The Last of the Wise Lovers (2 page)

   I was going south again, but now
there was nothing in my rearview mirror - just blackness.  Actually, I
thought, I might have had it all wrong.  It could've been just some old
couple coming back from the movies late at night in the fog and rain, clinging
to the rear end of another car in order not to lose their way, or tourists who
were afraid of missing their turnoff, or two guys who'd have a great time
telling their buddies tomorrow about how they'd scared the shit out of some
lone lady driver.

   All of a sudden I was in Fort Lee,
approaching the sign for the George Washington Bridge.  From here on it
was impossible to turn around; I had to pay the toll and drive into the city.
 Mom's car is always full of change: on the floor, between the seats, on
the little shelf under the radio, and in the door pockets.  I started
picking up coins and by the time I reached the toll booth I had practically
five dollars.

   On the bridge I ran into heavy
traffic again.  The cars inched forward.  It was late, 11:07
according to the clock in the car that Mom never for the life of her has
adjusted, which is to say it was close to 11:30.

   The wig I was wearing started to
slide forward.  I tried to take it off, but it was fastened to my hair
with bobby pins.  The guy in the next car over, who was bald, started
making sucking noises at me.  I closed the window and looked straight
ahead, just straight ahead.  The traffic suddenly loosened.  I drove
south, fast, alongside the river.  I slowed down at one of the
intersections. I tried to read the name of the street.  A policeman who
had appeared out of nowhere yelled, `Keep going, lady'.  I sped away into
other streets.  At some point I lost my way.  I'd had enough.
 Around 42nd Street I saw a sign that said "Lincoln Tunnel".
 Somewhat relieved, I turned to follow the arrow.

   But they were there, too.

   You'll probably want to know how I
could tell it was them, when before, on the highway, I couldn't identify them.
 And I suppose it could have been just another blue Chevrolet with a
chrome nose and two completely different shadows in the front seat, but I had a
clear sensation that it was
them
, and that by some mysterious means they
had been following me the whole time.

   I didn't feel fear, just a kind of
unpleasant curiosity, probably like what the rabbits or the robots or the
Russian planes feel in those computer games.  After one relatively empty
street - for the length of which the blue Chevrolet was practically stuck to my
back bumper - I was in the lane that led to the tunnel.  Further on there
was a small barrier that took up half the width of the street.  The
traffic was forced to one side, in order to make way for five or six buses that
drove in a row down the ramp that led out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
 I glanced in the mirror, feeling somewhat better: I was at the entrance
to the tunnel, beyond the border of darkness, and they were still bathed by the
light of the headlights outside.  But just then I realized that only one
man was sitting in the Chevrolet - the driver.  Before I could look again,
the window of the door behind me had been broken.

   It wasn't a rock, or a hammer, but
something sharp and precise. He had hit exactly in the center of the glass and
transformed the window into a web of shards that a gloved hand swept aside like
a curtain in order to unlock the door.  A second later someone was sitting
in the back seat, saying in heavily accented English, "Don't turn around.
 Keep driving."

   I tried to say something, but I
forget what.  He immediately added, "... and don't talk."

   It took all the strength I had for me
to nod my head up and down once, as a sign that I understood.  I'd heard
plenty of times about people getting robbed in their cars, in elevators, or
just plain in the street.  I had several plans worked out for such
situations.  But just then I couldn't remember any of them.  The car
in front of me started to roll forward.

"Drive," he said. "Drive."
 My foot trembled on the gas pedal. "Don't worry," he said,
"just drive."

   Two workers stood by the barrier.
 They didn't even glance at the broken window.  I thought of the
three dollars that were in the change compartment, and I tried to remember if
there was anything in the glove compartment I could offer him.  Then it
dawned on me that he might not be a thief at all, that he might be interested
in something else, like rape for example, and that my costume had fooled him.
 I gingerly raised one arm, wondering whether I should pull the wig off
all at once, or just move it a little, as a hint.

   "Two hands on the wheel,"
he said quietly but firmly.

   I tried to catch his face in the
mirror.  He was smart enough to have positioned himself in the right-hand
corner of the back seat.  All I managed to see was the wide front of the
Chevrolet, which was still hugging my back bumper.  He said: "We're
not going to have any trouble, are we?"

   I shook my head and thought about the
fact that he was sitting on a pile of glass shards from the window he had
broken.

   He relaxed and said,
"Good".  Underneath the wig my head started to itch something
fierce.  Again I raised my hand and snuck a finger underneath the wig.
 This time he didn't stop me, he just leaned forward and said in Hebrew,
all of a sudden, "Now that we understand each other, I've got news for
you, Mrs. Levin."

    The Hebrew was, without a
doubt, a surprise, but there was an even bigger surprise than that: he wasn't
talking to me.  He was talking to some woman, maybe to Mom.

   I
opened my mouth to say something, but again he commanded: "Quiet."
 Then he waited a minute and added, "The news is, you've got to
stop."

   I was silent.

   "You must stop," he said
again.  "And break off all contact, if you know what's good for
you."

   "Stop," I said over in my
head, thinking I would have to report it all to Mom, "and break off all
contact."  Water was dripping in through the ceiling of the tunnel,
and once again the cars were standing in a long line, waiting for a worker in a
Day-Glo vest to direct them between two barriers.

"We understand that it's not possible to
break off contact in a day," he said, "and we're also not interested
in... how shall we call it... making waves.  We'll give you a week, all
right?"

   I nodded.

   "Even two weeks...” He turned on
a tiny light on his wristwatch, "Today is the 24th of August... you've got
'till the 6th of September, just before Labor Day.  That should be enough,
shouldn't it?"

   Again that itch under the wig.
 This time I pushed two fingers up and reached in almost to the middle of
my scalp.  That was a real relief. The worker signaled for me to start to
move.  The traffic became less dense, and it seemed the guy in the back
seat had made himself at home, since he sounded pretty relaxed when he said:
"I'll give you up until the very last day, and I hope you won't disappoint
us, because if you don't stop by the 6th of September, we won't have any
choice. Maybe we'll wait another day, and maybe we won't, but we'll have to act
on the 7th of September at the very latest."

   "September 7th," I
rehearsed to myself.

   "Things will be very
uncomfortable for you," he bent forward so I could hear him breathing, and
a dry little cough that choked him when he added, "and him...” (hack,
hack), "him we'll have to
finish off
."

   Then several things happened at once:
I slammed on the brakes in alarm, turned the wheel in order to pass another
barrier, and finally managed to dig my hand in under the mess of bobby pins on
my head. The pressure of my fingers forced the wig to fly forward onto my
forehead, and a million curls covered my eyes.  I tried to straighten out
the wheel, but the car skidded with a loud shriek and scraped against the wall
of the tunnel.  There was also a great thud from behind: the Chevrolet,
which hadn't had time to stop, had plowed into me.

   I felt around on the back of my head
and discovered that most of my hair was exposed.  The guy had undoubtedly
already caught on that he was talking to the wrong customer.  He let go a
short curse and took off.

   The cars in back of me began honking
their horns like mad.  The Chevrolet tried to disengage itself from my
back bumper.  After pulling back three times he changed tactics and
started pushing, and then, after we'd made a nice deep gouge in the wall of the
tunnel, he managed to break free of the bumper, pass me, and tear off like some
great wounded beast.  I tried to peer into the Chevrolet, but all I could
see in the bad light of the tunnel was a grey coat that the guy next to the
driver had pressed against the window.

   The police got there immediately.
 First a highway patrolman on a motorcycle who didn't even bother to order
me to get out of the car, just pushed me over and drove the car to the end of
the tunnel, and then two cops in a mobile unit who took more interest in the
wig, the high heels, and the padded bra than in the accident or the shattered
window.  I had enough sense not to tell them about the guy in the back
seat and his promise to finish somebody off on the 7th of September.  Back
then I still thought that all I'd have to do was tell Mom, and everything would
be ok.  You, with your education and experience, will undoubtedly see this
as naive, but after all, what does a kid of seventeen and a half know about
what's called in the books `human nature'?

*

You can probably imagine at least some of what
happened next. After they'd finished checking my license and all my other
papers, the police called home.  Mom came to pick me up in a taxi.
 The car was left there, stuck on a side lane of the road to New Jersey,
in the rain.

   We didn't talk on the way home.
 Mom just stared out the window.  She was apparently thinking about
the car I'd wrecked, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't help
letting go a few broad hints about what was waiting for me.  When we got
to an intersection, she looked at me in the yellow light as if she was seeing
for the first time the made-up face, the tousled hair, and the fake boobs that
were slung unevenly across the front of my chest.

 "What could you have possibly wanted
there, after you'd promised me... ?" she said.  Another time, from
within the darkness of the highway, she let fall, as if continuing a sentence
she'd begun in her head, "You realize that the next car, if there'll be a
next car, will be off limits for you." I didn't say anything.  I just
kept going over and over in my head the message I'd been asked to deliver.
 I felt like a suffering martyr, like a hero who'd been temporarily
wronged.

   When we got home, Mom paid the
driver, went inside, kicked off her shoes and plopped down in the kitchen,
flexing her toes irritably.  I tore off the remainder of my costume, put
on a pair of jeans and collapsed into the chair opposite her.

"I couldn't say anything the whole way,"
I said with an expression worthy of the moment in which my capacity for
restraint would be revealed, "because of the taxi driver.  But what
happened was no accident."

   She looked at me without speaking.

   "Someone smashed the window, got
into the back seat and said something very strange about the 7th of
September."

   She impatiently let out some air.
 "Instead of fantasizing, perhaps you'd care to tell me what you were
doing there."

   And here I should tell you something
that you may or may not know: they don't really believe me at home, mostly
because of this stage I went through once, where I would make up all sorts of
stories, like that Dad was Mom's second husband and that my real Dad was a
champion skier living in France; or that the old Fairmont was just a temporary
replacement for our Lincoln Continental, which was in the garage being equipped
with anti-attack defense devices.  But those days were long gone.  I'd
grown up since then.  Nevertheless, no one ever forgot.  Mom found a
way "to see the matter in a positive light" (she's sure that my
tendency to stretch the truth means I'll someday be a great writer).  Dad,
on the other hand, turns this searing gaze on me every time I tell a story, so
that even when I'm telling the truth I check the details twice to make sure
that I'm not making a mistake, or exaggerating. 

   Therefore, I tried to be very
precise.  When I got to the part about the guy who broke the window in the
Lincoln Tunnel, Mom nodded her head and said with a tense look on her face,
"Maybe I made a mistake when you were twelve and I forgave your lies.
 Your father said that they were a sign of a weak character, and he was
right.  Today we're reaping the benefits."

   "I'm not lying...”

   "Two men, a blue Chevrolet, a
broken window.  All just to justify an accident that you had in a place
you'd promised not to drive to. . "

   "Hear me out to the end...”

   "Only if you'll tell me the
truth.  Who did you hit?  How did the window get broken?"

   "I've told you the truth."

  
She
got up and went out of the kitchen.  What if I've dreamt it all, I
thought, what if I've been in an accident and I've got a concussion and I'm
imagining the broken window, the Chevrolet, the guy in the back seat and his
promise to hurt Mom and to "finish off" somebody on the 7th of
September if Mom doesn't stop some mysterious thing that she's been doing?

   From downstairs in the basement came
the hollow sound of the dryer.  I followed it.  I found her filling
up a Waldbaum's paper shopping bag with bits of torn paper and trash.  I
sat on the top stair and leaned my head against the wall.  It was already
three in the morning and an atmosphere of forgiveness was beginning to settle
on everything.