Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (17 page)

‘You’re sure you got nothing to do tonight?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

‘What time do you have to be in?’

‘I gave up punching the time clock a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I’m a big girl now I have my own room and everything. Where do you want to go?’

‘I’m a stranger here,’ I said. ‘I leave it to you.’

‘Well, what would you like? A movie? A sandwich? Some music? Want to go hear some music and dance?’

‘I’ve already had a small helping of music,’ I said. ‘On your radio. While I was waiting for you. Right there …’ I laid the tip of my forefinger against the dial. ‘Right there. Eleven hundred…’

‘That’s the record station. They play records.’

‘I know. They played one. I’ll go down there one of these days and get a copy of it, too.’

‘What was the name of it?’

‘I don’t think you know it,’ I said.

‘I might. I listen a lot. …’

‘ “I’ve Found a New Baby.” Chicago Rhythm Kings.’

‘I don’t know it,’ she said, stopping at a traffic light. She looked at me with amused suspicion. ‘Is this more conversation?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid I got off on the wrong foot with you,’ I said.

‘There’s no such record as that, is there?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You didn’t listen to the radio, either, did you?’

‘No. I never touched it’

‘You know why I know?’

‘Because you got me pegged?’

‘A much more infallible reason than that,’ she said, laughing. ‘My radio’s out of whack. It won’t play.’ She reached over and turned it on. The honking of horns behind reminded her that the light had turned green, and she let the clutch in with her stockingless, moccasined foot. The little light was glowing on the radio dial, and there was a tiny humming sound, but nothing else. She turned the knob and the needle moved down the dial, but there was no reception. ‘You see?’

‘Yes, I see,’ I replied, laughing. This was funny as hell. ‘You ought to get that fixed. …’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘You’re prodigious,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to believe now.’

‘Well, we’re sitting in this car together. That you can believe.’

‘Yes. That I can believe.’

‘And the top’s down. That you can believe.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s a hell of a night for a ride. That also you can believe.’

‘Yes. That also I can believe.’

I shrugged. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘why not save all the things you can’t believe until tomorrow and lump ’em together and worry about ’em then?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘We’ll take a ride then. Where... ?’

‘I’m a stranger here,’ I said. ‘I leave that to you.’

‘We have four directions here – a sort of local phenomena,’ she said. ‘North, south, east and west. Do you have a favorite?’

‘My favorite’s the one that’s not so lousy with traffic,’ I said.

She weaved over to the right. The radio was still humming and I turned it off before it suddenly popped on and she could catch me in a truth. She turned right at the next corner into a narrow residential street, both sides of which were so thick with trees that the foliage interlaced above the street, and it was like boring through a tunnel. There were restrained lights in some of the houses, and in one of the yards the sprinklers were going and in the rays of the headlights I could almost count the drops of water from one of them as they left the peak of the arc and started falling. They left a sliver of dampness in the air which was barely perceptible, only enough to make me realize that there was one other smell in the world than
Huele de Noche.

‘Nice,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, not knowing what I meant.

At the first block she turned right again, but this street was wide open above to the sky, and two or three blocks ahead I could see a red stop-light blinking, and cars passing. I looked at her, but did not say anything.

‘I’m trying to get on the boulevard,’ she said, ‘where it isn’t so lousy with traffic. …’

‘Oh …’ I said.

It was a boulevard, a big one, the one we had crossed on the other street, at the three-way intersection, and it was carrying a lot of traffic She paused the car at the stop signal, and then shot on to the boulevard, turning left. There were stores and cut-rate filling stations along both sides of the boulevard, but a mile or so ahead the lights ended, and what looked like a wilderness began, and there was nothing beyond but space.

‘We’ll be out of the traffic soon,’ she said. ‘This is the highway west.’

The highway west? ‘Is this the one the Greyhound buses use? The Arizona buses use?’ I asked.

‘It’s the only one. Are you going to Arizona?’

‘I was thinking about it once,’ I said. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘Do you live here now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Downtown.’

‘Downtown? In a hotel?’

‘In an apartment.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Well, nothing just now. I got several irons in the fire. …’

She looked at me abruptly. ‘What part of the South are you from?’ she asked.

‘What makes you think I’m from the South?’

‘Your accent’

‘My accent?’ I said. ‘I got no accent’

‘I hadn’t noticed it before. But I did then. When you said “iron”.’

I laughed. ‘That’s one of the words that always gives me away,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to be more careful. …’

‘Are you ashamed of being from the South?’

‘Not exactly. …’

‘Then why try to hide it?’

‘I don’t know. …’

‘You shouldn’t try to hide it. Southern accents are cute.’

‘Business reasons. Most people associate laziness and shiftlessness with Southern accents. I suppose that’s why I keep trying to get away from it. …’

‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true, at all.’

‘Most business people do,’ I said. ‘I’d like to be a success one of these days. I don’t want to put any hazards in my way.’

‘That’s a curious way to look at it,’ she said.

‘Well, maybe so. I guess it’s a phobia, sort of…’

‘But you should try to understand it. Phobias can be understood. Don’t you know that?’

‘I know that some of them can,’ I said, looking at her full in the face, and seeing, again, the little old lady in the coffin. ‘Some of them can,’ I said.

She shuddered violently, and looked away, and I looked away too. The road raced straight west now, pearly black under a full moon, and almost emptied of traffic The night whistled over the top of the windshield and whined off the wind-wings as the car drilled through, and I heard a quiet plop! and glanced down and saw that her foot was pressing the throttle against the floor rug. She had meant for me to hear that, she had slapped the throttle down to direct my attention to what she was doing. The whine of the night increased and I could hear the cylinders sucking furiously to take up the irruption of gasoline vapours. I knew what she was up to, but I didn’t know why. Unless… But that was not possible. She was no mind reader and she couldn’t have seen that in my face. But she had seen something or sensed something, because she still held the throttle open. She was trying to out-gut me. All right, sister, I thought, you go right ahead and out-gut me. You’ll get fat trying to out-gut me. I settled back and dropped my eyes from the windshield to the floor rug, picking out a spot to concentrate on. The trick in not being out-gutted is to avoid looking at anything by which you can measure your speed. The whine of the night and the sucking hiss of the cylinders were my only gauges, but in a minute or two I was conditioned to the night whine, and the cylinders had at last caught up with the gas intake, and I told myself that as long as I could keep my eyes off the speedometer I could control my nerves. We hurtled past the other cars that were coming and going and there was a roar, roar as we hit the edges of their slipstreams, and the roadster shook and trembled under the impact of air already disturbed, and I heard the angry sounds of horns wailing at us from behind. This was a thunderbolt we were riding now, but she held it steady, both hands frozen to the wheel I noticed, out of the corners of my eyes, sliding them to her hands and back again to that spot on the floor rug, careful to keep them away from the speedometer. Three or four little thumps exploded somewhere in front of me and I looked up and saw blobs of viscous insect fluid on the glass. ‘Look how fat they are!’ she called. ‘Good crops this year!’ I said nothing, putting my eyes back on that spot on the floor rug, figuring we must be doing ninety at least, maybe ninety-five. Other squishy explosions sounded against the windshield, but this time I did not look up, and that disappointed her. I could tell, because she started the windshield wipers and their evil metronomic clicks filled the car: she was doing everything she could to call my attention to the speed. I still did not look up, but I was fighting to keep my eyes off the speedometer. In what seemed less than the passing of a second my equilibrium was suddenly disturbed and I slid across the leather seat against the door. Instinctively, I looked up. The road was still perfectly straight, she had merely swished the car a little. Jesus, I thought, this dame is insane. I looked out over the door. The flat, fallow field to my right was a strip of continuous undulation. We must be going a hundred miles an hour, I thought. At this speed anything can happen. I got out a cigarette, and she took her right hand off the wheel and nonchalantly pushed in the dashboard lighter, holding it in. That chilled me. You must be out of your mind, standing for this, I told myself. You’re no college boy now. You’re no starving musician making that wild jump from Rocky Mount to Goldsboro in a Model T, ashamed to tell the hop-head at the wheel to slow down. You’re a guy with a future. But where the hell is that future if you pile up in ditch?

I looked at the speedometer. The needle was just scant of one hundred. I grabbed the cigarette out of my lips and flung it out the door.

‘This is too fast!’ I yelled at her.

‘The speedometer’s not right,’ she yelled back at me. ‘It’s broken too.’

‘Hell with the speedometer!’ I yelled. ‘This is too fast. Goddamn it,
this is too fast
.’

She put her hand back on the steering wheel and feathered her foot on the throttle and the speed of the roadster diminished. The speedometer needle fell back slowly, ninety-five, ninety, eighty-five, eighty, seventy-five, seventy, sixty-five, sixty, with the whistle and whine of the night lowering, fifty-five …

‘You know how fast you were going? A hundred miles an hour. …’

‘The speedometer’s not right,’ she said. ‘It’s out of whack. …’

‘Well, speedometer or no speedometer, you got too goddamn much power here,’ I said.

She took her foot off the throttle now, pulling over on the shoulder of the highway, using the compression as a brake.

‘What are you stopping for?’ I asked.

‘So you can light a cigarette?’ she replied calmly.

‘Well, Jesus,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to stop for that.’

‘You drive,’ she said.

I looked at her. ‘What the hell are you trying to prove?’ I asked.

‘Prove?’ she said innocently. ‘I’m not trying to prove anything. I just want you to drive.’

‘All right, I will,’ I said. I leaned across her and snatched on the hand brake and the car stopped and I got out and went around the front to her side. ‘Move over,’ I said. She slid over and I opened the door and got in under the wheel.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘Feel better?’

‘I do, indeed,’ I said, closing the door. I took the brake off and put the car in gear and nosed it back on the highway.

‘May I have a cigarette?’

I fished a cigarette out of the pack in my pocket and handed it to her. She lighted it with the dashboard lighter, and I could feel her looking at me.

‘I think I like your driving better than I do mine,’ she said.

‘I like it better, too,’ I said.

‘It always makes me nervous when somebody else is driving. But I’m not nervous now.’

‘Neither am I,’ I said.

She suddenly put her hand on my leg, staring at me in wide-eyed surprise. ‘Now I get it,’ she said. ‘You thought…’ She broke off, laughing. ‘Oh, no, you couldn’t! The very idea! Do you think I was deliberately trying to scare you?’

‘That’s nice conversation from you, too,’ I said.

‘Why, it’s too silly to even talk about,’ she said.

I turned off into a side road that was narrow but surfaced and headed north. She had no reaction to this, none at all. In a minute or two I glided to a stop under an oak tree and cut off the lights. I turned the switch and the motor died and the world was suddenly quiet. I looked at her. The cigarette was in her mouth, twisted away from her nostrils, and she was fluffing her hair with both hands.

‘Why’d you do it?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘You know what.’

‘Speeding?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do I have to have a reason?’

‘For that you do.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t, at all. I often feel like rolling …’

‘That fast?’

‘Sometimes faster.’

‘Crap,’ I said. ‘What scared you?’

‘What scared
me
? Now really…’

I took the cigarette from her lips and tossed it over her head, out of the car, and put my face close to hers.

‘What scared you?’ I asked again.

‘Don’t look at me that way,’ she said.

I put my arms around her and kissed her on the half-parted lips and could feel her hot exhaling breaths against the roof of my mouth. She shuddered again, mumbling into my throat, twisting her head, but I had her lips anchored with my mouth, swimming in a balsamic sea of
Huele de Noche.
After a while she stopped struggling and moving and then I took my arms from around her.

‘Get out,’ I said.

She just looked at me with that white face. I reached over and opened the door on her side and twisted past her, stepping on to the ground.

‘Get out,’ I said.

She didn’t move.

‘Goddamn it, get out!’ I said.

She got out and I took her by the hand. I slammed the door of the car and walked her to the base of the oak tree. The roots of the oak were exposed on the side of a grassy slope, and I sat down, pulling her down beside me. There was still no response from her, no excitement, no apprehension, no curiosity – nothing.