Deceit

TWENTY-ONE

The ride back was a journey into self-pity.

I was familiar with the terrain, having visited it on a number of previous occasions-mostly in that one-year period I spent holed up in my NoHo apartment like a prisoner in isolation. I journeyed frequently to Self-Pity then, sampling the local tequila and scribbling postcards to Dr. Payne: having no fun, wish you were here.

I’d mostly refrained from giving Anna the psychobabble, but Dr. Payne had shown no such restraint.

Why did this liar lie?

You really want to know, Anna?

Are you sure?

Because I woke up hours late one morning, and needed to.

Because the Ward Cleaver of editors patted me on the head and said good job.

Not good enough?

You want more?

Because I lied to my 9-year-old self, lied that my dad wasn’t sleeping with that waitress, that he’d be home any minute, that my mom was not a sadistic drunk, that the men trooping upstairs with her really liked me when they didn’t even like her.

That Jimmy was clumsy.

Children of alcoholics tend to see what they want to and not see what they don’t, Dr. Payne said.

You have no idea.

He slipped on the ice and he hurt his head.

He slipped.

On the ice.

Lying as defense mechanism, Dr. Payne said. Don’t knock it.

Lying as palliative, an elixir, a quicker-fixer-upper.

Lying like a cheap rug and a thousand-dollar hooker.

Lying as my MO.

Lying to caseworkers from Children’s Protective Services. To the police. To everyone.

What happened, Tommy?

He slipped.

On the ice.

He hurt his head.

When I saw a black figure sauntering up the front walk of my house, it didn’t register at first.

Even when I noticed he was carrying some kind of bag in his left hand, even then it took me a few seconds to organize that thought into anything resembling coherence. That’s interesting, I said, and took my foot off the gas pedal.

He stopped. Halfway to my front door. Where his face was momentarily lit up by the bug zapper attached to the half-dead elm on my lawn, those repulsive features illuminated in a sickly flash of purple.

You’re it.

Our friendly neighborhood plumber. Back for another service call.

He knew he had company.

My Miata had stopped dead in the middle of the street, as if that finicky coil wire had popped loose again.

He ran back into his pickup truck and zoomed off, quickly accelerating past the legal speed limit, assuming you weren’t allowed to do ninety on a residential street.

I gunned the engine, followed his taillights.

They dodged and darted and weaved and blew past the aluminum-sided homes on Redondo Lane, past the hacienda-style stucco ranch houses on West Road, past 7-Eleven, Shakey’s, and IHOP, past San Pedro High School and the motorcycle bar out in the flats. They ignored five stop signs and two lights and a bunch of rowdy teenagers on Warrow Road, who were chug-a-lugging beer from brown paper bags in the middle of the street and had to literally dive for cover.

I’m not sure if I’d ever driven that fast before.

Maybe in a video game.

I hadn’t realized how drunk I was-not until I clipped my first car on a wide turn around the high school ball field, a slight jolt accompanied by the awful sound of shearing metal, sound slightly behind sensation, as if the sound waves needed a while to catch up.

I clipped my second car somewhere by Littleton’s nine-hole golf course. This time not even seeing what I hit-just knowing I hit something, because my Miata rocked violently to the right and its victim cried out in pain, a car alarm bursting into full-throated fury.

Then something hit me.

Smash.

I’d turned a corner, and faced empty street.

I’d looked left. I’d looked right.

I should’ve looked behind me.

The plumber had ducked into a driveway.

Then ducked out.

It was like one of those Looney Tunes cartoons. Elmer Fudd furiously chasing the wabbit until positions suddenly reverse the way they magically do in cartoons-and poor gun-toting Elmer’s pumping away with Bugs hot on his tail.

Only it wasn’t a rabbit chasing me, and if anyone was toting a gun, it was him.

Smash.

He jolted my back bumper again, once, twice, then hard enough to actually propel me into the dash.

My chin hit the top of the steering wheel; my head snapped back.

I felt the wine coming up, the vermicelli alfredo.

I couldn’t stop.

If I stepped on the brake, he was going to end up in my front seat.

I could see that blackened shell on Highway 45. It was me.

I floored the gas, resisting checking the speedometer, thinking that the actual number might scare me, not wanting to take my eyes off an increasingly blurry road. Once or twice, we sped past other cars, but they seemed like stage props, seemingly frozen in place. I caught one face registering astonishment and outright fear.

It was mutual.

The plumber smacked me again. I felt a pain shoot up my spine as my car whiplashed right, clipping a curb.

Then again-harder this time, one hand stuttering off the wheel, as the car shimmied left.

This is what it feels like when you’re about to be trampled.

This is what it feels like to have something brutish and unstoppable stepping on your heels.

There’s nowhere to go.

You can’t stop; you can’t turn right or left.

You can only try to outrace it.

Until you can’t.

I flew around a corner where the road suddenly widened out and structures disappeared.

I knew where we were.

The service road that passes two billboards: Spex in the City, the eyeglass store on Main, and Binions Casino, with three 40DDD showgirls in glittering sequins luring me to possible salvation.

The open highway.

If I could make it onto the highway, I had a chance.

I gunned the engine; I said a prayer.

I didn’t see the police-car lights come on until they were suddenly flashing in my rearview mirror.

“WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, LUCAS?”

The first words out of Sheriff Swenson’s mouth.

I told him what I was doing, suffused with the gratitude of the suddenly rescued.

“What pickup?” he said.

He was standing outside the driver’s-side door shining a blinding flashlight into my eyes, making me feel less grateful and more as if I were in the middle of an interrogation. All that was missing was the rubber truncheon.

“The blue pickup that was right behind me,” I said. “The one with the man who broke into my house and beat me up.”

“Pickup?” Sheriff Swenson said. “What are you talking about? I didn’t see any pickup.”

Which was about when I felt it. That insidious chill that travels up your legs when you’re standing in a stifling-hot room in dripping-wet socks. You just know you’re going to be really sick.

“How’s that possible? It was five feet behind me.”

“Get out of the car.”

The headlights from Swenson’s cruiser illuminated a reject from Demolition Derby. The front fender was smashed in; there were jagged streaks of odd color crisscrossing the passenger door. The back bumper had two formidable dents.

“I caught him trying to break into my house again. Then he tried to run me off the road,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Swenson said. “You said the pickup was blue?”

Blood will tell, but so will Apple Red from Earl Scheib, clearly the color tattooed into my passenger door.

“Been playing bumper cars, Lucas?”

“Okay, yeah, I might’ve clipped someone.”

“Looks like several someones. Care to walk a straight line for me.” It wasn’t a question. “Go ahead, Lucas, any direction you’d like.”

“I told you, he was actually trying to rob my house again. He tried to run me off the road. He could’ve killed me.”

“Take a walk for me, okay, Lucas?”

“No problem.”

I was hoping that was actually true-that it wouldn’t be a problem.

That I’d walk a straight line, and keep walking, back into my car and out of trouble. I could do that-navigate the shortest distance between two points-couldn’t I?

Maybe not.

It’s hard to execute an everyday physical action when your personal freedom depends on it. I’d never paid attention to the actual physics of placing one foot ahead of the other. Tricky business.

I teetered, wobbled, overcompensated, and listed right.

Still, I managed to make it ten whole feet without actually falling on my face. Then I turned around with rapidly dwindling assuredness and started back.

I went over.

Something had tripped me.

Or someone.

I didn’t realize it was Swenson’s black boot until my head smacked the ground and he placed the boot directly on the back of my neck.