Big Driver (18 page)

Streeter was grinning, having fun. He would have said having fun was now out of reach, but life was full of surprises.

Elvid was also grinning, as if they were sharing an excellent joke. “And once,” he said, “I swung a
reality
extension for a painter—very talented man—who was slipping into paranoid schizophrenia.
That
was expensive.”

“How much? Dare I ask?”

“One of the fellow's paintings, which now graces my home. You'd know the name; famous in the Italian Renaissance. You probably studied him if you took an art appreciation course in college.”

Streeter continued to grin, but he took a step back, just to be on the safe side. He had accepted the fact that he was going to die, but that didn't
mean he wanted to do so today, at the hands of a possible escapee from the Juniper Hill asylum for the criminally insane in Augusta. “So what are we saying? That you're kind of . . . I don't know . . . immortal?”

“Very long-lived, certainly,” Elvid said. “Which brings us to what I can do for you, I believe. You'd probably like a
life
extension.”

“Can't be done, I suppose?” Streeter asked. Mentally he was calculating the distance back to his car, and how long it would take him to get there.

“Of course it can . . . for a price.”

Streeter, who had played his share of Scrabble in his time, had already imagined the letters of Elvid's name on tiles and rearranged them. “Money? Or are we talking about my soul?”

Elvid flapped his hand and accompanied the gesture with a roguish roll of his eyes. “I wouldn't, as the saying goes, know a soul if it bit me on the buttocks. No, money's the answer, as it usually is. Fifteen percent of your income over the next fifteen years should do it. An agenting fee, you could call it.”

“That's the length of my extension?” Streeter contemplated the idea of fifteen years with wistful greed. It seemed like a very long time, especially when he stacked it next to what actually lay ahead: six months of vomiting, increasing pain, coma, death. Plus an obituary that would undoubtedly include the phrase “after a long and courageous battle with cancer.” Yada-yada, as they said on
Seinfeld
.

Elvid lifted his hands to his shoulders in an expansive who-knows gesture. “Might be twenty. Can't say for sure; this is not rocket science. But if you're expecting immortality, fuggeddaboudit. All I sell is fair extension. Best I can do.”

“Works for me,” Streeter said. The guy had cheered him up, and if he needed a straight man, Streeter was willing to oblige. Up to a point, anyway. Still smiling, he extended his hand across the card table. “Fifteen percent, fifteen years. Although I have to tell you, fifteen percent of an assistant bank manager's salary won't exactly put you behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce. A Geo, maybe, but—”

“That's not quite all,” Elvid said.

“Of course it isn't,” Streeter said. He sighed and withdrew his hand. “Mr. Elvid, it's been very nice talking to you, you've put a shine on my evening, which I would have thought was impossible, and I hope you get help with your mental prob—”

“Hush, you stupid man,” Elvid said, and although he was still smiling, there was nothing pleasant about it now. He suddenly seemed taller—at least three inches taller—and not so pudgy.

It's the light,
Streeter thought.
Sunset light is tricky
. And the unpleasant smell he suddenly noticed was probably nothing but burnt aviation fuel, carried to this little graveled square outside the Cyclone fence by an errant puff of wind. It all made sense . . . but he hushed as instructed.

“Why does a man or woman need an extension? Have you ever asked yourself that?”

“Of course I have,” Streeter said with a touch of asperity. “I work in a bank, Mr. Elvid—Derry Savings. People ask me for loan extensions all the time.”

“Then you know that people need
extensions
to compensate for
shortfalls
—short credit, short dick, short sight, et cetera.”

“Yeah, it's a short-ass world,” Streeter said.

“Just so. But even things not there have weight.
Negative
weight, which is the worst kind. Weight lifted from you must go somewhere else. It's simple physics.
Psychic
physics, we could say.”

Streeter studied Elvid with fascination. That momentary impression that the man was taller (and that there were too many teeth inside his smile) had gone. This was just a short, rotund fellow who probably had a green outpatient card in his wallet—if not from Juniper Hill, then from Acadia Mental Health in Bangor. If he
had
a wallet. He certainly had an extremely well-developed delusional geography, and that made him a fascinating study.

“Can I cut to the chase, Mr. Streeter?”

“Please.”

“You have to transfer the weight. In words of one syllable, you have to do the dirty to someone else if the dirty is to be lifted from you.”

“I see.” And he did. Elvid was back on message, and the message was a classic.

“But it can't be just anyone. The old anonymous sacrifice has been tried, and it doesn't work. It has to be someone you hate. Is there someone you hate, Mr. Streeter?”

“I'm not too crazy about Kim Jong-il,” Streeter said. “And I think jail's
way
too good for the evil bastards who blew up the USS
Cole,
but I don't suppose they'll ever—”

“Be serious or begone,” Elvid said, and once again he seemed taller. Streeter wondered if this could be some peculiar side-effect of the medications he was taking.

“If you mean in my personal life, I don't hate anyone. There are people I don't
like
—Mrs. Denbrough next door puts out her garbage cans without the lids, and if a wind is blowing, crap ends up all over my law—”

“If I may misquote the late Dino Martino, Mr. Streeter, everybody hates somebody sometime.”

“Will Rogers said—”

“He was a rope-twirling fabricator who wore his hat down around his eyes like a little kid playing cowboy. Besides, if you really hate nobody, we can't do business.”

Streeter thought it over. He looked down at his shoes and spoke in a small voice he hardly recognized as his own. “I suppose I hate Tom Goodhugh.”

“Who is he in your life?”

Streeter sighed. “My best friend since grammar school.”

There was a moment of silence before Elvid began bellowing laughter. He strode around his card table, clapped Streeter on the back (with a hand that felt cold and fingers that felt long and thin rather than short and pudgy), then strode back
to his folding chair. He collapsed into it, still snorting and roaring. His face was red, and the tears streaming down his face also looked red—bloody, actually—in the sunset light.

“Your best . . . since grammar . . . oh, that's . . .”

Elvid could manage no more. He went into gales and howls and gut-shaking spasms, his chin (strangely sharp for such a chubby face) nodding and dipping at the innocent (but darkening) summer sky. At last he got himself under control. Streeter thought about offering his handkerchief, and decided he didn't want it on the extension salesman's skin.

“This is excellent, Mr. Streeter,” he said. “We can do business.”

“Gee, that's great,” Streeter said, taking another step back. “I'm enjoying my extra fifteen years already. But I'm parked in the bike lane, and that's a traffic violation. I could get a ticket.”

“I wouldn't worry about that,” Elvid said. “As you may have noticed, not even a single
civilian
car has come along since we started dickering, let alone a minion of the Derry PD. Traffic never interferes when I get down to serious dealing with a serious man or woman; I see to it.”

Streeter looked around uneasily. It was true. He could hear traffic over on Witcham Street, headed for Upmile Hill, but here, Derry was utterly deserted.
Of course,
he reminded himself,
traffic's always light over here when the working day is done
.

But
absent
? Completely
absent
? You might expect that at midnight, but not at seven-thirty PM.

“Tell me why you hate your best friend,” Elvid invited.

Streeter reminded himself again that this man was crazy. Anything Elvid passed on wouldn't be believed. It was a liberating idea.

“Tom was better-looking when we were kids, and he's
far
better-looking now. He lettered in three sports; the only one I'm even halfway good at is miniature golf.”

“I don't think they have a cheerleading squad for that one,” Elvid said.

Streeter smiled grimly, warming to his subject. “Tom's plenty smart, but he lazed his way through Derry High. His college ambitions were nil. But when his grades fell enough to put his athletic eligibility at risk, he'd panic. And then who got the call?”

“You did!” Elvid cried. “Old Mr. Responsible! Tutored him, did you? Maybe wrote a few papers as well? Making sure to misspell the words Tom's teachers got used to him misspelling?”

“Guilty as charged. In fact, when we were seniors—the year Tom got the State of Maine Sportsman award—I was really
two
students: Dave Streeter and Tom Goodhugh.”

“Tough.”

“Do you know what's tougher? I had a girlfriend. Beautiful girl named Norma Witten. Dark brown hair and eyes, flawless skin, beautiful cheekbones—”

“Tits that wouldn't quit—”

“Yes indeed. But, sex appeal aside—”

“Not that you ever
did
put it aside—”

“—I loved that girl. Do you know what Tom did?”

“Stole her from you!” Elvid said indignantly.

“Correct. The two of them came to me, you know. Made a clean breast of it.”

“Noble!”

“Claimed they couldn't help it.”

“Claimed they were in
love,
L-U-V.”

“Yes. Force of nature. This thing is bigger than both of us. And so on.”

“Let me guess. He knocked her up.”

“Indeed he did.” Streeter was looking at his shoes again, remembering a certain skirt Norma had worn when she was a sophomore or a junior. It was cut to show just a flirt of the slip beneath. That had been almost thirty years ago, but sometimes he still summoned that image to mind when he and Janet made love. He had never made love with Norma—not the Full Monty sort, anyway; she wouldn't allow it. Although she had been eager enough to drop her pants for Tom Goodhugh.
Probably the first time he asked her
.

“And left her with a bun in the oven.”

“No.” Streeter sighed. “He married her.”

“Then divorced her! Possibly after beating her silly?”

“Worse still. They're still married. Three kids. When you see them walking in Bassey Park, they're usually holding hands.”

“That's about the crappiest thing I've ever heard. Not much could make it worse.
Unless . . .” Elvid looked shrewdly at Streeter from beneath bushy brows. “Unless
you're
the one who finds himself frozen in the iceberg of a loveless marriage.”

“Not at all,” Streeter said, surprised by the idea. “I love Janet very much, and she loves me. The way she's stood by me during this cancer thing has been just extraordinary. If there's such a thing as harmony in the universe, then Tom and I ended up with the right partners. Absolutely. But . . .”

“But?” Elvid looked at him with delighted eagerness.

Streeter became aware that his fingernails were sinking into his palms. Instead of easing up, he bore down harder. Bore down until he felt trickles of blood. “But he
fucking stole her
!” This had been eating him for years, and it felt good to shout the news.

“Indeed he did, and we never cease wanting what we want, whether it's good for us or not. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Streeter?”

Streeter made no reply. He was breathing hard, like a man who has just dashed fifty yards or engaged in a street scuffle. Hard little balls of color had surfaced in his formerly pale cheeks.

“And is that all?” Elvid spoke in the tones of a kindly parish priest.

“No.”

“Get it all out, then. Drain that blister.”

“He's a millionaire. He shouldn't be, but he is. In the late eighties—not long after the flood that damn near wiped this town out—he started up a
garbage company . . . only he called it Derry Waste Removal and Recycling. Nicer name, you know.”

“Less germy.”

“He came to me for the loan, and although the proposition looked shaky to everyone at the bank, I pushed it through. Do you know
why
I pushed it through, Elvid?”

“Of course! Because he's your friend!”

“Guess again.”

“Because you thought he'd crash and burn.”

“Right. He sank all his savings into four garbage trucks, and mortgaged his house to buy a piece of land out by the Newport town line. For a landfill. The kind of thing New Jersey gangsters own to wash their dope-and-whore money and use as body-dumps. I thought it was crazy and I couldn't wait to write the loan. He still loves me like a brother for it. Never fails to tell people how I stood up to the bank and put my job on the line. ‘Dave carried me, just like in high school,' he says. Do you know what the kids in town call his landfill now?”

“Tell me!”

“Mount Trashmore! It's huge! I wouldn't be surprised if it was radioactive! It's covered with sod, but there are KEEP OUT signs all around it, and there's probably a Rat Manhattan under that nice green grass!
They're
probably radioactive, as well!”

He stopped, aware that he sounded ridiculous, not caring. Elvid was insane, but—surprise! Streeter had turned out to be insane, too! At least on the subject of his old friend. Plus . . .