Palo Alto: Stories Read Free

standing in the road. The car went right at it. There was a bump and the figure disappeared underneath the car. I realized I was already pressing the brakes when the car stoppedten yards away. I put the car in Park and pressed the button for the automatic window and stuck my body out the window to look back. The figure was lying facedown on the road. There was no one else around. Just the empty school on one side of the street and on the other some sycamores in shadow. Whoever the figure was couldn’t have seen what kind of car raced into her. I took the moment and drove off before she started moving.
    I was driving fast again, but I obeyed the street signs now. I didn’t know where to go. My rage had dissipated into a little boy’s fear for his safety. I couldn’t go to Susan’s, and I didn’t want to go home because my father would see how drunk I was; but I wanted to get the car off the street. Ed’s house was close, and I drove in that direction. The flaccid monkey mask in the passenger seat looked like it was grinning. It was an object from a different time. Alice Wolfe’s house and Sandy Cooper were far away. The accident had drained the life from everything that had happened earlier.
    Near Ed’s, I parked the car very carefully under the shadow of a large tree. I got out and forced myself to look at the front of the car. There was only a small dent on the front of the hood where the head must have hit. I didn’t see any blood. I realized I was only wearing a T-shirt, and I was shivering.
    I knocked on Ed’s door. Inside, someone grumbled, and then, finally, there were footsteps. Ed’s professor father opened the door. At first only a little, and then he saw it was me and stuck his bald lightbulb head out and smiled, showing his bad teeth.
    “Why, hello, Ryan. I thought you were some late trick-or-treaters, and I was about to tell them to go screw.”
    “Can I come in?”
    “Uhh, sure. Is everything all right?”
    I was still shivering.
    “Yeah, I’m just drunk and I don’t want to drive right now. I don’t think it would be safe.”
    I thought he would understand about being drunk better than my own father. My father was tired of my shit.
    “Sure, come in,” he said. He sat in his chair and I sat on the couch. Ed’s mom wasn’t there. The TV was on to the news, something about the Gulf War. Ed’s dad took up his meerschaum pipe and lit it.
    “Would you like to smoke? Ed usually keeps his pipe here on the bookshelf, but I don’t see it. Here, I have an extra.”
    He picked up another old pipe and loaded it with tobacco.
    “Just suck a bit while you get it started or it will go out.”
    I did, and inhaled sweet-tasting tobacco.
    “Where’s Ed?” he said.
    “Oh, out with the guys, I guess.”
    “Chasing tail, no doubt.”
    This was funny because Ed wasn’t the best guy with the ladies.
    “Hope it works out for him,” he said. “He’s gone through all the tissues in the house.” He laughed a high-pitched, too-big laugh. The longer I sat there, the more I calmed down. It meant no one was coming after me. My father would hardly notice the dent on the already beat-up car. I might get in a little trouble because I had kept the car and not gone homeafter school, but that would blow over. I would tell Susan that I got upset over Nick and went home.
    After about an hour there was something on the news about the actor River Phoenix overdosing outside a club in LA. Then I decided to go.
    “You sure you’ll be all right?”
    “Yeah, I feel okay now. Thanks, Mr. Sales.”
    I never told anyone about the accident. The
San Jose Mercury
ran a story about the woman the day after and so did the
Palo Alto Weekly
. She was a librarian and had been walking home from work. She lived alone.
    My last couple of years of high school, I passed that corner a few times, and the little-boy terror came back. But eventually the feeling left. When I went back home from college to visit my parents, I’d drive past