A Voyage in the Near Distance 1: From Here to Nearly There

by Alec Merta

  “What do you need help with?”

  4

  As it happened, she needed help escaping from the scene of the crime. That much was pretty clear on its face. Why I, the victim of said crime, should help her was less clear.

  “I just need to get away. I can’t get arrested.”

  “People say that, but it doesn’t make sense. Getting arrested for chucking a computer in a pub is worth, what? A fine? An ASBO? If you run, then you’re looking at serious charges.”

  “I don’t care about the charges,” she said before pausing to catch her breath.

  “Who are you anyway?” I asked.

  She smiled at this. It was a surprising smile; warmer than the circumstances warranted and just a bit disarming.

  “I’m Allie.” She held out her hand. I took it and gently shook it, although even this was enough to elicit a wince of pain across her face.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s ok.” A deep breath. “I can’t tell you anything more than my name. I can’t give you any reason to help me, and I certainly can’t give you a shred of proof that I’m telling the truth. But I need your help. If you don’t want to give it, then walk away.”

  “I already said I’d help you.”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then I just did. But it really does not make any sense to run from the police. They’ll catch you. Surely.”

  “You mean they’ll catch ‘us.’ And they won’t. Trust me.”

  Remember that part about being a sucker? You really would not want me to be your lawyer.

  “And you won’t tell me why you’re running?”

  “Nope. But I’ll show you, ok? Not here. We have to get away first.”

  My assent taken as given, she took my arm for support and impelled me down the throughway.

  “Where are we going?”

  She was wincing in pain. “Car,” was all she said.

  “You’re not going to get far in this condition,” I said.

  She reached into her coat pocket. Well, actually she reached into the cloth flap that covered the pocket. I watched her manipulate it for a minute until she took her hand away. She produced a small, disc-shaped object. It looked plastic and was the approximate size of a ten pence coin. She rubbed the object between two fingers for a few seconds and then, being evidently satisfied by that operation, brought it to her mouth. She lay the disc on her tongue and closed her mouth.

  Her eyes shut, and for a moment I feared she would pass out. Instead, she gave a profound shudder and then opened her eyes wide.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “What was that?”

  “Pain medicine,” was her reply.

  It must have been something on the so-effective-it-is-illegal schedule of pharmaceuticals, for she quickly released my arm and stood under her own support.

  “Let’s go,” she said. With that, she was off.

  The throughway wound its way up to and through the western portion of Albury until it brought us back to the Dorking Road. We emerged on a sidewalk at the very edge of the village. Allie, which I mostly believed was her name, surprised me by walking back in the direction of the pub.

  We walked for a minute or so before she stopped. I did also. Allie began to look around, and I assumed she was checking for police. Evidently satisfied, she began to walk with purpose toward a small coffee shop.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “The keys,” she replied. “Wait here.”

  She walked with impossibly casual purpose into the shop. I dutifully waited outside, taking the time to check my email. I guess that’s the sort of man evolution has in mind for the Twenty-First Century. She was back out in a minute or two.

  “Come on,” she said and walked past me.

  Allie walked to a little red Fiat parked along the road. She approached the passenger side and tossed me the keys.

  “Wait,” I began to protest as the keys bounced off my chest.

  “I’ve got so many amphetamines in me that the world is moving in slow motion. I’m not really up for a drive.” She cocked her head and considered me. “Or do you always seem this slow?”

  “It’s debatable.” I collected the keys and looked at her for a long moment.

  “Carver, what are you worried about? You’re just a hostage. If we get caught, I’ll come clean, and you’ll get a photo spread in the Daily Mail.”

  I pressed the button to unlock the doors.

  “Wait, how do you know my name?”

  She answered as she opened the door. “The same way I know your address. Now get in.” She climbed into the car.

  I followed suit, settling into the driver seat.

  “You do know how to drive right?” She asked.

  “Of course I do, why?”

  “It’s England, I’m surprised driving is still legal.”

  I let that pass. The car started quickly, and we set off.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Where you and I first met.”

  I stared at her with a practiced expression of confusion.

  “The pub?”

  “The Moors.”

  We were through Chilworth and into Guilford within minutes, and the car’s sat-nav predicted that we would reach our destination in the North York Moors in about four-and-a-half hours. We drove in silence for the first leg. I say the first leg because just beyond Guilford city center, Allie asked me to stop.

  I had noticed her looking around keenly as we were picking through the town. She seemed to be looking for something, but I did not ask what.

  “Just here,” she said, “Pull into that parking lot.”

  I swung the Fiat into the car park.

  “What are we doing?”

  “You’re waiting in the car. I’ll be right back.”

  When she alighted from the car, I thought about how confident she must have been that I would not just drive off. Flight was certainly an option, but she had evidently discounted it. Why? She held no leverage over me, and yet she willfully exited her only means of transportation.

  I looked into the rearview mirror and saw her walking back to the car. She did not approach the passenger side. Instead, she went to the boot and knelt down. I could not see what she was doing, but I heard a distinctly workman-like set of sounds. The car bounced up and down slightly. After a minute, she walked around to the bonnet and repeated the performance.

  Finished, she stood and walked to the door. Settling in, she bid me to drive off. As I did, she tossed something in the back seat.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “License plates.” She responded.

  “License plates? License plates? What are you mad? We’ll be pulled over before we make the M25! They have traffic cameras that read number plates, and-”

  “Relax, we’re fine.”

  “Fine? Fine? How exactly are we fine?”

  “Because we have perfectly ordinary looking plates on our car. They came from another one just like this back in the parking lot.”

  Here’s a note to anyone who decides, in future, to turn this narrative into a movie. At this point, it would be perfectly acceptable to show my face superimposed with a computer-generated set of wheels and cogs. Do it up though, really highlight the abject confusion. I thought I could hear them myself at that moment as I worked out just what she was saying.

  “You stole this car.”

  “No, Carver, you stole this car. I stole the keys. You used them to gain entry without lawful permission and, again illegally, start it up and drive it away. We’re partners.” She smiled at me impishly.

  “What? How?” I sputtered like this for ten or fifteen minutes. Eventually, I managed to express, though not as clearly as is represented now, “Well, I am a hostage anyway. You put me up to it.” Images of prison raced through my mind. Parts of me actually contracted.

  She just laughed. Damn her.

  “You really think that’ll hold water? You and I had this planned fo
r months. Thought it would be a real gas to steal a car and dump it up North. Maybe sell it to some travelers.” She smiled again and stuck her tongue out a tiny bit.

  Of course she was right. Worse, she now had ample leverage over me. That would have been true with most people given the circumstances. With me it was especially so. You see, I have a rather pathological fear of breaking the law. Actually, it is a fear of being caught. Allie could not have known it, but ever since childhood I have had a consuming dread of being sent to jail. I have actually woken from shallow restfulness with fresh memories of some nightmare scenario wherein I had been convicted of a crime I never committed and been sent off to a life as guest of the Queen.

  I attempted to frame a suitable reply to her cocksure certainty, but this came to nothing more than additional sputtering. You do not really need a description, so I’ll just let you imagine it. I am confident that anything you conjure up will be far less absurd than my actual performance.

  “Just get me to Yorkshire, and that’ll be that. You’ll never see me again.”

  I was utterly trapped. In my mind, I imagined saying things like, “You fiend! You’ll never get away with this!” or “I’ll see you hang, you scoundrel!” But, predictably, I just sputtered down the road toward London.

  The M25 was crowded even at night. Few people who do not live in England (and honestly a lot who do but who wisely avoid driving in London) fail to grasp just how awful driving has become near the capital. Roadworks are omnipresent, and lanes frequently vanish behind walls of traffic barriers. Police and traffic cameras watched us constantly, and the going was quite rough.

  For every mile of it…but who am I kidding? For every inch of it, I was a nervous wreck. Three times (three times!) I lost a small amount of waste when blue lights appeared in the mirror. Each time, though, the police were after someone else.

  “The car is reported stolen,” Allie said as though reading my mind, “but the car with the missing plates is probably going to sit there until tomorrow morning. By that time, if the owner reports it, this will be over.” She made a small groan and tightened her face.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “The medicine is doing a good job, but it’s mainly an adrenaline booster. When your body stops producing adrenaline, the medicine stops being as effective.”

  “So that’s what, military?”

  “No. Well, not like you mean it.”

  “How do you mean it?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Just not like you do.”

  A thought crossed my mind.

  “If it isn’t the military, then what? MI6? CIA?”

  “I’m insulted. And, if you must know, it was designed by a very wealthy woman who liked to sail absurd distances all by herself. She wanted something that would give her an edge if she was injured at sea, alone, and trying to keep her ship from sinking in a storm. Damn, but she must have had a strong stomach.”

  “Are you going to throw up?”

  “Not if you don’t stop swerving into the next lane.”

  I yelped in a quite macho way when I realized that I had indeed started to drift into the next lane. I corrected the car and fixed my gaze at the road.

  Hostage situation or not (and I will swear to this day that it was), road trips are road trips. Eventually, I stopped being scared and started getting bored. That’s not exactly, right, I suppose. It was not that I really got over being afraid, but my body eventually ran out of fresh stimuli with which to justify the production of various neurotransmitters and hormones.

  I had noticed a while back that the car was equipped with a satellite radio system. There was no telling if it picked up local stations, but I gave it a shot.

  “What are you doing?” Allie said. Her eyes were closed, and for a while I had thought she was going to sleep. Evidently she was still feeling both the highs and lows of artificial stimulation.

  “I’m looking for the news,” I said.

  “You think the news would cover one stolen car from Surrey?”

  “No,” I replied, “No, you’re right. I might just put on some music.”

  It was sort of crazy to want music, but I needed something to distract me from thoughts of handcuffs and lawyers.

  I tuned through the thousand or so channels on the satellite music system. Periodically, I would pause to consider a few bars of song. Finding nothing to my liking, I kept going.

  The system eventually landed on one of those boutique stations that feature music from bygone eras. Not from the fifties or sixties, mind you, but far earlier. Like from the era when men stared longingly at black-and-white photos of Sophie Tucker and Ruth Etting. I mean old. And obscure; I had to look up Sophie Tucker and Ruth Etting.

  I reflexively moved to change the station when, to my abject surprise, Allie slapped my hand away. I gaped at her. Her eyes had not even opened.

  “I like this one,” she said in a surprisingly clear voice.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, leave it here.”

  I had no clue what the song was, but my first impression was far from favorable. Do not assume that I have a problem with music from bygone days. But, for pity’s sake, keep it to Gershwin or one of those guys. This was far too antique for my tastes. Hell, it made Perry Como look progressive. By the sound of it, I figured it had to be from the twenties.

  The singer, a woman with evident talent I will admit, was in the middle of a refrain about the moon setting or something like that when I spoke.

  “You really like this?”

  “I love it.”

  “I have to ask, how?”

  “Don’t you mean ‘why’?”

  “No, I really don’t. I mean, by what process of consciousness can you find this to be appealing.”

  Her head lolled to aim in my direction. She opened her eyes and, to my surprise, smiled another warm and disarming smile.

  “It’s called ‘The Song is Ended.’ The singer is Annette Hanshaw.”

  “You know her name? Are you a fan?”

  “Not so much, but I know this song. It’s sort of special to me. To a lot of people.”

  She closed her eyes again, but now I felt she was simply engrossed in the music and not hiding from consciousness.

  “Give it a chance, Carver.”

  I said nothing.

  “Imagine you’re some place very far away. You’re so far away that you don’t even know about the other side of the world.”

  I silently complied.

  “Now, imagine you turn on your radio, and this comes on. You’ve never heard it before. No one has ever heard it or her before. It’s like music you know about, from movies or something, but it’s totally unique. Like a ship in a bottle from a place you never knew existed.”

  I did my best to see what Allie was describing. There was some success, and I managed to conjure up a mental image close to what she said. Even so, I failed to grasp the point of Allie’s metaphor. But the song grew on me slightly.

  It soon ended, and I was delighted to hear the now-slightly-interesting Ms. Hanshaw finish the track by saying “That’s all” in a squeaky, feminine voice. I laughed a little; I couldn’t help it.

  “That was sort of her thing,” Allie said. “It was like a catchphrase. She wrapped up a lot of songs with that.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Endearing really.” A moment later, a thought occurred to me. “Which people?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You said the song was special to a lot of people. Which people? The Annette Hanshaw Fan Club?”

  Allie looked away. She sat up higher in her seat. “I said it was sort of special, and ‘lot’ is a relative term.”

  “Now you’re dodging.” No response. “Come on, what’s the big deal? Do you belong to a secret underground flapper society?”

  She laughed softly and shook her head.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the problem? I w
on’t laugh, I promise.”

  A sigh.

  “It’s not that you’ll laugh, Carver.”

  “Nicholas.”

  “What?”

  “You keep calling me by my last name. No one does that.”

  “Well, I do. I like it better. Plus, I’m in the habit now, so you’re out of luck.”

  “Fine. Anyway, we’ve establish that I won’t find your secret flapper cult to be in the least way amusing, so spill the beans.”

  Looking back and knowing what I did not then, I kind of feel bad for asking Allie what she meant. If I had had the slightest idea of the secret she was carrying, I would have let the matter drop. Really, I would have preferred not to know. At the time, though, I was entirely ignorant of the tumultuous events that were taking place both at my home and hers.

  So, as it played out, I continued to pester and rib her on the subject. I will not produce a transcript of the exchange, as it wore on with swiftly diminishing qualities of amusement. Suffice it to say that I let the matter drop somewhere outside of Hemel Hempstead. We were on the M1 and halfway from London to Milton Keynes before I changed the subject.

  “Is Allie short for something?”

  “Allison. And to save you the time, my last name is Valois. It’s spelled with an ‘s’. My middle name is Gabriela.”

  “Allison Gabriela Valois. And which jurisdiction is your dad viscount of?”

  She laughed.

  “No. Far, far from it. Dad’s a doctor.”

  “Medicine?”

  “No, he’s sort of an anthropologist.”

  “Oh, now it makes sense.”

  She considered me.

  “What does?”

  “Why you want to run from the cops. Obviously rebelling against your father’s strict demands that you follow in the family business. One arrest, and no one will ever take you seriously in the field.”

  “Who says I didn’t follow him?”

  “Oh, so that’s it. This is all part of some elaborate study.”

  “Primate behavior,” she smiled when she said it. I had never known the phrase ‘primate behavior’ to be uttered with charm. Life is about learning, I suppose.