legacy of the metal fragments embedded in my back, and specifically, the result of some flesh-encrusted screw, some rusty bolt, working its way toward the air like a restless corpse. I felt it now exactly in the place where Edward Hubbel, who had never understood why he had been mesmerized by lines of seminaked boys, had breathed on me while he scrutinized my scars. Edward Hubbel's breath had seeped through my skin and awakened the sleeping bolt. Now it was moving around, crawling toward the surface like Lazarus, where first a sharp edge, then a blunt curl, would emerge. For a week, I'd print spotty bloodstains on my shirts and sheets.
I slowed down before I slammed into the back of a truck and puttered along behind it while I tried rubbing my back on the seat. The truck picked up a little speed. I could feel the exact dimension of the little hatchet buried at the bottom of my shoulder blade. Pressing it against the seat seemed to calm it. The painful circle on my back shrank by half an inch. I looked into the rear-view mirror, saw nothing, and moved out to get around the truck. A horn blared; brakes shrieked. I jammed the accelerator. The Pontiac wavered ahead, and the massive wheels of the truck filled my side window. The horn blasted again. The Pontiac made up its mind and shot forward. The rear end of another car jumped into the windshield, and I hauled the Pontiac into the fast lane with my heart skipping and my mind in the clear empty space of panic. I never even ticked it. When I saw red lights ahead of me, I slowed down and waited for my heart to get back to normal. The screw in my back declared itself again. A few other little knots and bumps began to throb. Hubbel had breathed them all into wakefulness. Headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, and I sped up by another five miles an hour. The headlights grew larger and sharper. I swung back into the middle lane.
The car behind me came up alongside me and stuck with me for a long time. I thought it must have been someone I had irritated or frightened during my Fontaine phase. The other car drifted toward my lane, and I swerved right far enough to put my tires on the yellow line. The other car swerved with me. It was dark blue, pocked with brown primer, with crumpled corrugations behind the headlight. I sped up; he sped up. I slowed down; he slowed down. Now he was only inches from the side of my car, and my heart began to trip again. I looked sideways at a curly dark head, heavy bare shoulders, and a flash of gold. The other driver was watching the front of the Pontiac. He moved his wheel, and his car whapped into mine just above the left front tire.
I slammed down the accelerator, and the Pontiac zoomed into the slow lane. There was a screech of metal as he dug a long strip down my side. The Pontiac jumped ahead. The other man raced up alongside to hit me again, and I zagged sideways. The rows of warning lights at the back of another semi zoomed toward me. When I saw its mudflaps, I swerved off the road and shuddered onto gravel. I kept pace with the semi for half a mile, telling myself that the other driver would think I had driven off the road. The truck driver blasted his air horn. I was glad I didn't have to hear what he was saying. Sooner or later, I was going to run into an exit sign or a stalled car, so I edged forward until I could see past the front of the cab, gunned the Pontiac, and scrambled back onto the road. The truck driver gave another enraged blast of his air horn.
The dark blue car swam up beside me again. This time he hit me hard enough to jolt my hands off the wheel. The semi's headlights filled my rearview mirror. The blue car veered away and then came back and ground against the side of the Pontiac. If he got me to slow down, or if he jarred me into an angle, the semi would flatten me. A calm little voice in the midst of my panic said that Fontaine had learned that I had tickets to Tangent and had someone watch the Pontiac until I came back. The same voice told me that a couple of witnesses would testify that I had been driving recklessly. The thug in the blue car would just disappear.
The semi's enormous radiator filled my rearview mirror. It looked carnivorous. The blue car swung into me again, and I fastened onto the wheel and slammed into him, just for the satisfaction. Sparks flew up between us. I could taste adrenaline. The big green rectangle of an exit sign took shape in the fog ahead of me. I took my foot off the accelerator, yanked the wheel to the right, and took off over the gravel. In seconds, I was shuddering over bumpy ground. The steel posts of the sign flew past the sides of the Pontiac, and the blue car sailed away into the fog only feet away from the cab of the semi. I went bumping through weeds. The bottom of the Pontiac scraped rock. Then a curb led down to the off ramp, and I thumped down onto the roadbed, drove without seeing or thinking for thirty seconds, pulled up at the stop sign, and started to shake.
I wiped my face with a handkerchief and got out to look at the damage. The man in the blue car would be swept along until the next exit, at least a mile away. He had put three long silver slashes down the side, buckled in the metal between the wheel and the door, and punched a lot of dents along the entire length of the car. I leaned against the car and breathed hard for a while, watching the ghostly traffic move along the highway in the fog. After a while I realized that I was on the off ramp to the south side of Millhaven, twenty minutes from Livermore Avenue. In all the excitement, I had reached the exit I wanted in the first place. I think I had forgotten that I had a destination.
I got back into the car and pointed it toward Pigtown. The uneasy thought came to me that the man in the blue car would already be traveling back toward me.
I didn't look at my watch until I saw the vague shape of the St. Alwyn towering over Livermore Avenue, and then I was surprised to see that it was ten to eight. Time seemed to have simultaneously speeded up and slowed down. The little hooks and ratchets in my back pulsed and burned, and I kept hearing air horns and seeing the blue car slamming toward me. As soon as I saw a parking spot, I moved up and reversed in. The right front tire rubbed against the dented shell, and the entire body of the Pontiac shuddered and moaned.
I paid the meter an hour's worth of quarters. Maybe Glen-roy's appointment had been called off; maybe his visitor was delayed by the fog. I had a feeling I knew what kind of appointment it was, anyhow. Meetings like that don't take long. I locked the car, shivering a little in the fog.
The hotel was two blocks away. I hugged myself against the cold, walking through the thin layers of gauze. The street lamps cast feeble yellow orbs, like Japanese lanterns. All of the shops were closed, and there was no one else on the street. The St. Alwyn receded as I walked toward it, as a mountain backs away when you approach it. Behind me, a distant, momentary crackle tugged at my subconscious, then died. I took another couple of steps and heard it again. This time I recognized the sound of gunfire. I turned around, and there came another rattling burst from off on the other side of the valley and a little way south. The sky held a faint orange tinge. If I'd been closer to Messmer Avenue, I would have heard fire gobbling up stores and houses.
The hot circle below my right shoulder blade began to sing more loudly, but that was a phantom, like the pain in a severed leg. It was just memory, brought back by the sound of small arms' fire. I crossed the next street in the fog, and then I couldn't take it anymore. Directly to my side, rising up two stories of solid darkened brick, was the old annex of the St. Alwyn, now a Valu-Rite pharmacy. I went over to the wall, bent my knees, and pressed my back against the cold brick. After a couple of seconds, the heat and pressure began to shrink. Real relief from phantom pain, as good as a Percodan. If I could press my back against the cold wall for an hour, I thought, all the bolts and fish hooks could go back to their rusty sleep.
I was standing half-crouched against the wall when a curly-haired young character in a black sleeveless T- shirt and baggy black pants came hurrying out of the arched little alleyway. He took a quick, automatic glance in my direction, turned away, then gave me a double take. He stopped moving with a kind of indolent, theatrical slowness. I pushed myself away from the wall. He was going to say something about the rattle of gunfire coming to us from the ghetto at that moment.
He grinned. That was disconcerting. He said, 'You stupid fuck,' even more disconcerting. Then he took a step near me, and I recognized him. Somewhere on the other end of the brick alley, tucked behind a dumpster or nestled in at the back of a liquor store, was a dark blue car with a lot of dents and scratches on its left side. He laughed at the recognition in my face. 'This is beautiful,' he said. 'I don't believe it, but it's beautiful.' He looked up and spread out his hands, as if thanking the god of lowlifes.
'You must be the new Billy Ritz,' I said. 'The old one had a little more style.'
'Nobody is gonna help you now, shithead. There's nowhere you can go.' He reached behind his back with his right hand, the muscles popping in his biceps and shoulders, and the hand came back filled with a solid black rod
