One could always tail the tail. Almost sounded like a riddle when you ran the words together like that — tail the tail. Like a betting rule in football or something.
If only it was. As spooky as it was watching a zombie that looked like RFK drive a car through Boston presumably after me — to say nothing of it being just dangerous; what on earth was keeping that guy on the road? — it’s not as if it could escape the rules of the universe forever. (Right? … Right?) What’s more, we were in Boston. Driving here meant something. It didn’t matter if you were a commuter, an irritated local, a Dot Rat, a haunted pair of eyes from Murderpan, or whatever. You didn’t mess around. You couldn’t. Why would you? Boston was The Hub of the Universe and you wanted to waste your time on the road futzing like a putz? Putz futzing? Futz putzing on the Ritz? Get outta here.
I took a moment to look around the car — to take it in in a moment of appreciation. A deep breath before what was to come. I kept a copy of Cronopios and Famas by the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar open and face down on my passenger seat because I adhered to an old-fashioned idea of books keeping me company on solo drives. I guess you could say that that was just the kind of guy I am. Even when I had the radio going — BCN or something — even when it felt like every song I heard these days was a variation on David Byrne singing about how ‘he lost his shape/trying to act natural,’ I still wanted to have a book next to me. Some people had air fresheners; I had literature.
Therefore, with literature by my side and trumpets between my teeth, I double-checked my rear view mirror one more time, took a deep breath, took a hard left onto West Brookline, and abso-positively gunned it.
Driving in Boston meant something, sure — we’ve well and properly established that, your honor — but driving fast in Boston was something else altogether. It was a real ‘speak softly’ kind of skill, and I was loathe to show it. People liked to drive fast the same way they liked to talk loudly on those big cell phone bricks Wall Street folks were starting to carry around — it was for them and them alone, and it was almost never a reflection of their actual skill.
Because here was the honest to god, dirty truth: driving fast was about variables. The reason why you saw people like Darrell Waltrip driving in circles was because driving in a circle cut down on all the variables. How was your road? What was on it or near it? How was the weather? How well were you strapped in? (Your body gave you information all the time.) How was your car’s alignment? Its camber? If you didn’t have enough answers to be able to bring the overall metaphorical temperature of driving down to the cool, steady kiss of kelvin, then there was no reason for you to be on the road. Sure, it made it boring as hell to watch, but better that than the alternative — in this case, this.
Consider the double-parked delivery van with its emergency lights tick-tocking half-mounted on the curb. Consider the way in which it blocked the eventual right side of my vision. Was the driver still in the driver’s seat. If he was fiddling with something, did that mean he was about to open the door? Was he liable to come around the front of the car as I came rocketing around? Would a car in a position similar to mind decide that they, too, would try and cut down this street? All this and more in the fraction of a fraction of a second. A felt morass of truth.
I eventually found myself following what used to be RFK as I let my adrenaline sink back into the jangling sea. He seemed to look for me for a little bit — a turn here, a glance there — but eventually gave up.
After a few minutes, he pulled in next to a health food supplement store and went inside. I parked across the street and casually approached. I didn’t want to look at the car right away. I didn’t want to confront him right away. I wanted to observe.
At first I thought a fight was breaking out inside the store — I nearly went in with my gun drawn — but I paused when I realized he was yelling about how he wanted to make a bone saw out of something called Phen-Fen in order to perform amputations on wounded soldiers, and why didn’t they have Phen-Fen? Why didn’t they have it now?
I backed away from the store and sidled up to the car, where he, too, seemed to have a book on the passenger’s seat of his car. ‘LUST JOURNAL,’ read the cover. I made a face of disgust and — after taking note of the license plate — began to walk back to my car.