The Drive

by Tyler Keevil

  Fatty, who was grinning, turned him in the right direction. ‘It’s dead ahead, boss.’

  Fatty moved back, and motioned for us to move back, too. The chatter of the crowd lowered to a hush. In the stillness you could hear the traffic in the Castro. There was a park behind the bar, and from one of the trees an owl hooted.

  ‘This is so fucking stupid,’ the guy muttered.

  He did that thing you do, where you tilt your head up and down, trying to peek out the top or bottom of the blindfold.

  ‘No cheating,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  He raised his Magnum, and hesitated. Holding it like that, he looked stiff and awkward as a scarecrow. While he adjusted his aim I leaned over to whisper to Beatrice.

  ‘You know to only fold the scarf once for me, right?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  Then the biker pulled the trigger, and his Magnum thundered. The echo resounded in the confines of the yard, but the bottle didn’t break – the bullet had gone clean over the wall.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, yanking off his blindfold.

  Fatty went up and patted him on the back. ‘Nice try, boss.’

  ‘As if this chick is going to hit it, anyways.’

  He tossed the scarf down at my feet. Bea gathered it up and took my handbag from me. Together we crossed to the shooting line. I checked my clip, thumbed the safety, and spat on the palms of my hands, playing up to the crowd a little. Then I gave Bea the nod. She stepped behind me to put on the blindfold. I could smell the biker on it – this stale, musty smell.

  He called out, ‘Make sure those sluts aren’t cheating.’

  Fatty came over to check, feeling the front with his fingers.

  ‘Looks legit, boss.’

  It wasn’t, though. Bea had only folded the scarf once, so the blind was thin enough for me to peer through. Not perfectly, but partially. I saw the outline of Fatty’s head as he finished inspecting me. Then he stepped aside, and I could vaguely discern the yard, and the wall at the back. It was like looking at everything through a veil.

  ‘This is harder than it looks,’ I said.

  They all laughed. Nobody actually expected me to hit it. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the wall a little better, but not the bottle. I took a few deep breaths. I was thinking, the hitcher had said his wife did it, somehow. Through blind luck and feminine intuition – like Zuzska in Las Vegas, and Bea’s Indian princess. Maybe I had it in me, too.

  I raised my gun.

  ‘Good luck,’ the guy said.

  I ignored him. Bea called for quiet. I stood for a long time, holding my pistol lightly, like a divining rod, and feeling for the target. I imagined taking aim. I imagined squeezing the trigger. I imagined the bullet sliding from the barrel. I imagined being the bullet, on a beeline for the target. I imagined burrowing into that bottle, like a sperm into an egg, and I imagined being that bottle, accepting the inevitable impact. And, as I imagined all that, I saw a faint glimmer atop the wall, like the glint of moonlight off glass, and felt my arm float up.

  Then the pistol fired. I didn’t consciously pull the trigger – it just went off. There was that familiar gunshot-yip followed by a sound like a light bulb popping. I still wasn’t sure what had happened until, in the shocked silence, I heard shards of glass tinkling down.

  chapter 72

  The crowd went absolutely wild. They didn’t care that they’d just witnessed something that should have been impossible. I’d made it possible, by doing it. From a distance, the reaction must have sounded like a riot. An extremely happy riot. People were shouting, screaming, cheering, jumping around, laughing in disbelief, pumping their fists in the air. Even Fatty joined in. He roared and seized Bea by the waist and twirled her around. The only one not whooping it up was the head biker. He couldn’t believe it.

  ‘But – that’s impossible,’ he kept saying. ‘Impossible!’

  I guess some people can accept the impossible, and some can’t.

  ‘Looks like Lady Luck was smiling on me,’ I said. Then, while everybody else was still celebrating, I leaned over to kiss his cheek, which felt dry and coarse and leathery. In my regular voice, I whispered, ‘Does this mean I get to keep your bottle of mezcal, sugar?’

  He drew back to look at me. His nostrils flared and his eyes quivered wildly, like a horse on the verge of going berserk.

  ‘You!’ he said. ‘You fucking queer-bitch!’

  He grabbed me by the throat, with both hands, and started choking me. I kicked and squirmed and tried to break free, but his grip was as solid as a hose-clamp. I couldn’t speak, or breathe, or do anything, really – except make this weird gurgling noise. His face loomed in front of me, all twisted up and demented-looking, like the reflection in a distorted mirror. My vision began to flicker, flaring white, and I figured that was it. I was finished. Then I heard a dull, hollow sound, which seemed to reverberate in my skull, and he let me go.

  I doubled over, coughing and clutching my throat. On the ground in front of me the biker was sprawled flat, with one arm folded awkwardly behind his back. He was out cold. It took me a second to figure out what had happened. It was Bea. She was standing beside me, holding my bottle of mezcal like a club. The bottle hadn’t broken. She brandished it above her head and glared at the other bikers, her eyes flashing like fucking Athena.

  ‘So are we going to party and play nice,’ she shouted, ‘or are the rest of you assholes also the kind of men who would hit a lady?’

  All the bikers muttered and looked at each other – trying to figure out whether or not they were the kind of men who would hit a lady. It fell to Fatty to decide. Since the boss was down, he was the new boss – and you could tell he was already a little in love with Beatrice.

  ‘Hell, no!’ Fatty roared, thumping his chest. ‘I’ve never hit a lady in my life!’

  Then he kicked his old boss, right in the guts. That clinched it. Everybody cheered: me, Bea, Venus, her band, the ladies, the bikers. Even Fatty started cheering, for himself.

  Then one of the woman – the drunk one who’d called out before – screamed, ‘Let’s get this party started!’

  Even though I’d won the bet, we didn’t make the Cobras leave. We piled inside, en masse, and the bartender served up a round of drinks on the house. Venus and the Flytraps got back on-stage to finish their set. The rest of us gathered near the front. At first the men and women were standing apart and sitting at separate tables. But after a few songs, and a few rounds, people started to mix and mingle, stirred up by the music.

  The Flytraps rocked out for another hour. We kept demanding encores. Whenever they tried to wrap things up, we would pump our fists in unison and chant, ‘More! More! More!’ We wanted more music, more booze, more revelry. It was as though the single bullet I’d fired had set off a race to see who could party the hardest. Pitchers were poured, corks were popped, bottle-caps were snapped, cans were cracked, and shots were lined up like dominoes. People kept bringing me random cocktails, too: Mai Tais and Grizzly Bears and margaritas. They wouldn’t let me get my own. They all wanted to buy me drinks, and they all wanted to know the same thing: ‘How did you do that?’

  Whenever they asked, I would tell them I didn’t know, which was true. I didn’t. Not in any way I could explain. The only one who didn’t ask was Bea. She had a question of her own, though. She waited until we were alone in the women’s bathroom, checking our make-up, before laying it on me.

  ‘Trevine,’ she said, ‘what the hell are you doing with a gun?’

  ‘That’s a long story. Literally.’

  We were looking in the mirror, talking to each other’s reflections.

  ‘Don’t get all mysterious on me. I had your back out there.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll take you as my wing-woman, any day.’

  ‘You think you’re so crafty, with your wily ways and gun tricks.’ She turned and tapped my nose with her forefinger. ‘I want to hear the whole story. Later.’

&n
bsp; ‘That could take a while.’

  ‘We’ll stay up to watch the sunrise.’

  ‘Deal.’

  When the band was finally allowed to finish, the bartender asked for a volunteer to kick off the karaoke. One of the Cobras hopped up there, right on cue, as if he’d been waiting for the chance. He was wearing a NASCAR racing cap that he’d grabbed off the wall. He held it high and waved it at us, then started crooning that old-school Willie Nelson track, ‘On the Road Again’. The other bikers knew all the words, and sang along. It was their gang’s anthem, apparently.

  The ladies got into it, too. This butch chick tore through a couple of indie classics – Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire – and managed to blow one of the speakers. Afterwards Bea and Fatty took over, belting out a supercharged rendition of ‘Life is a Highway’. They had to holler the final chorus to be heard over the rampant cheering. It was followed by more duets and group singalongs. Almost everybody got in on the action, except Venus. I spotted her sitting at a table near the back, drinking. Her band members weren’t with her. One of them had passed out, and the other was playing pool with three Cobras.

  I went over and told her, ‘You guys rocked tonight.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  She didn’t look up. She was staring across the room, to where Beatrice was arm-wrestling Fatty amid a circle of onlookers. They’d both rolled up their sleeves. Their arms, hand-locked at the top, tilted to and fro like a slow-motion metronome.

  ‘The latest member of the Beatrice Carmen fan club,’ I said.

  Venus grunted. I sat down with her and poured us both a glass of mezcal. I’d cracked open the bottle to share it around. We’d been pounding it back, but that stuff never seemed to run dry. It was like a magic fountain.

  Venus asked, ‘How’d you pull off that stunt, anyway?’

  ‘Your girl helped me cheat.’

  ‘That figures. Thanks for stepping in like that.’

  ‘It was my fault that guy showed up in the first place.’

  A cheer erupted from the arm-wrestling table, and we both looked over. Bea had won. She stood up and flexed her bicep. Fatty was shaking his wrist out, exaggerating the pain for the onlookers. Venus toasted them with her empty glass, then tipped it back and dumped the ice cubes into her mouth. I listened to her crunch and crack them like candy.

  ‘Want another?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m about done.’

  A few minutes later the bar got lit on fire. The bartender did it. He doused the bar top in sambuca and set it alight. People got up to dance in the flames, scorching their shoes and skirts. It was fairly extreme. The heat triggered the smoke detectors, which set off the sprinklers. Then everybody was parading around in the showers of water. The floor became as slippery as a waterslide. You could barely stand up. My wig had fallen off somewhere, but nobody seemed to notice, or care that I was actually a guy. People were trading clothes and costumes, tearing props off the walls. Men became women, and women became men. A lesbian wearing a Cobra jacket organised some kind of piggyback race. Then one of the bikers took to the stage in a pink dress and did a little striptease to ‘I’m Too Sexy’.

  At around midnight I ducked out to check on the head biker. Amid all the celebrating I’d forgotten to get my visor back. It was lying in the centre of the vacant lot, on top of a pile of dust. I picked it up, whacked it against my thigh to clean it, and looked around. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I guess he’d slunk off to nurse his wounds.

  ‘You’re missing a great party,’ I shouted.

  I heard muttering and scuffling to my left. Behind the garbage bin one of the punk chicks was making out with a biker. I apologised and told them to ignore me – I was just talking to myself. Then I went back inside. Our party raged on into the night, like a demented lion.

  chapter 73

  Back at their place we staggered and stumbled around, crashing into the furniture: chairs and tables, lamps and bookshelves. I even managed to knock a plant over. The floor was tilting wildly, as if the waters of Mission Creek had flooded and risen up and washed their houseboat out to sea. We were floating on an ocean of booze, and nothing would stay still.

  ‘Stop this floor from rocking!’ Beatrice shouted.

  ‘The table,’ I said. ‘Get to the table.’

  We made a heroic effort to reach the kitchen table and clung to it, trying to steady ourselves. The entire place was bobbing up and down and spinning around in circles, like Dorothy’s house on the way to Oz. Venus couldn’t take it. She emitted a low moaning sound, like a sick cow, and lowered her head face-down on the table.

  ‘Baby?’ Bea said.

  She was out. The houseboat listed to one side, and Venus began to slide off her stool. Bea managed to catch her in an armpit hold. I got up to help, lifting her feet, and together we carried Venus into the bedroom. As we were tucking her in, she opened her eyes and looked around, fraught and frantic as a fever victim. ‘Don’t leave,’ she said, clutching Bea’s blouse. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘I’m right here, honey.’

  ‘Don’t…’

  Her moment of clarity passed, and she conked out again. We left her lying on her side and shut the bedroom door. The house was still spinning, so we took what remained of the mezcal on to the deck. Out there, they had a set of deckchairs, a Moroccan table, and a hammock strung between the railings. We sank into the chairs, and Bea stretched her legs across my lap. I removed her shoes, handling them as gently as glass slippers, and placed them on the table. The raging waters that had carried us along subsided to a gentle seesaw lilt.

  ‘I haven’t tried your mezcal yet,’ Bea said.

  ‘Everybody else did. But it seems to be bottomless.’

  She picked up the bottle and studied the label. I’d never been able to decipher it, but Bea understood a little Spanish. She understood a little of everything, really. At the base of the bottle was a slogan, which she translated and read out. ‘“For everything good, mezcal. For everything bad, also.”’

  ‘Go ahead, señorita.’

  She dutifully took a swig, handed the twixer to me, and smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth – in that way you do to accentuate the taste.

  ‘It’s like drinking liquid smoke,’ she said.

  ‘I could do with a smoke.’

  She opened her pouch of American Spirit and rolled one. I lit it for her with my Zippo. Before taking a drag, Bea pointed with the cigarette towards each of the four horizons, dipped it down at the deck, and then held it up to the star-splattered sky.

  ‘Great Spirit,’ she said, ‘we offer this smoke to begin our ceremony tonight.’

  ‘Is that a West Coast thing?’

  ‘A Native thing.’

  For a few minutes we smoked and swilled in silence, and took in the view. Since it was so late, the condos across the creek were dark. I could hear the water slopping against the sides of the houseboats, and some animal rustling around in the reeds that lined the bank. The air smelled wet and foetid, almost fen-like. It felt as if we were somewhere in the wilds – the bayou, maybe – rather than the centre of a major American city.

  Then Beatrice reached over and tapped the brim of my visor.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is possibly the most radical fashion accessory I’ve ever seen.’

  I tipped it at her, like an old man doffing his cap. ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Insanely so. Where’d you get it?’

  ‘In Trevor. It’s like my equivalent of Dorothy’s slippers.’

  ‘You,’ she said, jabbing her cigarette at me, ‘still haven’t told me about any of that. You and your visor and your biker and your gun. The whole crazy story of your road trip.’

  ‘I tried. You guys didn’t believe me.’

  ‘Try me again.’

  I sat back in my chair, adjusted her legs on my lap. ‘Where should I start?’

  ‘Wherever you want.’

  ‘The road trip – the actual road trip �
�� started when I picked up the rental car at the airport. But really it all started before that, when I was working on this independent film.’

  I told her about Zuzska’s phone call and crossing the border, about meeting the hunters and shooting the eagle, about Seattle and Sprague and the other places I’d passed through. I told her all of it, but not always in the correct order. I jumped around a bit at first, since I was so excited. I exaggerated here and there, too. I turned the girl I met in Trevor into a kind of Slovakian witch, when really she’d just been a rich chick with a weird family. And I made the father and son in the diner more psychotic than they actually had been. There were a lot of details like that – little tweaks and alterations to make it seem more exciting. I wasn’t lying, exactly, but I was stretching the truth, turning my long story into a tall tale.

  ‘That’s harsh,’ Bea said, when I got to the bit about the old man in the trailer park, with his baseball bat. ‘What a son of a bitch.’

  I nodded. I hadn’t had to exaggerate much about him. ‘I felt guilty about getting him hammered.’

  ‘Booze is just an excuse for assholes like him.’ She twisted her cigarette in the ashtray, as if she was imagining grinding it into the guy’s eye. ‘And after that? Tell me the rest.’

  ‘You know the rest. I showed up on your doorstep, like a penitent pilgrim. I came to prostrate myself before you and worship at your altar and kiss your feet, looking for a cure.’

  Bea raised her foot, very seriously, pointing it like a dancer. I cradled it in my hands and kissed the bridge, just below the ankle.

  ‘Has it helped?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, there’s still the impotence thing…’

  She threw back her head and laughed – this braying coyote laugh. ‘You and your fucking impotence. You’re so melodramatic.’

  ‘Trevine’s a drama queen, all right.’

  We gazed at each other for a while. Her eyes were shining in the dark like a cat’s.

  ‘You still haven’t called her.’

  ‘Mañana,’ I said. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow.’