The Drive

by Tyler Keevil

  Finally I called her, but we didn’t really talk. I couldn’t talk. It was like the letters. Everything sounded second-hand. Regurgitated words. My tongue felt thick and useless. I remember asking her why. It just happened, she kept saying, it just happened. It was as if she was blaming it on a tornado, or a hurricane – a natural disaster that had blown us apart.

  I hung up and broke my cellphone. I didn’t break it when I hung it up, but after. I broke it on the floor, deliberately, with a hammer. I’d decided it would be the last time I talked to her. Then I added absinthe to my coffee. It tasted bizarre. At one point I tried to masturbate but couldn’t. There was nothing happening down there. She’d cast some sort of spell on me, or a curse. I was paralysed from the balls down – a penis-plegic. I ran a bath and lay in it, fully dressed, until the water went cold. That didn’t help, either.

  chapter 7

  They made me wait in a whitewashed room with an American flag on the wall. I sat and stared at the flag until the stars began to spiral and the stripes seemed to ripple and bend. A body-stone was creeping over me, like a slow-growing fungus. They must have let me stew in there for nearly half an hour. The whole room reeked of perfume and body odour and fear.

  Then an official came in and sat down in one of the chairs across from me. He had a sprinkling of pimples on his forehead. He asked to see my passport and driver’s licence, then opened my passport and thumbed through it. There was a form on the desk in front of him. He began copying my details into the form, frowning in concentration.

  ‘How long will I be in here?’ I asked.

  He looked up, still frowning. ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘If they find anything when they search your car.’

  ‘I thought they already searched it.’

  ‘This time they’re really searching it.’

  That shut me up. I wasn’t worried about the car. I was worried about the slurpee. I thought there might be flakes of bud left inside the straw, or in the cup. When my friend had been searched at the border one time, they’d found resin on his Swiss Army knife. He’d been banned from going to the States for the rest of his life.

  The guy finished copying down my details and slid my passport back to me.

  ‘What’s the purpose of your journey to the United States?’

  He had his pen poised, ready to write.

  ‘I’m going on a road trip.’

  He looked up. ‘By yourself?’

  ‘I’m trying to get my head together.’

  He jotted something down in a box on his form. Then he scratched out what he’d written and stuck the end of his pen in his mouth. He gnawed on it for a while. He looked like a high-school kid who’d turned up for an exam totally unprepared.

  Eventually he said, ‘Stay here.’

  He left, taking the form with him. I waited. Directly above me hung an incandescent light bulb, dull and yellowish, blazing down like a heat-ray. I was getting hotter and hotter, sweltering, melting into my chair. I felt as soft and malleable as a chunk of clay. It was hard not to squirm and shift around. Mostly I was worried about my eyes. Pretty soon they would be bloodshot and cherried, from being so body-stoned, and that could easily give me away.

  The door opened again and the guy came back. He had two people with him. One was the woman who had searched my car – the dog-handler. The other was a Latino guy in a pinstriped suit, who reminded me of a professor. He even wore little wire-rimmed spectacles. He peered at me over the lenses. He had my form on a clipboard in his hand.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ the first guy said to him. ‘It just seemed a bit odd.’

  ‘No worries, Shooter,’ the professor said. ‘We’ll take care of it.’

  The guy’s nickname was Shooter, apparently. Shooter looked relieved.

  The professor studied me. ‘So you’re the kid going on the road trip.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  He glanced at the woman. ‘Search turn up anything?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet. They’re running some tests.’

  I knew she meant on the slurpee. I tried to look indifferent, and innocent. That wasn’t easy, since I wasn’t really either.

  ‘Let’s wait on that,’ the professor said.

  He sat down opposite me, with Shooter and the woman on either side. All three of them had pens and pads of paper. The professor clicked the end of his pen and twirled it around his finger – first one way, then the other. It was obviously something he’d practised a lot.

  ‘What’s the purpose of your trip?’ he asked me.

  ‘Does a trip need to have a purpose?’

  ‘If it doesn’t,’ he said, ‘it looks suspicious.’

  I rubbed my hand over my face. My cheeks felt sensitive, as if they were sunburnt.

  ‘I’m going through a tough time,’ I said. ‘It’s personal, okay?’

  None of them wrote that down. They just looked at me. Dubiously.

  ‘What?’ I asked, holding out my hands, beseeching them. ‘Is that so unbelievable? Isn’t that what young guys do? We’ve been doing it for decades, ever since Easy Rider. Ever since Kerouac, actually. You know – traversing America, being free, finding yourself and all that shit. That’s the purpose of my trip. Except I’m doing it in a budget rental car, instead of on an awesome chopper.’

  They were taking notes now. The three of them scribbled furiously, as if I’d given them some sort of solution, or equation, a breakthrough scientific formula: the new E=MC².

  Then the professor said, ‘You taking any drugs on this road trip?’

  He said it super-quick – as if he wanted to catch me by surprise.

  ‘No way, man.’

  He frowned at that. I probably shouldn’t have called him ‘man’.

  ‘Nothing at all? Even for personal consumption?’

  ‘Nope. I’m not into that stuff. I’ll probably buy a few beers on the other side.’

  He wrote down each of my answers. The other two weren’t writing any more. They were watching. The woman was, anyways. Shooter had started nibbling on a hangnail.

  ‘And where exactly are you going?’ the professor asked.

  ‘Nowhere in particular.’

  He sat back, smiling. His glasses flashed once beneath the light, as if he’d taken a picture of me with his eyes.

  ‘Not San Francisco?’

  I’d forgotten that I’d already mentioned it to the guard in the booth.

  ‘I might end up down there.’

  ‘So you are going somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe – but it’s not official or anything. I mean, I’m trying to keep my options open. Go with the flow. I have a friend down in San Francisco but haven’t told her when I’ll be arriving.’

  Shooter had started doodling on his paper pad. I noticed he’d written ‘Gay’ at the bottom of the page, followed by a pair of question marks.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m not gay, okay?’

  The other two looked at Shooter, who put his palm across the page, hiding it.

  ‘I’m not gay,’ I repeated, karate-chopping the table for emphasis. ‘I just can’t have sex at the moment. I can’t get it up or something. I’ve lost my libido, my sex drive. It’s a perfectly legitimate physical condition. Impotence. I’m impotent, okay?’

  Shooter dutifully crossed out ‘Gay’ and wrote ‘Impotent’. I’d made my point, at a price. I’d started to sweat. My fingers felt stiff and I could no longer feel my feet. I was being baked in that kiln-hot room, slowly hardening like fired clay.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the professor asked, peering at me. ‘You’re white as a sheet.’

  I licked my lips. If they decided to take a blood test, I was fucked.

  ‘Maybe you should tell us what this is all about.’

  ‘All right.’

  I closed my eyes and bowed my head, as if in prayer. I figured I had to toss them a scrap of truth. People respond to authenticity.

  ‘It’
s my girlfriend. She… died.’

  I have no idea why I told them that. It just popped out, like a burp. Shooter was so surprised he dropped his pen. The three of them drew back and glanced at one another.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ That was Herbie’s handler. She seemed the most sympathetic – maybe because she felt guilty that her dog had busted me. ‘That must be incredibly hard for you.’

  ‘It is,’ I admitted. I’d started tearing up. I was really getting into it. Hopefully that would explain my red-eye. ‘It is, but I’m trying to cope.’

  She pushed back her chair and said, ‘I’m going to check on those tests.’

  When the door slammed behind her, I jumped. Seeing that, the professor smiled.

  ‘Take it easy. You’ve got nothing to worry about – so long as you’re clean.’

  chapter 8

  The next day we were shooting at a rest stop on the Sea to Sky Highway, near Squamish. My dad agreed to drop me off up there before work if I bought him a six-pack of beer. My dad’s great at cutting deals like that. He’ll do you a favour, so long as you pay him back – usually with a six-pack.

  On the drive over, he asked me, ‘How’s the shoot going, boy-child?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  We were both drinking coffee: him because he always drank it, me because I didn’t want him to smell the absinthe on my breath.

  ‘Script any good?’

  I had the script in my lap, open to the scene we were shooting.

  ‘It’s a bit avant-garde.’

  ‘That’s the problem with these film school graduates.’ He gestured with his cup of coffee, slopping a few drops on his tie. He didn’t notice. ‘All they want to make is navel-gazing art-house flicks, without a real story.’

  I hadn’t been allowed to go to film school – mostly because it was so expensive. A year at Vancouver Film School costs over twenty grand. That’s partly why I ended up going to Prague, and the language school, after graduation.

  ‘What’s it about, anyways?’ he asked.

  ‘A road trip.’

  ‘That’s it? A road trip?’

  ‘And relationships, I guess.’

  He snorted. ‘I bet this director hasn’t even heard of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That’s a real road-trip story for you. What did you think of it, by the way?’

  I had to admit I hadn’t read it yet. He’d given it to me for my birthday.

  ‘Jesus, Trevor.’ He slapped his forehead. ‘I’m telling you, you’d love it. It’s about the contrast between the romantic and the rationalist world view, the need to find a middle ground. It’s the real deal, a proper philosophical text. None of this flaky new-age garbage.’

  He started rambling on about these things called gestalts and Chautauquas. I pressed my forehead to the window and felt the cool tingle of glass. Eventually my dad noticed I wasn’t listening.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I should probably read this over before we get there.’

  ‘Whatever you say, boy-child.’

  He turned up the radio. I pretended to study my script.

  Most of the scenes in the film were the same. The jock and the junkie would pull over at a random location. They would get involved in some kind of incident, and then they would hop back in the car and keep going. That day, the incident was her throwing up. She was in withdrawal, and apparently junkies become nauseous when they’re in withdrawal. She was going to puke in the road and we were going to film it.

  I was the first to arrive. My dad pulled over and popped the trunk so I could unload my camera gear. He didn’t help me. He was still mad that I’d ignored his road trip lecture.

  ‘Remember my beers,’ he said before he drove off.

  Across from the rest stop was a little tourist shop and a gas station. I bought a pack of Player’s at the gas station and sat on my camera box to wait, and smoke, and be miserable. Inhaling made me cough, so I ended up puffing and faking it. I was so tired my vision had gone blurry. I was crying a bit, too. I closed my eyes and sat like that, resting my eyes.

  The DP showed up next. He was a tall, gangly guy with shaggy brown hair. He loped over and perched next to me, drawing his knees up to his chin.

  ‘Hey, bro,’ he said. That was what he called me. ‘Can I see your camera?’

  He loved my camera. He knew more about it than me. I got it out for him, and he fiddled around with the settings until the other crew members started to arrive. The director showed up last, with the actors. The rest of us sat around while he talked them through the scene. Then he swaggered over to me and the DP.

  ‘How’s my camera crew this morning?’

  The DP said, ‘Wicked, bro.’

  He called everybody ‘bro’, now that I think about it. I nodded at the director, took a drag, and let smoke slip out between my lips.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked, Trevor.’

  ‘I’m trying to start.’

  ‘Great.’ He smiled like a ventriloquist’s dummy and shook a sheaf of storyboards at us. ‘Let me show you guys what I have in mind for this scene.’

  He squatted down with us. He had half a dozen shots scheduled for that morning. The first was a long shot with a telephoto lens, of the jock and the junkie pulling over into the rest stop. As the car stopped, she stumbled out and puked. That was an easy one. We popped it off in under half an hour. The second one wasn’t so easy. It was from inside a moving car. The director thought it would be artistic if we swept by and filmed the actors at the roadside. We were going to use the DP’s car – this beat-up Volvo station wagon that steered erratically.

  ‘Okay, Trevor,’ the director told me. ‘I want you shooting from the back seat. As we pass, you swish-pan to the right, finding them in the frame. You get me?’

  It seemed a tricky shot to pull off, especially on an absinthe hangover and no sleep, while doing sixty in an old beater.

  ‘I get you.’

  We piled into the station wagon to try it out. With the DP driving, we headed up the highway and doubled back, but when I went for the swish-pan I missed the actors entirely.

  ‘Cut!’ the director cried.

  He had a handheld monitor wired to the camera, so he could see what I was doing.

  ‘Sorry, man,’ I said.

  ‘No worries. We’ll do that again.’

  We did. I screwed up the next take, too. My hands were jittery and I had no feel for the camera – it wouldn’t do what I wanted. After five or six takes, the DP offered to give it a try. I passed my camera to him, and the director took over at the wheel. He kept glancing at his watch. It was only the second shot of the day and we were already behind schedule.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said absently.

  Somehow, the DP nailed the shot on the first take.

  ‘Finally,’ the director said. ‘We should have just done that in the first place.’

  The DP handed the camera back to me. I started cleaning the lens and the director turned the car around. Nobody said anything as we drove back up to the rest stop.

  We managed to squeeze off one more exterior shot before breaking for lunch. The catering lady – who was also the producer – popped the trunk of her car and handed out slices of pizza, with paper plates and President’s Choice cola. When she offered a piece to me, I shook my head. I felt too sick to eat.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ I said.

  The DP looked over. ‘Aren’t you having any, bro?’

  ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

  ‘It’s vegetarian pizza.’

  ‘Great.’

  I took a slice. It was home-made pizza, with mushrooms and green peppers. She’d kept it in tinfoil and it was still warm. I gnawed on it for a bit but swallowing made me gag. I wandered away from the group. When I thought nobody was looking, I flung my pizza across the highway. I was aiming for the woods on the other side, but a gust of wind caught the slice and slapped it down in the middle of the far lane. Cars started running over it, smearing it out like a piece of roa
dkill. I looked back. The rest of the crew was staring at me. I waved at them. Then I ducked into the souvenir shop beside the gas station.

  A Native guy with a crew cut stood behind the counter. He had a piece of wood in his hands, which he whittled as I wandered around. I studied his carvings and his dreamcatchers and his pewter jewellery. A set of wind chimes dangled above the door. I listened to them tinkle and breathed through my mouth until I stopped trembling. I still had no appetite, but I decided I no longer needed to eat. I’d become one of those people you hear about that exist only on water and sunlight, like plants. Except, in this case, I’d get by on booze and smokes. It would be like a fast. An extremely unhealthy fast.

  On my way out, the Native guy nodded at me, as if in approval of my plan.

  chapter 9

  For a while we sat in silence, awaiting the results of the tests. By then the heat in that tiny room had baked me dry. My arms and legs had hardened, my joints had seized up, my body-stone had slowly solidified. Shooter started drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Then the professor looked at him, frowning, and he stopped.

  The professor asked me, ‘Tell us about this friend of yours in San Francisco.’

  I stared at him. I was so blasted, it took me a moment to digest the question.

  I said, ‘She’s a lesbian.’

  Shooter sat up straighter. He looked interested for the first time. ‘A lesbian?’ he asked.

  ‘An absurdly beautiful lesbian, with so much natural charisma she’s practically off the charts. She’s like an angelic femme fatale, and my one true friend. I love that woman.’

  The professor was smirking now, as if he had me all figured out. Shooter just sat there with his mouth hanging open.

  ‘Not in a dirty way, though,’ I said. ‘In a platonic way.’

  ‘Of course,’ the professor said. ‘You want her pity.’

  ‘You’re hoping for a mercy lay,’ Shooter added.

  It was no use trying to explain it. Not to these guys.