Oil & Hay

Lorenzo was yawning as usual. And when he wasn't he excused himself to vomit into a white bucket that his pit crew had stuck behind the wall.

I yawned too, helplessly. Not wanting to. Not needing to.

"See? You yawna too," he said.

"It's because you make me tired, Zo."

Lorenzo smiled meekly. His damp and pallid face gave him the odious air of a stage villain.

"How many times have you done this, Zo?"

"Twenty-nine. After today, thirty. Se Dio vuole," Lorenzo said, crossing himself. Rocking foot-to-foot.

"Twenty-nine. You'd be used to it by now I should think."

"Never, Malcolm," he replied somberly, shaking his head. "Never, never, never, never get used to it."

His strangled syntax made confession sound like admonition. Or is that what he meant? I didn't get a chance to ask.

"Excuse-a me, Malcolm," he said with a yawn. "Good race for you, OK? I go now. Che Dio ti protegga."

I waved as he went off to vomit once again.

I was nervous as well. Not in the particularly expressive way Lorenzo Maldarelli was. But I must admit. I was acting calm but I was nervous.

I sat on a folding chair in the pits and gazed at the grid, aswarm with actors and mechanics, reporters, portly officials and women on the make. Lurking among them were the motor cars, arrayed in staggered pairs, a patchwork of reds, blues and greens, sun-dappled by a canopy of maritime pines.

The prince and princess peered down upon the scene from across the boulevard.

I closed my eyes and beheld my apprehension like a wearyingly familiar object. Like a pocket watch. A shoe. What did it look like today? The same.

I placed a cold-sweaty hand to my chest and felt my heart.

Melanie tried to teach me a mantra once. Om et cetera. I didn't take to it, I must confess. Fine, she said. (Just like an American girl.) Make up your own. Really? I asked. Can it be anything? It can be anything you like, she said. So I chose a verse from a popular song:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

I thought my mantra three times through and felt a little better.

I'd soon be serene. This I knew. Once we snaked past St. Devote and were heading hopefully up the hill to Massenet I'd become exquisitely calm. Fall into that trance. Easy as pie. Hard to imagine it now, though.

In ordinary waking life my mind was perpetually cluttered by a thousand and one thoughts both frivolous and profound. I was distracted, fickle and forgetful. Inattentive. I'd read half a paragraph of an article in the morning paper only to be charmed by the next sensory event, regardless of importance: A birdsong. Burning toast. The untied laces of my shoes.

But when I raced my consciousness contracted. The world fell off the edges of the track. What remained? The tailpipes of the car ahead of me. And if by luck or merit none were present: the maddening unseen, ever vanishing around the bend or over the horizon. This is what I chased. Was it what I wanted?

Why were this and that so far apart?

Zo told me once, late one night, after we had copiously toasted one of his dominating performances in '63—was it Monza?—that the entire race, every race in fact, was for him an occasion for hysterical, shrieking panic. He was terrified to the core that he'd die and he grew more certain that he would with each passing lap. He told me he often screamed out loud into the wind whilst downshifting into a particularly devious corner. Out loud? I asked. Si, Malcolm, he replied. Come una ragazza. He was desperately eager for the race to end. Always. How many more laps? Twelve? God forbid. Five? Two? When it was over and he'd bring his machine to a stop—in the winner's circle, often—he'd experience such an elation, such a burst of pure pleasure, that in his efforts to describe it he broke into sobs. I put my hand on his shoulder.

One thing was for certain: he was quick.

---

I sat in my Star-Apogee and twice pumped the throttle, the motor roaring venomously at my back. I looked to my left and saw Santiago Bragato, the Argentine, adjusting his goggles in his hunter green Hewitt-Clark. Ahead of us in the first row were reigning world champion José das Chagas in his Cavallo Nero, offset to my left, and Zo at the far left in his. Zo and Zé. Teammates and tempestuous rivals. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Beyond them Louis Chiron held his hand up: five.

I tried to contemplate the calm between my heart's concussive beats.

Four.

I stepped on the clutch and engaged first gear.

Three. Two.

I pressed the throttle to the floor. The motor noise rose to a continuous shriek of extreme urgency, all its energy lusting keenly for release.

One.

Louis steps aside and waves the Monégasque red-and-white with an extravagant flourish. I release the clutch and my rear wheels spin madly for the merest moment; soon they find purchase and I shoot forward, ducking under Zé. Up to second gear. To third.

How to overtake a car? Pretend it isn't there. View its claim to existence with scorn. Occupy the space that it would occupy. Ignore the laws of nature and they'll concede something to you. Not much. An inch or two. Enough to get by.

Ignore the laws of man as well. You've got to be ruthless in racing. Criminal-minded, really. Every time I overtake someone I feel as though I've picked his pocket. Though he must howl with indignation, I don't care. So what's in my spirit? An airy elation where shame's supposed to be. To race and to win is to be rewarded for sin.

As we approach St. Devote I push Zé out, brazenly insisting on my line. There's Zo ahead of me on the outside. He started like a rocket. I'll slip in behind him like that's the way it's meant to be.

I hold my breath and make it stick. That's one thing I do whilst overtaking: I hold my breath.

I make the rear of my car wide in my imagination. That way none shall pass. I follow Zo up the squiggle of Beau Rivage and left around Massenet. We emerge into Casino Square, the grandstand a jubilant burst of orange, white and red. Over the bump we go, airily down the hill, past the manhole cover, toe the brake, declutch, neutral, clutch, heel the throttle, declutch, second gear, clutch, throttle, right around Mirabeau, close up to the curb but not too close, and down again to the Station Hairpin, slow, slow, slow, turning the wheel all the way, my God it takes forever and there goes Maldarelli.

I can't stand to be left behind.

I grow more comfortable now, sinking into the peculiar rhythm of the course. There is no respite. There cannot be a breach in concentration, yet there is no time to think. You're always braking, shifting, turning, shifting, turning, braking. The only way to do it is to give yourself completely. To just let go. At other races it's useful to conceive of the car as an extension of your body; here you must think of the entire track that way. Be a blood cell coursing through your veins.

I feel the unexpected cool of a drip of drool emerge out the corner of my mouth.

I remain fixated on the back of Zo's car but find that I can observe certain incidental environmental details with naive fascination—amusement, even—like a child. There's the big Marlboro sign on the footbridge past start/finish. The Campari sign on the bridge after Casino. The banners that festoon the barriers and walls: Martini, Elf, BP, Esso, Total. Cigarettes, booze and petrol. What men buy.

I also discern the spectral figures of photographers, walking blithely along the narrow sidewalks, sometimes turning into a crouch to face us.

Zo's pulling away. Each time I see him in the tighter corners I'm tempted to believe the narrowing gap is meaningful but again he speeds off—down into the tunnel, out of the chicane, out of the Gasworks hairpin and up the front straight. I wish he'd make a mistake. Anything. Anything is possible. I look for his tail to fly out of his perfect drift. It never does.

My pit board says:

P2
-3.7
+1.2
L18

Eighty-two laps to go.

There's hay strewn about the track on the descent to Portier, the tight right-hander before the tunnel. Debris, too, but not much: Bits of suspension. The solitary silver cone of a rear-view mirror. Marshals scramble for their flags. I step on the brakes, skid into the corner and take it wide, gingerly. To my left there's a hideous gap in the guardrail where the third of four Total banners used to be. Total, Total, nothing, Total. Nothing but the deep blue sea.

As I pick up speed into the tunnel I wonder what happened, who that was. A backmarker? Lorenzo? I don't see him up ahead at the chicane but he did have quite a lead. Maybe he's alright.

When I come round again my pit board says P1. Maldarelli must have flown into the void.

---

I parked my car before the royal box, as is the custom, and stepped out of the cockpit in a daze. As I slowly removed my goggles, helmet and fireproof gauze, Tex, the Star team boss, ran over from the pits. When one of his cars won he usually cheered it at the checkered, leaping and tossing his Stetson in the air. Today he hadn't.

"Malcolm. Good race, pal," he said, panting.

"And?"

"And Lorenzo Maldarelli's dead."

I sighed. "Just like that?" I asked. I can only think of stupid questions about death.

"Just like that? I dunno what you mean by just like that. He exited the track."

"Into the sea?"

Tex nodded. "Musta slammed into somethin' first."

"He crashed the wall?"

"He crashed the wall."

"Rolled over? Caught fire?"

"You know how the story goes."

"Then he plunged into the Mediterranean Sea?"

"Frogmen retrieved his corpse."

"What killed him? The fire or the water?"

"Jesus, Mary'n Joseph, Malcolm."

"Are you telling me he couldn't swim?"

"If he coulda swum, he'da swam, goddammit!"

"Did he suffer?" I hadn't meant to ask this question. But then I heard it out my mouth.

"Did he suffer. Jesus motherfuckin' Christ. He died like a man!"

I found myself pressing the point. "But Tex, it's import—"

"Of all the ghoulish goddamned questions! Did he suffer. I dunno. You ever die before?"

"Yes, but—no, but I mean—"

"Mal, he's dead. He died."

A moment passed. I hung my head.

"Thank you, Tex."

The buildings reverberated with the sonorous drone of the announcer revealing to the masses the tragic end of the great Lorenzo Maldarelli, hereafter consigned to legend. There followed a minute of silence. One could hear the rustle of the trees.

Then the speakers came to life anew. It was me they celebrated now. Malcolm Wood of Britain in his Star-Apogee. Winner of this twenty-fourth Grand Prix de Monaco. A blonde darling in a miniskirt and go-go boots approached me and placed a wreath around my neck.

I ascended the royal box's felted steps as the prince and princess stood to greet me. Grace, resplendent in blue and rose and a flowered hat, extended her hand to me and smiled.

---

When I got to my hotel room I took off my shoes and lay down with her messages unread in my fist. My right hand still gripped the neck of my half-drunk magnum and kept it balanced on the bed. I examined the elaborate mouldings on the ceiling: the chain of decorative beading on the periphery, the stylised leaves in the corners and around the chandelier. I thought about the breach through which Lorenzo disappeared. My racing suit was soaked through with sweat and Champagne.

I perched the bottle on my belly and leaned it to my lips. The fluid tasted alive. Electric. It spilled down my chin and neck, drenching the pillow. I just kept staring at the ceiling and drinking. Finally the bottle was empty and the telephone rang.

"Yes?"

"Mal, it's me."

"Mel?"

"It's me."

"Where are you?"

"I'm still in New York. I was at the studio late last night."

"You must be tired. What time is it?"

"Morning here. Evening there."

"When can you come—"

"You sound drunk. Are you alright?"

"They offer Champagne to the victors."

"I heard what happened in the race."

"Word of my glory travels fast."

"No, Mal. Yes, I know. But I heard what happened."

I kept silent for a moment or two. It annoyed me that she brought it up. I'm rather ashamed to admit.

"So terrible, Mal! I'm so, so, sorry."

"He's the one who deserves the sympathy I should think."

"You really liked him!"

I paused again, resolving to be calm. "He was very quick."

"Mal, are you crying?"

"No, Mel. No."

"But I can hear it in your voice!"

"When can you come over? I should like to see you."

"I can fly to Brussels in a week. Is Spa near Brussels?"

"It's near Liège."

"Can I fly to Liège?"

"I don't know, darling. Perhaps you could fly to Paris?"

"I'll try to fly to Paris."

"I've got to get dressed for a party on a yacht."

"Try not to get too drunk. You know what happens to your energy when you drink."

I sighed. "I'll speak with you soon, Mel."

I hung up and got back on my feet.

---

Our host for the evening's formal affair was Bambang Duadji, the louche and dissolute Indonesian playboy, art forger, champion water-skier, alleged arms dealer and heir to a rubber fortune known to friends and others as B.B. I adjusted my bowtie and stepped onto the gangplank to the Virgin of Bali, moored along the Quai des États-Unis, near the chicane, not half a kilometre from Lorenzo's off.

I weaved through the crowd of royalty, near-royalty and lesser nobility to find the bar at the end of the after deck. After ordering a whiskey sour, I joined a group of fellow drivers leaning glumly on the railing: Zé; the American Hasu driver Danny Youngblood; the Spaniard Sergio Martín y Bustamente-García, better known as Checho, Santiago's second at Hewitt-Clark; Rodney Sutcliffe, my former teammate at Hewitt-Apogee; and his teammate Jean-Michel Vaton, the ingenuous French heartthrob with perfect teeth and eyes the hue of the iridescent sea. Straight away Danny started in.

"What did you see, Mal? You were right behind him."

"I wasn't right behind him. I didn't see a thing."

Skeptical expressions flickered on each face.

"How could you not be right behind him?" Danny persisted. "It was lap, what?"

"Lap twenty-four," asserted Checho.

"Twenty-five!" Jean-Michel interjected.

"Twenty-five," I confirmed. "It was lap twenty-five."

"You're tellin' me by lap twenty-five, Zo was outta sight?" As Danny gestured towards me to make his point, gin and tonic sloshed out of his glass to rain on the tips of my shoes. He seemed intent on impugning me one way or the other, for dishonesty or lack of pace.

"I couldn't keep up with Zo. When I turned the corner at Lower Mirabeau all I saw was bits and pieces."

Danny gave me a baleful look. "You ran him off the track."

"I did nothing of the sort!"

Jean-Michel quickly changed the subject. We all need another drink, he said, and so we dutifully queued up at the bar. When we reconvened, Zé made a statement in my defense.

"Danny, I was not too far behind Mal. I do not think he was close to Maldarelli."

"You're one to talk."

"What does this mean?"

Danny slurped his drink and peered over the rim at the Brazilian.

"You hated Maldarelli."

Things happened then in quick succession.

Zé slammed his Martini onto the teak in wordless exclamation. It popped into a hundred shards, the olive rolling God-knows-where. He lunged at Danny, managing to grab him by his tuxedo lapels before anyone could intervene.

"Seu cabrão!" he shouted, slapping the American on the side of the head.

Danny, enraged, now ducked into a charge, wrapped his arms around Zé's abdomen, and heaved him overboard. We watched as he fell twenty feet and splashed arse-first into the Port of Monaco. He emerged sputtering, panting, ludicrously treading water, his jacket floating from his shoulders like a cape.

Zé's submergence broke the bitter atmosphere. Danny quickly unfastened a lifesaver and threw it to his erstwhile foe, then we all took a spot on the rope and pulled the soaking man aboard. It was enough, for now, that one of us emerge from the water alive.

---

I took a sip of my seventh whiskey sour, feeling uncomfortable. Out of sorts. A little cross. I took out my flattening pack of Gauloises, pulled one between my lips and flickered at it with my faltering Zippo. B.B. Douadji walked over grandly, holding out his immaculately manicured hands.

"And this is the guest of honour!" he exclaimed. "The great Malcolm! The great Wood!"

"Thank you, B.B."

"Allow me the privilege of lighting the cigarette of a winner," he said, holding up his flame.

The crowd formed a circle around us as we spoke, a pocket of deference and exaltation as might befit a warrior hero come to meet his king. B.B. slapped me on the back.

"What a race today Malcolm! What a race! And you, my friend! You are the winner of the race!"

I exhaled a plume of rich smoke from my nostrils. "It was a difficult race today. A sad day—"

"Oh! Lorenzo Maldarelli!" he interrupted, eyes wide. "Vroom! Vroom!" he went, pretending to hold a steering wheel. Then his arms shook as he pretended to brake. "Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee!" he exclaimed in staccato squeaks. "Boom! Whoosh!" Arms flailing in the air. Finally he pinched his nose, closed his eyes and descended into a crouch, his other arm above his head, a pantomime of a drowning man. After a moment in the depths he stood back up and smiled brightly.

"That's right," I said. "That's right."

"You drivers, you are not afraid to die," he stated, suddenly solemn.

"Well, I don't kn—"

"When you die, it is beautiful. When everyone else dies, it is shit."

As he cocked his head and frowned I thought I detected a flash of resentment in his face. I nodded dumbly, wondering how much more of this I was due to endure.

He's a real nowhere man.

B.B. rested his arm around my neck and paraded me along the promenade. It was dark now. Across the harbor the palace sat glowing on the rock.

"Maldarelli's death was a great death, a wonderful death," B.B. continued. "Did you see it?"

"I got there late."

"You should have seen it, Malcolm. I was standing right there on the other side of the boat," he said, pointing. "I saw the death and it was..." He shook his head. "Magnificent."

"You saw his car go in the water?"

"It exploded from the street. Spinning! Burning!"

I drank the last drops of my drink as we leaned on the rail. B.B. sighed and gazed up past the tangle of masts.

"I could have been a driver myself, you know."

"Is that so?"

"My father would not allow it," he said, and spat into the sea.

---

On Monday I drove the thousand kilometres to Paris in the pouring rain. My hangover didn't lift until I reached Lyon, but when it did I was plunged into a honeyed realm of ecstasy and nearly cried. Still it rained.

When I pulled up in front of 48 Rue de Grenelle I half expected to find her waiting in her soaking pea coat, blond hair matted to her brow. But she wasn't.

Upstairs I mixed a gin and tonic and leafed through my little black book to the page of her ever-changing numbers. The only one not crossed out was for the Hotel Pierre in New York City.

"I'm sorry, sir. Miss Welles has checked out," said the clerk. "She did leave a message for you in the event that you called."

"And?"

"And it reads as follows: Had to fly back to Los Angeles. Publicity for the record. Will call you in Paris."

"Is that all?"

"Kisses."

"What?"

"Her salutation, sir."

"Kisses?"

"Kisses."

I hung up, walked out on the balcony, and lit a cigarette. I gazed out at the intersection, at Boulevard Raspail divided by its treed median. I thought about Mel. Her night terrors, her love of Calder. Her advocacy on behalf of prisoners of conscience. Her past lives. She believed she'd been an emperor's taster in an ancient Chinese court.

"Which emperor?" I had asked her then, chidingly.

"Xian, the last emperor of the Han dynasty. He didn't see the writing on the wall. Also, his diet was overly rich in salt. I adored him though."

Her certitude startled me.

"Were you his concubine as well?"

"I was a male eunuch, Mal."

I remembered another thing she said that night at the party in St. Moritz.

"There's a new world coming. Don't you know that?"

"What in heaven's name do you mean?"

"It's about to be born. Can you feel it?"

"Where is this new world you speak of?" I asked, a bit pompously I fear, as if to say: This world you see is all there is, my dear.

"Not where, what. And when."

"So what? When?"

"We're evolving. We're casting off the old ideas. Sure, it might be rough at first. A bloody revolution in the streets. But the time has come. Are your chakras in order?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Seven energy centers run along your spine."

I leaned forward on the divan and felt around on my back. She laughed.

"Do you know where you are in time and space?" she queried.

"Right here. Right now," I answered. A bit defensively.

"I'm unconvinced, darling. You seem a little fuzzy."

I rattled my ice in mild irritation and smiled a tense little smile. "But I'm not driving, you see. I'm all sorted when I drive."

"You don't have to go around in circles to find yourself."

It struck me that I did. But I kept the thought to myself.

"You should meditate. You should do yoga."

"Will it help me drive faster?"

"It will help you do anything."

---

I had the impression of awaking psychically, a fraction of a second before the phone sounded. I knew I'd likely been roused by a phantom first ring, unconsciously perceived, but it was tempting to imagine that I hadn't. Anything was possible.

"Mel?"

"Darling, I know it's late for you. I only have a few minutes."

"Where are you? Los Angeles?"

"Los Angeles. Hollywood."

"When on earth can you get away?"

A breeze blew the gauzy curtains from the window. The wall across the way glowed amber in the lamplight.

"I'm not sure, Mal. Life wants me tomorrow."

"What for?"

"Interview. Photo shoot. The song and dance."

"I'm testing in Rouen tomorrow," I said dully.

"Maybe I can get away next week. Will you have time?"

"I shall make the time. We'll go somewhere. Meet somewhere. We'll see each other."

"That sounds nice."

"We'll suss it out, Mel. Good luck w—"

"I have something to tell you, Mal."

A spasm of fear seized my heart. In a flash I understood it all: She no longer wanted me. She had another man.

"Yes?"

"I'm pregnant."

---

I sat at the back of the pits at Les Essarts with my hand in my race suit pocket, rolling the soft ball of hashish between my fingers. Von Schlosser had given it to me before taking his turn at the wheel of our newest Star.

"Have you smoked?" he had asked me in his oddly melodic accent.

"Ever? This? Before?"

He nodded.

"No."

"Empty out your cigarette a little bit. Put the hashish inside. Smoke it."

"Thanks, Jürgen."

I decided to do as he said. I was done driving for the day, after all. There was naught to do but watch the car come in and out of the pits, to stand over the motor with an expression of thoughtful concern, to occasionally bow my head into the cockpit, pretending to understand my German teammate's breathless observations.

I took it out back, in the paddock by the lorries. Discreetly ground out some shag from a Gauloise and packed the cylinder with crumbs of the claylike material. I lit it up. The thick, sweet smoke settled into my lungs like a fog. I erupted into a fit of spasmodic coughs and as soon as it was over a curious warmth spread over my face and neck. My mouth grew dry. In the distance I heard the Apogee engine whining against the gears as Jürgen wound through the Forêt de la Londe.

It was a grey day. The cold air moved around my arms in streams as I walked back to the pits. Tex was seated at a table, ruminating.

"I been thinkin' 'bout puttin' wings on the car," he declared.

"Wings?" I exclaimed. "Good Lord. Are we now permitted to fly?"

"Upside-down wings. Think about it."

"Won't that slow us down?"

"Yes."

My mind was aswim. Tex bit off a new cigar and spat the tip of the butt at the cinderblock wall.

"It'll slow us down in a straight line," he said. "Ya get my drift?"

I felt my heartbeat quicken. "No."

"But speed us up around a corner."

As I pondered the implications of his remark I felt as though a new world were opening its doors.

"How'd it feel out there, Mal?" he asked after some time.

"Smashing. Bit of understeer." Why did I say that? Had I said the proper thing? It seemed like a reasonable thing to say. I was aiming for maximum plausibility.

Tex clamped down on his cigar and scrutinised me warily.

"Why, Schlossie just told me he got oversteer."

"That so?"

"Mal, I need your ass back out there."

"Beg pardon?"

"You an' the Kraut, ya gotta getcher stories straight. Car ain't that temper-mental."

I felt the cold sting of panic overwhelming my soul.

"Putcher helmet on, Limey," Tex said as he navigated his wide girth off the chair and back towards the track.

Before I did as I was told, I poured a glass of water from the little carafe on the shelf. Some of it splashed on my trembling fingers. If I can't fill a glass with water, I thought with dread, how can I drive a car at speed? I gulped it down morosely, the last sip of a condemned man.

I pull out, past the Esso sign hanging at the end of the pits, between the bales of hay that line the straight, and down the hill into the first corner, a gently sweeping righter, feeling alright so far. I contemplate the ditch along the steep bank to my left with a shudder.

And all these patches in the asphalt! Had they been laid in the few hours since I'd last been at the wheel? It alarms me that I am just now giving them a conscious thought. The chassis rattles and skids over them. I can feel every seam.

I can also feel cold sweat through the palm of my glove when I grip the gearshift. It terrifies me to be strapped to this contraption, out here alone among the fields and the trees and the silvery sky, each blade of grass oblivious to me, indifferent as to whether I miraculously navigate the course or fly into the woods. Is it at times like these that a man cries out for his mother? What a stupid thought. In a succession of stupid thoughts: This is the moment; this is it, it, it. This is what a man does. He does what he's afraid of doing. What am I doing? Here comes the hairpin. The Nouveau Monde. Downshift, downshift, downshift, and around, grind a little shifting up, get on the throttle, a bit too soon: the tail goes wavy, then I'm back in shape. I love to climb, to feel the power at my back as it wrenches the car from gravity. What was Melanie telling me? Something new is coming. But it's not lurking in these woods, unchanged for a hundred thousand years but for this sinuous band of asphalt and its rude freight. Or is it?

I'm driving now, really driving. Scared out of my wits but driving. To press the accelerator requires a tremendous exercise of will but I'm damned well doing it. This is what a man does. If I can get around this track a few good times I can step back into the pits, tell Tex what he wants to hear, find a dark corner somewhere to hang my head and cry. And be alive.

Finally they call me in.

As I decelerated and pulled into the box I began to quake with relief. They all looked at me with bewildered expressions. Was the motor on fire? The chief mechanic, Derek Owens, leaned in to me.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing," I replied, taken aback. "Nothing I can tell. Why?"

"Nothing?"

I shook my head as he turned to survey the engine and exhaust.

"Are you alright?" he asked with an air of grim concern.

I felt a jolt of shame, suddenly seeing myself as he must see me: freakish, fumbling, incompetent. I decided to let my pride go. To tell the truth. A little.

"I've felt better, if I'm honest. I'm not in tip-top form."

Derek nodded slowly.

"Why do you ask?"

He showed me his stopwatch.

"You're thirty-five seconds off your pace from this morning," he declared.

After Jürgen retook the wheel I lay on a bench and slept fitfully as the sober world, full of purpose and authority, circulated about me and cast its shadow on my incoherent dreams. When I awoke the car was already loaded in the lorry.

I changed back into my civvies and was about to bid farewell to the crew when Anja, our communications director, came rushing in from the track office bearing a Telex.

"Urgent for you, Mal."

It read as follows:

AM IN PARIS ON STOPOVER TO BERLIN. MEET ME AT THE SPOT. FLIGHT LEAVES ORLY AT 915 PM. WILL WAIT TIL 730. HURRY! DRIVE SAFE!

KISSES

MEL

It was nearly six-thirty now. I could make it to Paris in less than an hour, flying on the A13. But there would be traffic coming into the city.

I took a moment to will away the hazy torpor in my brain. Then I shouted my goodbyes, strode out to the parking lot, and got behind the wheel of my blood-red Cavallo Nero spider.

The trip to Paris was quick and uneventful. I roared down the left lane of the motorway with my headlights on and the speedometer hovering at well over 200 kilometres per hour. I reached the Porte Dauphine at a little past seven and that's when the trouble started: There was a long line inching up the exit ramp. The Avenue Foch was a little better but the Étoile was an inferno: crisscrossing rings of chaotic, clamorous traffic, scooters darting in and out, taxi drivers shouting at lorries, every horn ablare. I dared not glance at my watch as I sped down the Avenue des Champs Élysées, weaving between the other cars and burning lights. I tried to heighten my peripheral awareness, to become unconsciously aware of any looming hazard, any old lady crossing the street with her dog.

I zigzagged past the Place de la Concorde, nearly striking a cyclist, and raced along the Tuileries. When I saw that haunted-looking building to my left that signaled the beginning of the Louvre, I thought I'd make it. Honestly I did. A city bus emerged lazily from the Place du Carousel and I darted in behind it, into the square—regal, open like the sky—then under the opposite arch, up past the Opéra and finally off the boulevards and avenues and into the belly of Paris, real Paris, where the statues give way to the masses and the streets run red with wine.

It was mad: to get around a rubbish lorry I had to drive halfway on the sidewalk, past an elegantly dressed woman with her back against the wall. The workers derided me: "Sale con, eh!" "Enculé, va!" I nearly killed a man in a white suit walking across a little square who stared impassively as I swerved around him, tyres squealing.

Melanie was up there waiting for me, I thought. It gave me tremendous satisfaction to conquer each obstacle, great and small, that stood between us. My heart was aflutter now, not for the treachery of my journey but for the glory that surely awaited me at its end. What could be more romantic than to defy eternity to meet one's beloved for a quarter of an hour?

My ultimate travail arrived on the ancient cobblestones of Montmartre as the evening sun shone goldenly on the white façades. A gaggle of tourists, possibly Japanese. I waited, fuming, revving the engine in brusque bursts to vent my agony. Finally they'd all crossed the street. I drove around the basilica and screeched to a diagonal halt atop the hillock overlooking the crepuscular city. I knew she would emerge like Venus, in a diaphanous robe, radiant, her arms outstretched. Now. Now! Now?

My watch read seven thirty-two. The sun was setting and she wasn't there.

---

I'm following Sutcliffe during Friday morning practice, a mist hanging in the Ardennes. It could rain any minute, or it could not, as is always the case at Spa. I measure my progress in telephone poles, in people crowded on the hills, in the groves, the grandstands, in houses and in fields dotted with their cones of hay. My task—my obligation—is to make them disappear, again and again and again.

This track is skittish, temperamental. Deeply unnerving to drive. You're a pest on the body of a beast, vexing its rest; at any moment it might shudder and shake you off.

The rain starts falling in earnest now. Great plumes of spray rise from each of Rodney's rear wheels. He was never too fond of the wet. He enters the corners timidly, erratically, not quite sure when to brake. He overcompensates on the way out, accelerating too soon, letting the rear twitch and go squirrely. He's driving scared and angry, a toxic combination. I know how he feels.

Something terrible happens at the Masta Kink. Rodney's carrying far too much speed into the chicane; he navigates the left sweeper wide but can't turn back into the right. He loses it just before the house on the corner, hits the little concrete lip at the edge of the asphalt and flies off in a shower of mud, grass and debris.

I pulled over on the Holowell straight, got out of the cockpit and ran back to the scene of the shunt. I recognised from a hundred feet away the characteristic aura of the motorsport catastrophe. In the immediate aftermath the atmosphere grows eerie and unstable, as though breached by a precipitate void to which serene, surrounding nature must suddenly conform.

Where was his car?

This phenomenon, this nauseating mood—it occurs no matter what, I realised. Whether the driver's dead or halfway 'round the track on his merry way back to the pits. Is it in my head?

I followed the tracks in the grass past a row of bushes, down a little gulley and back up towards a farmhouse lined with pines. A haze of smoke, faintly discernible in the rain, emanated from a maw in its stone façade. Oil smoke—at least for now.

I scrambled up to the house, climbed through the shattered wall and entered a peaceful living space, a peasant's home adorned with tasteful, bourgeois furnishings and details: a side table with a lace cloth and a vase, a scroll-armed burgundy settee, sepia-toned ancestral portraits on the walls, a crucifix, a cuckoo clock. An antique globe had been devastated, with planet earth torn from its axis to roam around the hardwood floor like a marble. A wrought-iron chandelier swayed creakily overhead.

The gleaming green chassis of the Hewitt-Apogee lay sideways between the salon and kitchen, twisted and bent, hissing malevolently in a deepening pool of its precious fluids. I was struck by the absurdity of its black, diagonal number, on a circle on the bonnet. A scene of such violent incongruity, one world intruding upon another, and here was the only symbol I could see, the only code: 12. I thought again about what Melanie had said. I was frightened. Three wheels were missing but the fourth still spun.

Where was Rodney?

I examined the floor around the car. Nothing. He must have been ejected—mercifully—onto the soft, wet grass outside. I was about to climb back out the wall to look for him when I heard murmurs from down the corridor. I followed them to a partly open door. Pushing on it, I found Sutcliffe lying on a bed, bleeding from the forehead. He was soaked in petrol—its venomous stench filled the room. Two nuns ministered to him on either side, gently fiddling open his fire-retardant suit, dabbing his wounds with a towel.

"Rodney!" I exclaimed. "You're looking a bit second-hand."

"Malcolm, my friend," he answered airily. "My old, dear friend."

"Who are the nuns?" I asked.

"Aren't they lovely?"

The one to my right, the older one, turned to me with a stiff little smile and a bow.

"Monsieur," she said. "Nous étions de passage." We were passing through. Rodney gazed up at the other like a hungry babe.

"Ou sont les... habitants?" I asked in my heavily accented French.

She shrugged. "Ben, ils sont à la course, monsieur. Au Grand Prix. La d'ou vous venez, donc." They're at the race. Of course.

"C'est pas la course aujourd'hui, ma Mère," the younger nun corrected, her eyes fixed on her patient. "C'est les essais." It's not the race today. It's practice.

The other gave the faintest little shrug: Race, practice. What do I care what these men do? What do I know of these things?

It occurred to me that we must leave with the utmost urgency.

"Faut partir! Faut partir tout de suite!" I yelled.

The younger nun and I each took one of Rodney's arms over our shoulders and the three of us staggered back out the bedroom, Mother Superior in tow. Down the corridor we went, past the wreckage, out the kitchen and down a little path to the dirt lane that led back to the track. There we found a gendarme who advised us that an ambulance was just now on its way. We waited there, Rodney splayed out on the grass, the nun pressing the bloodied towel against his brow as the Mother knelt piously nearby. Arms crossed, the cop beheld our little scene impassively. Then we heard a hollow boom.We looked up to see a fireball engulf the farmhouse, black smoke and sparks beating up against the rain. From far away we heard a siren's dreary melody grow louder.

---

On the morning of qualifying day I sat on the end of the hotel bed, joylessly chewing my toast and jam. Still the telephone was silent. I waited as long as I could before I had to dress and drive to the track.

She rang just as I tied my shoes.

"Mal darling, I only have a minute."

"Where are you? Berlin?"

"Yes. No—"

"No? Yes?"

"I'm in Berlin right now. On my way out the door to London."

"What for? A photo shoot? A premiere?"

"I'm going to see His Holiness."

"The Pope's in London?'

Melanie laughed. "Not the Pope, my poor, dear Malcolm. The Maharishi."

"Who on earth?"

"Maharishi Mahesh Yogi."

"I'm hearing gibberish right now, my love. Baby talk."

"He brings a message of unfathomable bliss to every man, woman and child on earth."

"Well then by all means."

"You should come see him with me, Mal. You of all people. His Holiness can open up your mind and see inside."

"Sounds rather dreadful, Mel."

"Are you ready to sacrifice what you are for what you may become?"

"Beg pardon?"

"That is the question."

"I saved Rodney Sutcliffe's life yesterday."

"Oh my God, Malcolm. Sweetie."

"He flew off the track and landed in a kitchen. I found him in bed with two nuns."

"Were they about to kill him?"

"He was soaking wet with petrol."

"Then what happened?"

"We lay him on the grass in the rain. The ambulance came."

"You need a new mantra. Guru can give you a mantra."

"You don't like my mantra? What's wrong with my mantra?"

"There is no right or wrong, my dear. You need new."

"I thought you were coming here, Mel."

"I am."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

"In time to kiss me good luck?"

"In time to kiss you congratulations."

"I shall drive all the faster knowing such a moment is to come."

"I love you, Malcolm."

"I love you too."

I hung up and sprang to my feet, my once-heavy heart now buoyant. I sang to my reflection as I knotted my tie:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

---

Rodney was patched up today, hobbling 'round the paddock on crutches, bandage on his head. It was of no concern to him to be so handicapped; like any of us, he'll race as long as he can still sit down. Keep his head up. He lurched over to my stall to say hello.

"Malcolm, dear chap," he saluted cheerily. "How will I ever thank you?"

"You'll return the favor someday."

He laughed. "Can I trouble you for a sip of water, Mal?"

I handed him my carafe and he pulled a pillbox from his pocket, placed a little white pill on his tongue. He took a swig and swallowed hard.

"Bob's your uncle," I said. "What are they?"

"Approximatol? Fixatol? Something-atol."

"Better than nothing at all."

He told me Roger, his team boss at Hewitt-Apogee, dispensed them with a gentle warning.

"And what was that?"

"He said, 'You'll feel like you had a whiskey, so—'"

"So don't drive too fast?"

"No, no. Don't drive too slow."

We laughed a tense laugh.

"Cheers then, Mal," Rodney said, taking another sip of water. He handed it back to me and shuffled away on his crutches.

It happened towards the end of the session. I was in the pits getting fresh tyres, aiming to improve my time as I battled Checho and Zé for pole. Jean-Michel Vaton, Rodney's H-A teammate, came by on a flyer, screaming across the starting line and down to the valley below. There was a slow car just ahead. I wondered absently whether Vaton would try to pass it before Eau Rouge, the tricky little twist where you feel your stomach sink into your arse. I wondered what I would do. Probably pass it.

Vaton got on the outside but ran out of space and time. He stepped hard on the brakes and tried to slip back behind the other car. Instead, his left front struck its right rear. Vaton's car flew up, perhaps twenty feet, appearing at its peak to hang in the air a moment.

Would that it could have remained there, forever coddling its occupant. Or continued to ascend, never to touch the earth again.

Instead it flipped backwards and landed upside down, hard, where the track met the grass. Its left tyres and suspension absorbed the impact and projected the chassis back up again to spin the other way, a full rotation, rightside up and upside down again, landing in the grass on the opposite tyres. The car bounded up one final time, flipped upright, and came to rest facing traffic in the middle of the track, just past the right-hand bend, at the bottom of the Raidillon. There was Jean-Michel Vaton, head slumped backwards, his left arm hanging from the cockpit so his knuckles grazed the ground. The fingers of his right hand, still guided by some primal spirit, remained hooked to a spoke of his wheel. And then the car exploded into flames.

I felt an overwhelming, familiar physical sensation take hold of me, from my shoulders to my chest and up through my throat and mouth. In my entire head. My brain. What was happening to me?

I was laughing. I had erupted into a spasm of barking, helpless laughter. Hopeless laughter. Even as I was struck with shame my mirth continued, cruelly afflicting me with tears of glee.

I took off my helmet and gloves and slapped myself across the face as hard as I could, punishing myself for my disgraceful reaction. This stilled my merriment for a few seconds. I took a deep breath and gripped the wheel, staring at my tachometer, my oil pressure gauge, all the needles reading nil. I thought my mantra one time through and looked up again. Down at Eau Rouge, marshals waved yellow flags as cars paraded past the conflagration. I noticed that Vaton's cockpit was now empty. Across the track, a group of officials, gendarmes and other drivers knelt in a circle on a hay-strewn patch of grass. I couldn't see Vaton. But I knew he was there.

I thought about his accident and laughed again, and cursed, and stilled my tongue between my teeth. Then I slugged myself as hard as I could in the jaw. And then I laughed again.

There was an exodus from the pits now, everybody drawn, the way they always are, to the catastrophic disturbance in the distance.

Tex walked out behind me and joined the gathering throng. I tried hard to force my face into an appropriately somber expression and hoped he wouldn't turn in my direction. Still the muscles in my cheeks resisted, straining upwards against my will. I covered my mouth with my hand, as though aghast, and laughed maniacally.

I heard Tex tell someone from Cavallo Nero, "It's Vaton!"

I was struck by his use of the present tense. It isn't Vaton; Vaton is dead. But here was Tex saying, "It's Vaton!" as though the Frenchman had just appeared over the horizon, walking down the middle of the track and back to us.

It's Vaton!

Hey everybody! Come and see. It's Vaton!

I imagined a scene of joy and relief, of uncomplicated love. The ending to a children's story. The people swarming their hero. Hoisting him on their shoulders. For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow. I imagined he was coming home.

I got out of the car and watched as everyone gathered at the bottom of the hill, all pretending there was something more to do than look. As though they might summon Jean-Michel back to his feet by the force of their collective will.

I found I was trembling, traumatised. Still I could not stop breaking into airy titters when I thought about the shunt. There was something emphatically comical about it. The sequence of events had the character and rhythm of a marvelous joke; each spasm was a word and each concussion, punctuation. The explosion was the punchline, exclamation-marked, delivered with exquisite timing.

Ha!

---

A few of us gathered at the hotel bar that evening for an impromptu wake. Mercifully, my hysteria had long ago abated. When I thought of the accident now I felt a chill of dread and shame.

"I saw it happen," I volunteered to the others as I sipped my whiskey sour.

"You were behind him?" asked Danny.

"I was in the pits."

"He hit someone," Santiago noted. "Who did he hit?"

There was a pause before the Scot Rory MacDougal, Danny's teammate, shifted on his feet and cleared his throat.

"Me. He hit me."

There followed a silence as we all looked down, some nodding solemnly, in acknowledgment of the awful revelation that MacDougal had just made. We knew that he was not at fault; we knew Jean-Michel—impatient, impetuous—had brought about his own spectacular, perhaps inevitable end. I'd seen it happen.

Still, none of us wanted to set eyes on Rory now. It was as though he stood naked and trembling, defrocked by some brutish authority. He was cursed, untouchable. Of course, this made him a victim too. The shadow victim. What incomparably cruel luck it is to be the unwitting agent of another's death! To be an oblivious obstacle, rolling merrily along until he causes the furious driver behind him to vault into oblivion. Then what does he do? He pulls over, runs to the inferno, tries vainly to pull the victim out himself. The very flames guard the prone driver mockingly, as if to say: He's ours now, you fool. You're not worthy to save him.

There existed a strong—though unspoken—sentiment within our circle, and among aficionados, that death was a greater glory yet than victory. And as a corollary, there was no graver disgrace than to survive.

What's more, Jean-Michel Vaton was adored. He was strong, young, beautiful. Effortlessly charming. Had his pick of women. Never let on that he cared. A brilliant driver, fast as they come, a risk-taker in the grand tradition. Everyone knew he was going to be champion someday, and champion again for many years. People the world over bit their lips, impatient for his glorious reign to begin. And yet he was modest, even self-deprecating. I remembered seeing him in the pits at Monaco, wearing a ludicrous sombrero against the beating sun. He clowned in it, making faces. He was ridiculous and wonderful at once. Only he could get away with that, I remembered thinking to myself with envy. I, too, wanted to wear a very large Mexican hat and make everyone around me laugh. Who wouldn't? But what puzzled and disapproving smirks I'd receive if I did. Vaton was an utterly natural human being, absolutely unselfconscious, unfreighted. The sort of creature you're lucky to meet once, maybe twice in a lifetime. He was loved, loved, loved, loved, loved. And now he was dead.

I really began to feel bad for Rory.

"Something, I—" I began, hoping to change the subject. "Something funny. I had a funny reaction to the crash."

They all peered at me quizzically. It occurred to me I'd already made a hash of what I was about to say. Something funny? But there was no turning back now.

"A funny reaction, Mal?" Santiago Bragato asked me, squinting.

I sighed. And then I resumed. "I—my first reaction—I mean, I—well, this is strange. Truly hard to explain, b—"

"Spit it out, Limey!" urged Danny.

"I laughed."

"You what?" Danny asked, incredulous.

"I laughed. I'm sorry. I apologise. I laughed." I shook my head and peered into my drink, hoping this might underscore my remorse.

"You laughed?" said Checho, his temper rising. "You laughed?! I, for one, cannot understand what is so funny about the death of our friend, Jean-Michel Vaton!"

With that, he emphatically drained his Champagne, placed the empty flute on the bar, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. That was funny too. But no one smiled.

"No, Checho. I don't think it's funny, it's just that—"

"You laughed!" Danny accused.

"I laughed."

I let my admission hang in the air for a few moments. Then I tried again to make my case.

"I'm just as sick ab—"

"Why?"

"I laughed because there was something funny about it, Danny. Something about how the car hopped at the very end and..." I shook my head again. "It's horrible."

"Death is serious, Mal."

"I know, Danny. I know it is."

They all looked at me as though I'd grown a third eye. I redoubled my efforts to be understood.

"Gentlemen. I strive only to be candid with you. At a time like this. Think of Jean-Michel. Wouldn't he want us to be candid? I should think he'd be laughing too, actually," I ventured.

"Laughing at his own death?!" barked Danny.

I briefly closed my eyes. "Yes. Laughing at death. Isn't that what he was doing anyway?" I gulped from my glass. What on earth was I saying? What a stupid, stupid thing to say. Then I persisted, stubbornly: "Isn't that what we all do? Anyway?" I thought to myself: Stop talking. Stop. "Don't be such hypocritical cunts. The lot of you. If you didn't think death was funny, you'd never get into a race car."

A sheen of sweat had formed on my brow. I keenly wished to flee. If only I could somehow take it all back. Too late, too late, too late, too late.

Bragato dismissed me with a great wave of his hand. Slowly, the others withdrew, some giving me a wry, pitying glance as they turned their heads.

I went to the loo and splashed water onto my face. Had a good look at myself in the mirror. Who was this pathetic creature? This monster? He's a real nowhere man, I murmured to myself.

Just then the door banged open. I heard the creaks and scrapes of some stiff, unhuman figure proceeding solemnly, deliberately across the threshold. It was Rodney Sutcliffe on his crutches. I was afraid of what he might say. I was about to offer a preemptive apology when he spoke first.

"You know what, Mal?" he asked, gazing at his injured head in the mirror beside me.

"Yes?" I replied apprehensively.

"I was in the pits too. I saw it."

"Did you?"

He nodded. "And you know what?"

"Yes?"

He shook his head and looked into the sink. "I laughed too."

"You did?"

He nodded and sighed. "I did. Why, Mal? Why?"

"You laughed because it was funny," I replied grimly, feeling better now. Not so all alone.

"What was funny about it, Mal? A man dies before our very eyes."

"A good man."

"A great man."

We stood a while longer, staring at our reflections. Finally Rodney emitted a guffaw.

"God have mercy on us, Malcolm."

"It was funny, Rodney. Because we laughed."

"Something about the way th—"

"I know. The car landed on the track and—"

"And flipped right up again. You didn't expect it to—"

"But it did," I said. "That really wasn't called for, was it?"

"Bit much!"

"Sorry, mate, look—you're not dead enough already."

"Die some more!" said Rodney, his body quaking with laughter.

"And just for good measure—"

"Poof!"

"Bang!"

"Boom!" Rodney spread his hands to mime a big explosion.

We laughed at the mirror for a final few seconds. Then Rodney excused himself.

"Good luck tomorrow, Mal."

"You too."

I vomited copiously into the loo, rinsed out my mouth, and went upstairs for a scant few hours of dreamless, fitful sleep.

---

I paced the strip of grass at the top of the hill beside the starting grid on the pale white afternoon of the race, the cars arrayed in threes and twos this time; there was mine in the middle of row one, between Checho's Hewitt-Clark on pole and Zé's Cavallo on the outside. Santiago Bragato sat nearby on the Armco. He gazed blankly at the pits across the track, muttering the Rosary, one hand in his pocket and the other on his knee. I knew he was done when he crossed himself.

"You are not very religious, Malcolm," he accused in his aristocratic accent, pulling taut his gloves. "You do not believe."

"I'm not superstitious. If that's what you mean."

Santiago raised an eyebrow before putting on his helmet.

"Is that what I am, Malcolm?" He chuckled. "Superstitious?"

I shrugged.

"What are you supposed to be, Malcolm? For church?"

"C. of E. That's what I was. And am supposed to be. I suppose."

"You think you fly above it all, don't you?" he said, shaking his head in disgust.

"Surely not above it all," I protested, goodnaturedly I hoped. I felt a hollowness in my chest.

He wagged a scolding finger at me. "It is better to believe a beautiful lie than to accept an ugly truth," he stated.

He seemed angry. About last night, still? Did he find me, in my apostasy, somehow responsible for Jean-Michel's death? For Lorenzo's? I felt a gnawing dread. A loneliness. A sensation—a condition—that, I now realised, had haunted me for weeks. I tried to lighten the mood.

"Argentine proverb, Santi?"

"I invent it right now. For you," he replied.

He fastened his chinstrap and got up. I worried he'd take his leave without a word. Without a gesture, nor a glance.

But as he walked past he patted me twice, quickly, on the back.

---

The Belgian tricolor falls. I get a jump on Checho. All I see is the bottom of the straight, Eau Rouge, the little twist lined with barriers, roiling crowds amassed against them; on the hill beyond it, a sign like a giant, squinting eye beholds the scene: Gulf.

I know Checho's there but I choose not to believe it. I sense there's nothing to my right. Zé has slotted in behind me, not taking any risks. Third gear now, the flags atop the pits now gone, and now's the dip, the nadir; I decide to get there first, to make it mine. I edge slightly to the left, almost ashamed of my audacity. And at once I perceive an awful presence: a wheel, racing madly; its trembling suspension; a green fuselage; a man inside—the entire entity consisting of an angry and indignant rebuke: Get back!

I cede the way to Checho at the corner and climb back up the hill behind him, both of us fishtailing as we hit the throttle.

I'm not losing ground. In fact I'm close enough to pressure Checho at the slower corners; not to pass—yet—but to harass, to worry him a bit.

It's a pleasure to be in this position. When cars are racing close the trailing driver has a certain power—an authority, even—over the leader, by virtue of what he might accomplish should his rival make the slightest error. The leader's naked, exposed, vulnerable. Blind. His pursuer is relaxed, happy. Hungry. What bliss it is to see up close the dark maw of the engine and the pair of pipes that frame the herky-jerky helmet of the laboring pilot. All of it inflames desire.

After a few laps I'm in his draft on the straights and I know it won't be long. I nose to either side of him going into corners, sniffing opportunity. He closes the door adroitly. Here the balance of power becomes more complex. If a quicker driver can't pass, he's a fool. I try not to become impatient, unnerved.

Then I come out of Blanchimont, a fast leftward bend, with exceptional pace. I must take advantage of it. I draw up on Checho to the left, up to his rear wheels, letting him believe I have the hubris to pass on the outside of the La Source hairpin. I wait for him to defend. I wait, and wait. And wait. Finally he drifts over a little and I duck back to the other side. As we approach the corner I have to believe the line belongs to me. I have to believe he won't turn in. I know I'll have to brake late, late, late. Keep it in shape. Most of all I must fill the track with my imagination. It's mine.

I'm a little more than halfway past the Hewitt-Clark when I get on the brakes. I feel the front end go loose right away—I'm skidding, swerving in this space I've arrogantly claimed. The wall of adverts at the end of the straight is fast approaching: Esso, Esso, Esso, Esso. Photographers. Gendarmes, staring dully at us as they do. I pump the pedal to avoid losing control completely. Little gasps of traction let me keep the line. I know I've got Checho beat as long as I can make this corner. I commit to it, a little bit too fast—too late to brake again; I'd skid into the hay. The back end loses traction now and I drift around the hairpin, giving quick bursts of throttle so I don't spin around. I don't care where Checho is; I can't care. On the other side now, I've got the front wheels in the right direction. I get back on the throttle all the way and the car shakes into shape. I fly down past the pits again, elated. P1.

About twenty laps into the race the fine mist that has lingered over the track all day grows heavy. It soon begins to rain at one extremity, the elevated, wooded section around Burnenville and Malmédy, whilst elsewhere it's dry. This phenonemon, unique to Spa, intensifies the impression one has of occupying the whimsical space of a dream.

You can't quite see where it's wet; you feel it under the car. You have to hold on tight, ride across until you hit a patch of dry on the other side. And then you're on the throttle, at the limit, angrily making up for lost time.

I come out of the sweeping right hander at Stavelot and perceive a spectral figure in my path, black robe-clad, gesticulating madly. Have we aroused some mythical being from his slumber? He bears a sign. He's not getting out of my way. I swerve a bit and he leans over; in a flash I see his contorted face leering at me as I pass. I check the rearview and see him shaking his fist at Checho.

On the following lap, though I'm petrified I'll see him again, I try hard not to lift. I come around the corner. There he is. Waving his sign. He encroaches upon my line just enough that I have to swerve again. My mouth is dry, my heart throbbing. What is that he's wearing? I know what it is. It's what a priest wears. It's a cassock. He's a priest. And his sign? I can read the first word only:

Repent!

Lap after lap I brace myself for this close encounter, always missing the madman by a foot or two as he glares down at me, mouth agape. Each time I manage to read another word:

Rejoice!

The

second

coming

is

near!

And the lap after I've read the last word, he is gone.

It's raining harder now. I chase the foggy haze around each corner, down each straight. It appears as though I soon will catch it.

Oh dear. That's what my mother used to say: Oh dear. Sounds silly but she used it in circumstances both trifling and solemn. She'd say it as she inspected a stain on a shirt. She said it when my father fell sick the second time. Oh dear.

I've committed a sin.

I lose the rear turning into Les Combes. There's no correcting it. And in the cold moments before I hit the barrier two forces act upon me in equal measure yet opposite directions: Scorn—expressed by some faceless entity—encroaching from without. Shame rising from within. As though to crash at the border of my body.

When you lose control of a car at speed you also feel relief. You've been fighting it lap after lap, corner after corner; forcing it, willing it to the line. Finally it's forcing you. There's nothing you can do. Skid, slide, spin. You're a passenger now, right? You may—you must—let go. For God's sake, it's over. You're tempted to believe this was the objective all along. Was it?

Such a cold word, momentum. Ruthless. A word that peers down from above. From out of time.

The impact—rude, shockingly violent—convulses my spine. I perceive it as a reprimand. My proudest claims—to control, to speed—are vaporized with scornful fury.

I'm skidding backwards along the Armco now. Seems like I'll never stop. A plume of sparks blows over my left shoulder, embers in the rain; cars emerge from the fog on the corner, here comes one, and then another. A tall pine stands watch above it all. I see the little white pylons on the opposite edge of the track go by. One. Two. Three. In the rough, pale grass beyond them stands a man. He wears dark grey trousers, a white shirt and a red cardigan jumper; he stares at me, mouth agape. A camera dangles from his neck, bobbing on his belly. Beside him sits a woman—his wife? She's voluptuous, rosy-cheeked. Her skirt floats around her on the grass; her feet are bare. She rests a brelly on her shoulder. Bit carelessly. Don't mind if the rain gets in her face. She—unlike her man—watches me impassively, almost sleepily, as though it were the most banal thing in the world for a race car to go by on the barrier, in reverse. She squints. I think I see her big toe twitch.

Mr. Wesley with his little round glasses would race up to your desk. Command you to place your hand upon it, flat. Fingers spread.

Glory, glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler

I see the hay up on the hill, the misshapen little pyramids, and I look down and there's hay strewn on my lap, like some miracle. Or a joke. Hay strewn on my lap.

Scorn pressing down. Shame rising from within.

Momentum haunts each willful action. It's the cruel truth belying our fantasies of control.

The sparks are pretty. I watch them fly by and think: how pretty. Each one alight for the merest fraction of a second. I watch a thousand live and die.

Oh dear. I've done it now, I've really done it.

The man up on the hill, mouth open. His camera swinging stupidly. His woman doesn't care.

I'm still moving—I think I'm moving. Where am I supposed to go? There's smoke now, too, I think, around my head.

Oily tufts of hay cling to my arms, hands, legs, manifesting my trespass. I look stupid, laughable. A loutish and petty miscreant, tarred and feathered. Fit to be derided by the good people of the town. It's the insult I deserve.

I've always yearned for power and control. Only to lose it in the end. It's inevitable that you should lose it. The thought occurs to me: It's what I've wanted all along.

Is that what I think?

Sparks, sparks, sparks. Pretty, pretty sparks. The slack-jawed man on the hill. His smirking wife. I don't know what it means but I know what it means.

Sod it all.

Dad had an Austin Devon and I had it in Dinky Toys. Same color, black. I spent hours with it at night, tracing imaginary roads in the paisley patterns of my duvet. Sometimes by the light the moon, sometimes blind, seeing the corners in my mind, clipping all the apexes, drifting into shape and getting on the throttle. Careful not to fall off the edge of my world.

The man stares with some alarm. Why won't he take a picture? Surely I make a pretty picture.

Smoke. Tex likes to say, Where there's smoke, there's fire. Never to do with smoke or fire. He says it when something's gone wrong in the car but no one knows why. Takes the cigar out his mouth, squints at the engine or suspension: "Where there's fuckin' smoke, there's motherfuckin' fire."

I can't see any fire. I see a figure through the hazy veil, jumping like a marionette. It's a driver. With a navy-blue helmet on. It's Rodney.

"Wake up son!"

"Wot? Wot's that?"

"Hay's burnin', innit son?"

I look outside. The barn aglow below the moon, flames coming out the windows and the roof, sparks rising into night.

"Help us put it out then. Come's on. You're a big boy, aintcha?"

He puts me in the chain by Mr. Burrows, who passes me a pail. Water splashes on my feet. The pail's so heavy, its wire digs into my soft and sweaty palm. Everyone is shouting. Everyone so grave. Another pail comes. I pass it to Mr. Greene, the sweet shop man. Governor of the realm of my childish desires. Victim of my criminal compulsions. He's awaiting it, arms extended, hands open. His face is stern but he's not cross with me today. He's expecting me to pass the pail. I mirror his expression. I hand it over, arms trembling from the burden. I've never carried anything heavy before. He does not thank me but I've never been so gratified.

Rodney looks like a damn fool out there. Dancing around on his bad leg. He waves to me. OK, Rodney. I see you. He's using both hands, waving urgently, as though from across some type of divide. I see you waving, Rodney. I see you, I see you. Don't worry. I wave back slowly. It surprises me how long it takes and how hard it is to lift my arm.

I open the door. There stands Mr. Burrows, blocking out the sun.

"'ello Malcolm. Peaches for yer mum."

He presses on into the house while I inspect his fruit. There's a bad one towards the bottom. Its overripe flesh is split. A fur of dark mold has grown around the wound. I take it outside and throw it over the wall, over the trees, watching it arc across the milky sky, imagining it will land on the windscreen of a car traveling the Great South West Road. Perhaps the driver, momentarily startled, will jerk the wheel, lose control, and skid off in the grass. Tumble, tumble, tumble and explode.

I yearn for power over the world. I want to make things happen. To be the cause in a chain of events. It excites me that I might, remotely, blindly, reach into the world of rules and rigor—of Mummy and Daddy and God—to wreak havoc upon it.

I return to the kitchen to fetch more peaches, and I heave them over the wall in turn. Unsatisfied, I return for more, and more again. Finally, three peaches remain.

What a fool I am. What a fool. What am I going to tell her when she sees her peaches gone? I mutter a prayer, more sincere than any I'd made on Sundays. Don't let Mum find out.

I creep around guiltily that evening, bracing myself for the wrath to come. Yet she does not mention it, even as she urges me to eat my veg. To help my sister Julie with the washing up. Has God rewarded me for sin?

The three peaches sit at the bottom of the basket, haunting me for days. Then one morning the basket is gone. My culpability erased by some unduly compassionate hand.

"I know watcha did wit' 'em peaches Mr. Burrows gave t'Mum," Julie declares as we brush our teeth for bed.

"Wot?"

"I saw ya throwin' 'em over the wall," she says in that hideously taunting tone.

I feel a spasm of dread. Would she tell Mum after all?

Feeling tears about to flow, I spit into the sink and say into the mirror with a quaking voice: "I prayed t'God an' 'ee don' want Mum t'know!"

Julie laughs. "God ain't got nothin' t'do wid it, Malcolm!""Yes 'ee do!"

"'ee don' give a toss. Mum jus' don' wanna let on 'bout Mr. Burrows is all."

I have no idea what she means.

"Wot about 'im?"

"'ee's shaggin' 'er ain't 'ee?

"He's wot?"

"Ye always s'daft, Malcolm," she replies, and screws the cap back on the tube. As though life may well continue.

I do not know what that means but I know what it means. It means there's something bigger than God.

I begin to get a sense that the world is not what it seems. Little hints crop up, like glimpses of a ghost that's ever vanishing from view. Things that appear to be one thing appear to also be another. I wonder whether the entire world is an edifice for my amusement—or some yet darker purpose. Just what exactly is happening beyond the confines of my vision? Imps are madly constructing and deconstructing the world, that's what; rearranging objects, buildings, signs and cars. If I turn my head fast enough, might I see them? How might I ever see them?

One morning I am struck by an interaction between my mother and my father.

"G'mornin' dear," says Mum, seated at the table, head turned up and tilted back. Eyes closed.

"Mornin' luv," he says, leaning over her with a smile, delivering a peck on her cheek. "'Ow are ya?"

"Good."

"Good."

"'n you?" she asks.

"Good," he says. "Good."

Then he turns away to toast his bread. She takes a sip of tea. I hear the clank of her cup as she returns it to its saucer. Then silence.

That was around the time I realised: Trees don't shake all by themselves. There's something unseen shaking them.

I became obsessed with paths, with roads. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me than a landscape scored by a ribbon of asphalt. It was for cars, I'd think, and my heart would lighten, quicken. Cars go on the road. There's a path you can take. You can drive a car on it: turn left, turn right. Straight ahead.

I was never happier than when I sat in the middle of the back seat, Dad at the wheel, and looked through the windscreen at an expanse of grey for the wheels to devour.

"Faster, Dad, faster!" I'd shout. "Can we pass that car?"

Sometimes he'd humour me. Other times he wouldn't.

I stole the Austin one day and drove it to the graveyard, Julie in the seat beside me. I could hardly see over the dashboard. It's a wonder we made it back alive.

Or was it just a dream?

As I'm sitting here in limbo it occurs to me suddenly how good and warm and pleasant it all is, everything: the white sky and the trees, the car, the smoke, the oil and the hay. My friend across the barrier, gesticulating wildly. The man and the woman on the hill, I love you all, I do.

Checho, Rory, Danny, Zé, Jürgen, Santiago. Tex. The lot of you. I love you too.

I feel an acute pang of sadness for Vaton, commensurate to my glee at watching his machine somersault on the track and grass, his ragdoll body trapped inside. Right now I am connected to him. I am indistinguishable from him or any other.

What's my manna, Mel? What's my... it's a thing you're meant to say again and again and again. She told me so. Helps me with my nerves.

I know she's waiting for me. At the finish. And then our child will be born. These two things are the only things left to know about the world.

Up on the hill the woman with the umbrella turns her head away. I close my eyes.

There's a new world awaiting, just around the bend.

I mean: mantra. I'm a real nowhere man. Somewhere, someone something said for nobody.

I see a new world coming. Not just for me. For everyone.

I forgive myself. I am forgiven. The tension on the surface of my body breaks and I dissolve. I feel my limbs spreading, extending, breaking into unruly, floating particles. The molecules of my body intermingle with those of the car, the track, the grass.

I feel light, so light; I can't stay tied to Earth much longer. And so I drift up, out the cockpit. There it is, my car, white with its navy stripe. My number seven on the nose. So pretty, engulfed in flames. There's the fire! There it is! And yet the black smoke rising does not hurt my eyes.

There's dear old Rodney darting about, clutching his helmet, staring helplessly at the conflagration. Poor sod.

I rise higher still, above the pine. I see the people watching the inferno. The man with the camera has it to his face now. He's zooming in. Focusing. Meanwhile, his wife remains distracted, unconcerned. She'll look at me now. And as soon as I form the thought, she slowly lifts her head and looks up, squinting at the rain. She's peering at me. Through me. For I am indistinguishable from the molecules of water and of air.

Now corner workers crouch over the cockpit. They carry my body away and lay it on the grass; they're so tender and careful with it, needlessly; it's just useless now really, ain't it? It's nothing. It's dirt. It makes me smile to watch them ministering to it so urgently, so solemnly. They are playing with a doll.

I radiate heat and light onto everything I see and everything I don't. All the people, all the signs, and every blade of hay.

Goodyear. Castrol. Total, Esso and Ferodo. Gulf, Martini. Lucas, Champion, Shell. Every word reveals itself to me, charged with meaning and poignancy. Every letter in every word and the spaces in between the letters. Especially the spaces. Within them I hear a voice commanding me—not really a voice. Just words. Not words. Letters. Not letters. But the command is given. And I understand.

Oh!

I see the track in its entirety. I see the bends and straights, the spaces that were hidden by the hills and trees. There's no more corner, nor horizon. There it is: a vast, sprawling triangle traced amid the pastures and the trees. I'm shocked by its beauty. It has no end! It goes around and around forever. I always knew it. Now I see.

8/4/76

Jim picked me up in his rusty blue Duster at a little past three, then picked up Rick, then Rick's girl Jenny. We were between junior and senior year at Neptune High School in Neptune City, New Jersey. It was Wednesday, August 4th, 1976.

Jim wore no shirt as usual, gold chains bouncing on his collarbone as he braked. At a light, he reached into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a crumpled plastic baggie. He tossed it at me and it floated as it flew.

"Take one and pass it on."

The engine idled rough. Jim had to step on it a couple times. You could feel the vibrations all around you.

"Hell, take two. I'll take two."

I unfolded the package and opened it to find a little square of black paper perforated into nine subsquares, each bearing the image of a gold pyramid with an eye inside. The light turned green.

"Awesome," I declared.

"It's the Eye of Horus, man," said Jim.

"The eye of whores?"

"Horus. Horus."

"The fuck is that?"

"I don't know man. It's the Egyptian God of LSD."

Without hesitation I tore off a corner square and placed it on my tongue. For a moment it tasted a little metallic. Then it tasted like paper. I wondered how anything so small could possibly have any effect on anything or anyone.

I turned around and stuck my tongue out for Rick and Jenny, showing off the dissolving hit for good measure. Rick gazed back sternly and made grabby motions with his outstretched hand.

"Gimme," he said.

"Eye of the Horus," I stated, and tossed him the baggie.

As I stared out at the sun-soaked trees and grass along the Garden State Parkway I swallowed hard. There. Now it has begun.

---

There was a disordered pile on my side, ankle-deep, the characteristic refuse of car life: Styrofoam coffee cups, empty Marlboro reds, a yawning Big Mac box, pull tabs and cans, napkins, stir sticks and spent Heinz packets with ketchup coagulated along their lacerations. Rick's collection of 8-track tapes was carelessly intermingled with the trash. I nudged and burrowed until the soles of my shoes made contact with the floor.

"Grab a tape," Jim said.

I examined the choices. Pictures at an Exhibition, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. There Goes Rhymin' Simon, Paul Simon. Keep the Faith, Black Oak Arkansas. I dug deeper.

"How is this?" I asked, holding up the new Led Zeppelin, Presence. The cover depicted a wholesome family of four in their Sunday best, seated around a white-clothed table upon which rested a highly sinister, abstract object. They contemplated it cheerily.

"I dunno. It's OK. I–"

"Sucks!" yelled Rick from the back.

I looked at the cover more closely. Outside the window behind the family, pleasure boats bobbed in a marina. The title of the first song was "Achilles Last Stand."

"I haven't heard it all yet," Jim confessed.

"Fuckin' sucks," Rick repeated.

"Good. Fuck you. We're listening to it," I declared.

I popped it into Jim's player and pushed play. A creeping guitar figure arose and wound sinuously from the speakers. It was a weary little melody. It sounded like it had been playing for a thousand years and we'd just now intruded upon it. Suddenly a dark beat cracked, charging and throbbing like a pitiless storm. The drums were thunder. The guitars were lightning and rain. Floating above it all was a baleful, moaning song.

I looked out again at the mid-Jersey landscape. Macedonia. Leafy industrial parks by the side of the highway. Billboards for cigarettes and cars. Pontiac Bicentennial Sale-abration. Everything suspended in honey.

Rick tapped me on the shoulder and passed me a balloon filled with nitrous oxide. I emptied my lungs and placed it to my lips, inhaled deeply, and held my breath. Everything inside and outside of my mind fell away like water down a drain. I was in a small, bare room with a solitary light. A room without a door. I was on my hands and knees and gazing at the floor. I was higher than I'd ever been before. I turned to my right to see the window roller knob and for a moment I saw it for what it really was: not a window roller knob. Everything was transparent, porous. Purple petals of guitar and liquid bass. Ah, ah-ah-ah, ah, ah-ah-ah went the song. I realized I was sweating when I felt the vent wind cool on my face and that's when I stopped being high. I handed the rest of the balloon to Rick.

---

Jim had the acid. Rick had the beer. And I had the pot. Jenny just sat back there with her hands clasped between her thighs. Silent. Rick had just hooked up with her this summer. The Good Girl. Studious and proper. She was hot, though. Straight blond hair. She wore a chaste collared shirt under a flower-embroidered sleeveless sweater, but new and dangerous curves strained the seams of her pale pink bell bottoms. I imagined that her prim demeanor belied a ferocious sensuality. I fantasized that I'd get her high later and, at the peak of the bacchanal, sneak her off to some corner of the field to fuck her under the moon.

We were about halfway to Jersey City. I rolled a joint and passed it 'round.

"I'm not high enough," I declared.

"Take more acid," Jim replied matter-of-fact. Almost sharply. A command. He reached again into his pocket and gave me the baggie. He never took his eyes off the road.

I pulled out the blotter. An L-shaped, four-square strip remained. Jim had taken two; the rest of us had each taken one.

"Yes sir," I replied, tearing off another square and popping it in my mouth.

"I'm telling you, it'll sneak up on ya."

"What?"

"You're higher than you think."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Shit's serious."

I turned around.

"Are you guys high?"

Rick stared back at me mutely, bearing an expression of vague alarm. His pupils were the size of dimes. Suddenly, Jenny erupted in laughter. She covered her howling mouth with the back of her hand. She looked out the window. She leaned over with a spasm and appeared to drool between her knees.

"Oh my God," she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh my God. Oh my God."

Rick turned his eerie gaze to her then back to me. I turned around again. Robert Plant sang:

Nobody's fault but mine

It's nobody's fault but mine

Try to save my soul tonight

Oh, it's nobody's fault but mine

Jim was smiling. "How 'bout now?"

"What now?"

"Are you high now?"

And the moment I thought about it I realized it was true.

---

Laughter is mechanical. It's like an engine. It takes a spark to start but then it goes all by itself.

I had an idea. It was a funny idea. And so it made me laugh – in sputtering starts at first. But soon I was laughing hard, my chest and shoulders heaving. A tear ran down my cheek.

You get a funny idea, you laugh.

What was my idea? My idea was this: I should open the door right now and get out of the car. That'd be funny. It'd even be funnier if I said goodbye to everyone first.

Just imagine. Seventy miles an hour on the Garden State Parkway. Everybody sitting where they sit. Lost in their petty little worlds. Thinking of this or that. Sex. Drugs. Food. Music. I'd break the silence with a jovial salutation: Alright guys, I gotta go! Bye! Then I'd open the door, wind rushing in like crazy. Step out of the car like it was nothing. Disappear into a speck in the rear-view.

There's a lot of different things I could say before I go. Hey! Take it easy guys. I'll see you later. Or: OK everybody, I'm gonna split. All equally funny. I was laughing like hell.

Why was it funny? 'Cause we were in a car. The dashboard and the ceiling and the seats. When you're in a car, you ain't goin' nowhere.

It was funny because of the way Jim gripped the wheel. A little tensely, knuckles white. A little seriously. Driving is serious, man.

I stilled my hysteria long enough to speak.

"Driving is serious, man."

"What?" Jim said, his voice dissolving into an airy chuckle. He looked at me with a bemused but affirming smile. And then he looked back at the road.

I flicked the chrome door handle a couple times. Flick. Flick. God it would be funny. Goodbye!

---

We stopped at a 7-Eleven in Perth Amboy before getting on the Jersey Pike. I was really high now. Trying to keep it together. Trying to let it go.

It was hot outside but not too hot. The hazy realm of summer doldrums. No shoes, no shirt, no service, said the door. When I pulled at the handle it opened quickly, like some spirit inside was eager to escape. Immediately I was enveloped in a blast of frigid air that bore the sickly odor, at once acrid and sweet, of coffee gently burning in its pot, hot dogs rolling on their rollers, the Slurpee machine, stacks of papers and a hundred thousand candies, gums and snacks. An eerie hum played over the cold.

I examined the front page of The New York Times. Each headline exquisitely banal. "Senate Overrides Veto on Coal Fees." They seemed like subtle, clever parodies of headlines. Mockeries of reality. "Italians Wrangle Over Poison Issue." Some bore the haunting ring of something long-ago forgotten. "U.S., West Germany Reach Tank Accord." Every element within them – every name, noun, verb and number – struck me as obvious. Predictable. "Grenade Kills Four in Burma." Of course grenade. Of course kills four. Of course in Burma. "Teen-age Kansas Girl is Missing After Her Father is Found Slain." Might they have been written before the fact? Maybe nothing really happens if it isn't a headline in The Times. Maybe nothing really happens at all.

Jim walked in, bare feet slapping the linoleum.

"I'm gettin' a Slurpee," he declared.

"Fuck yeah. Me too."

"Out!" shouted the man behind the counter.

We turned to face him.

"Out! Out! Now!" he repeated, red-faced, pointing to the door.

Waves of crimson panic pulsed through my brain.

Jim did a squinting double take. "What the f–"

"Shirt! Shoes! Out! Out! Out!"

"The fuck is he saying?" Jim asked me pleadingly, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

"Out! Now! Out! Now! Shirt!" the man insisted.

I understood.

"Jim," I began, as calmly as I could. "You're not wearing a shirt. Nor are you wearing any shoes."

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus. Christ. Fucking scared me half to death."

The man, silent now, stood like a statue, arm outstretched.

"Get me a Slurpee and a pack of reds," Jim told me.

"What flavor?"

"Blue," he replied as he walked back out, holding up his middle finger all the way. Not once even looking at the man.

---

I returned to the car and handed Jim his Slurpee and cigarettes. Rick and Jenny were still fucking around inside the store.

"What kind did you get?" he asked.

"Coke and cherry. Mix."

"Was he a prick about it?"

"About what?"

"About mixing the flavors."

"Nah. He was normal. He was normal about it."

"Fuckin' prick." Jim slurped loudly from his.

"He was humming a song."

"He was humming a song? What song?"

"Late December back in '63."

I drew a copious mouthful of dark-pink goop with my straw. First there was a shock of sweetness. And then I perceived strange and complicated molecules, concocted in flasks and beakers, tripping across my tongue. Fruit tastes. Lime and cherry. But the tastes were two-dimensional, transparent. Abstract. It occurred to me that they weren't the tastes of fruits so much as the tastes of the names of fruits. The taste of the word lime. Thin, flat, pale, cold. The word cherry. Florid. Freighted. Rich. I also tasted metal for some reason. Lots of metal.

"Song fucking sucks my balls," Jim remarked.

Suddenly a spike shot up out of my heart and traversed through the center of my fevered brain. Cold. Sharp. Merciless. It was the distillation of every truth in the universe penetrating once and for all my cluttered and benighted mind.

"Ahhhhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" I moaned, rocking back and forth in my seat. "Aaaaahhh!"

"Brain freeze!" Jim declared cheerily.

---

When we got to JC we sat in traffic on Route 440 for about half an hour. Finally we pulled into the looping driveway around Roosevelt Stadium, ringed with parking lots. We drove a full counterclockwise lap, slowly, taking the measure of the place. Along the sidewalks, and spilling out into our path, were boisterous streams of people: Some freaks, tie-dyed and bandanna'd; some kids like us. Some older people. Many of the guys were shirtless. Practically every single man and woman wore blue jeans.

The stadium itself was a forbidding monstrosity, a hulking and ominous presence, somber in the summer light. It looked like a prison or some Soviet ministry.

"That place freaks me out," said Rick.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Don't tell me we have to go inside of that thing."

"Ooh!" Jenny exclaimed. "I don't want to go inside!"

"There doesn't even seem to be a door," Rick noted, his voice full of dread.

"We are going inside," Jim stated. "Everyone is going inside."

The right front wheel ran over a beer bottle, crushing it with a muffled pop. A man in overalls and a green tie-dyed shirt turned toward us.

"Fuck you!" he exclaimed.

I leaned my head out the window and stared dully at him. He punctuated his insult with a defiant nod.

"Wow," said Jim.

We parked deep in one of the lots, beside a red-and-white VW bus. As soon as I got out a man in the driver's seat passed a burning pipe to me through his window. I took a big hit and held it as a spark ascended from the bowl into the sky. My lungs convulsed against the hot, raw smoke.

"What's your name, man?" he asked.

I exhaled a glorious, sweet white plume. "Alex."

"Cool, cool. I'm Doug. This is Magic Girl," he said, indicating a drowsy blonde in the passenger seat. "Cerberus is sleeping."

I peered into the back of the bus to find a German shepherd coiled on a dirty mattress, sheets and crocheted blankets in a tangle. It smelled of sweat, dog and patchouli.

Doug and Magic Girl got out and said hello to everybody else. He wore a poncho and a floppy leather hat; she wore a peasant dress with little red flowers. We passed the pipe around.

"We were in Hartford the other day. We been on the road all summer," said Doug.

"This is the last show," said Magic Girl.

"Then where you gonna go?" asked Jim.

"Anywhere but home, man," said Doug.

"Anywhere but home," Magic Girl repeated.

Cylinders of purple light extended above their heads.

"Why you called that?" Rick asked Magic Girl.

"'Cause she can tell your future," Doug said. Magic Girl was silent.

"Tell it then."

"OK. You," she said, pointing at me. "You're afraid."

"Me?"

"You're afraid something's gonna happen tonight."

"Happen? Like what?"

"Like something." She shrugged. "Anything."

"Something bad?"

"Good-bad doesn't matter, man. You just need to let it happen."

Doug nodded in assent as he relit the bowl and took a hit. "Don't recoil from experience, man," he said, holding his breath. Little wisps of smoke emerged with every word.

"It's all there is," continued Magic Girl. "Whatever's gonna happen, you need to let it."

I felt like my entire body was vibrating.

"I don't think I'm afraid," I protested.

"That's because you are," she said.

---

There were two worlds within the stadium. A world of light and life in the center. There the eternally young and beautiful basked in the golden sun. On folding chairs and blankets. Playing cards. Smoking pot. Stretching languorously.

Encircling this world was a world of shadow and death. The covered grandstands, cold concrete and steel. They were occupied by a desultory patchwork of clannish groups. There were even outliers among these outcasts, sitting way far up where it was darkest. Someone let out a fearsome hoot and a bottle arced high, end-over-end, and exploded in a splatter of shards and foam at the opening of the tunnel from which we had emerged.

We walked the littered path that formed the border. Jim and Jenny in front, Rick and I each carrying a handle of the cooler. We were scouting a location on the grass. To the left of the stage, where the stadium opened to the east, twin rectangular forms shimmered in the distance. Someone else shouted from the stands. Pure abstract shape. Identical. The objects seemed to oscillate in and out of existence. The breeze picked up a bit, kicking up a little dust. In the haze they were barely distinguishable from the sky. Only their outlines, tinged with gold, rippling like the sun upon the sea, were seen. I heard a woman laugh. Though I knew what they were, they appeared to be a phantasm. Their presence was exceedingly tenuous. They did not seem to be a part of this world.

A Frisbee glided across the foreground to break my reverie. The clock on the scoreboard was stuck on six to nine.

"Wait!" said Jim.

We stopped behind him.

"Check that out!" he exclaimed, his voice nearly trembling with wonder.

He was pointing at an object in his path. Rick and I put the cooler down and we all approached to have a closer look. It was a tube of something. Toothpaste. It was a tube of Aqua-fresh toothpaste. Brand new, apparently. Pristinely resting on the dirt and full to bursting. We scrutinized it with some awe.

Passersby walked around us at first. Then a few stopped too, to look at the thing that we were looking at.

Jim got down on his knee. He touched the cap first, with the tip of his index finger. Then he knelt on both knees to get a little closer. He ran his finger along the cool, white, unblemished surface of the metal skin.

"Wow," he whispered.

"It's beautiful!" Jenny asserted. She sounded like maybe she was about to cry.

We all knelt down now, forming a circle around the toothpaste. The crowd around us grew, peering over our shoulders. We admired in silence the very slight italic slant of the navy-blue lettering: Aqua-fresh. The toothbrush flat on its back below it, bearing a sleek dollop of blue-white-blue-white-blue striped paste.

After a time, Jim took his jackknife from his pocket and opened up the blade. Jenny let out a worried moan. Jim looked at her and then at each of us, his knife poised over the turgid belly of the tube. I nodded slightly, as though to give our assent. He punctured it up near the neck, working the tip in with a little twist. Then he drew an incision down across the letters, almost all the way to the tapered end. He withdrew for a moment to observe his work.

The opening act had just begun. It was the Marshall Tucker Band. They played a song called "Can't You See."

I'm gonna take a freight train down at the station, Lord

I don't care where it goes

Gonna climb a mountain, the highest mountain, Lord

And gonna jump off, ain't nobody gonna know

A thin band of white toothpaste had emerged from the slit. Jim leaned in again and made a careful vertical incision bisecting the original one just past the capital A. Then he made a similar one at the other end, between the H and the bristles of the brush. He made a third between these two, between the F and the R in "fresh." He paused again and we stared in wonder at the tube, which now began to ooze blue-white goo from its wounds.

Can't you see, oh, can't you see,

What that woman, Lord

She been doin' to me

Jim looked at us again, his expression conveying utmost solemnity and seriousness of purpose. Jenny stifled a sob.

"Do it!" she cried.

Jim carefully peeled back the middle segments of the tube, and then the four corners, to reveal a mass of sticky, viscous material in four perfectly symmetrical bands of alternating white and blue. We gasped. It was beautiful. It was horrifying. The crowd around us whooped and cheered. He wiped off his knife on the knee of his jeans.

"Touch it!" someone shouted.

"Yeah, touch it!" someone else repeated.

"Touch it! Touch it! Touch it!" the crowd began to chant.

Jim dipped his finger into the splayed-open tube and examined the dab left on its tip. Then he put it in his mouth. We awaited his reaction, expecting some revelation perhaps.

"Minty," he declared with a frown.

Then he dipped two fingers in the blue and brought his hand up to his face. He hesitated a beat then painted the tip of his nose. Then he took some white and painted stripes on his cheeks, his forehead. It was twilight now. He looked up and we studied him, the first initiate to a new religion. We understood that we were all to paint our faces.

---

We glommed a patch of lawn somehow, maybe fifty feet from the stage, and huddled around the cooler. I looked back at the stands. The sun had set behind them; its last rays shone through the gaps that ran along the very top, making silhouettes of the most remote.

"Hey man, be cool," the man to the right of me said in a terse and demanding tone.

"I'm cool."

"You're in our space, man."

I made myself small as his girl stretched back out the corners of their blanket. Someone else nearby had planted a Confederate flag.

We drank cold cans of Ballantine Ale. I squeezed a dent into the middle of mine. Like I always do. I took rapid sips, sucking the beer through clenched teeth. It, too, tasted of metal. Was I able to taste the can? I looked down at it and noticed the logo: three interlocking rings.

"What do the rings mean?" I asked.

"Deaf, dumb and blind," said Jim.

I looked to the others for an alternative answer. Jenny shrugged. Rick was sitting cross-legged and fiddling with the grass.

"How's it going, Rick?"

Just then the band came on. Most of the crowd stood up so we did, too. As I examined the stage I discovered that each of the drummers' bass drums was painted with an Eye of Horus.

"Jim, look at the bass drums," I said.

"Well I'll be damned."

"Are you sacred? I'm a little sacred."

"What do you mean, sacred?" Jim inquired.

"Did I say sacred? I mean scared. Scared."

I looked at him pleadingly. He appeared to be formulating an answer when he suddenly spat out a sudsy mouthful of beer and leaned over, clutching his knees and howling with laughter.

The band began to play. It was a lazy, lilting country song:

When they come to take you down

When they bring that wagon round

When they come to call on you

And drag your poor body down

---

I turned around to check on Rick. He was sitting down again, a forlorn, huddled figure in a forest of swaying blue jeans. He opened his mouth at me.

"Aaaah!"

There appeared to be some feathery material on his tongue. I leaned towards him.

"What is that, man?"

"Aaaaaaaah!"

"What's that in your mouth, man?"

Rick promptly fell onto his back and spouted out a flurry of grass. It landed on his face and neck in damp clumps. Jenny knelt down beside him and began to rub his chest.

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" went Rick.

I elbowed Jim's arm and indicated Rick with a nod.

"He's high as hell," I said.

"Good. He's alright."

"You think he'll be OK?"

"He's got Jenny."

Rick tore off his T-shirt, got on his belly, and began writhing against the ground. At first I thought this was some extreme dance, but his gyrations did not appear to conform to the music. Now he drew his pants down to his knees.

"No, Rick, no, Rick, no!" Jenny shouted.

He spread his arms, gripped tufts of grass in each hand, and began humping furiously. The crowd had opened up a bit to give him space. Some looked on with vague curiosity as his pale ass throbbed in the fading light.

"What are you doing, sweetie? What are you doing, honey?" Jenny asked.

"I wanna... aaahhh!"

"You wanna what? You wanna what?"

"I wanna fuck the Earth! I wanna fuck the Earth!"

Jenny grabbed the waist of Rick's jeans and pulled them up as best she could. After a time he rolled over on his back and lay prone, defeated, one arm extended and one across his chest.

"It's OK baby, it's OK sweetie, I know, I know," said Jenny.

"Do you know!?" he wailed.

"I know. I know."

She lifted his head onto her lap and caressed his brow. His wide eyes appeared to be fixed on something far away.

---

It was not a band that I was very familiar with. Their iconography was in favor among a certain element at school. It was creepy, that's for sure. The type of shit that Mom and Dad do not want you scrawling all over your three-ring binder. But it wasn't ghoulish; it had a sort of jaunty, old-fashioned prettiness, a lot of it. Skulls and lightning and roses and ravens. It seemed like it had been stolen from some mythical frontier in a lost decade of the American past. What was most disturbing – and therefore most exciting – about it was its whimsy. There lurked a devilish joke behind it all. Death. Ha!

Based on these factors I had imagined – and hoped – that this band would tear my heart out with their electric guitars. Pound my spleen with drums. Make good on their morbid promise. But everything about them – the way they looked, the way they acted, the way they sounded – defied my expectations. They dressed like normal. They didn't particularly acknowledge the crowd. Their music was faint and faraway. The harder I struggled to focus on it the more it deflected my attention. They played a song – something about rowing – and I swear I forgot each note the moment the next one passed into my ears. It only left me with a feeling. A feeling about nothing.

---

Now it was night. I shook my head to paint the sky with zigzag moon-streaks. Across the water the antenna was aglow and poking at the darkness, sending "The Bionic Woman" into hundreds of thousands of cozy homes. The punchcard pattern of lit-up windows below it had to be some kind of code. I thought I might just break it if I really let go. Really let go now.

Lord, you can see that it's true, sang the band.

I tried to make myself innocent. I tried to make myself worthy of the truth. I remembered what Magic Girl said before. Was something happening now? Surely something was happening. Something.

The bass player was out of tune and he tried to fix it in the middle of the song, playing a note again and again as he adjusted. He made it sharp before he made it right, and he played three slow, sharp notes in a row that sounded like the moaning of some beast from another universe. I was staring at the towers at the time. Ohhhw, ohhhw, ohhhw. Everything – all I thought I knew and trusted – disappeared – not from sight but from being  – and I hung in the void, alight with terror. Ohhhw, ohhhw, ohhhw –

For a moment I saw it. The thing without a name.

The song ended. A pop went off and bright-red, incandescent trails arced across the sky.

I felt some kind of warm fluid flowing over the corner of my mouth. Blood? Was I bleeding? I touched it and examined my fingers. No. I was crying.

"Hey!"

I turned around to find Rick leaning weirdly towards me and Jim.

"Hey! Hey!"

"Hey what, man?" said Jim.

"Hey!"

"Hey man, what. What's up?"

"Jenny," Rick replied. More fireworks popped and cracked behind us.

"What about her, man?"

"She's gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Gone can't find her, man."

---

Rick was in a state of great agitation.

"Where'd she go?" Jim asked.

"She told me she was coming back!" he cried.

I told Jim I'd sit with Rick while he looked for Jenny. I opened the cooler, got two beers, and handed one to Rick.

Up onstage the song went like this:

Well I ain't often right but I've never been wrong

It seldom turns out the way it does in the song

"We'll find her, man," I said.

He was weeping. "You sure, man?"

"Of course, man."

He gulped his beer and shook his head.

"What if something happens to her?" he moaned.

"Nothing's going to happen to her," I answered reflexively. I felt a stabbing certainty deep in my heart that something was going to happen to her. And to us, too. Something big. There seemed to be no truer truth.

Jim came back.

"I dunno, man. Can't find her," he declared.

"Where did you look?!" Rick howled.

"I looked around. Jesus."

"We have to find her!"

"Let's stay here for a little while in case she comes back," I said. "Then we'll go find her."

The band took a set break. The stage lights went down and an old black-and-white film was projected onto a screen behind the drums. The title came up: the Three Stooges in "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb." The crowd cheered lustily as the doughy men barked, whimpered and jabbed at each other. I felt a second darkness encroaching upon the night. So this is it? I wondered. This is what it comes to? I hung my head and muttered a grim, despairing prayer. We were doomed. That much was clear.

I looked up, expecting to see my anguish mirrored in Rick's face. Instead he gazed blankly at the screen. Movie light flickered faintly on his mentholated warpaint. He took a sip of beer. Moe hit Curly with a hammer and he laughed.

---

Jenny had not returned. I turned to Jim.

"We should go or something."

Rick was mesmerized by the set-break show. A W. C. Fields short played now. The ornery man's tiny eyes peered out at us from his pale, bulbous face and a ludicrous top hat teetered on the edge of his head. I couldn't bear to look.

"Rick," I said.

No response.

"Rick!"

"Huh?"

"Dontcha wanna go find Jenny?"

"Jenny," he repeated airily, his eyes gravitating back to the screen.

"Let's just go," Jim said to me.

"Yeah, let's go. Let's get up and go."

Jim and I stood up.

"Rick, up. Up, man. Up," said Jim.

Very slowly, without losing sight of the movie, Rick uncrossed his legs and got up.

"What about the fucking beers?" I asked.

"Drink 'em," said Jim. "Chug 'em."

There were nine beers left. We started drinking as fast as we could. Onstage the movie ended and the lights came on. There appeared a man holding the hand of a tuxedo-clad chimp. He introduced him as Mr. Jiggs. There was a pitiable crackle of applause. Mr. Jiggs scampered around on roller skates, knocking heedlessly into mic stands and monitors.

I hiccuped and opened up another can. "This is pretty weird," I said.

Mr. Jiggs lit a cigarette. Some in the crowd laughed. Others booed. He blew smoke into his master's face. Then he got on a little motorcycle and rode around in circles. A venomous roar erupted from the audience. Finally Mr. Jiggs mixed himself a martini and gulped it down at once.

"Get out! Go home!" someone shouted. Man and chimp were rained on by glow sticks and change.

"They hate the chimp," Rick said hollowly. "They really hate him."

"Ready to go?" said Jim. "Let's go."

We took our last beers with us and headed out the back of the field.

---

Behind us the animal act exited the stage in ignominy. The trainer hung his head, his face twisted into a quivering grimace. Mr. Jiggs seemed fine.

"Why did the chimp wear a tuxedo?" asked Jim.

"I give up. Why?"

"It's no joke."

The band was playing again. We crossed the encircling path, past barefoot figures swaying in the moonlight. Somewhere a man howled incessantly, incoherently, in proximate rhythm to the music. Before we knew it we fell back through the tunnel. In the halls below the grandstands green cinder block walls and the gray floor glowed pale and sickly under fluorescent light. Along the walls were scattered circles of cross-legged pot smokers. There was a concession window with an elderly black woman in a hairnet and red uniform. She stood with her chin on her fist, elbow on the counter, gazing at the opposite wall. Hot dogs cost seventy-five cents.

We gravitated toward the ladies' room. A weary hippie in a flowing granny dress appeared to be standing guard at the door.

"We're looking for our friend," Jim said. "She might be in there."

The woman contemplated us with a frown.

"What does she look like, your friend?"

"Blonde. Normal-looking." Jim turned to Rick for elaboration.

"Pink pants," Rick said. "Toothpaste on her face."

"Like the three of you," the woman remarked pensively. "I don't know that I've seen her but we may be able to help you."

"We?" I asked.

"Which one among you is most pure?"

We looked uneasily at one another.

She nodded sharply to Rick. "You!"

Startled, Rick pointed at himself and did a double take.

"You're to enter the circle. When the high priestess asks you how you enter, tell her that it's in the light and the love of the Goddess."

"In the what of the what?"

"In the light and the love of the Goddess. Then tell her you're looking for your friend."

"What's going to happen to me?" Rick asked with a trace of alarm.

"You'll receive a blessing."

She opened the door for Rick. Inside we could see five women huddled in the middle of the room. Around them four candles burned, one on the counter by the sink and the others on the floor. One of the women held a small, very sharp dagger. They chanted:

As above, so below, by our will, by our will

As above, so below, by our will

Isis, Astarte and Diana

Hekate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna

Rick walked in slowly and the woman let the door close after him.

She smiled at us. "He's only going to be a minute."

We sat down against the wall. Jim lit up a cigarette and I rolled a joint.

"Didja see that knife?" asked Jim.

"Yeah. What are they gonna do to him with it?"

Jim exhaled a plume of smoke. "Prolly fuck around with his dick."

"Cut up his dick?"

"Cut it up a little. Drink the blood."

"Drain blood from his cock into a little dish? A ceremonial dish?"

"And pass it 'round and sip from it. Yeah."

"Won't they fuck him first? Worship it before they fuck it up?"

"Maybe. Yeah."

We sat numbly for a while, sipping the last of our beers. In the distance we heard a song:

Tell you where the four winds sleep

Four lean hounds the lighthouse keep

Wildflower seed in the sand and wind

May the four winds blow you home again

---

After a time Rick emerged, none the worse as far as we could tell. He did look a little spooked. Jim and I stood up and I handed Rick the joint.

"What happened in there?" I asked.

Rick took a deep hit. "They gave me a feather," he croaked, holding his smoke.

"They gave you a what?" asked Jim.

Rick opened his fist to reveal a small, white feather, damp with sweat.

"What's it for?" I asked.

"Luck on my journey they said."

"Did they fuck you?" Jim interjected.

"What journey?" I asked. "You're not going anywhere."

Rick shrugged and stuck the feather in his pocket.

"Better not fucking lose that," I said.

"They didn't do nothin' to your cock?" Jim persisted.

"What happens if I lose it?"

"I dunno. Something bad? You should know. You're the one that was blessed."

Rick looked down the front of his pants to assess whether the feather would be secure.

"I can't believe they didn't do nothin' to your cock in there."

"They're not that type o' witch," Rick protested.

We stood and smoked in silence, listening to the band. They sang:

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down

You can't let go and you can't hold on

You can't go back and you can't stand still

If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

A wild-eyed man without a shirt insinuated himself into our circle.

"What it is, what it is, fellas! Can you lay some of that fine-smelling shit on me?" He was hopping a little, foot-to-foot.

Jim passed him the joint.

"Cool, cool, cool, much appreciated, much appreciated!" He took a hit and passed it to me.

"What are you guys doin', man? Fucking enjoying the show?"

"Yeah. Actually we're looking for someone right now," said Jim.

"Cool, cool, cool. Who? Who?"

"His girlfriend," Jim replied, indicating Rick with his elbow.

"Yeah? What she look like?"

"Pink pants. Blond hair–"

"NO FUCKING WAY!" the man shouted abruptly. "Blond chick? Young chick?"

We nodded.

"Holy FUCKING SHIT, man! She DISAPPEARED!"

We stared at him, perplexed.

"Yeah," Rick said. "That's what we're saying, man, she dis–"

"No, no, no, no, no! Dig it, man: she DISAPPEARED!" He was clutching his head now. "I fuckin' saw it happen, man! So far out!"

"What did you see, man?" asked Rick.

"Check it out, check it out, check it out: I was up there, dancing, you know?" He nodded in the direction of the field. "And there's this chick just like you describe, fine chick, blond chick. Dancing. Pink pants."

"Yeah?"

"The band was jammin', man, it was so intense. And suddenly, I swear to God, a, like, bolt of pure fuckin' energy came out of Jerry's guitar and fuckin' zapped the chick!"

"Pure energy?" I said.

"And she fuckin' disappeared, man!"

"Disappeared?" asked Jim.

"I mean like she was there and then she was not there, man! Fuckin' blew my mind!"

He shook his head and smiled, his whole body swaying now. He took another hit of our joint.

"Uh, we gotta go look for her now," said Jim.

"I told you she disappeared," the man said emphatically. He looked at us sharply. Sternly, even.

Outside, the band sang:

If I had my way

If I had my way

If I had my way

I would tear this whole building down

"She'll turn up," I offered.

"Dude, turn up. Forget it. She turned out."

"We'll find her."

"Dude, she's gone, man. There's nothing to find."

"Yeah. We're gonna go looking anyway, man. Thanks."

"Good fuckin' luck, man. You're lookin' for nothing."

---

We began to wander back to the tunnel. A man caught up with us.

"Hey guys, guys, guys. Wait up," he said.

We stopped and turned.

"Don't listen to Billy. He's a fuckin' tweaker."

"Yeah, thanks. We figured," I said.

"He's a good guy and all, you know. He just gets–"

"Yeah. S'OK."

"Listen, I think I saw that chick though. For real."

"Where?" Rick asked hopefully.

"She was with a couple dudes. She was headed up above," he said, gesturing with his thumb.

"Into the stands?" I asked.

The man nodded solemnly.

"When did you see her?" asked Rick.

"First set. End of the first set."

"Cool, man," I said. "Thanks."

We emerged from the bowels and turned around. You couldn't see much up there. But you could sense a roiling presence. The shadows teemed with fitful souls. In the farthest corner of the darkness there burned a fire.

I looked back at the stage. The drummers played alone now. Sinister tattoos blurred into cacophony and started up again. The Eyes of Horus peered urgently into mine as cymbals whispered warnings only I could hear.

"Let's head up," said Jim.

We climbed the concrete steps, scanning each row. A group of drunks stood unsteadily on their seats, shouting simpleminded chants: Hoh-oh! Hoh-oh! Hoh-oh! Hoh-oh! Hoh! Hoh! Hoh! Hoh! A man drank from a gallon jug of wine, letting it spill down his chin and the front of his shirt. His girl vomited copiously beside him; her pink puke flowed across the aisle and dribbled down the steps. On the other side a woman, lost in ecstasy, bounced on her lover's lap. Clouds of smoke drifted over it all.

No sign of Jenny.

---

As we ascended, the band began a malevolent vamp. It had an urgent, martial quality. March music for the armies of the damned. I thought everybody was gonna die.

"Saint Stephen!" someone shouted.

We took a left and walked along the landing between the upper and lower stands. Far off in the distance was Manhattan, dense and bewildering in its cloak of lights.

"I'm worried," I remarked.

"What about?" said Jim.

"How much more time do we have? As a race on earth."

"Twenty-five years. Thirty, tops."

We found some empty seats up near the top and sat down for a spell. The music quieted and distended and finally disintegrated into burbles and pops. Hums and silence. Purple and green spots appeared before me, trembling and dissolving and shifting into whimsical configurations.

"What if it's all true?" asked Rick to nobody.

I eyed him with some concern.

"What if what's all true?"

"What if it's all true?"

I wasn't sure what to say. He seemed fairly serene. I ventured a reply.

"I guess maybe it is."

He plunged his face into his hands and began to howl.

"I can't take it! I can't take it! I'm not gonna be able to take it!"

I grabbed his shoulder. Jim leaned in, observing quietly.

"It's gonna be fine, man," I said. "It's gonna be fine."

The last row was occupied by a shadow rhythm section, freaks on tambourines and bongos. One of them saw us and stopped. He wore only cutoff jeans and the Cat in the Hat's red-and-white striped stovepipe hat. It tilted and swayed as he clambered over the seats to join us.

"What's going on with your friend?" he asked. He had a bony chest, long stringy hair and a beard.

"He's having a bad trip," I said.

We all looked for a moment at Rick. He'd lifted his head and now gazed out to sea. His mouth hung slightly open.

"We're looking for his girlfriend," added Jim. "We lost her somewhere. She lost us."

"Lemme talk to him," the man said. He climbed into the empty seat to our left.

"Here man, hold this," he said, handing his drum to Rick. It was one of those hourglass-shaped drums with bands that stretch from top to bottom. Rick took it and beheld it with a vaguely pained expression.

"You wanna find your girl?"

Rick nodded.

"You can't just expect her to come back, you know. She's not gonna just come back."

Rick blinked and nodded again. What the man said did not appear to surprise him.

"You have to make her come back. You know that, right?"

Rick mouthed the words "I know."

"Play the drum."

Rick placed it under his left arm. He smacked the membrane with the flat of his other hand and squeezed the strings against his ribs with a spasm. The drum made a sound:

Ohhw!

And with it something shot through my mind. I understood exactly what the drum was saying.

"Play it again."

Ohhhw! Ohhhw! Ohhhw!

"She'll come back if you make her come back. Play the drum."

Ohhhw! Ohhhw! Ohhhw! Ohhhw! Ohhhw!

Onstage the music resumed its previous, ominous cadence. Rick played in time to it.

Oh-ohw-ohw, oh-ohw-ohw, oh-ohw-ohw, oh-ohw-ohw

The other drummers had gathered behind us. They handed tambourines to me and Jim and we all began to play. The band sang a chorus:

Coming, coming, coming around

Coming around, coming around, in a circle

Rick played with mad abandon, his drum shouting and pleading over the din. Every jangling impact of my hand on the tambourine electrified me. Like I was beating myself out of my own head. I thought I could let go now, if I wanted. I wanted. Don't think. Don't want. I banged the tambourine and then I didn't think.

At the peak of our frenzy it felt like something was moving. Shifting under and around us. Then someone near us screamed and it was over. The charging music melted into a ballad; we slowed and quieted, too. Everything had changed.

"She's back now," the man announced cheerily.

"Really?" asked Rick.

"You brought her back."

"Where?"

The man just laughed. We thanked him, handed back our instruments and descended to the field. Practically everyone was standing now. The stage lights edged each silhouetted head in gold. We found our original spot, marked by the abandoned cooler. Rick stood on it and looked around.

"Where is she?" he said, climbing down. "She's supposed to be back."

"She is back," I insisted. At that moment I honestly believed that any expression – or mere apprehension – of doubt might impede the delicate, mystical process of her bodily return.

"She's back, Rick," Jim echoed wearily, peering at the crowd around us. "She's back."

The band sang:

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag

Atop no ship of fools

We dutifully took turns standing on the cooler and scanning the field. Nothing.

I looked back at the stands. I wondered what it was I'd felt up there. What I thought I'd felt. I thought it was something. An indication that something had fallen into place. That Jenny was back. That we had brought her back, in fact. Was I so easily seduced by superstition? What an idiot I am, I thought. Just another link in the chain of suckers who'd sooner trust a vision than a sight. I felt a flash of shame.

In my sorrow and confusion I considered whether Tweaker Billy might've been right. Something must be right. I found myself trying to calculate the odds that Jenny had been a shared hallucination all along. Every time I drew her face in my mind's eye it turned into another face. She deflected conjuring. She did not seem to be a part of this world.

The pattern of lit-up windows on the towers had grown sparser over time. Now the code it sent into the dark was stark and bleak, a curt summary of the truth. I struggled to understand it. I begged to know. Only to know.

And then I had a dark epiphany. There is no Jenny. Now that was just a plain fact, there. I permitted myself some grim satisfaction for conceding to cold reality. There is no Jenny.

The band played a rousing finale and then an encore. After it was all over we sat for a long while, the crowd dispersing around us.

"We can't just stay here," Jim said finally. "We have to go."

"We can't go home without her!" cried Rick.

"We'll call the cops, man. Report her missing. We gotta get to a pay phone though. We gotta go."

We got up and walked slowly across the trash-strewn field. We stood by the path a little longer, looking left and right. When an acceptable period seemed to have elapsed, Jim turned to lead us out the tunnel. We walked in silence across the ring road and through the parking lot. People were still drinking, smoking, playing music out the backs of their vans.

When we neared Jim's car we found a dark form curled up on the hood.

"Jenny!" Rick shouted.

She sat up groggily and squinted at us.

"Where were you?" he asked.

"I dunno," she said. "I couldn't find you guys."

"Couldn't find us?" Jim said. "We couldn't find you!"

"Are you OK? What happened to you?" asked Rick.

"I'm fine, Rick. I was fine. Fine."

"What the fuck do you mean, you were fucking fine?" asked Jim.

"I mean fine. I was fine. Jesus."

"All this time. You were fine."

"What, are you guys my dad now or something?"

"Well, where did you go?"

"I dunno. I went to the bathroom. Then I couldn't find you in the crowd. I couldn't see shit."

"What did you do?" asked Rick.

"I listened to the music. I danced. Hung out with some people. Met some people."

"Met some people?"

"I had fun! Jesus Christ."

We all got in the car and rode in silence. A little after we got back on the Jersey Pike I heard a snore. I turned around to find Rick and Jenny asleep, leaning on each other's shoulders.

"I really thought something was going to happen tonight," I said to Jim.

He shrugged.

"But nothing happened," I continued. "Did something happen?"

He lit a cigarette. "Nothing happened, man," he said, taking a drag. "What was supposed to happen?"

"I mean, something. Something was supposed to happen. Don't you think? Felt like that type of night."

Jim didn't answer.

I had a funny sensation on my face. Rubbery and numb. I felt around my cheek and was startled to find a smooth patch of second skin stretched thinly over the first. It cracked and peeled off in flakes. I rubbed a pinch of it into dust and sprinkled it over the trash around my feet.

Jim looked at me. Then he turned and looked back at the road.

I absently put my finger to my tongue.

Minty.

Grateful Dead lyrics quoted with permission from Ice Nine Publishing.