Driven: The Sequel to Drive Read Free

Elsa had come from. Her spirit, the quiet at her center, her generosity.
“But we will miss you too, Paul. We are your family. What is going on now, once it’s done, however and whatever it is, we hope you’ll come back to us. We’ll be here.…I have to go, son.”
Driver was at America’s Tacos on Seventh Avenue, misters going full, no one else out here on the patio. Mostly couples inside, beyond the windows. Just two men eating alone. One of them young, crested hair, denim shirt with sleeves ripped off, head bobbing to the piped music. The other in his fifties or sixties, staring at the wall as he ate. Lost in reverie? Or to memory?
Leaving, Driver dropped his paper plate, cup, and cell phone in the recycle container.
— • —
     
A young woman was bent over something that looked like a gymnast’s pommel horse, bare butt in the air, eating a burger as the tattooist worked on her. Every time she took a bite, a brownish mess of grease, mayonnaise and who knows what else spurted onto the floor. Hebrew letters took form slowly on her butt. Justin’s eyes kept going back and forth from that butt to the printout tacked on the wall. His Rasta hair looked like something pulled down from attic storage, first thing you’d want to do is thwack out the dust. Jeans low on hips, shirtless, nipples sporting tiny gold anchors. After watching closely a moment, Driver wondered if the young woman or anyone else realized how bad Justin’s eyes were.
Those who wore their exception like a billboard were a puzzle to Driver. Given his circumstances, he’d always worked hard to appear to fit in, not be noticed. But he was with them in spirit.
The tattooist’s head turned. Driver watched as his eyes worked to grab and hold the new focus.
“From the look of you, no way you’re here for ink, so I’m thinking you have to be Felix’s friend.” He laid a hand lightly on the young woman’s rump. “Right back, sweetheart.” She shrugged and took another bite of the burger.
Justin kicked off the wall and rode his roller chair across the floor, fetched up at the front counter and went adroitly erect.
“Clothing, laptop, sandwich, Cracker Jacks,” he said, hauling a duffel bag to the countertop. “And…” snagging these from a nail in the wall, “keys. Place is a little out of the way, off the beaten path. But cozy. Or so I hear.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Don’t see Felix do many solids like this. Marine?”
“Something like that.”
“Had to be. Back to my homework, then. Phone’s in there. It’s safe. Felix says call him.”
The woman had finished with her burger. Justin looked at the puddle on the floor and shook his head as he settled in at his post.
— • —
     
Back early on, back before the house, before the job, before Paul West, he had a fascination for malls. In ways he never understood, they drew him. Bright colors, lush displays in windows, the sense and sound of all those bodies moving separately and together, music, the cries of children, friendly banter. Malls were a country in miniature. He visited them, stepped into them, as though just off the ship. As though if only he sat in them long enough, put in enough miles along those arcades and scuffed floors, ate enough food court specials, something—some understanding, some sense of belonging—might solidify around him.
It was a pull he still felt when he met Elsa—at this very mall, in fact. They came back regularly. And sitting here one day, could even be the same table, he’d spoken to her about it, wondering why he kept returning.
Elsa had looked at him in that quiet way she had. “You really don’t know, do you?” Eyes went up as a pigeon took wing from the struts above their heads and sailed off toward the domed roof. Did it think that was sky? “It’s homework, Paul. Anthropology. You’re learning how to fake it.”
And he still must be—since here he was again.
He thought back to how he’d sit and eavesdrop, matching voice and cadence to