(2003) Overtaken Read Free Page A

cut across our path forcing
us to step into six lanes of hurtling traffic, or there would be a new mini
mail that had erupted where the map said was sidewalk, with high razor-wired
walls that we had to scale if we wanted to get round it to the identical mini
mall on the other side.
    But we
couldn’t stop. Every morning when we gathered in the lobby of our hotel Sage
Pasquale would hand out complex route maps and photocopies of points of
interest and if anybody suggested we had a day off her face would go all closed
and tight and we were more frightened of her than we were of the Crips and
Bloods and lone maniacs who were waiting out there for us.
    One
day, our sixth, while we were sheltering from the sun under an overpass of the
I-405 on Santa Monica Boulevard and Colin was emptying blood out of his shoe, a
Range Rover did a U-turn and stopped next to us; the driver pushed the
passenger door open: it was the English actor Ian McShane, his hair painted the
same black as the Range Rover. He said, ‘I knew you had to be English, nobody
else white would be walking here without pushing a shopping cart full of cans.
Would you perhaps like a lift to somewhere less terrifying?’
    But
Sage Pasquale shouted, ‘No, we’re on our holidays, go away!’
    He
looked pityingly at the rest of us and he went away. Later on that day we were
walking a particularly alarming stretch of La Cienaga Boulevard: a lowrider
crammed to the roof with massive crack-confused Tongans had just crawled past
us for the third time when, passing a car lot with rows of triangular plastic
flags hanging in the limpid air, Loyd spotted a black V8 Ford Econoliner van
with tinted windows, six velour-coated swivelling captains’ chairs, folding
tables, carpet up the walls, a fridge and electricity sockets, its sinister
bulk rising above the Lincolns, Pontiacs and over-bumpered Volkswagens. Loyd
gave a cry and said he simply just had to have it right there and then. We all
immediately said, ‘Oh yes, it’s fantastic!’ and, ‘That’s the greatest van I’ve
ever seen!’ The salesman in the orange blazer and the polyester trousers with
the belt buckle that spelled out ‘Handguns’ never had an easier sale. From then
on we were able to ride the freeways to the beaches and the deserts without it
seeming like a bad idea that we had once thought we could walk it.
    After
the holiday the van was shipped back to Britain on a container ship and Loyd forced the computer games design
company he worked for to let him keep it as his company car. Loyd’s bosses
absolutely hated seeing it there in his named parking place looking like some
sort of Syrian taxi — they’d much rather he drove a black Audi TT like they all
did; Loyd said it really was rather surprising how conservative
nineteen-year-olds could be.
    When
one of us wasn’t present, if you’d heard us talking :about them, sometimes
you’d have thought we hated each other. ‘Him and his wife already buy most of
the tickets for most of the shows, choose the restaurants, suggest the
holidays,’ Colin said. ‘Now since he’s got that fucking van and he’s started
driving us everywhere we have to do everything when he wants us to do it.’
Colin was always a bit overheated in those days. He had until, recently been
married to Paula who was thirty-three, exactly the same age as the rest of us.
Paula and Colin seemed as happy a couple as Loyd and Sage Pasquale, though
admittedly their life was o bit more complicated because they’d given birth to
the only child that we’d managed to produce between us, a boy of fourteen whose
existence we were barely conscious of. The idea that Colin and Paula were
married seemed to be a fact as solid as that Chester was up the M56 or that golf was shit; when they split up I had to
go to Chester to check it was
still there. Colin had not seemed at all unhappy being married to Paula but
then he’d met Kate, a student teacher at a school he’d been inspecting; pretty
soon he