Short Squeeze

by Chris Knopf

  The gym is about fifteen minutes from my house. I usually take the back roads, even off-season, so I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. The truck runs on autopilot.

  My route takes me through the potato fields just north of the highway in Southampton. There’s still a lot of open land up there, though it’s being steadily eaten away by development, and there’re no street lamps, so it’s pretty dark.

  My route goes due west through Bridgehampton horse country. During the day you get to look at thundering huge mansions, long lines of white fences, and well-bred jumpers trotting around looking cocky and well fed. At night it’s just a long two-lane road.

  Then you turn up Brick Kiln Road. My road. It takes you out of the open, rolling fields and up the hill and into the woods. You also go from this nice straight, smooth road surface to a serpentine washboard. This is where my husband found himself too drunk and driving too fast to adjust to the change in circumstances.

  That night I was cold sober, and too fast was never a possibility with the old pickup. In fact, I was trying to gain a little ground speed to overcome the hill before the first curve when I saw the truck behind me. A real truck. A big truck going so fast that the headlights went from pinpricks to almost filling the mirror in the time it took me to look away and look back again.

  My first thought was, Man, he’s really going to have to hit the brakes. And then I realized he wasn’t going to hit anything but me.

  This solved the acceleration problem. I was suddenly going a lot faster, with the rear end of the Toyota now trying to pass the front end. This put the little truck in a full spin. I stood on the brakes, which might have been a bad idea, but what else was I going to do? The tires sounded like a city of the doomed on their way down to hell.

  My father taught me how to cock the wheel to pull out of a spin, so miraculously, I kept control after a single three-sixty. I was so relieved by this that I almost forgot how I got there in the first place. So I didn’t have the Toyota aimed where I should have when the truck hit me again.

  I was able to turn to the left as I flew forward, just missing a tree. The move threw me back on the road surface. I shoved the shift knob into second and floored it.

  The truck behind me recovered quickly and was bearing down on my tail before I reached the next curve. Something told me trying to race the guy was a losing strategy. So I did the opposite. I yanked the steering wheel to the right and hit the brakes.

  This almost worked. He cleared my bumper, but then somehow jammed up on my side. We were now moving at about the same velocity, but he was locked on my right fender, my truck now an insignificant gnat, helpless against overwhelming horsepower superiority.

  So there was nothing I could do when the other truck broke free and sent me hurtling toward the big tree except to ponder, in that time-out-of-time moment before you hit something at a high speed, the lovely irony of going out just like Potato Pete. Flying free over Brick Kiln Road. Watching the giant gray column come at me mighty and aloof, and thinking, All that nice work on my face, and now this.

  6

  People who suffer massive head injuries usually don’t remember how they happened. I guess that’s nature’s way of shielding you from the horror, letting you heal and get on with your life without having to relive the moment over and over.

  That’s how it was with me after getting blown up by the car bomb. I went from being late for lunch with Sam to swimming in a gooey, hallucinogenic stupor. The shock wore off about the same time as the painkillers, which was partly by design. The doctors wanted to ask me how I felt, to get my read on the overall situation.

  I said I felt about as shitty as a human being was capable of feeling, and that was before they showed me my face—what was left of it. I’m not the suicidal type, but I have to admit the question of life or death at that point was a coin toss.

  If you don’t smash up your head in a terrible accident, you’ll probably remember everything that happened, like a movie in slow motion that lets you take in every exciting moment.

  Maybe that’s why I had plenty of time to jerk the steering wheel all the way to the left, which caused the top-heavy little truck to flip on its side and slide about ten feet, so instead of a head-on collision, the top of the bed hit the big tree, absorbing most of the concussion and spinning the Toyota like a top into a grove of saplings, which absorbed the rest.

  That’s when I learned the Toyota had an air bag, which scared me more than the impact when it blew up in my face but kept me safely pinned to my seat as the truck whirligigged through the woods.

  And that’s where I stayed frozen, braced for another blow from the assassin truck. When it didn’t come, I discovered my arms and legs were all still working. I wormed my way around impediments, like the shift knob, until I was more or less standing on the passenger’s side door. The seat belt was now half wrapped around my neck, which was better than having it squeeze the part of my chest already blossoming an angry bruise.

  I unsnapped the belt, reached over my head, and opened the door far enough to prove I couldn’t open it any farther. I wedged my foot against the side of the passenger seat and pushed up, trying the door again, this time getting halfway out before it closed on top of me like the jaws of a wounded but determined shark.

  I was stuck, but at least I had a view of the road, so far clear of murderous pickup trucks. Feeling vulnerable, I frantically wriggled through the door and dropped to the ground, where I looked up at the stars for a while, wondering which were the lucky ones I was supposed to thank.

  A car passed. I held my breath and lay as still as a stump. As if that was enough to camouflage an overturned Toyota pickup truck. And to what end?

  I stood on shaky legs and leaned back against the dirty underbody. That’s when my cell phone rang, from inside the truck. I wasn’t going to climb back in, stupid as it was to leave it there, so I got to listen to it trill at me for a while.

  Then I reconsidered. How sensible was it to be a few humiliating and uncomfortable moments away from contact with the outside world?

  After burning my hand on the muffler, I found a better handhold and a place to put my foot, and was about to hoist myself up when Danny Izard raced up with every light on his patrol car ablaze. I guess if the Town went to the trouble to put all that stuff on your car, you want to use it.

  “What did I tell you about pushing turns in that toy truck?” he said, as anyone would do to comfort and reassure an accident victim. “You all right? Bleeding anywhere?” he said, sticking a thousand-watt flashlight in my face.

  I reached through the light and took it out of his hand. I shut it off and told him to call an ambulance and then call Joe Sullivan. I wasn’t giving my statement to Danny and then be stuck with him as the reporting officer for the life of the case. I liked him, but he was too much of a dumb kid for this one. I needed a grown-up.

  He looked unsure but did as I said.

  As I hoped, Joe got there before the ambulance. With one small blue light on his dashboard blinking discreetly. I hoped Izard took note.

  By now I was sitting on the ground with my back against a tree. I was drinking a bottle of water Danny had given me and smoking a cigarette, which unlike my cell phone, I had the sense to stuff in my pants pocket when I got dressed at the gym.

  “Good, you got a smoke,” said Joe, walking up to me. “The paramedics can skip that part.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “Some big pickup pushed me off the road.”

  He reached into the rear pocket of his jeans and pulled out his casebook.

  “Really.”

  “No idea of year, make, or model, but it had four wheels and a big bumper that he used to ram me.”

  “Ram you? Actually physically, intentionally drove into the back of your truck?” he asked, looking skeptical.

  For the first time since the crash I felt a little sick.

  “We’re not gonna go through that, are we? I tell you what happened and you tel
l me it was my imagination or lecture me on probative evidence or pat me on the head and tell me condescendingly that you’ll look into it? If that’s what we’re going to do, get me another cop who’ll stop fucking around and take this seriously.”

  His face fell halfway to the ground.

  “Okay, Jackie, jeez. I’m not doubting you. It’s just a hell of a thing to say happened.”

  “It’s what happened. I don’t know what color it was, either, but it was dark. Blue, black, gray. Maybe lighter than that, though definitely not white. Where’s that ambulance? I’m think I’m going to puke.”

  Sullivan made me lie down on a patch of weedy grass on the side of the road and put my feet on a knapsack he dug out of his car. He took off his jacket and put it over me.

  “Don’t start getting chivalrous,” I said through my teeth, which for no reason had started to chatter.

  “If you die of shock they’ll fire me. I need the job.”

  I didn’t think the problem was physical. It was the thought of somebody going to the trouble of trying to kill me. Intentionally, with malice aforethought. Which it had to be, because random, unprovoked killings are less common than a meteor hitting you on the head. Even if I cut the guy off down on Scuttle Hole Road, and I didn’t, this was an overreaction. Even for City people, and they don’t drive pickups.

  I hated that feeling. Nauseating fear.

  I looked over at Pete’s pickup, probably a total loss. So there’s a silver lining, I told myself. It made me chuckle, which Sullivan probably thought was shock-induced dementia.

  “So, Joe,” I said. “I’m thinking the next ride’s a Volvo, but I can’t decide between station wagon and sedan. I’m always hauling stuff around, but does anyone date a woman who drives a station wagon?”

  “Hang in there, Jackie,” said Sullivan, leaning over me next to Danny Izard, concern written on their faces.

  On the way to the hospital, the paramedics had a fun time listening to my heart, shooting penlights in my eyes, and squeezing body parts like my mother kneaded bread, all the while studying my face for evidence of pain, which they didn’t have to do. I had no problem yelping if I needed to.

  By the time we got there, they were acting as though nothing was hugely wrong, so I relaxed. Relaxed so much that I almost passed out. Which is why I didn’t know Sam was there until I was rolled into an examination room, where I opened my eyes.

  “Everything still working?” he asked.

  “Haven’t tried everything yet. Sullivan must have called.”

  “He told me you were okay, but I’m a bugger for confirmation.”

  “You’re a bugger, period,” I said.

  “I’ll check off ‘Change in personality’ as a ‘No.’ ”

  “This is not good.”

  “Markham said you were probably fine.”

  Markham as in Dr. Markham Fairchild, Jamaican giant and king of Southampton Hospital’s emergency and trauma unit.

  “I’m talking about what happened,” I said.

  “Getting run off the road? Been there. No big deal as long as you survive.”

  I forced myself up onto my elbows so I could look him in the eye. “I need to find out who did it and have them permanently incarcerated or I won’t be able to sleep, eat, or drive a car ever again in my entire life.”

  I like to think I’m good at reading people—interpreting their facial expressions and body language. Good luck trying that with Sam. I guess he has the same muscles in his face the rest of us have, but I’d never seen them in action. I used to play poker when my dad’s friends caught me sneaking a peek at their game in the basement. That’s where I learned what people meant by a poker face, and the best of them were Marcel Marceau compared to Sam Acquillo. He just sat there and stared at me. Implacable.

  “What?” I said.

  He stared a little more, then said, “You’re not gonna let down, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back off from what you’re doing.”

  Maybe letting down is not a bad idea, I thought to myself. Better that than dead.

  “Can’t do that now. I have to find out,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Why me? I must’ve done something to bring this on. What the hell did I do?”

  He stood up from the visitor’s chair and sat on the edge of my bed. He took my hand in both of his. Hands bigger than a man his size should have. Meaty, knuckly, calloused, and coarse to the touch. But careful and tender.

  “Good,” he said. “And don’t worry. If someone kills you, I’ll kill them. Simple.”

  I don’t know why acts of kindness make me want to turn the other way and run. Maybe it’s a reverence of self-sufficiency or maybe I don’t work well in team environments or maybe I just can’t stand the intimacy.

  Sam was an exception, usually. The ledger with him still had a balance in his favor, though there were plenty of entries in both columns.

  So I did the logical thing. I grabbed the poor guy’s sleeve and held on until I fell asleep, a little drugged but mostly on board with his logic:

  You’re gonna die eventually anyway. You might as well live the life you have without worrying about who or what is going to end it.

  Or how.

  Later that night, after surviving some poking and prodding by Markham Fairchild, I got a pat on the head and a ride home in Sam’s old Pontiac Grand Prix. The car, once a total loss after a similar run-in, was now completely restored for no good reason anyone could think of, including him. I told him Potato Pete’s pickup would not enjoy the same resurrection.

  Sam offered to stay with me, but I did what he really wanted and told him to get out of there and let me get some sleep. I gave what I thought was a convincing performance because he seemed to leave convinced.

  It wasn’t until I was alone in my house, after I’d carefully and dispassionately stripped off my clothes and taken a shower, slathered cream all over my body, and poured myself a glass of wine, that it was safe to sob a little.

  I hated myself for it. Not the crying, but the cause. I hated losing control of my emotions. I couldn’t afford it. Not now. Now that people were actually trying to kill me, too, it was time to get serious. I had a dead client to look after—one who might be past looking after—but that was tough.

  I wouldn’t have chosen the method, but I had to admit, they had my attention.

  7

  The next morning I couldn’t move, predictably enough. Markham had given me a bottle of painkillers. The label said three a day, so I got a head start and took two. I waited another hour, then got out of bed and felt my way to the bathroom.

  I pulled up my pajamas to assess the damage in the mirror. Half my left boob had turned purple, with highlights in pink and yellow. Very attractive. It actually looked worse than it felt, and it felt really bad. I checked around the rest of me and found a few more ugly red splotches, though in less intimate places.

  I examined my face, calming the irrational fear that somehow the crash had dislodged all that lovely plastic surgery. It hadn’t, of course, but that’s why it’s called an irrational fear.

  When I went to get dressed, a bra was out of the question. Just looking at it made me wince. So I went for a tube top, baggy shirt, and loose jacket combo that looked so good I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  A little concealer from a tube—almost dried into stone for lack of use—was all I needed to dab out the welt on my forehead and be ready for public consumption.

  And Harry.

  “You did what?” he asked when I called him on my cell phone.

  “I didn’t do anything. It was done to me. I’m okay. Just a little banged around. The truck, on the other hand, is a goner.”

  There was a moment of silence on the line.

  “I need to come over there.”

  “No,” I said, before he barely had the words out. “You don’t need to come over here.”

  “It’s not safe.”


  “Yes, it is. It’s safe if I keep moving,” I said.

  “I want to see you.”

  “I’m going over to the Volvo dealer to buy a car just like yours. We’ll match.”

  He pressed me to describe the accident and my actual condition. I got him off the phone by promising to tell him everything, in person, as soon as I had the chance.

  “I’ll pick you up in my new car,” I said.

  I’m not sure where I stand on big, strong men. If you pay attention to the words, it makes some sense. Big, strong men. When you’re feeling threatened, there’s just nothing better. This wasn’t the first time I’d attracted murderous attention, so I knew that well enough.

  But if I gave in to that now, there’d be no going back. Harry couldn’t follow me around all day, and Sam wouldn’t. Eventually I’d start resenting the constraints on my freedom and get all twisted up in gender angst and be worse off than if the truck had done a proper job running me off the road.

  So when the cab arrived, I ran the ten yards and jumped in the rear seat as if a thunderstorm was raging, but I did it on my own.

  As it turned out, I picked the right mood to negotiate for a new car. Testy paranoia, seasoned with a feminist rage that would’ve embarrassed Bella Abzug. I got the car I wanted, at the price I wanted, and likely paved a less condescending path for the next unwed sister who wandered into the dealership.

  The Internet has made it impossible to hide anymore, unless you intentionally change your identity, and that isn’t easy. If you’re a regular law-abiding member of society, I’ll find you. The more active you are in the world, the easier it is to pin you down. I’ll know when you were born and your parents’ names and their parents’ and your other ancestors’ as far back as I have time to look. If you go to school, graduate, get married, buy a house, get a job, get a promotion, get divorced, get fired, get foreclosed on, get arrested, sued, or released on parole, I’ll know about it. If you’re famous, or you come from a famous family, I’ll know even more and twice as fast.