Choke

Chapter 15

IF YOU'RE EVER IN A BIG HOTEL LOBBY, and they start to play "The Blue Danube Waltz," get the hell out. Don't think. Run.

Anymore, nothing is straightforward.

If you're ever in a hospital and they page Nurse Flamingo to the cancer ward, do not go anywhere near there. There is no Nurse Flamingo. If they page Dr. Blaze, there is no such person.

In a big hotel, that waltz means they need to evacuate the building.

In most hospitals, Nurse Flamingo means a fire. Dr. Blaze means a fire. Dr. Green means a suicide. Dr. Blue means somebody stopped breathing.

This is stuff the Mommy told the stupid little boy as they sat in traffic. This is how far back she was going nuts.

This one day, the kid had been sitting in class when a lady from the school office had come to tell him his dentist appointment was canceled. A minute later, he'd raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom. There never was any appointment. Sure, somebody had called, saying they were from the dentist, but this was a new secret signal. He went out a side door by the cafeteria, and there she was waiting in a gold car.

This was the second time the Mommy came back to claim him.

She rolled down the window and said, "Do you know why Mommy was in jail this time?"

"For changing the hair colors?" he said.

See also: The malicious mischief.

See also: The second-degree assault.

She leaned over to open the door and never stopped talking. Not for days and days.

If you're ever in the Hard Rock Cafe, she told him, and they announce "Elvis has left the building," that means all the servers need to go to the kitchen and find out what dinner special has just sold out.

These are the things people tell you when they won't tell you the truth.

In a Broadway theater, announcing "Elvis has left the building" means a fire.

In a grocery store, paging Mr. Cash is a call for an armed security guard. Paging "Freight check to Women's Clothing" means somebody is shoplifting in that department. Other stores page a fake woman named Sheila. "Sheila to the front" means somebody is shoplifting in the front of the store. Mr. Cash and Sheila and Nurse Flamingo are always bad news.

The Mommy shut off the engine and sat with one hand gripping the steering wheel at twelve o'clock, and with her other hand she snapped her fingers for the boy to repeat stuff back to her. The insides of her nose were dark with dried blood. Twisted old tissues smeared with more old blood were on the car floor. Some blood was on the dashboard from when she sneezed. On the inside of the windshield was some more.

"Nothing you learn in school is this important," she said. "This stuff you're learning here will save your life."

She snapped her fingers. "Mr. Amond Silvestiri?" she said. "If he's paged, what should you do?"

At some airports, paging him means a terrorist with a bomb. "Mr. Amond Silvestiri, please meet your party at gate ten on the D concourse" means that's where the SWAT teams will find their man.

Mrs. Pamela Rank-Mensa means a terrorist in the airport with just a gun.

"Mr. Bernard Wellis, please meet your party at gate sixteen on the F concourse" means somebody holding a knife to the throat of a hostage there.

The Mommy set the parking brake and snapped her fingers again. "Quick like a bunny. What's Miss Terrilynn Mayfield mean?"

"Nerve gas?" the boy said.

The Mommy shook her head.

"Don't tell me," the boy said. "A rabid dog?"

The Mommy shook her head.

Outside the car, the tight mosaic of cars was packed around them. Helicopters beat the air above the freeway.

The boy tapped his forehead and said, "Flamethrower?"

The Mommy said, "You're not even trying. Do you want a clue?"

"Drug suspect?" he said, then, "Yeah, maybe a clue."

And the Mommy said, "Miss Terrilynn Mayfield ... now be thinking about cows and horses."

And the boy screamed, "Anthrax!" He pounded his forehead with his fists and said, "Anthrax. Anthrax. Anthrax." He pounded his head and said, "How come I forget so fast?"

With her free hand the Mommy messed his hair and said, "You're doing good. You even remember half of these and you'll outlive most people."

Everywhere they went, the Mommy found traffic. She listened for radio bulletins about where not to go, and found those tie-ups. She found gridlock. She found jams. She searched for car fires or open drawbridges. She didn't like driving fast, but wanted to look busy. In traffic, she couldn't do anything and it wasn't her fault. They'd be trapped. Hidden and secure.

The Mommy said, "I'll give you an easy one." She closed her eyes and smiled, then opened them and said, "At any store, what's it mean when they ask for quarters on checkstand five?"

They were both wearing the same clothes from the day she had picked him up after school. In whatever motel they got, when he crawled into bed the Mommy snapped her fingers and asked for his pants, his shirt, his socks, his underpants, until he'd passed them all out from under the covers. In the morning when she gave them back, sometimes they were washed.

When a cashier asks for quarters, the boy said, they mean a pretty woman is standing there and everybody should come look at her.

"Well, there's more to it than that," the Mommy said. "But yes."

Sometimes the Mommy went to sleep against the car door and all the other cars drove away from around them. If the motor was on, sometimes red dashboard lights the boy didn't even know were there would light up to show all kind of emergencies. These times, smoke came out through the crack around the hood, and the motor stopped by itself. Cars stuck behind them would honk. The radio talked about a new tie-up, a stalled car in the center lane of the freeway, blocking traffic.

With people honking and looking in the windows at them, being on the radio, the stupid little boy figured this was being famous. Until the car horns woke her up, the little boy just waved. He thought about the fat Tarzan with the monkey and the chestnuts. The way the man could still smile. The way humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.

The little boy smiled back at all the angry faces glaring in at him.

And the little boy blew kisses.

When a truck honked its horn, then the Mommy jumped awake. Then slow again, she pushed most of the hair off her face for a minute. She pushed a white plastic tube up one nostril and breathed in. Another minute of nothing went by before she took the tube out and squinted at the little boy sitting next to her in the front seat. She squinted at the new red dash lights.

The tube was smaller than her lipstick, with a hole to smell through at one end and something that stunk inside. After she smelled it, there was always blood on the tube.

"You're in, what?" she said. "First? Second grade?"

Fifth, the boy said.

"And at this phase your brain weighs, three? Four pounds?"

In school, he got straight A's.

"So that makes you, what?" she said. "Seven years old?"

Nine.

"Well, Einstein, everything those foster parents of yours have told you," the Mommy said, "you can forget it."

She said, "Those foster families, they don't know what's important."

Right over them was a helicopter flying in one place, and the boy leaned so he could look straight up at it through the blue part at the top of the windshield.

The radio talked about a gold Plymouth Duster blocking the center lane of traffic on the beltway. The car appeared to be overheating.

"Screw history. All these fake people, they're the most important people for you to know," the Mommy said.

Miss Pepper Haviland is the Ebola virus. Mr. Turner Anderson means somebody just threw up.

The radio said emergency crews were being dispatched to help clear the stalled car.

"All that stuff they're teaching you about algebra and macroeconomics, forget it," she said. "You tell me, what does it get you if you can square root a triangle and then some terrorist shoots you in the head? It gets you nothing! This is the real education you need."

Other cars edged around them and took off squealing fast and disappeared to other places.

"I want you to know more than just what people think is safe to tell you," she said.

The boy said, "Like what more?"

"Like, when you're thinking about the rest of your life," she said, and she put her hand over her eyes, "you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road."

And what else she said is, "By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself."

Another thing she said was, "The Enlightenment is over. What we're living in now is the Dis-Enlightenment."

The radio said the police had been notified about the stalled car.

The Mommy turned up the radio, loud. "Damn," she said. "Please tell me that's not us."

"It said a gold Duster," the boy said. "That's our car."

And the Mommy said, "That shows how little you know."

She opened her door and said to slide over and get out on her side. She watched the fast cars just missing, driving past them. "This isn't our car," she said.

The radio yelled how it appeared the occupants were abandoning the vehicle.

The Mommy shook her hand for him to take. "I'm not your mother," she said. "It's nothing like that." Under her fingernails was more dried nose blood.

The radio yelled after them. The driver of the gold Duster and a small child were now a hazard themselves as they were attempting to dodge across four lanes of freeway traffic.

She said, "I figure we have about thirty days to pile up a lifetime of happy adventures. That's until my credit cards run out."

She said, "That's thirty days unless we get caught, first."

Cars honked and swerved. The radio yelled after them. Helicopters roared closer down.

And the Mommy said, "Now just like with 'The Blue Danube Waltz,' hold on to my hand, tight." She said, "And don't think." She said, "Just run."