changes lanes. Richard follows him. SOS. SOS.

Richard beeps at the car in the same dot-dash pattern. He beeps and then pauses and beeps again. SOS. SOS. The brake lights flash.

Richard beeps two short beeps. The lights flash two short flashes.

He is in conversation. Someone is in the trunk flashing SOS. Richard has to stop the car; he has to get the car off the road without hitting the trunk. He puts up alongside, pressing in towards the other guy. The two cars touch as if kissing and then pull apart. The guy speeds up. Richard keeps up the pace. He leans on the horn as if blowing a warning, and then veers into the guy — hard.

The guy glares at him. "What the fuck?"

He pulls away and Richard speeds up and does it again. People are honking, trying to get out of the way. SOS. SOS.

The guy slams Richard back and then swerves onto the shoulder. Richard follows alongside, squeezing in.

"Are you fucking nuts?" the guy yells. They are so close that Richard can hear him perfectly clearly.

He might be.

What would happen if the guy stopped, if he opened the trunk, and all that was in there was a spare tire, a couple of cans of oil, and some old clothes that the guy kept forgetting to drop off at the Salvation Army? The car is talking to him, communicating, and why would the guy be trying to get away if he wasn't hiding something?

The two of them are side by side on the shoulder. The guy is stepping into the gas and heading into him, this time clipping Richard's door. Richard returns, aiming for the guy's front wheel. Both cars slide off the road, down a grassy hill, the big Mercedes creaking, crunching, complaining, but taking it like a pro. As soon as they come to a stop the guy is out of his car and running. Richard goes after him, catching him only when the guy trips, falling. Richard jumps on his back while the guy is facedown.

"What the fuck?"

Richard sits on the guy, riding him like he's a pony, actually more a bucking bronco. How long can he keep him down? Richard kicks him with his heels, digging in.

And finally there's someone at the top of the hill.

"Do you need an ambulance?"

"Hurry," Richard yells.

"Should I call 911?"

"Help me." The guy is about to get away. He's wiggling out from Richard. Two men come running. "Sit on him," Richard says, and they do, and then one of the guys says, "Why are we sitting on him?"

And Richard tells him about the SOS signal.

"Is there someone in the trunk?" they ask the guy. He doesn't answer.

"You'd better go," the men tell Richard.

Richard climbs back up the hill and knocks on the trunk. "Hello?"

"Yes," a woman says.

"I saw your SOS," he says. "I ran the car off the road. Everything is fine. I'm going to get you out."

"Don't open the trunk."

"You don't want me to let you out?"

"Are there people out there?"

"Yes."

"I'm naked."

"OK." He pauses. "I'll crack the trunk lid and hand you some clothes."

"My hands are tied," she says.

"All right, I'll pop the lid so you can get some air while I find some scissors." He reaches into the front seat and pulls the trunk release. "How's that?"

"Good," she says. "I can see."

A highway cop pulls up on a motorcycle. "Do you need help?"

"It's a hostage situation," Richard says.

More cars have pulled off the road; the two men who were sitting on the guy have tied him up with their belts.

Someone has a pocket knife; the girl sticks her wrists out of the trunk, they cut the duct tape. Richard takes off his shirt and pushes it through the crack, and someone has some sweatpants and they stuff those in, and then she says, "You can open it."

Richard lifts the lid and there she is — eyes blinking, adjusting to the daylight, wet like she's been half drowned, terrorized.

"I was taking a shower; he grabbed me out of the shower." Her hair is still wet.

"Do you know the guy?" the cop asks.

"He repaired my television a couple of weeks ago."

By now, an ambulance has pulled up and they're helping the girl into the back, and the guy is being stuffed into the backseat of a police car, complaining that they hurt him when they sat on him.

And the cop taking the report is saying to Richard, "I just want to get this right. You were driving behind them and the car started talking to you?"

"SOS, SOS," Richard says, "in Morse code."

"And what's that, Morse code? Is that something I should know?"

"Yes," Richard says.

"Some kind of high-tech Internet talk?"

"He was going to kill her," one of the men who'd been sitting on him said.

"Did he tell you that?" the cop asks.

"Not in so many words, but once they put you in the trunk it's a bad sign," one of the men says.

"Right," the cop says. "Trunk crimes have a very high lethality."

"You saved her life," someone tells Richard.

Police dogs are searching the area; a bystander with a video camera is filming everything. "Off the shoulder, off the shoulder," a cop says, directing traffic. "No gawker accidents."

"I need to go home," Richard says to no one in particular. And while the cops are getting the last of his information, address, phone number, one of the men drives his car up the hill. They escort him onto the highway, and he drives off squinting into the glare of the bleached afternoon.

He drives with pieces of metal dangling, the car sounding like tin cans at a wedding.