it.”
“I’m sorry. You want to call him back? I don’t mind-”
“No, no. He’s just-it’s hard to explain-or, it’s actually kind of easy to explain. He smokes a lot of weed and has a shitty job. That’s his life. He wasn’t always that way. He was a good kid, smart. He could have been whatever he wanted. And then my mom died, and then a few years ago my dad shot himself. And he just stopped. And started being a fuckhead. I’m afraid, you know…”
Victor Gold hisses, “Fucking shit,” as he rises from his stool and heads for the kitchen, his shoulder brushing Nicky’s.
Stacy says, “I’m so sorry,” and bows her head into her hand. Nicky is surprised by this sudden display of pity. She reaches for his elbow, offers her tenderness, which is not for him, Nicky understands, but for Chris, who must endure the burden of this faceless brother.
Nicky contemplates the empty stool, the brazenly discarded items on the bar.
He wants to fly from his body. He doesn’t want to be Chris or Victor-just anyone but himself, anyone but the fucked-up son of the ultimate fuck-up.
“You want to go?” he says.
She takes his arm and the moment they hit the sidewalk takes his face into her hands. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says.
“Fuck it,” he mumbles to himself, just as he spots the yellow car whose insides glow when he presses the button on the key he’s aiming toward the street, the silver bunch jangling.
On cue, she turns. “Is that your Maserati
They drift toward the brightness under the canopy of birches across the street.
“You have to let me drive,” she says, beaming now.
With a last glance back, he says, “Why not?”
Inside, he imagines the two of them united on a mission to create some new future for themselves. Her smile grows increasingly luminescent, as if draining the light from the overhead lamp. They are ensconced in black leather. As she feels for the ignition, he taps his foot, glares out the window. He flicks open the glove compartment to find the mother lode of dope, rolling papers and all, sealed in a Ziploc bag. At first he doesn’t recognize the blunt silver barrel of a gun, until he reaches for the twinkling Zippo and a finger hooks the trigger guard.
The engine rumbles. The glove compartment door clicks shut. Stacy leans forward, then settles back with arms outstretched and hands gripping the wheel. With a few deft, seemingly practiced maneuvers, she manages to exit the curbside spot and enter the open lane, which appears, in a suspended moment of pure potential, to lead straightaway toward a positively magnificent, if shadowy, future, lined with inferior automobiles.
There is an explosion of force, and they are sailing forward. It is not long before the car veers vaguely right and Nicky leans left, as if to counteract this unfortunate detour. A faint, feminine yelp-followed by the snap, like a mushroom cap, of a sideview mirror-signals the beginning of the end.
The rest feels patently catastrophic, these seconds an eternity of unending metallic screeching. It is as if Nicky is poised at the crotch of a giant zipper, its teeth off kilter, some stubborn force willing these two discordant halves to unite, only so that they can be free of each other once and for all. It makes no sense that they haven’t yet come to a stop, in spite of this ribcurling resistance. How many have they already sideswiped? Three? Ten? She must be gassing it, in spite of the mounting disaster, as if to race toward the inevitable, or from it.
At last, they have come to the T at the end of the road, an instinctive foot on a brake, with the help of the curb, having saved them from the profile of the oblivious brownstone straight ahead. They are heaving in unison, taking in the common air. “I’m bleeding.” Her eyes are locked on her reflection in the rearview mirror. She dabs a fingertip to her forehead. Outside, the world has stopped, while inside, their hearts and thoughts become entwined in mutual terror-albeit born of independent fears.
“I can’t get a D.U.I.,” she utters.
“I have to go back,” he says.
The sidewalks are empty, the windows of the surrounding houses dark or, if lit, free of shadows.
“I make $750,000 a year.” She seems to be in a trance. “I’m the lead anchor on a major network in the fourth largest market in the country.” She sets her hollow gaze on Nicky and asks, apparently in earnest, “What the fuck am I thinking?” After a pause, she screams, “I’m asking you! What the fuck am I doing here?”
“In Philly, you mean?”
“No! With you! Here! Now! Why do I keep letting asshole men ruin my life?”
“I don’t know,” Nicky says. “Just-go.”
In this merciful moment in time, there is no one in sight, not even through the rear windshield.
“What do you mean?” Her voice softens. “Walk away?”
“Run
Her lips quiver. She blinks out waves of tears that tumble down her cheeks. It’s too late. In the distance, light spills from doorways, onto stoops, as slumped silhouettes make their way toward the wreckage.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean what I said-about you.”
“Get in the back,” he hisses.
Her grace has returned. She understands the plan. In one swift, elegant gymnastic feat, she becomes one with the leather, heaving herself through the narrow gap between seats, hips twisting, legs and heels and toes all pointed in their mission to clear the way for Nicky, who with undramatic haste removes them from the scene of the crime.
Even in these dark streets, there is no way for this car to be discreet. Curious, envious eyes flash from the sidewalk, as Nicky wraps around a corner or two before quietly pulling over.
“Why are you stopping?” Stacy whispers nervously.
“We won’t get far in this thing,” Nicky states. “We’ll go to my brother’s. It’s right around the corner.” He gets out and offers his hand, scanning the empty sidewalk, as one stiletto boot follows another onto the concrete.
When she takes his arm, crossing the street, a shiver of recognition shoots up his spine, his chivalry tainted.
She looks back, puzzled. “What about your car?”
He forgot that the car is his. “I’ll call it in as stolen.”
She seems to consider this. “Okay,” she says softly.
He nods and remembers what a real thief would remember. “Wait here.”
The passenger side is wounded with depressed streaks of ugliness and, at the shoulder, an awful black spot- an absolute absence of something that once existed, severed at the root-marking the trajectory of that brief ride. Inside, the light dissolves around him. He glances at the beautiful woman waiting by the trunk of a tree, cupped hands at her elbows. She could run, as he’d urged her, but she is waiting for him-and this is something good, he tells himself. There may be hope. He stuffs the bag of dope into the puffy pocket at his knee, a perfect fit, slips the gun into the slim pocket at his hip, along with the keys-he adds the Zippo and alights.
When he reaches her, a distant siren pops and goes silent. She squeezes his arm and pulls herself close. “Did you call?” she asks.
“That car is officially stolen,” he assures her.
Two more blocks, and they ascend the stoop and stairs to his apartment. Inside, she heads straight for the living room. When he comes from the kitchen with a damp washcloth, she’s facing the window, legs tightly sealed, poised steadily on those two impossibly tall, thin pedestals he hadn’t noticed give her at least an inch on him. She appears unsure at first, until he gestures toward her forehead. Her whole body sinks, softens, under the warm pressure, and just like that the thin line of dried blood has vanished.
“It’s gone,” he says, and for a moment pretends he has erased their troubles. He can see a million miles in her eyes, infinite stretches of sun-baked highways and yellow-ribboned roads that go on forever. She must feel discovered. Her eyes close and lips descend. When her tongue meets his, he finds the bare small of her back and pulls her against him. He travels to her neck, her shoulder, the hidden downy hair behind her ear. There is a line, he imagines, joining his two hands, and that line is the golden zipper he delicately fingers. As they shift toward the couch, he thinks, I can die now, just as she whispers, “Stop.”
“What is it?”
They sit, fingers entwined on their adjoining thighs.
“What about your brother?” she says.
