much interested in confronting problems as I was in finding a way around them. It would have made of me an extremely poor scientist, the discipline at which I first dabbled, but in other pursuits… Well, there you are, as they say.”
“And here I am.”
“Wondering why, no doubt.”
“It was an interesting invitation.”
“We work with what we have. You once drove, and now you drive again. Is that recidivism? Adaptive behavior? Or simply returning to what you are?”
“Yes would probably answer all those.”
“People attempting to kill you might well be construed a problem.”
“For which you have the solution.”
“Not at all. The problem is yours.” All sound from the restaurant had ceased. Through a small pane of glass in the door Driver saw the lights go out. “A solution, though-this could be another thing we have in common.”
A fterward, he drove to South Mountain. Well past eleven, and not a lot of activity out here, two or three convenience stores, a scatter of Mexican drive-throughs along Baseline. He found a boulder halfway up and sat looking down at the city’s lights. Planes came and went from the airport ten or twelve miles away, ripples in the dark and silence and boundless sky.
Driver didn’t want to go back to the new place, trashed or not. He couldn’t think of any place he did want to go. What he wanted was to get back in the car and drive. Drive away from all this. Or just drive. Like the guy back at the garage had said: just you and the road, leaving all the rest of this shit behind.
But he couldn’t. And what Beil had proposed-once they’d snaked past I work alone and They’ll keep coming — seemed, if not the best alternative, then certainly a feasible one.
“The people who engaged me-”
“As a problem solver.”
“Exactly. Like all of us, primarily they wish to restore order, to have things the way they were. But now there are imbalances. Problems with those moving the pieces around.”
“None of which has anything to do with me.”
“Your presence has introduced wholly unexpected variables. You’ve become a crux, of a sort.”
Driver’s attention went to what looked to be a collision down on Baseline. First, headlights moving toward one another too fast, then a hitch in time, then the lights gone suddenly askew. Did he hear the crash, a horn, seconds later? He remembered a night years ago back in L.A. when he sat in Manny’s banged-to-hell Mercedes on the northern flank of Baldwin Hills, in oil fields that appeared deserted but might for all he knew still be functioning. The gate was open, and they’d entered along a dirt road. The entire city lay before them. Santa Monica, the Wilshire District, downtown. Hollywood Hills in the distance.
“The diminutive fires of the planet,” Manny had said. “What Neruda called them. All those lights. The ones inside you, too. Your house is burning, that’s all you see. But get up here, get some distance, it’s just another tiny fire.
“We go through our lives agonizing over income or what others think, getting wound up about Betty LaButt’s new CD, who shot or fucked Insert-name-here on some TV show, or the latest skinny on the latest idiot with cheekbones who’s making a run for office, and all the while, governments go on killing their citizens, children die from food additives and advertising, women get beaten or worse, meth labs now take over the rural south the way kudzu once did, and we’re getting lies spoon fed to us at every turn.
“The most interesting thing about us as a species may be all the ways we figure out so we don’t have to think about those things.”
This from a the man who spent most of his life writing crap movies. Well, mostly crap anyway.
Emergency vehicles pulled in below, so yes, a collision.
Driver stood. The boulder he’d been sitting on was all but covered with paint-sprayed tags, scribblings, and knife etchings-Manny would have insisted upon calling them modern petroglyphs. In the dark Driver could only make out that they were there, not distinguish them. Tags, he figured, tags and hearts and dates and jumbled-up names. And if he could read them, they’d make about as much sense as everything else.
He drove back in along Southern and Buckeye, then spilled over to Van Buren and, surprised to see lights on at the garage, turned in. The door was unlocked. As he stepped through, a head leaned out from behind the hood of a bottle-green BMW.
“Everything all right?” he said.
“Would I be under here if it was?”
“I mean…” He looked around. The only lights were two floods over her space. Strange to have the place so silent. “It’s late.”
“And quiet.”
His face must have carried the question.
“You tilted your head, the way people do when they’re listening-just for a second there. Nice, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Love it. Being alone in the night, nothing much else in the world except what I’m working on.” She came out from behind the BMW. “I have a key. Lupa’s daughter and I, we went to school together. Anyway, this monster’s almost done.”
“Yours?”
“No way I could afford it. Or want it. But I can get it running smooth again, and the guy who owns it can’t do that. You notice the sidewalks just up the way?”
“Not really.”
“WPA, from 1928. More cracks than cement, so the city finally decides to repair them. One look and you can tell the old good stuff from the new crappy stuff.”
“I’ve got some poorly repaired cracks myself.”
“Not the right vintage.”
“A little earlier, true. Interesting thing to notice about the neighborhood.”
“Everything’s interesting. You just have to look closely.”
“And most people don’t.”
She shrugged. “Their loss.”
He was careful not to move closer. And while she seemed wholly at ease, body language told him she was every bit as watchful and aware. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“You never had it.”
Caught without a response, he shook his head.
“You have legal motives in mind, say-oh, I don’t know, applying for a marriage license, checking my credit-put down Stephanie. Real life, I’m Billie. Long story, not very interesting.”
“I thought everything was.”
She turned to put down the feeler gauge she was holding and turned back. “You have possibilities, Eight.”
When he held his hands out and apart in mock supplication, she pointed to the stall where he usually worked. Right. Number eight.
They turned to the door in unison.
“You folks okay?” Floating in the gray behind concentric circles of blinding light, the cop stepped in. He pivoted the flashlight around the garage, up and down, then back to them before shutting it off. As their eyes readjusted, his partner came into sight at the door.
“Saw the lights on, commercial establishment. Kinda late, isn’t it?”
“And quiet,” Driver said.
The lead cop let that go. His eyes did a once-over, checking Driver’s hands, clothing, shoes, stance.
“We’re good, Officer,” Billie said. “I often work late.”
“Yes, ma’am, we’ve seen your lights on before. What about your friend here?”
“He works here too.”
“Sure he does.” The cop flipped his light back on, ran it along the BMW, shut it off. “You have papers on that
