Tony and Susan

TWO

That’s the end of the chapter, and Susan Morrow pauses to reflect. It looks more serious than expected, and she’s relieved, glad to see the firmness of the writing, how well Edward has learned his craft. She’s in for something and worries on behalf of Tony and his family on that lonely highway amid such menace. Is he safe if he keeps the doors locked? The question, she realizes, is not what he can do to keep them safe, but what the story has destined for him. That’s Edward, who has the power in this case: what he has in mind.

She appreciates the irony in Edward’s treatment of Tony, which suggests maturity, an ability to mock himself. She’s full of illegal questions, like whether that’s Christmas-card Stephanie putting her hand so affectionately on Tony’s neck, and whether Helen is derived from Edward’s own domestic life. She reminds herself not to confuse Tony with Edward, fiction is fiction, yet noticing Tony’s last name she wonders if Edward deliberately named him after the town where they grew up.

She wonders how Stephanie likes Edward the Writer. She remembers, when Edward told her he wanted to quit school and write, she felt betrayed, but she was ashamed to admit it. After the divorce she followed Edward’s surrender of that dream through her mother’s reports. She drew her own conclusions, the transformation through stages of Edward the Poet into Edward the Capitalist, thinking it vindicated her doubts. From poetry writing to sports writing. From sports writing to journalism teaching. From journalism teaching to insurance. He was what he was and was not what he was not. Money would compensate for lost dreams. With Stephanie presumably behind him all the way. So Susan supposed, but apparently she was wrong.

She pauses to locate herself before going on. She puts the box on the couch beside her, looks up at the two paintings, tries to see them fresh, the abstract beach, the brown geometry. Monopoly bargaining on the floor in the study, Henry’s friend Mike has a mean laugh. On the gray rug in this room, Jeffrey twitches, asleep. Martha approaches him, sniffs, jumps on the coffee table, threatening Dorothy’s camera. What?

That menacing unidentified monster she remembers in her mind before she began to read. Has the book put it to sleep? Just keep reading. Paragraphs and chapters on a lonely highway at night. She thinks of Tony, the tall thin face with the beaked nose, the glasses, the sad bagged eyes. No, that’s Edward. Tony has a black mustache. She must remember the black mustache.

Nocturnal Animals 2

The driver’s door of the old Buick opened and a man stepped out. Tony Hastings felt Laura his wife’s hand on his arm, to restrain or give him courage. He waited. The other men in the car were looking at him from their windows. He couldn’t see what they looked like.

The man ambled over, slowly. He was wearing a pitcher’s warmup jacket, zipper open but fastened at the bottom, with his hands in the pockets. He had a high forehead, the front part of his head bald. He looked at the front of Tony Hastings’s car and came over to the window.

“Evening,” he said.

Tony Hastings felt rage rising for what he had been through, but he was more frightened than angry. “Good evening,” he said.

“You’re supposed to stop when there’s an accident.”

“I know that.”

“Why didn’t you stop?”

Tony Hastings did not know what to say. The reason he did not stop was that he was afraid, but he was afraid to admit that.

The man leaned down and looked inside the car, at Laura and at Helen in the back.

“Hah?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Close by, the man had big teeth in a small mouth with a small receding jaw. He had bulging eyes over small cheeks and his hair stood up in a pompadour behind the bald front of his head. His jaw was working but his mouth could not shut. The jacket had an elaborate Y in curling script sewed on the left front. Tony Hastings was thin, he had no muscle, only a black mustache, his soft sensitive face. He kept his hand on the key in the ignition. The window was half open, the door was locked.

Laura spoke up, her voice strong. “We were going to report it to the police.”

“The police? You’re not supposed to leave the scene of an accident. The law says. It’s a crime.”

“We have reason not to trust you on this lonely road,” Laura said. Her voice was louder than usual with an edge Tony recognized when she said drastic, revolutionary, or scared things.

“What you say?”

“Your behavior on the road—”

The man called: “Hey Turk!” The doors on the right side of the other car opened and two men got out. They were not in any hurry.

“I’m warning you,” Laura said.

“Be ready,” she whispered to Tony.

The man put his hands on the half-open window, stuck his head in, and grinned. “What did you say? You’re warning me?”

“You stay away from us.”

“Why lady, we’ve got an accident to report.”

The other two men had a flashlight and were inspecting the front of Tony’s car, putting their hands on the hood, leaning down out of sight.

“All right,” Tony said, thinking all right if you want the protocol of accidents we’ll have the protocol of accidents. “Let’s exchange information.”

“You have information you want to exchange?”

“Names, addresses, insurance companies.” He felt a sharp nudge from Laura, who thought giving these thugs their name was a bad idea, but protocol is protocol, he knew no other way.

“Insurance companies, hey?” The man laughed.

“You have no insurance?”

“Haha.”

“I’m going to report this to the police,” Tony said. He heard the weakness in his voice.

“Right, we report this to the cops, right,” the man said.

“So, we’ll go to the cops. Let’s do that,” Tony said.

“Great idea, man. What do we do, go together? What’s to keep you from running away? It was your fuckin fault, right?”

“We’ll see about that!” Laura said.

“Hey Ray,” one of the men in front said. “This guy’s got a flat tire.”

“Aw come on,” Tony said.

Ray went around to see. The men started to laugh. “Well what do you know?” “Well sure thing.” Someone kicked the tire, they could feel the jolt in the car.

“Don’t believe it,” Helen said from behind.

The three men came back to the driver’s window. One of them had a black beard and looked like a movie bandit. The other had a round face and wore silver rimmed glasses.

“Yes sir,” Ray said. “Your right front tire is flat, sure is.”

“Flat as a pancake,” the man with the movie beard said.

“It sure is flat,” Ray said. “You must have busted it when you was shoving us off the road.” Someone cackled.

“It wasn’t I, it was you who—”

“Hush up,” Laura said.

“Don’t believe them Daddy, don’t believe them, it’s a lie, it’s a trick.”

“What’s that?” Ray said, sharper than before. “You don’t believe me? You think I’m a liar? Shit, man.”

He waved the other guys back. “You don’t got a flat, go on and drive. Start the engine and drive. Drive on it, damn you, drive away. Nobody’s stopping you.”

Tony hesitated. He realized what the vibration had meant and the jiggling of the steering wheel when he was forced to stop after the second collision. He leaned back in his seat and murmured, “God damn!”

“Tell you what,” Ray said. “We’ll fix it for you.” He looked around. “Won’t we, guys?”

“Ya, sure,” one said.

“To show you we’re okay, we’ll fix it for you, you won’t have to do a thing. Then we can go to the cops together, you and me, report our accident.”

In a low voice Helen said, “Don’t believe them.”

“You got tire tools, mister?” the man with the beard said.

“Don’t get out of the car,” Laura said.

“No need,” Ray said. “Use ours. Come on, let’s get moving.”

The three men went to the trunk of their car while Tony and his wife and daughter watched with their doors locked, watched while the men brought out their tools, the jack, the tire iron.

“You got a spare tire?” the man with the glasses said. The men started to laugh, except Ray. “You can’t change a tire without a spare.” Ray was not laughing. He was not grinning. He looked in the window and didn’t say anything. Then he said, “You wanna give me the keys to the trunk?”

“Don’t do it!” Helen said.

The man looked at her a long time, staring.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he said.

Tony Hastings sighed and opened the door. “I’ll open it for you,” he said. He heard Helen moan in the back, “Daddy.”

And Laura saying softly, “It’s all right, just be calm.”

He got out and opened the trunk and lifted out the suitcases and boxes in the light of the flashlight held by the man with the beard, until they could get at the spare tire. He watched the two men get it out while Ray stood by. They put the jack under the front wheel, and the man with the beard said, “Get them women outa the car.”

“Come on,” Ray said. “Get them out.”

“It isn’t necessary, is it?” Tony Hastings said.

“Get em out. We’re fixin your tire so get em out.”

Tony looked in at his wife and daughter. “It’s all right,” he said. “They just want you out while they fix the tire.” So they got out and stood close to Tony near the door of the car. He thought if these men were dangerous it would be safer to stay near the car. The men went to work raising the car on the jack and loosening the flattened tire.

“Hey you,” Ray said. “Come over here.” When Tony didn’t move, he came over. He said, “You think you’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“ ‘What are you talking about?’ They think they’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t they?”

“Who?”

“Them, your women, your bitches. You too. You think you’re something special, you can bump a guy’s car and run off to the cops in violation of the law.”

“Listen, you were playing some crazy games out there.”

“Yeah.”

Every so often while they worked a car or a truck went by, full speed. Tony Hastings wished one would stop, he wanted someone civilized between him and these wild men he didn’t know what they might do. Once a car slowed down, he thought it was going to stop, he stepped forward, but something grabbed him by the arm, drew him back. Ray was in front of him, blocking the view, and the car drove on. A little later, he saw the flashing blue lights of a police car approaching. They’re coming to rescue us, he thought, and he ran out toward it as it neared, coming fast. It did not slow down and he suddenly realized it wasn’t going to stop. He waved anyway and tried to shout as it zipped by. He heard women’s family voices shouting too, but the car was already sparkling down the road at a hundred miles an hour out of sight.

“There goes your cops,” Ray said. “You should have stopped them.”

“I tried to,” Tony said. He felt defeated, wondering what other trouble had caught the attention of the police while his own remained unnoticed in the dark.

The men seemed to enjoy their work. They were laughing, and he realized one of them had worked in a garage. Only Ray was not laughing. Tony Hastings did not like the waiting expression on Ray’s pinched chinless face. The man is angry, he said to himself, while his own anger had ravelled out in the strangeness of things. He thought, they are trying to show me they are not what they seemed to be. They are trying to show me they are decent human beings after all. He hoped that was it.