Chapter Text
Max finishes the last few bites of his tomato sandwich, fishes out some change from his pocket, leaves it on the table, and gets out of the diner. The sun, not as lethal in March, bleaches the concrete sidewalk. Its reflection makes him squint. He dodges into his car, wakes it up from its early afternoon slumber, and takes it to the parking lot exit, where he sees a tall, slender man with a black duffel bag holding out his thumb, causing him to slow down.
A hitchhiker?
He stops by the stranger and lowers his window. “What are you up to?”
“I’m going to New York,” the man says, quickly turning his head to look behind him as if anticipating something. “Look, can you give me a ride? Drop me off anywhere—wherever is fine as long as it’s in that general direction. Just need to get out of here fast. Like right now.”
“What, is someone after you? The cops?”
“How’s that any of your business?” The tremor in the man’s voice makes Max chuckle.
“Well, it is my business if I’m going to let you hitchhike in my car. Need to make sure I’m not getting myself into trouble. You do know that we’re in the Southwestern desert, right? You in a rush?” Max grins.
“What’s your fucking problem?” The man, now gripping the shoulder strap of his bag so hard that his knuckles turn white, seems visibly agitated. “And for your information, no, I’m not a criminal at large—”
At the same time, cars heading out of the parking lot start to pool behind Max, who has clogged the only exit. Horns are being blared. Hands are being thrown. Angry heads stick out of windows and curse at the navy Ford Crown Vic and its idiotic driver who’s apparently ruined their day. “Shut the fuck up,” Max shouts back at the ruckus formed in the line behind him, “I’m having a fucking conversation here!”
“Well, you happy now? Are you letting me in your car or not?” The man crosses his arms and stares down at him impatiently. “The hell are you laughing at?” He sounds incredulous when he sees Max’s reaction.
“I’m laughing because you have no idea how much dumb luck you’re in.” Max reaches over the passenger’s seat and pops the door open. “Because I also happen to be going to New York. Get in.”
The man climbs onto the passenger seat and guards his bag in his lap. As Max hits the pedal the car roars, breaking away from the parking lot onto the asphalt like a starving animal let out of its cage. While he delights for a moment in the inertia that tethers him to the back of his seat he notices that his new passenger is still straining his neck to check the rear with a kind of fervent neuroticism.
“Look, you have to tell me what’s going on or I’ll have to dump you on the side of the road.”
The stranger looks at him for a second, blue-greenish eyes blinking in the sun like glass marbles he used to collect as a kid, before finally letting out a long sigh and slouching in his seat. “I just escaped from the last guy I was hitching a ride from. Ran for my life. The guy was not…normal. Kept asking me where I lived, how old I was, about my family. Said he's got some offers for me should I change my mind about where I was going. Asked if I was seeing anyone. I didn't like the way he looked at me through the rearview mirror. I reckon he was going to take me to the middle of nowhere and cut me into pieces. So I sneaked out the back of his truck when I got the first chance. Don’t know if he’s noticed. That shambolic...situation you caused back there certainly helped.”
“Wow, really. And here you are in a car that belongs to someone else you just met fifteen minutes ago. What makes you think I won’t do the same? I could totally be up to no good. Carve you up, take your things, and leave you rotting in the desert. I’m sure the vultures will like that.”
“Because…” the stranger’s eyes shift to the front of the car and the endless asphalt that rolls underneath. “Two reasons. One, I know what they’re like. Those kidnappers. Criminals. Nobody taunts their prey like you just did. Don’t think you’d have the patience to lure somebody into your car, let alone plot murder. And two.”
He clenches the bag on his lap. Max can hear the faint clinking of hard objects.
“You’re driving. I don’t want to do anything crazy, freak you out, and get both of us killed in a crash. But I’ve got a gun. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to see it right now.” He’s still staring straight ahead at the vanishing road. Trying to smooth out the nervous wrinkle in his voice.
Max is amused.
“I trust you, but you know what? Pay up and I’ll take you wherever you want.”
The man glances at him. Max has never seen someone with eyes that big, the way they roll around in their sockets. He must think with them, too.
“We split the gas, 50-50.”
“You pay for gas, food, everything else.”
“I’ve only got so much money on me!”
“I’m driving us.”
“Then let me drive. I know how to.”
“Don’t even think about it. It’s my car. My rules—”
“You’re getting what you want the way you want it. You’re driving. You’d spend the same amount on gas, on lodging whether it’s one person or two. I’m actually doing you a favor here by sharing the cost burden—“
“You better watch your mouth before I change my mind and find you a burden. Gas and food’s on you, we split the rest.”
“You’re really pushing me here. I don’t want to have to point a gun at your…” He reaches into the duffel bag.
“Heh! You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wha…”
Max brakes hard at the traffic light, throwing both of them toward the dashboard.
“Jesus! I really don’t have enough money. I’ll pay for food, everything else we’re splitting.”
Max observes the man sitting next to him, gripping the door handle like it’s his own life, dark blond curls strewn across his forehead, pale eyes glaring with rage. Or maybe fear. Desperation. Resignation. Doesn’t really matter.
It’s true, there’s no losing for him.
“Deal. I’m Max, by the way.”
“George.”
In the next few hours, George learns the following facts about Max:
The first thing is that he’s traveling for work. When George asks him why he’d be willing to drive across the continent to a place he’s never been to before, Max tells him that his good friend had left for New York a few years ago, and now that new opportunities have arisen, he would love for Max to see it out for himself too.
“Three weeks ago I got a letter from Daniel. He’s got his own thing running, selling imported textiles in the Garment District, whatever that means. Said he could use my help. Also said that I should get out of here and see the world outside, the bigger world, bigger cities, things like that. I dropped whatever I was doing and left in a heartbeat.
“It’s funny how angry I was when he first told me he was leaving. He basically watched me grow up, you know? I guess he was a bit like an older brother. He’d take me past the edge of our town, into the desert where we’d let the sun burn ourselves, watch it set, and I could steal a sip from his tall beer can and smell the dust and motor oil and hear nondescript rock music fading into static on his car radio, and then he would sneak me back into my parents’ house before it got late at night, back when they still cared. He’d drive me around in his car and let me drive it, too. Taught me how to change tires, how to fix an oil leak. I got us into real trouble once when I spun off the road a few miles outside our town, before I had a license, and he told me to stay in the car and spoke to the officer that caught us for a very long time. I don’t know what he did that day to bail us out. And later he just smiled and told me to be more careful next time. He always did that, always smiled no matter what kind of shit went down. It’s what everyone knew him by.
“But he wasn’t smiling when he said that he was getting sick of this place, couldn’t stand it for another minute, that he believed he needed to move on to a different stage of his life. At first I thought he was just fucking with me. When I found out he was serious we got into the biggest fight we’ve had. Probably the only time we ever fought. All these years and he was suddenly leaving, too. I called him selfish and didn’t talk to him for weeks. Then I regretted.”
“What happened then?”
“I couldn’t stop him, could I? It’s not like I haven’t tried to. The day he left, I was eighteen and crying my eyes out in his arms like a little bitch. Of course Daniel was still smiling.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
“He is,” Max says calmly. “What about you? Why are you headed there?”
“I…have a relative that lives there. An uncle. I’m going to visit him. Do you know anything about New York?”
“Only stuff I’d seen in the comic books. Skyscrapers. Statue of Liberty. I thought it might be cool to be a taxi driver there, in one of those yellow taxis. Take over the streets when the city’s asleep.”
“Like in the movie?”
Max looks at him. “Never seen it.”
“You love driving this much?”
Max taps the steering wheel. “This beauty is my prized possession. Got him from a police auction, just under ninety thousand miles and sturdy as ever. Changed the suspension, fixed the steering, brakes, got a new radiator, replaced the intake from some old parts I'd found on a wrecked Mustang in the junkyard. Borrowed a bit of paint from the shop. Did it all by myself. I don’t ever let anyone else touch him.”
“Most people refer to their cars as a she, though.”
“I don’t care what most people do.”
In between their scattered conversation, George reaches for the radio dial.
“Don’t.”
“Why, is it broken?”
“I’m not really into music. And I find most of the radio hosts really annoying. Something about their voices, you know?”
“Do you ever get bored, driving by yourself in silence?”
“Never. I listen to this.”
He upshifts a gear, the engine answering with a louder hum, almost excited.
“It sings better than music.”
“You’re mad,” George says, “I’ve never seen anyone that hates music.” But he is laughing. This is the second thing he learns about Max. This, and that he isn’t afraid to share.
Max pulls open the glove box and throws a brick-shaped book at him. The Ultimate Road Atlas: United States, Canada, Mexico.
“Call me whatever you want. You’re navigating.”
“Anyone waiting for you at home?” Another attempt by George to fill the silence.
Max pauses and says no.
“Come on, surely there must be someone. What about your parents?”
There was no reaction. Max is focused on the road ahead. When George turns absentmindedly to the field of oscillating oil rockers to his right he hears him say:
“There’s this kid. His dad owned the pharmacy. We’re the same age, basically grew up together. Had our fights and whatnot. Caused a lot of trouble. We became friends after, or maybe a bit more than that, I would like to think. He let me stay at his place for a while after I left my parents’ house and said I was like a stray cat he adopted. Later his dad died of cancer, so he kind of had to take over the pharmacy now, all by himself.
"It’s bullshit, right? You’ve got so many drugs at your disposal yet none of them can be used to save your own dad. I saw Charles before the funeral. His eyes were red—he had been crying, saying how he wanted to become a doctor since he was a kid. But his family didn’t have the kind of money to see him through all the schooling. Or so he told me. Nobody did in that town.
“I think we liked each other, maybe even in love at some point, but it just…couldn’t have worked, you know? I was a good-for-nothing son of an alcoholic who didn’t have a stable job, barely keeping myself alive with whatever little amount I could get as a car mechanic’s apprentice. I fought with my dad growing up. When he realized he couldn’t beat me anymore he turned to my mom. So I sent him into the hospital. But because I was underage nothing happened except a few months of community service. No one gave a shit. My mom moved away soon after that. I never saw my dad after he got discharged. Been living in between places with a couple of friends ever since. Most of the time in this car. We haven’t talked in years. I don’t know if he’s alive or not.
“A few days before I left, Charles asked me out to the bar. He bought me drinks and told me he’s getting engaged.”
The last thing George learns about Max is that he is, perhaps, a bit sad.
Over the past few hours, Max learns the following facts about George:
The first thing is that he is scared of physical contact. When Max backs up the car he would put his right hand on the passenger seat and turn around to look through the rear window. As he does this his hand sometimes inadvertently brushes over George’s shoulder. And like a bolt of lightning just ran through him George would recoil and dodge to the side. Neither of them would say anything and both would pretend nothing happened. The next time Max has to reverse the car he would intentionally avoid touching George, who would remain stiff in his seat like a wooden plank.
The second thing is that when George looks at him, for a very brief moment he would stare, even if he doesn’t intend to, with a piercing intensity as if he’s going to see through Max’s skull and examine his brain, his every thought. Like he’s completely naked in front of him. This leads to an unwelcoming feeling swelling up in Max’s chest. But it never lasts, and when George suddenly looks away it makes him feel even worse.
The third thing is that George doesn’t like to talk about himself.
“You have a funny accent. Where’s that from?”
“Not here.” George rolls his eyes.
Max decides not to pursue further.