film (as Shannon described them) there’d be enough food to feed a midsize town. Cold cuts, various cheeses, fruit, pizza, canapes, bite-size hot dogs in barbecue sauce, doughnuts and sweet rolls and Danish, sandwiches, boiled eggs, chips, salsa, onion dip, granola, juices and bottled water, coffee, tea, milk, energy drinks, cookies, cakes.
Today he was driving an Impala and the sequence was: double-vehicle ram, bootlegger’s turn, moonshiner’s turn, sideswipe. Ordinarily they’d break it down to segments, but the director wanted to try for a straight shoot in real time.
Driver was on the run. Coming over a hill he’d see a blockade, two State Police cars pulled in nose to nose.
What you do is start off from almost a full stop, car in low gear. You come in from the right, a quarter of a car-width or so-just like finding the pocket by the headpin for a strike. Gas to the floor, you’re going between fifteen and thirty mph when you hit.
And it worked like a charm. The two State Police cars sprang apart, the Impala shot through with a satisfying fishtail and squeal of tires as Driver regained traction and floored it.
But it wasn’t over. A third cop car lugged down the hill. Seeing what happened, he’d jumped the road up there and now came sliding and crashing down through trees, throwing up divots of soil and vegetation, bottoming out more than once, hitting the road fifty yards behind.
Driver let off the gas, dropping to twenty-five, maybe thirty mph, then hauled the steering wheel just over a quarter-turn. At the very same moment he hit the emergency brake and engaged the clutch.
The Impala spun.
Ninety degrees into the spin, he released the brake, straightened the wheel and hit the gas, let the clutch out.
Now he faced back towards the oncoming car.
Accelerating to thirty, as he came abreast-cop’s head swiveling to follow, incredulous-he hauled the wheel to the left hard and fast. Dropped into low, hit the gas, righted the wheel.
Now he was behind his pursuer.
Driver resumed speed and, clocking exactly twenty mph over, struck the cop car scant inches to the right of the left tail light. The car went skidding out of control, nose gone from north to northeast when wheels came back online and took the car the way it was headed-off the road.
To everyone’s surprise, the stunt went down without a hitch, first take. The director shouted Yes! when the two of them climbed out of their cars. Scattered applause from cameramen, onlookers, gofers, set-up men, hangers-on.
“Righteous work out there,” Driver said.
He’d driven with this guy once or twice before. Patrick something. Round Irish moonface, harelip poorly repaired, shock of unruly straw-colored hair. Belying the ethnic stereotype, a man of few words.
“Yourself,” he said.
Dinner that night at a restaurant out in Culver City, place packed to bursting with ponderous Mission furniture, plaster shields and tin swords on the wall, red carpeting, a front door like something you’d see on movie castles. Everything new and made up to look old. Wooden tables and chairs distressed, ceiling beams etched with acid, concrete floor ground down by polishers, cracks laid in. Thing is, the food was great. You’d swear two or three generations of women were back in the kitchen slapping out tortillas by hand, squatting by fires to roast peppers and chicken.
For all he knew, maybe they were. Sometimes he worried about that.
Driver had a few drinks in the bar first. Everything there shamelessly new, stainless steel, polished wood, as though to refute what lay outside the bat-wing doors. Halfway into his first beer he found himself in a political discussion with the man sitting next to him.
Knowing nothing of current affairs, Driver made it up as he went along. Apparently the country was about to go to war. Words such as freedom, liberation and democracy surfaced repeatedly in his companion’s patter, causing Driver to remember ads for Thanksgiving turkeys, how simple it’s become: just stick them in the oven and these little flags pop up to let you know they were done.
Causing Driver also to remember a man from his youth.
Every day Sammy drove his mule cart through the neighborhood crying out Goods for sale! Goods for sale! His cart was piled high with things no one had need of, things no one wanted. Chairs with three legs, threadbare clothing, lava lamps, fondue sets and fishbowls, National Geographics. Day after day, year after year, Sammy went on. Why and how, no one knew.
“Can I cut in?”
Driver looked to his left.
“Double vodka, straight up,” Standard told the barkeep. He took his drink to a table near the back, beckoning Driver to follow.
“Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
Driver shrugged. “Working.”
“Any chance you’d be available tomorrow?”
“Could be.”
“I’ve got something lined up. One of those check-cashing places. Way off the beaten path-off any path. Nothing around at all. Gets its bankroll for the week-and for the weekend-tomorrow before opening.”
“And you know this how?”
“Let’s just say, someone I met. Someone lonely. Way it looks, we’re in and out in five, six minutes tops. Half an hour later you’re sitting over a lunch of prime rib.”
“Okay,” Driver said.
“You have a vehicle?”
“I will have. The night’s still young.” On one hand, he didn’t like so short a lead. On the other, he’d had his eye on a Buick LeSabre in the next apartment complex. Didn’t look like much, but the engine sang.
“Done, then.” They set a meet time and rendezvous point. “Buy you dinner?”
“I’m easy.”
Both of them had steaks smothered in a slurry of onion, peppers and tomato, sides of black beans, pimento-studded rice, flour tortillas. Beer or two with dinner, then back to the bar after. TV’d been turned on but blessedly you couldn’t hear it. Some brainless comedy where actors with perfect white teeth spoke their lines then froze in place to let the laugh track unwind.
Driver and Standard sat quietly together, proud men who would forever keep their own counsel. No need, use or call for banter between them.
“Rina thinks the world of you,” Standard said after ordering a final round. “And Benicio loves you. You know that, right?”
“Both sentiments are fully returned.”
“Any other man got that close to my woman, I’d have cut his throat long ago.”
“She’s not your woman.”
Drinks arrived. Standard paid, adding an oversize tip. Connections everywhere, Driver thought. He identifies with these servers, knows the map of their world. A certain tenderness.
“Rina’s always claimed that I expect too little from life,” Standard said.
“Then at least you’ll never be disappointed.”
“There is that.”
Clicking glasses with Driver, he drank, pulling lips back against teeth at the stringent burn of it.
“But she’s right. How can I expect more than what I see here in front of me? How can any of us?” He finished his drink. “Guess we oughta be going. Get our beauty rest. Busy day tomorrow and all that.”
Outside, Standard glanced up at the full moon, looked across at couples hanging out by cars, at four or five kids in gangsta finery-low-slung pants, oversize tops, head wraps-on the corner.
“Say something happened to me…” he said.
“Say it did.”
“Think you might see your way clear to taking care of Irina and Benicio?”
“Yeah…Yeah, I’d do that.”
