Driven: The Sequel to Drive Read Free Page B

America’s all about.”
Another incoming call sounded on Manny’s line. He was gone seven seconds, tops. “Told ’em to fuck off. So you’re telling me you just walked away?”
“You got it. House. Car. That life.”
“What now?”
“Who knows. I’m in the wind. See where it takes me, I guess.”
“Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? Been here before. Nietzsche’s eternal return and all that shit.” The call alert sounded again. This time, Manny ignored it. “You could come on back out here. Fresh out of fatted calves, but I’d gladly buy you a plate of pork and yucca.”
“And I’ll do that. Soon. But for now—”
“Yeah, sure. Just be careful. Things may not be as easy as they used to be. Some of it comes back, some doesn’t.”
Driver looked around. His couples were gone. A younger crowd seemed to be moving in now, wagging their iPods and cellphones behind them, fatally connected.
Why had he called Manny in the first place? We talk up our problems to others, odds are high we’re doing it either to reassure ourselves that what we’re doing is right or to talk ourselves into doing something we know is stupid.
Yeah, he thought—that about covers it.
Wondering about motivations, why he or anybody else did what they did, was something he did his best to steer clear of. How the hell could you ever know? Act, when it was called for. Otherwise, hang back.
And the next act here, for him, had to be wheels.
There was, of course, a huge parking lot filled with cars just outside, any one of which could be his. And he wouldn’t hesitate, if it became necessary.
But for now it wasn’t.
— • —
     
I should have figured this out a long time ago, Bill thought. Life could have been a hell of a lot simpler. Now he could say and do as he pleased. The manners he’d been raised with; that sensitivity stuff he’d later had to learn, having to put up with other people’s shit whether he wanted to or not—all of it was out the door, down the block and gone.
Now he could just stare at Wendell when he asked if Bill would be wanting to go out and sit with the others, watch some TV, play cards, they’d like that. Didn’t have to react at all if he didn’t want to. They’d put it down like everything else to Mr. Bill’s not quite with us today . The Alzheimer’s or whatever it was they thought he had.
In a way they were right. The world out there, the one they lived in, was just pills and bad food and waiting. It smelled bad. But the world he carried around with him, that one was rich with people he’d known, places he’d been, things he’d done. The pictures there still moved.
Thing is, he liked Wendell. And he wondered if maybe Wendell knew what was going on with him. Sometimes when Bill sat there not responding, Wendell would look him in the eye and grin. Like a month back, something like that, when the “weekly entertainment” was a folk singer. Bill hated the fucking sixties, and here it was, standing in front of him. Long hair, tie-dye shirt, a smile that made you want to knock him silly. Sillier than he already was. Laughing at his own jokes. Pretending to flirt with the old women in the front row.
The guy’s first song started ‘My life is a river,’ Bill thinking the hell it is, my life’s like my head, nothing but dry fallen leaves in there. It’s not over, Eli said again and again, his oldest friend and the only one besides Billie who visited him. But it was, or well nigh.
He’d looked over and seen Wendell watching him.
Still, last night had been, by their standards, huge. Roommate Bobby’s daughter had smuggled in Bobby’s favorite, Girl Scout cookies and a pint of Early Times bourbon. It wasn’t in the rule book, but they weren’t supposed to have alcohol here. The list of reasons went on and on: confusion, dehydration, medication interactions, livers already sorely abused. Bill and Bobby finished the cookies in short order, drew out the bourbon, one sip at a time.
Now Bill sat