“…Now there’s a sign of the times. Door-to-door natural-foods salesmen. Like when they used to knock on your door with half a cow butchered and frozen, give you a great deal. So many steaks, so many ribs, so much ground.”
“Great deals are what America’s all about. Had a woman show up here last week pitching tapes of whale songs.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Late thirties. Jeans with the waistband cut off, faded blue workshirt. Latina. It was like seven in the morning.”
“I think she swung by here, too. Didn’t answer, but I looked out. Make a good story-if I wrote stories anymore. What’d you need?”
“Desuetude.”
“Reading again, are we? Could be dangerous… It means to become unaccustomed to. As in something gets discontinued, falls into disuse.”
“Thanks, man.”
“That it?”
“Yeah, but we should grab a drink sometime.”
“Absolutely. I’ve got this thing, which is pretty much done, then a polish on the remake of an Argentine film, a day or two’s work sprucing up dialog for some piece of artsy Polish crap. You have anything on for next Thursday?”
“Thursday’s good.”
“Gustavo’s? Around six? I’ll bring a bottle of the good stuff.”
That was Manny’s one concession to success: he loved good wine. He’d show up with a bottle of Merlot from Chile, a blend of Merlot and Shiraz from Australia. Sit there in the wardrobe he’d paid out maybe ten dollars for at the nearest secondhand store six years ago and pour out this amazing stuff.
Even as he thought of it, Driver could taste Gustavo’s slow-cooked pork and yucca. That made him hungry. Also made him remember the slug line of another, far classier L.A. restaurant: We season our garlic with food. At Gustavo’s, the couple dozen chairs and half as many tables had set them back maybe a hundred dollars total, cases of meat and cheese sat in plain view, and it’d been a while since the walls got wiped down. But yeah, that pretty much said it. We season our garlic with food.
Driver went back to the counter, drank his cold coffee. Had another cup, hot, that wasn’t much better.
At Benito’s just down the block he ordered a burrito with machaca, piled on sliced tomatoes and jalapenos from the condiment bar. Something with taste. The jukebox belted out your basic Hispanic homeboy music, guitar and bajo sexto saying how it’s always been, accordion fluttering open and closed like the heart’s own chambers.
Chapter Three
Up till the time Driver got his growth about twelve, he was small for his age, an attribute of which his father made full use. The boy could fit easily through small openings, bathroom windows, pet doors and so on, making him a considerable helpmate at his father’s trade, which happened to be burglary. When he did get his growth he got it all at once, shooting up from just below four feet to six-two almost overnight, it seemed. He’d been something of a stranger to and in his body ever since. When he walked, his arms flailed about and he shambled. If he tried to run, often as not he’d trip and fall over. One thing he could do, though, was drive. And he drove like a son of a bitch.
Once he’d got his growth, his father had little use for him. His father had had little use for his mother for a lot longer. So Driver wasn’t surprised when one night at the dinner table she went after his old man with butcher and bread knives, one in each fist like a ninja in a red-checked apron. She had one ear off and a wide red mouth drawn in his throat before he could set his coffee cup down. Driver watched, then went on eating his sandwich: Spam and mint jelly on toast. That was about the extent of his mother’s cooking.
He’d always marvelled at the force of this docile, silent woman’s attack-as though her entire life had gathered toward that single, sudden bolt of action. She wasn’t good for much else afterwards. Driver did what he could. But eventually the state came in and prised her from the crusted filth of an overstuffed chair complete with antimacassar. Driver they packed off to foster parents, a Mr. and Mrs. Smith in Tucson who right up till the day he left registered surprise whenever he came through the front door or emerged from the tiny attic room where he lived like a wren.
A few days shy of his sixteenth birthday, Driver came down the stairs from that attic room with all his possessions in a duffel bag and the spare key to the Ford Galaxie he’d fished out of a kitchen drawer. Mr. Smith was at work, Mrs. Smith off conducting classes at Vacation Bible School where, two years back, before he’d stopped attending, Driver had consistently won prizes for memorizing the most scripture. It was mid-summer, unbearably hot up in his room, not a lot better down here. Drops of sweat fell onto the note as he wrote. I’m sorry about the car, but I have to have wheels. I haven’t taken anything else. Thank you for taking me in, for everything you’ve done. I mean that.
Throwing the duffel bag over the seat, he backed out of the garage, pulled up by the stop sign at the end of the street, and made a hard left to California.
Chapter Four
They met at a low-rent bar between Sunset and Hollywood east of Highland. Uniformed Catholic schoolgirls waited for buses across from lace, leather and lingerie stores and shoe shops full of spike heels size fifteen and up. Driver knew the guy right away when he stepped through the door. Pressed khakis, dark T-shirt, sport coat. De rigueur gold wristwatch. Copse of rings at finger and ear. Soft jazz spread from the house tapes, a piano trio, possibly a quartet, something rhythmically slippery, eel-like, you could never quite get a hold on it.
New Guy grabbed a Johnny Walker black, neat. Driver stayed with what he had. They went to a table near the back.
“Got your name from Revell Hicks.”
Driver nodded. “Good man.”
“Getting harder and harder all the time to step around the amateurs, know what I’m saying? Everybody thinks he’s bad, everybody thinks he makes the best spaghetti sauce, everybody thinks he’s a good driver.”
“You worked with Revell, I have to figure you’re a pro.”
“Same here.” New Guy threw back his scotch. “Fact is, what I hear is you’re the best.”
“I am.”
“Other thing I’ve heard is, you can be hard to work with.”
“Not if we understand one another.”
“What’s to understand? It’s my job. So I’m pit boss. I run the team, call all the shots. Either you sign on to the team or you don’t.”
“Then I don’t.”
“Fair enough. Your call…”
“Another sparkling opportunity gone down the tubes.”
“Let me buy you another drink, at least.”
He went to the bar for a new round.
“I do have to wonder, though,” he said, setting down a fresh beer and shot. “Care to enlighten me?”
“I drive. That’s all I do. I don’t sit in while you’re planning the score or while you’re running it down. You tell me where we start, where we’re headed, where we’ll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don’t take part, I don’t know anyone, I don’t carry weapons. I drive.”
“Attitude like that has to cut down something fierce on offers.”
