“Yeah?”
“I’m messing with you.”
An awkward silence enveloped the car as her lips collapsed into a maniacal grin.
“You were screwing with me.”
“Come on, you really think I care what a guy I just met thinks about my dietary habits? No offense, Carlito, but I don’t. I give you credit for keeping your cool, though. I’ve been with other guys who’ve started calling me names and telling me to lay off the milk shakes.”
“So you actually do this often. That’s kind of scary.”
“Saves me money on gas and tolls, can’t blame a girl for wanting a little entertainment to go with it.”
“Well then I’m happy to oblige,” I said. “As long as we get to…St. Louis in one piece, I’ll sing show tunes if it’ll make you happy.”
“If I hear one chorus from ‘Dancing Queen,’ you’re walking to St. Louis.”
We pulled into a line of cars waiting for the outbound Holland Tunnel. Traffic was agonizingly slow, but Amanda steered us into the E-Z pass lane. I lowered my head as we passed through the tollbooth, not wanting to offer an easy glimpse to an attendant who might be perusing the newspaper while bored on the job. Within minutes, we were heading west toward New Jersey.
Sodium lights whizzed by, my life now squeezed into a one-lane road. The speck of light at the end of the tunnel grew as we neared the exit. I felt nauseous. I was out of NewYork, away from my personal ground zero. Hopefully arriving in St. Louis by nightfall. But in the commotion to leave, I’d been so delirious that I didn’t even consider the next step. All I knew is that an opportunity for survival had arisen and I’d taken it.
I didn’t know what to do once we got to St. Louis, didn’t know a soul in the whole state. I had no phone to use, forty dollars in my wallet and a gunshot wound in my leg. Mya was out of the picture, as was Wallace Langston. The police were probably circling them both like vultures. They were gangrenous appendages I had to cut off. Perhaps permanently. My life now existed in a parallel social universe, where I could trust only strangers, forced to alienate everyone who cared.
Guilt flushed through my system as I looked at the girl sitting next to me. Her eyes were stuck to the road, so delicate, innocent. I hadn’t considered the implications of what this could do to her. Amanda Davies was there, and I’d blindly reached for her. And now she was at the mercy of chance. I wanted to apologize, to tell her what she’d gotten into. But if I offered the truth, she wouldn’t be a stranger anymore. As long as my story was Carl’s, as long as I remained a stranger, I was safe.
Amanda took a pair of aviator sunglasses from a pouch above the rearview mirror. As we pulled onto US-1/9 south, the bright sunlight of morning shining golden on the horizon, she turned to me.
“You mind opening the glove compartment? Just pull the tab upwards. It might be stuck, so give a good tug.”
I complied, and half a dozen maps spilled onto my lap. A tape measure. Three old movie tickets. Chewing gum that seemed to have petrified.
“Okay, now what?”
“Hand me that notebook,” she said. “The spiral one in there.”
Behind a mass of red-and-blue illustrated tributaries lay a tiny reporter’s notebook, spiral bound at the top, with white lined pages. I’d seen many like it in various newsrooms, had a similar one in my backpack. Many reporters kept them on hand. Was Amanda a journalist? A writer? The odds were staggering, but who else kept a notebook in their glove compartment?
She took it from me and flipped to a clean page, then bit the cap off the pen while balancing the pad on the steering wheel. Then she began to write.
“Uh, hey,” I said, watching the two-ton vehicles whizzing by in a blur on either side of us. “Isn’t the first driving commandment ‘keep thine eyes on the road?’”
She said, “I do this all the time.”
I nodded, as though I’d seen this kind of motor vehicle behavior a thousand times. My hands, however, firmly gripped the armrest in the event she was lying.
“So how long’s the drive to St. Louis?” I asked.
She stopped scribbling. “Depending on traffic, between twelve and fourteen hours.”
“And you can make that in one sitting?” She looked at me as if I’d asked if her hair color was real.
“I’ve done it a hundred times. We might need a pit stop or two for coffee and bathroom breaks, but we should be there by midnight. You’ll have to let me know ahead of time where I’m dropping you.”
“Will do.”
A moment later, she added, “So I’m guessing your clothes are all there.”
“Huh?”
“Well, either all your clothes are wherever I’m dropping you off, or you don’t run up much of a laundry bill.”
“Yeah,” I said, tugging at my brand-new shirt, the fabric stiff, chafing my armpits. “I have a whole wardrobe waiting for me.”
“Gotcha.” She scribbled some more in her notebook as I tried unsuccessfully to read over her shoulder.
Traffic began to thin out as we got farther from the tunnel. I didn’t recognize where we were, but Amanda seemed confident in her bearings. The skyscrapers of New York were gone, replaced by high-tension power lines and smokestacks peppering the bluish-gray landscape. I’d never been to New Jersey. I’d never been to a lot of places. Funny that it took being wanted for murder to get me to see more of the country.
Amanda’s notebook lay open on the armrest, and I decided to sneak a look. Her handwriting was cursive, flowing in decorative, effortless loops. Surprisingly I glimpsed my name-or rather the name of Carl Bernstein-at the top of the page.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
“Just taking notes,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Notes on what?”
“You.”
“What do you mean? You’re taking notes on me?”
“Yup.”
Just my luck, I thought. Probably hitched a ride with an FBI profiler’s daughter.
“What kind of notes?”
“Just observations and stuff,” she said, without a hint of annoyance. “Personality, clothes, speech patterns. Just things I notice.”
Except for Carl’s name in large lettering, her handwriting was too small for me to make out the rest of her notes.
“So tell me. What have you observed about me in the twenty minutes we’ve known each other?”
“That’s none of your business, actually.”
“If you’re writing about me, it is my business. It’s my business very much.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Amanda replied. “See, this is my car and my notebook. I’m writing this for my own eyes, nobody else’s. What, you have a criminal record you don’t want exposed? Should I drop you off somewhere on the turnpike?”
“That wouldn’t be very appreciated.”
“Well, when I’m in your car, you can take all the notes on me you want. I won’t ask questions.”
“I’ll remember that.” She nodded, reached down and flipped the notebook closed.
Time flew by as Amanda coasted down the highway. I wondered how many other passengers she had written drive-by profiles on. Despite the temptation, I refrained from asking. The less Amanda knew about me-and vice versa-the better. She could ruminate all she wanted about Carl Bernstein, but I couldn’t let her know Henry Parker.
After an hour of complete silence, punctured only by the wailing strains of an all-girl rock band on the radio- something about “de-manning” their respective boyfriends-I decided to spark some friendly conversation.
“So, what’s in St. Louis?”
“Home,” Amanda said. “I have two months before the bar and my folks are on vacation in the Greek Isles. I have the entire place to myself to study in peace and quiet.”
