Fear itself

7

Say this about the upper Midwest: they had some terrific classical music stations. Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota-as one station faded out, another would kick in down at the bottom of the dial where public radio lived. And not just the usual suspects either, Vivaldi, Mozart, the three Bs, but a smorgasbord of off-brand baroque composers, the Albinonis and Stradellas and Guerrieris of the world. It was a musical education for Simon-as he drove, he kept making mental notes of CDs he’d be wanting to order for his collection, next time he was on-line.

Except, of course, that he didn’t have a computer any longer-or a CD collection, or an address. It was a strange dual state of mind Simon found himself in, as the Volvo rolled across the great iron bridge spanning the Mississippi above La Crosse. He was an intelligent man, and as Sid Dolitz had pointed out to Pender only five days earlier, his manie was decidedly sans delire: on one level, he understood that life as he’d known it was over. He was a fugitive now, condemned to a short, harried existence and a violent end, either at his own hands or those of law enforcement.

But on another, deeper level, down where the personality takes root, Simon’s grandiose sense of himself, the preternatural confidence of the psychopath, and the inability to empathize with others (Missy didn’t count, Sid would have said; psychologically, pathologically, to Simon she was not an other, but an extension of his self) or to appreciate that others lived on the same plane of consciousness as himself, with the same interior life, all combined to render Simon constitutionally incapable of imagining the universe continuing after his death. In this regard, for all his intelligence and awareness, Simon was like an infant, unable to establish any boundaries between itself and the outside world, to say this is where I end and the world begins. Simon was the universe and the universe was Simon, unable to comprehend the inevitability of its own nonexistence.

And yet here he was, hurtling toward a certain bloody death.

Instinctively, without being consciously aware of the problem, Simon knew the solution: purpose, focus, concentration. Whenever he found his thoughts drifting as he drove (and he’d been driving since 6 A.M.), whenever the riotous autumn colors, the lush music, or the elemental joy of highway speed failed to hold his interest, he turned his thoughts to Pender.

Pender, who was responsible for Missy’s death. Pender, who was responsible for Simon’s own exile. Pender, Pender, Pender: Simon kept the image of that bald, scarred melon of a head, those ridiculous clothes, that fatuous grin, in front of him always as a lodestar. Every mile he put behind him, he told himself, brought him another five thousand two hundred and eighty feet closer to wiping the smirk right off that fat face, and replacing the dull, self-satisfied expression with one of pure, sweet fear.