But she was already looking out the windshield, at Dick onstage.
“Joan.”
She pulled away. Then she started dressing.
“Joan, come on. I just got nervous that we were going to get caught.”
“Don’t lie,” she said, pulling on her jeans.
“I’m not lying! I thought I saw someone peeking at us from over there. From behind that Plymouth.”
“Stop already. I need to get some air.” She pulled the lever and opened the door.
I grabbed her hand. “Joan, I’m crazy about you. I want you to come to New York with me. Joan!”
“Let me go!”
“Joan, please!”
She tried to pull away but I held on.
“Get off of me!” She yanked her hand free and got out of the shuttle.
“I’m sorry,” I called after her, watching her vanish into the crowd. “I couldn’t help it!”
A woman with a blanket under her arm walked by the Coach’s open door and I suddenly became aware of my nakedness. I yanked the door shut and sat down in the driver’s seat, which gave a loud, tired wheeze beneath my weight.
For a long moment I sat inside the empty Coach, the sweat on my body cooling. I stared out the window at Dick Doyle, trying to figure out how, exactly, he’d tricked me into becoming this—a man sitting naked and alone in a dusty parking lot. He’d led me away from my life, down, down all the way to central Florida. He’d turned me into someone I didn’t recognize. A man I despised. I thought about returning to New York without anything to show for myself, returning with no one, to nothing.
I fished the keys from Joan’s bag and started up the Coach. Then I slammed on the gas.
The chain strung across the front of the lot snapped with a twang as the Coach roared up out of the gravel lot and onto the stretch of grass leading to the stage. I turned on the high beams, which cut through the darkness like the white horns of a charging bull. I was vaguely aware of people on the dance floor screaming and scattering, but I had my sights fixed on the man onstage. He seemed unaware of the commotion; he just strummed his guitar and sang, the spotlight making the sequined designs sparkle across his suit.
Lanterns popped against the windshield, one after another, sending showers of sparks across the glass. The blue floor gleamed beneath the Coach’s tires. Flecks of mica in the paint sparkled under the headlights, as though the floor were an immense body of water, an ocean I had to cross to get to Dick Doyle. Someone threw a soda against the driver’s-side door, where it splattered all over my window; I plowed through a giant teddy-bear, which burst in an explosion of stuffing. All I saw was Dick Doyle, singing away at the end of that bright shaft of light, his hairy fingers moving over the guitar.
I pressed harder on the gas; the stage loomed closer and closer. I glared at Dick, waiting for him to look over, to see the Coach speeding toward him, but his gaze was vacant, aimed blindly at the dancing crowd.
“Drop your mask!” I screamed. “Drop it!”
But Dick stayed where he was.
I stomped on the brakes, but the Coach was going too fast; the van hurtled toward Dick, screeching and fishtailing, smashing through hay bales. I pulled the emergency brake, and still the Coach skidded toward Dick, who was only now looking over, finally seeing what was about to happen. There was no fear in his face, though, only a lack of comprehension, bewilderment. He stopped playing. But that was all he had time to do before the Coach rammed into him. There was a horrible thud, and then the Coach slid to a stop.
“It’s that stalker!” someone screamed.
“Call the cops!”
I glanced in the side-view mirror and saw Dick staggering to his feet behind one of the hay bales. His guitar still hung from his neck, but its front had come loose and was dangling by the instrument’s strings over the empty wooden box of its body. Dick’s hat had fallen off too. His hair stuck up in wild shocks. He looked over at me, dazed and blinking against the stage lights. The light had been in his eyes, I realized. That was why he hadn’t seen me coming.
I put the Coach in reverse.
The tires squealed against the waxed surface of the stage. I watched in the side-view mirror as Dick wobbled on his feet, looking at me coming toward him with that same expression of confusion.
I was sure he’d dodge or dive to safety, but instead I heard a loud whump and a grunt and the crash of someone falling backward into stage equipment.
I jerked the Coach to a stop. The voices were closer now.
“Get him!”
“Grab his arm! Lord Christ, he’s naked in there!”
I craned my head out the window. I saw Dick’s leg hanging over a toppled speaker. The silver toe cap at the tip of his boot winked at me in the light. Beyond the boot Dick’s face appeared with what looked like a smile on it.
I stepped on the gas again. The Coach lurched backward, but an amplifier was stuck beneath the tail. The tires spun and smoked. I rammed the lever into drive, but before I could hit the gas again a hand reached inside the window and had me by the face. Another one grabbed my hair. All the stage lights seemed to go out at once.
Part Three: Ballad with Thirty-six Wheels
I SPENT THE WHOLE OF SUNDAY AT THE POLICE STATION, LOCKED in a common holding cell. The courts were closed for the weekend, so there would be no bail hearing until Monday morning.
All I did in the cell was lie on my cot. I hurt all over; I was covered in bruises from being dragged out of the Coach. One of my eyes was black and swollen and wouldn’t stop tearing. The cell was nicer than I’d imagined it would be, clean and well lit, with six soft cots lining the wall. The toilet had a curtain that pulled closed around it for privacy. Only two other people shared the cell with me. Both were men sleeping off drunks. One lay on his back with an arm flung over his face. The other sat curled against the wall, his jacket around his shoulders like a cape. This man was older, and for a moment, when I was first led into the cell, I mistook him for the old man from the dumpster, but he was just a stranger.
On Monday morning the policeman gave me two calls. I called Roddy and I called Joan. But it was Orlando who came to get me late Monday afternoon. Driving back from the station, he hardly said a word. He looked haggard, and he kept his eyes on the road.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” I said.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Miller. I should never have let you go see the singer. That was my mistake.”
“No, I—”
Orlando hissed through his teeth. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just rest.”
I leaned my head against the window, letting the glass cool the inflamed skin above my eye. The sun was just setting; all the day’s color was draining into the sky, leaving the trees black. I thought of my apartment back in New York. I could see the same sunset pouring in through those huge bedroom windows, lighting up the floor like the deck of an ocean liner. I saw my little robotic vacuum, slowly dragging itself from room to room, its batteries nearly dead.
I closed my eyes. How had I let this all happen? How could I have been so stupid? An image of Dick’s face came to me—his face the way it had looked in the Coach’s windshield just before I knocked him down, confused and frightened and yet horribly blank. I felt a great shame welling up in me. Dick Doyle was not to blame. He wasn’t a fake. He was just an unfortunate man, now made more so by my attack, left bruised and battered. I was lucky he’d survived at all.
By the time Orlando pulled into the pawnshop’s lot, I felt ready to sleep for a thousand years. It took a great effort to get out of the car. Raoul, another clerk, was just locking up.
