The Last of the Wise Lovers Read Free Page A

ceiling of the tunnel,
and once again the cars were standing in a long line, waiting for a worker in a
Day-Glo vest to direct them between two barriers.
    "We understand that it's not possible to
break off contact in a day," he said, "and we're also not interested
in... how shall we call it... making waves.  We'll give you a week, all
right?"
       I nodded.
       "Even two weeks...” He turned on
a tiny light on his wristwatch, "Today is the 24th of August... you've got
'till the 6th of September, just before Labor Day.  That should be enough,
shouldn't it?"
       Again that itch under the wig.
 This time I pushed two fingers up and reached in almost to the middle of
my scalp.  That was a real relief. The worker signaled for me to start to
move.  The traffic became less dense, and it seemed the guy in the back
seat had made himself at home, since he sounded pretty relaxed when he said:
"I'll give you up until the very last day, and I hope you won't disappoint
us, because if you don't stop by the 6th of September, we won't have any
choice. Maybe we'll wait another day, and maybe we won't, but we'll have to act
on the 7th of September at the very latest."
       "September 7th," I
rehearsed to myself.
       "Things will be very
uncomfortable for you," he bent forward so I could hear him breathing, and
a dry little cough that choked him when he added, "and him...” (hack,
hack), "him we'll have to finish off ."
       Then several things happened at once:
I slammed on the brakes in alarm, turned the wheel in order to pass another
barrier, and finally managed to dig my hand in under the mess of bobby pins on
my head. The pressure of my fingers forced the wig to fly forward onto my
forehead, and a million curls covered my eyes.  I tried to straighten out
the wheel, but the car skidded with a loud shriek and scraped against the wall
of the tunnel.  There was also a great thud from behind: the Chevrolet,
which hadn't had time to stop, had plowed into me.
       I felt around on the back of my head
and discovered that most of my hair was exposed.  The guy had undoubtedly
already caught on that he was talking to the wrong customer.  He let go a
short curse and took off.
       The cars in back of me began honking
their horns like mad.  The Chevrolet tried to disengage itself from my
back bumper.  After pulling back three times he changed tactics and
started pushing, and then, after we'd made a nice deep gouge in the wall of the
tunnel, he managed to break free of the bumper, pass me, and tear off like some
great wounded beast.  I tried to peer into the Chevrolet, but all I could
see in the bad light of the tunnel was a grey coat that the guy next to the
driver had pressed against the window.
       The police got there immediately.
 First a highway patrolman on a motorcycle who didn't even bother to order
me to get out of the car, just pushed me over and drove the car to the end of
the tunnel, and then two cops in a mobile unit who took more interest in the
wig, the high heels, and the padded bra than in the accident or the shattered
window.  I had enough sense not to tell them about the guy in the back
seat and his promise to finish somebody off on the 7th of September.  Back
then I still thought that all I'd have to do was tell Mom, and everything would
be ok.  You, with your education and experience, will undoubtedly see this
as naive, but after all, what does a kid of seventeen and a half know about
what's called in the books `human nature'?
     
    *
      
    You can probably imagine at least some of what
happened next. After they'd finished checking my license and all my other
papers, the police called home.  Mom came to pick me up in a taxi.
 The car was left there, stuck on a side lane of the road to New Jersey,
in the rain.
       We didn't talk on the way home.
 Mom just stared out the window.  She was apparently thinking about
the car I'd wrecked, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't help
letting go