Notes From the Midnight Driver

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  I wasn’t sure if this was the right move, and I’m not the most comforting guy in general, but I put my hand on Sol’s arm. We stayed like that for a really, really long time, until both Sol and my left leg were fast asleep. Now I knew why Sol had gone ballistic over my little gnome episode. I pulled his blanket up to cover him, turned off the lamp over his bed, and tiptoed out of there. Just as I hit the doorway, I heard Sol turn over and mumble, “I liked ‘All Blues,’ kid. Keep the key.”

  I dozed off on the bus home, with my hand clenched tight around the key in my pocket. It had been a long day.

  THE VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE

  In case I might have accidentally had a moment of relaxation or contentment, my high school scheduled a Sadie Hawkins dance for Valentine’s Day. For those of you who haven’t endured the nearly medieval torture of this particular event, a Sadie Hawkins dance is one where the girls have to ask the guys out. Now, I have very little skill in the man-woman-type area anyway, so I probably would have just stayed home in slightly depressed peace on V-day in a normal year, because the chances of my asking out a human female with any degree of success were right up there with the odds of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. No, worse—the Cubs winning the Super Bowl. But this Sadie Hawkins thing meant I couldn’t even just give up and sulk, because at any moment some random girl might snatch me up as a partner. Granted, there wasn’t exactly a waiting list to ask out semiproficient band geeks with criminal histories, but as long as there was the slightest hope, I would be sitting on pins and needles.

  And of course, there was the dreaded, yet slightly exciting, prospect that Laurie might choose me. So every time I was with her I had that to add to my agony. Every day at lunch, I sat across from Laurie, choking down my oddly congealed school cafeteria pizza, watching her eat her inevitable salad, and waiting for a word from her about the dance. Of course, at least three guys would stop by the table, one by one, to talk to her, and I’d have to sweat over whether she would pop the question to them right in front of me. Seriously, I’d perspire and pray, Not in front of me. Please, dear Lord, not right in front of me. Then they’d leave, and I’d be vainly trying to dry off my soaked palms while awaiting the next potential suitor.

  But nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened. It was like watching the world’s greatest relief pitcher. Three up, three down. Every lunch period, three up and three down. Until one day, this girl Sarah walked up to me. Sarah was a quiet, mousy little trombone player whose most distinctive features were a massive retainer that made her sound like she was gargling marbles, and the ability to write endless pages of horrendous love poetry that she read out loud daily in our English class. Here’s my impression of Sarah reading Shakespeare:

  “Womeo, ah Womeo, where faw ot dow, Womeo?”

  Sarah reading Elizabeth Barrett Bwowning (sorry, Browning):

  “How goo I lub vee?

  Wet me cout the ways.”

  And here’s Sarah, asking me to the Sadie Hawkins dance right in front of Laurie:

  “Hi, Wauwie. Hi, Awex. Hey, Awex, goo you what to go wiv me to vhe Sagie Hawkins Gance?”

  I just sat there, sweating and panicking. What does one say in a situation like this? There are really no guidelines whatsoever, because this is the kind of thing that only happens to ME. After a few moments of unbearable silence—I mean, silence from me; it’s not like the whole lunchroom got quiet, which is a small blessing—Laurie kicked me under the table like I was a pile of pine boards and she was really going for a trophy. I wasn’t sure what she meant to convey, other than a painful bruise, but she succeeded in prodding me into action. “Sure, Sarah, I’d be glad to.”

  While Sarah and I were working out the details, and I was trying to rub my shin without being too pathetically obvious, Laurie somehow left the cafeteria. By the time I said a fond farewell to my new hot date and hobbled out into the hall, Laurie was long gone.

  While I was making these swell plans, my parents were getting their own warped ideas for the upcoming holiday. They were in “couples therapy” together, because, as Dad put it, “We want to start fresh, and not make the same mistakes again that we made last time.” They could have saved seventy-five bucks an hour if they had just come to me instead. It was no big mystery: I would have just told Dad to stop getting it on with my teachers. But anyway, their therapist had this great idea that they should try to have a big, ceremonial, perfect “first date” on Valentine’s Day. So they had a whole elaborate scenario worked out, with fancy clothes, flowers, dinner, dancing, and God knew what else. Every time I went to Dad’s (which I was grudgingly doing maybe twice a week now), he would try to get me to tell him what Mom was going to wear. Then I’d get home, and Mom would interrogate me about Dad’s wardrobe choice for the evening. Like a) I cared, and, b) I paid attention to the weird sounds that came out when their lips were moving. I hoped things would go well for them, or at least I mostly did, but I wanted nothing to do with any of it, because even if they were forgetting, I remembered how peachy their romance had turned out to be the first time around. Whatever, it was just another interesting V-day plot twist.

  The day after my first disastrous lunch with Laurie, I was treated to the pleasure of another. I lurched over to the table with an exaggerated limp so Laurie would know she had probably hobbled me for life with her vicious kick, and said, “Hi. Salad today? A bold choice.”

  She fired right back, “Verbally challenged bandgeek date? A bold choice.”

  “What’s your problem? She came over. She asked me out. When I didn’t immediately jump up and start kissing her instantly, you kicked me under the table. So I said yes, just like you wanted me to.”

  “I didn’t want you to say yes, I wanted you to say no.”

  “Gee, too bad you didn’t give me the anklekicking Morse code translation kit so I could figure that out. I guess I’m a little rusty on distinguishing the yes kick from the no kick. And why did you want me to say no?”

  “Well, because you don’t like Sarah. At least, you’ve never mentioned her before. It just seems kind of cruel to lead her on. She’s obviously been longing for you in her heart, pining away, her tragic tears dripping down her face and rusting her adorable little retainer.”

  “Oh, I’m cruel? You’re busting on her orthodontic issues, but I’m the cruel one? And what if I had said no? Then I would have sat at home, miserable, and she would have, too.”

  Laurie chewed her lip for a moment. “Alex, you weren’t going to be sitting home on Valentine’s Day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I kind of thought…”

  Before she could finish, a huge shadow fell over us. We both looked up at the tanklike form of Brad Hunter, the star offensive lineman on our football team. Like a heavily armored attack vehicle, he towered above the table with an air of menace. Unlike a heavily armored attack vehicle, he started talking to Laurie. “Listen, Laurie, I know this is supposed to be a girls-asking-guys thing, but I think you’re really special, and I’d like to take you to the dance. I mean, if you don’t have other plans.”

  Laurie gave me yet another of her deadly and accurate kicks, and smiled sweetly at Brad. “No, I don’t have any other plans.”

  Women! Can’t live with ’em, can’t walk.

  The night of the dance, I was all set to make the most of the situation. My mom had graciously ungrounded me, perhaps so she could be home alone when my dad arrived to pick her up. I had on a nice pair of black pants and a dark green sweater that Laurie had bought me because she said it “set off my eyes.” I had shaved, which, okay, maybe I didn’t technically have a massive growth of facial hair, but hey! It allowed me to feel entitled to splash on some aftershave. I had brushed my teeth—twice—and rinsed with mouthwash until my mouth was a veritable garden of minty freshness. I had combed my hair so it didn’t quite have the usual “brown Q-Tip” thing happening. I was just about to set out on the short walk to Sarah’s house, which was only a block f
rom school, when the phone rang.

  My mom jumped about seven feet sideways and almost yanked the phone out of the wall—not that she was tense or anything, right? I only heard her end of the convo, obviously, but it didn’t have a good ring to it:

  “Hello. This is she. He WHAT? He can’t? When did this happen? Where is he? He asked for…? Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Thank you.”

  She turned to me. I was all ready to hear my dad had suddenly fled the country with my gym teacher or something, but I’ve never had a big gift for premonition. “Alex, I have some bad news. Mr. Lewis…Sol…is in the hospital. He has pneumonia. I know the timing is bad , but he asked to see you.”

  Oh, crud. “All right, I’ll go tomorrow morning. Can I skip school?”

  “Alex, you don’t get it. Sol has pneumonia. Pneumonia kills people, especially old people. Especially old people with emphysema. He might not be…around…tomorrow morning.”

  I thought fast. “Mom, can you drive me right now? We’ll have to stop at Sarah’s house to tell her what’s going on.”

  Mom sighed. This wasn’t exactly the vision she had had for this evening. “Okay, get your coat. I’ll call your father from the car.”

  At Sarah’s, I ran up and rang the bell. I’d been expecting her mom or dad to answer the door so we could have one of those awkward predate Spanish Inquisition rituals, but Sarah must have beaten them to it. She looked really, really pretty. I’d never seen her in anything except jeans and T-shirts before, but she was wearing some kind of silky green dress thing that suited her, somehow. Her eyes were green like mine, which had never registered with me before. Something else was different, too, but it didn’t click for me until she shouted, “Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad. I’ll be back by midnight. I have my cell if you need me!”

  When she smiled shyly at me, I had visual confirmation: The retainer had been deep-sixed for the night. Sarah could speak! So now I had a date who had basically transformed herself into a princess, but our gala ball had turned into a bedside vigil. I had to ’fess up to the facts, so on the way back to the car, I stopped walking and gave her the update. “Sarah, I have some bad news. I volunteer at the nursing home…”

  “For that old man, Sol, right? I know all about it—you got in trouble for drunk driving, and then you got sentenced to work at the nursing home. But then you really bonded with this old guy, and you put on a concert with Steven and Annette, and your guy played guitar, right? I think it’s heroic the way you’re helping an old man in need!”

  How did she know all this? I had to ask. “How do you know all this?”

  “Didn’t Bryan Gilson tell you? He told me all about you. I mean, I knew you from jazz band, and I knew you were cute…” God, my mom must have been smirking if she was hearing this through the open car window. “But Bryan was the one who told me how deep and sensitive you are. And then I wasn’t going to ask you out anyway, because of your—you know—relationship with Laurie, but Bryan said it was okay, and that Laurie was going with one of his jock friends anyway. So here we are, and I’m glad. I’m sorry, you were saying?”

  “Um, well, it’s like this: Sol—the old man—is in the hospital. I just got the call, and he’s really sick. He asked for me, and this might be, like, his deathbed. So I have to go right now to see him. You can come, if you want. Or my mom can probably drop you off at the dance, and I could meet you there after…”

  Sarah stopped me with a hand on my forearm. Her hand was warm and dry. And she was looking at me with weird googly eyes. “Alex, I’d be honored to go visit your friend with you. Let’s go there.”

  So we jumped in the car, and that’s what we did. When Mom dropped us off, I told her to go ahead with her date. She gave me a twenty and told me to call a cab when we were ready to go from the hospital to the dance. As we walked up to the hospital’s information desk, Sarah grabbed my hand and squeezed it. This was a weird night for sure. And I couldn’t decide whether I should thank Bryan or kill him.

  Sol’s room upstairs was “semiprivate,” which is hospital code for “not private.” So there was a guy in the bed by the window all hooked up to tubes and wires. Sol was by the door, propped partway up on pillows, with two different IV bags dripping into his arm and a cannula clipped between his nostrils. His glasses weren’t on, which made his nose look both bigger and sunken at the same time. His lips were blue.

  God, his lips were blue. I’m no doctor, and the ninety-one I got in biology freshman year probably didn’t qualify me as a diagnostic expert, but I was fairly certain blue lips were not one of the top ten signs of robust health. I said hello, and he turned toward my voice.

  “Alex, boychik, is that you? I knew you’d come.” His voice sounded like he was trying to speak through a mouthful of coffee grounds. BOILING coffee grounds. I went right over and put my hand on his shoulder—his blue, IV-punctured hand was just a little too scary for me. While he was catching his breath after this long speech, Sarah stepped up next to me.

  “Sol, this is…”

  “I know who this is. What, I get a little cough and take off my glasses and you think I’m suddenly a complete schmeggege? It’s wonderful to see you again, Laurie.”

  Uh-oh. Sarah stiffened and pulled her hand away.

  Sol grabbed her hand. “Let me have a good look at you, dear.” For what seemed like maybe the length of—oh, I don’t know—a year on Pluto, he squinted up at her and breathed raggedly. “Alex, va-va-voom! She’s all dressed up tonight. So where is your husband taking you this evening, Mrs. Um?”

  She didn’t know how to reply to that, and neither did I, but Sol seemed to catch the look that passed between us. “Oh, I know, I know. You aren’t married YET. But I might die tomorrow, so I’m using the present tense—HOO-hah, excuse me—for the future.”

  “Sol, uh, she isn’t…”

  “Oh, I know. She isn’t comfortable talking out loud about this, are you, Laurie, honey? Don’t worry, then—we all understand exactly what’s going on here, right?”

  Sarah’s eyes were flashing danger signals at this point, but I couldn’t work out a way to stop Sol from digging the hole even deeper. You had to give me credit for trying, though. “Sol, listen to me. This isn’t…”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s the end for me either. You don’t have to try to cheer me up, Alex. And there’s no need for crying, Laurie. I’ll pull through fine. These doctors are excellent. And I think this one nurse likes me. She winked at me before. I told her I was too old for her, but these women just can’t resist a man with his tuchis hanging out—sorry, Laurie—with his tuchis hanging out of a robe like this.”

  I gave up on my attempts to correct Sol, which meant that Sarah sulked and fumed through the rest of the visit. Sol and I talked for maybe fifteen minutes more, and then a nurse came in and told us that visiting hours were over. As soon as we stood up to go, Sol launched into the longest, deepest coughing fit I’d ever heard. I mean, even for him, this was something special. There was harrumph-ing, and HOO-hah-ing, and barking, then more of all three. When he suddenly grabbed a cup from the nightstand and spat into it, he got his wind back for a second. He said to Sarah, “Laurie, sweetie, can you please get me a glass of water from the nurses’ station? I appear to have schmutzed into my drinking cup.”

  When she cleared the doorway, I saw my chance: “Sol, that’s not Laurie. Her name is Sarah. She’s a trombone player in my school jazz band, and she’s my date for a dance tonight.”

  He gave me such a deadpan look that I wanted to shake him. “Of course, she’s not Laurie. Do you think pneumonia makes a man blind? What school do you go to again?”

  “Well, I mean, you said…she isn’t…you’re not wearing your glasses, so I thought…”

  “Boychik, haven’t you ever heard of contact lenses? You really need to get with the times here.”

  “Then you knew this whole…?”

  Sol’s malicious, yet radiant, smile told me everything I needed to know: “GOTCHA!”

  Sarah
came in with the water at that point, just as Sol doubled over in another spasm of coughing. But it sounded to me like there might have been just a touch of laughter mixed in. I apologized profusely to Sarah all the way downstairs, and while we waited outside for our cab, AND on the whole ride over. AND as we headed into the dance. She kept telling me over and over that it was no problem, she understood, yada yada. But it didn’t take a genius to realize Sol had a better chance of running off to Aruba with his nurse than I did of getting anywhere with Sarah.

  And the odds didn’t get any better inside. The first people we ran into on our way to the dance floor were Laurie and her monolithic side of beef, Brad. She was wearing—and I couldn’t believe my eyes—a fire-engine-red dress that fit her like the designer had run out of fabric in the middle and switched over to spray paint to finish the job. Brad was sporting baggy slate-colored pants, a slate-colored shirt, and a slate-colored sweater. I don’t want to insult the guy, but all I’m saying is this: If you had been mugged by an African water animal, and the safari police placed Brad in a lineup with four rhinos, it would have been pretty hard to disqualify him as a suspect.

  He was almost incomprehensibly bigger than she was. Approaching them from a distance, the view reminded me of a picture book I used to love when I was around five, called The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. But this story was a lot less entertaining for me. And when we got close enough that I started worrying we might get caught up and sucked into Brad’s gravitational field, we had to actually communicate.