Envy the Night

a little closer, almost on top of the Lexus now, staring hard at the silhouette of the driver’s head.

“It’s him.” He said it softly, exhaled the words, no justification for them at all but somehow he was positive—

Brake lights. A flash of red, one quick blink that he saw too late because he was too close, and then he hammered the brake pedal and slammed the wheel left and hit the back corner of the Lexus at fifty miles an hour.

“Shit!”

The back of the Jeep swung right with the impact, then came back to the left and sent the front end sliding, a fishtail that was threatening to turn into a full three-sixty. Even as the skid started Frank could hear his father’s voice—turn into it, turn into it, your instinct will tell you to turn away, but you’ve got to turn into it. He heard it, recalled those old lessons in the half second that it took him to lose control of the car, and still he turned away from it. It had happened too fast and the instinct was too strong. He turned away from the skid, the tires shrieked on the pavement, and then any hope of getting the car back was gone.

Frank was saved by bald tires. He’d lectured himself on the tires a dozen times, thinking they’d kill him someday if he didn’t get them replaced, but instead they saved him. The pavement was dry, the Jeep was a top- heavy vehicle, and if the tires had been able to grab the road well he probably would have rolled. Instead, because there was hardly a trace of traction left on the worn rubber, he slid. He saw whirling trees and sky and then the Jeep spun off the shoulder and into the pines. He heard a crunch and shatter just as the airbags blew out and obscured his vision, and then he came to a stop.

The airbag deflated and fell away, leaving his face tingling, and for a few seconds he sat where he was, hands still locked on the steering wheel, foot still pressed hard against the brake, blood hammering through his veins. It was amazing how fast the body could respond—you’d spend an hour just trying to wake up on a normal morning, but throw a crisis out there and the body was ready for a marathon in a split second. He reached over and beat the airbags aside with his hands and saw spiderwebbed glass on the passenger window, the door panel bent in against the seat. Bad, but nothing terrible. He could probably drive away.

What about the Lexus? Devin Matteson’s Lexus. He was sure of it again, absolutely certain, and without any pause for thought he turned and reached behind his seat, found the metal case, flicked the latch and opened it and then he was sitting behind the wheel with a gun in his hand.

Reality caught up to him then. Sanity caught up to him.

“What are you doing?” he said, staring at the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”

He slid the gun back into the case and closed it and opened the door—after a glance in the sideview mirror to make sure he wasn’t going to step out in front of a truck, survive the accident only to get squashed when he was on foot—and then got out of the car. He walked around to the front and saw that he wouldn’t be driving anywhere. The right front tire was blown out and the wheel bent inward, crunched down beneath the mangled front quarter panel. If he’d handled it right, turned into the skid instead of away, he might’ve been able to keep the Jeep straight enough to avoid the trees. Then he’d be left with a dent and a drivable car, instead of this mess.

He’d lost track of the Lexus at the moment of impact, and now he was surprised to see how far behind him the car was, a good hundred feet at least. The driver had made the shoulder as well, but the car was facing the wrong direction and angled against the trees that lined the road.

Looking up at the car made his previous suspicion come on again, and again he thought of the gun, had to shake his head and move away from the Jeep before the urge to go for it got any stronger.

“It’s not him,” he said. “It’s not him.”

At that moment the driver’s door on the Lexus opened and Frank’s breath caught and held for a second until the driver stepped out onto the road.

It was not Devin Matteson. Not by a long shot. Even from this far away he could tell exactly how ludicrous the idea had been, could tell that he’d just caused a dangerous accident over an utterly absurd moment of paranoia.

He walked toward the Lexus as the driver began to survey the damage to his vehicle. Frank’s first thought, watching him—the dude’s on speed.

The guy, tall and thin with a shock of gray hair that stuck out in every direction, was dancing around the Lexus. Literally dancing. He’d skip for a few steps, twirl, lift both hands to his face and then prance back around the other side. He was talking to himself, too, a chattering whisper that Frank couldn’t make out, and he seemed completely oblivious to the fact that there’d been another car involved in the collision.

“Hey.” Frank got no response and walked closer. “Hey! You okay?”

The guy stopped moving then and stared at Frank in total confusion. Then he looked up at the Jeep and nodded once, figuring it out. Up close, Frank saw that he wasn’t too old, maybe forty, the gray hair premature. He had a long nose that hooked at the end and small, nervous eyes set above purple rings that suggested it had been a while since he’d had a full night’s sleep. His hands were still moving, too, fingers rippling the air as if he were playing a piano.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m okay. Yes, everything’s fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll just call Triple-A. You can go on now.”

Frank raised his eyebrows. “Just call Triple-A? I hit you, man. You’re going to want to hang around and get this worked out for insurance.”

The guy was shaking his head. “No, no, I hit my brakes, just slammed on my brakes, not your fault at all.”

Not his fault at all? What the hell was he talking about? Frank had been tailgating so bad he’d slammed into him as soon as the guy slowed. It was clearly Frank’s fault. The guy must be nervous, that’s all. Shaken up. Collision like that, at nearly highway speeds, who wouldn’t be?

“What I’m saying is, we need to call the police,” Frank said. “Get an accident report made, so we can make this square with the insurance company, right?”

The gray-haired guy winced and rubbed his forehead as if a pain had developed there. He probably had a bad driving record. Maybe a few accidents, and driving a car like that Lexus, his insurance rate already had to be high. He was worried about the money. Didn’t understand that Frank was liable for all the damage.

“Tell you what,” the guy said. “It’d be a big help to me—a big help—if we didn’t get an accident report made.”

So he’d been right—bad driving record. Unless it was something more serious. Hell, maybe the guy was on drugs. Frank frowned, studying him closer, looking for the signs. He just seemed amped-up, that was all. Buzzing. His eyes were clear, and he was cogent enough in conversation. A Starbucks addict, maybe.

“I’ll pay for your damage,” the gray-haired man continued. “I know what you’re thinking—as soon as I can, I’ll take off and stiff you on the bill. But I promise that won’t happen. We can take care of it right now. Find a repair shop, and I’ll take care of the bill beforehand.”

“I hit you,” Frank said again.

“Don’t worry about that. It was my fault, my responsibility, and I don’t want an accident report made, okay?”

Frank shook his head and walked a few steps away, looking at the Lexus. It was even more beat to shit than his Jeep. The front end was crumpled, there was a gash, maybe three feet long, across the passenger side of the car from the contact with the trees, and steam was leaking out of the hood.

“Please,” the man said, and there was a desperate quality to his voice that made Frank look back with surprise. Whatever trouble this guy had with his driver’s license—if he even had one—was serious. Frank stood there on the shoulder as two cars buzzed past them, nobody stopping, and looked at this weird guy with the nervous hands and panicked eyes. Why not give him a break? It was Frank’s fault, so it was only fair to let this guy handle it in whatever way he wanted.

“All right,” he said, and the look on the gray-haired man’s face, the way it broke with relief, was enough to convince him he’d made the right call.

“Thank you. Oh, man, thank you. I’ll call a tow truck. The car’s got a navigation system, you can find anything with it, we can pick any repair shop you want, I’ll show you the choices . . .”