promise, I'll be good. You can help me to be good. I'll even see another shrink if you want.'
I thought about Betsi. I thought about Nana. I thought about Norman Stillman's check in my pocket. I thought about the rent, for about the sixth time that week, and I gave up.
'Oh, Christ, Toby,' I said. 'If I stick around, what are you going to do?'
'You mean tonight?'
'That'll do for a start.'
He threw his arm around my shoulders, as though everything were settled at last. 'Let's go to the Spice Rack,' he said. 'Let's go be nice to Nana.'
4
My knees were up somewhere around my chin, and my heart was competing with a hamburger for space in my throat. Toby drove even worse than Dixie said he did.
The roof of the Maserati was about four feet above road level. The console looked like a transplant from the space shuttle. Toby used both hands and both feet constantly just to keep us on the road, which, unfortunately for my peace of mind, was Laurel Canyon.
'Got your belt on?' he asked, taking a sharp downhill curve on two wheels. The burger, to which Toby had graciously treated me at a McDonald's, was refusing to obey the laws of gravity.
'Are you kidding? I'd have yours on, too, if I could get to it.'
'Good. Because I can feel that load coming on.'
This piece of news, added to the burger and my heart, was too much to swallow. 'Toby,' I said, 'tell me that's a joke.'
'In the trailer,' he said. 'Jesus, champ, I've been straight as a string all day.'
'I wouldn't go that far,' I said, looking for something to hold on to.
He popped the clutch and downshifted, keeping his eyes on the road. 'That wasn't dope,' he said finally, sounding uncomfortable. 'That was just old Toby.'
'You want to tell me why you did it?'
'I don't know. She just got me so damn mad. Whatever you think about my face, it's my only valid ticket. The wrong picture, even on the cover of
'Horsefeathers. You set it up.'
The road straightened again, and he pressed down on the accelerator. 'If I were you, champ,' he said, 'I'd let me concentrate on driving.'
'You didn't answer my question.'
'I don't know how to answer it. Listen, I like women, I really do. I always want them to be different, and they never are. They always say something stupid or fuck up in one way or another, and then it happens.'
'What happens?'
'Yaaa, yaaa, yaaa,' he said. 'Something. Like pressure in my head, like, I don't know, like a headache, and my jaws get all stiff and tight, and then I want to break things. Why am I telling you this?'
'Because you like to talk about yourself.'
'Boy, are you wrong there. I'd rather get a rabies shot.'
'And when you hurt somebody, the feeling goes away.'
He pulled up at a stoplight. Sunset Boulevard. He gunned the motor once, looking down at the tachometer. He examined his wristwatch as though it had just appeared on his wrist through spontaneous generation. He checked the fuel level and wiped a speck of dust off the glass on the gauge.
'Would you like to clean the ashtrays?' I asked. 'Maybe get out and polish the car?'
'The sun comes out,' he said brutally. 'There are double fucking rainbows in the sky. For about two minutes. Then I start to feel like shit. But at least I'm not mad anymore. Haven't you ever hit a woman?'
'No. What was your life like at home?'
'I don't talk about home,' he said.
'Why not?'
'What's to say? I was born, I grew up, I left. Same as everybody else.'
'Go out and get dirty, go in and get clean.'
'Say what?'
'According to a friend of mine, that's life in ten words.'
We were speeding down Sunset now, and the sun was all the way down. Toby's face looked green in the glow from the Maserati's console.
'That's not bad,' he said. 'Except that sometimes you can get dirty when you're inside, too.'
'Depends, doesn't it?'
'Don't moralize. You don't know me well enough. That's not what I need from you.'
'So what do you think you need from me?'
'Protection.'
'From whom, Toby?'
'Whom, whom,' he said. 'I'd have said, 'From who?' ' He changed lanes and sped up. 'Whom, whom, whom,' he said, pushing down on the accelerator each time.
'Increasing your word power?'
'I'm a car,' he said. 'I'm also getting pretty loaded.'
'So why did you leave?' I asked, checking my seat belt for the fifth or sixth time.
'We're going to talk about this, huh?'
'Unless you want to say good-bye to me whenever we get where we're going.'
'I wouldn't use that one too often, if I were you.'
'I won't. That was the last time.'
He navigated a couple of turns. 'Who wouldn't leave? You ever been to South Dakota?'
'No.'
'Keep it that way. It's a good place to leave.'
'What's wrong with it?'
At first I thought he wasn't going to answer me. 'To me, South Dakota just means cold,' he said at last. 'And clothesline.'
'Clothesline? Why clothesline?'
'There are lots of reasons. The one I'll tell you about has to do with cold. Ever heard of a white-out?'
'Something to do with snow.'
'Champ, it's
We pulled up at the corner of Sunset and Doheny. A sudden squeal to our left caught my attention. A beat-up convertible with three teenage girls crowded into the front seat had pulled up next to us, and the girls were gawking and squealing and flapping their hands at Toby. They looked ecstatic. Toby smiled and gave them an extravagant wave and then made a sudden right-hand turn down Doheny to get away from them. 'Dumb bitches,' he said. 'Did you see their faces?'
'That's your public,' I said. 'The clothesline.'
'Wind-chill factor,' he said, sounding grumpy. 'It gets down to fifty or sixty below zero. Honest, champ, you can get killed in a white-out just going out to start your car. So you go hand over hand along the clothesline, like a blind person, feeling your way through the freeze and hoping your nose won't break off if you bump into the garage. Great way to start the morning.'
A stoplight went yellow in front of us, and a car popped into the intersection from the right. Toby leaned on the horn and fishtailed the Maserati in front of the other car, heading left on Santa Monica. Brakes squealed behind
