Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
- Steven Wright
The lights appeared out of nowhere, at first a glow in the distance. It was odd to have them show like that - suddenly, in the middle of an empty road, no clue where they came from, no idea where they were going. All we'd seen were trees - walls of pines and firs. And now there were these beams, splintering through the snow on the back window, creeping on us slowly, like a cop reading our plates, lying back just far enough to obscure the frame of his vehicle while he phoned us in to the station. Run me a check on a Volvo 240, late-eighties model, Jersey plates, license alpha diamond monkey, two two seven...
"What the fuck is that guy's problem?" Martin turned and looked out the back window.
"Don't turn around." I snapped. "It looks suspicious."
"Where'd that car come from?" Chris kept a death grip on the wheel - squinting, always squinting. "Did we pass an intersection?"
"I don't remember any. Just those carve outs... rest stop type things."
"That's where cops hide, Stu."
"You're paranoid." Martin sniffed at Chris. "If that was a cop, they'd have been on us already. They don't trail you. They pull out, hit the sirens and nail you. You ever had a cop sit on your tail? No. They go for it, right out of the chute."
"Not if they're waiting for some reason to bust you." As Chris argued with Martin I could see the car behind us accelerating quickly, the glow of its headlights filling ours as brightly as the mid day sun. "And he's coming up hard now."
"Put that joint out." Stu barked from the back.
"Not in the fucking ashtray." Chris grabbed my arm.
"Where?"
"In a soda can or something."
"Eat it." Stu snapped. "We don't have time."
"It's not a fucking cop." Martin folded his arms over his chest. "We're not even over the fucking speed limit."
"Who the fuck else would ride us like that?" Chris adjusted the mirror to knock the reflection of the high beams off his face.
"A drunk trying to keep pace."
"Keep pace?"
"Stick with traffic - follow the lights in front of him." Martin huffed. "Works like a laser site on a gun."
"There's no empty soda can, here." I'd been running my hand underneath the passenger seat, checking every inch of carpet only to come up empty.
"Just eat the roach, you fucking pansy."
"Fuck off, Stu."
"It goes out on your tongue. You don't feel shit."
"Why the fuck do I have to eat it? We already have a sack and bowl in the car!"
"Those are my problem. The joint's yours now--"
"It's your shit." I cut Stu off, sensing a "lesson" on the way - some point of dope etiquette supporting the argument that the person holding when law enforcement is spotted has the duty of hiding the evidence. That was true as a matter of practical common sense, but I figured Stu had some heavier, cultural explanation, and I had no patience for the preaching.
"You didn't let me finish."
"What?"
"I was going to say, 'And you're a fucking cramp'."
"Jesus Christ." Martin handed up the empty Jagermeister bottle. "Just put it out in the cap..."
"Then eat it." I turned and saw Stu elbow Martin.
"What's so funny?" I caught Stu's eye.
"What are you talking about?"
"You just elbowed Martin and laughed. I saw you."
"You're fucking paranoid." Martin dropped the bottle in my lap.
"What the fuck is that doing here?" As Chris started hollering I noticed the lights behind us beginning to move into the oncoming traffic lane to our left. "You didn't throw the bottle away?"
"Wasn't my job."
"That's not a fucking excuse, Martin."
"If you tell me, 'Hey, Martin, make sure you throw that bottle away,' I'm happy to do so. Nobody did that."
"Don't give him that bottle." Stu protested. "Make him eat it raw."
The lights were getting closer, easing into the opposite lane. Watching them start to pull up next to us, as if to hit the sirens and order our car to the side of the road, the debate in my head grew frantic, splintered and confused - a litany of mangled musings. If I put it out in the bottle and the cops search the car they can find it and arrest us. If they pull us over and for some reason search us, they'll find it on me and I'll get popped for possession. But wait... Wait just a second... Are these really cops? Probably not. But what if they are? I could just wait until they pulled us over and know for sure. Right, but why take any risk at all? "Fuck it." I shoved the roach in my mouth. It burned for half a second and tasted like charcoal, barely sliding down the parched flesh of my throat. Look at the upside. At a minimum, you won't have to listen to Stu calling you a pussy for the rest of the night.
"Somebody has to tell you to throw away an empty liquor bottle?" Chris was still barking at Martin.
"I assumed somebody else threw it away. There are three other people here. Why is that my job? Because I'm the 'responsible' one?"
As the cat fight in the car continued, I started to make out the shape of the vehicle next to us. "Hey, assholes - look left!" The car went silent as we realized it wasn't the police at all. It was Randal - if anything, at that moment, the absolute polar opposite of every notion of "law enforcement." He'd headed out ten minutes before we did, again taking an alternate route he claimed was faster. Somehow, some way he wound up reconnecting with ours, behind us, all but certainly as a result of getting lost on the first road and driving in circles for twenty minutes.
"Ha ha! Fuck you!" Otto rolled down the passenger window and screamed out of the car, flipping us off as Randal pulled out of the oncoming traffic lane and back into ours, barely yards ahead of our front bumper.
"I'll kill that little shithead." Chris accelerated behind them.
"Did I tell you it wasn't the cops? No-o-o-body listens to Martin."
"No." I grabbed Chris's arm as he tried to shift the car to a higher gear. "You can't even see the fucking road."
"I'm fine."
"You just saw a cow a few miles back and a man jumping a divider."
"It was a stick figure."
"You weren't on the debate team in high school, were you Chris?"
"Fuck you, Stu. You want me to drop your ass off right here?"
"You realize there's no divider on this road." I didn't want to steal Chris's confidence, but someone had to the end the argument. The combination of the bickering and the horrible Samples album playing on the car stereo was driving me insane. Either was tolerable alone, but working in concert they might as well have been the sound collected by a parabolic mic aimed at a saw mill.
Chris stared forward as Randal's car rocketed down the road, turning into a set of blurry red lights two or three football fields ahead, then suddenly turning, crossing over a lane and vanishing behind a blind of trees.
"Where the fuck did he just go?" I watched as Randal's car disappeared up what looked like an old logging road.
"I think that's the way to a state park, like twenty miles West." Martin turned on the center ceiling light and checked his watch. "Or is that East? Which way are we going?"
"Why is he heading that way?"
"It's the scenic route?"
"Good luck finding his way back." Chris snickered.
"He'll be fine." Martin turned off the overhead lamp. "Randal's good with directions."
"Are you kidding me? I headed for the shore with him last year and we wound up in Perth Amboy. He just picks a road and keeps driving."
"It works." Martin leaned in and grabbed a lighter from the center console. "Sooner or later get where you're going."
"How profound." Stu laughed.
"It is, you cynical fuck." A little dramatic, maybe pedantic, but I understood what Martin was saying, or at least the spirit of what he seemed to be trying to explain. Randal knew where he was going. It wasn't as the crow would fly, but he had a direction, generally speaking. Your starting point's a magnet, a deep-rooted memory, lower than instinct or intuition, buried in the medulla. You can go linear - efficient - the shortest distance between the poles. Or you can take the scenic route. Just point the wheel in the direction you think is right and keep tacking on that course until you spot something that looks familiar. Most folks would say it's idiocy to drive through a state park in the dead of winter. Others would say that's when you see the best foliage.
"Excuse me, Thoreau."
You mean 'Frost,' asshole... Frost did roads. Thoreau did ponds. I wanted to say it, but why? Stu was a physics major and it was just a technicality, at least in that moment.
"By the way, did you eat that roach?"
"Yes."
"You really ate the thing? Put it out on your tongue and everything?"
"Yes, Stu. You satisfied?"
"You fucking tool..."
"What?"
"Could you be any more gullible?"
* * *
"So this is why you never eat with anyone in the office?" Jeffrey raised an eyelid, Belushi-style. "You'd rather eat cold cuts in an alleyway?" It was an awful, awkward moment. His question was pointed, and I knew Jeffrey didn't care much for my attitude. It wasn't that we'd fought, butted heads or gotten into one of those "cold war" stare-downs colleagues have with each other in law offices every day. No, our problem was quite the opposite. Jeffrey thought me a snob. And I could never defend myself against his allegations. Look, man. It isn't that I don't reach out to you because I think I'm better than you. I just don't want to burn the one hour a day I have free hanging out with people whose only connection to me is thirty feet of drywall dividers, industrial carpeting and a shared secretary. You're one of those guys who wears blue shirts with white collars, and pocket squares. You hang on the females in the office, abusing the fact that they have no choice but to talk to you. That's all cool with me. You get your jollies however you want... But we're not alike, and I'm nervous around you, like anything I say might cause an argument, seem too seditious for your comfort. I guess the thing is, Jeffrey, this firm, this place, this job - this is where you stopped. Me, I'm not so sure. But I am sure I don't want you to know that.
"Iff-- fiff..."
"What?"
"Ifff-- Ifff..." I gulped hard, shoving a slug of the lox almost big enough to choke me down my throat.
"Are you alright?"
"I was trying to say 'It's fish.'"
"Fish?"
"Yes, fish." I searched for a joke to make but nothing came, so I took the simple literal course. "Smoked salmon, cured with salt. It's good, a Jewish delicacy."
Jeffrey just stared.
"Good for you as well." I was stuttering, looking for a sensible response. "High in omega three." A better grade of protein, Jeffrey. I needed the fuel for the trip. I was going, leaving - on my way to join the circus. You want to do that sometimes, don't you? Somewhere, on some basic level you barely remember you have... You can't seriously want this, the life of a flesh and plasma computer - worked to obsolescence, depreciated to zero then shipped off to West Palm Beach for the inevitable "recycling." There were a thousand things I wanted to say and couldn't. Just like every other day I walked into the firm. You know those urges, the ones we all have and never talk about. The ones where you want to jump up from the desk and shout, "Stop!" Bring the whole place to a halt, freezing the wheels in motion. Make everybody pause at one immediate moment, consider their positions, ages and stations - what they're doing, where they're going.
What's your plan, Mary? Paralegal for life? And what's your aim, Bob? 'Of-counsel' until you have enough saved for a shore place? Is that it? Anyone crazy enough to think they had something bigger in their veins? Or do you all think that's just wildly arrogant, the ramblings of a madman? You don't have to actually do it, you know. I realize we all can't run, flail at our nagging passions. You just have to keep the desire in your head, even if it's only subconscious. Avoid the Stockholm Syndrome and complacency that bring you to thinking 'This job isn't so bad.' Always remember that yes, if you could you'd leave, and if someday you're lucky enough to - if the phone should ring and someone tell you the pharmaceutical company you own 10,000 shares in just found the cure for cancer or a long lost uncle just left you a fortune - you'll drop what you're doing right there and walk straight out the door. Never tell them why. Never say a word. Throw your Blackberry in the nearest fountain and never look back.
Who's still alive inside? Raise a hand.
If you had that kind of power, if you could stop a floor of white collar employees dead and bring them to those considerations well, hell, somebody in charge would have to kill you. Men in black suits would walk you to the car the way Michael Corleone had his lieutenants execute Sal Tessio in The Godfather. "We can't have this. If the people we need to do what we need them to do and believe what we need them to believe start realizing they have options the whole thing turns to shit. It's just business, you understand."
Ever consider, Jeffrey, that if everyone started thinking about their lives the way they ought to the "wage subsidy for overeducated white kids" economy - the armies of consultants and lawyers and stockbrokers - would crash on its face?1
No. I couldn't say that. Jeffery'd stopped and I was still running, and they don't make translators to cover the dissonance between those points on the curve. You used to think about taking off, Jeffrey, but you buried that a long time ago, didn't you? It's alright. I'm sure you have your reasons. I wish I could shake the urge. For some reason or another, however, I seem to be stuck with it.
* * *
The last real "road trip" I recalled prior to that day was a hellish odyssey in the summer between my second and third years of law school. It started in a bar called "The Princeton," a dingy shore club in Avalon. The place was always crowded, packed with beer drunk yuppies, mostly kids from Philly whose families had places at the beach or people like us - seasonal renters and their freeloading friends. I'd call it a pick-up scene except for one little problem. It wasn't. The Princeton was all about drinking. You could meet a woman there, sure, but she was just as likely to vomit and pass out on the deck furniture in a puddle of her own urine as fuck.
And drink we did. Tanqueray and tonics and Beam shooters, one round after another - boozing with a purpose. Trying to get numb, to deal with very strange scene.
I'd rolled into town around seven, after a horrid five hour drive, most of it spent idling in bumper to bumper traffic on Route 47, a back road snaking through the pine barrens of Southern Jersey. It was a two hour trip on the map, but this was late May, start of the beach season. In any other circumstance I'd have lost my mind entirely, but coming from where I was, five hours wasn't bad. I knew the drill. I'd brought newspapers to read in the dead-stopped stretches, along with a cooler, sandwiches and two packs of smokes.
Harris was renting a place in Avalon and he'd invited Bennett and I to spend the weekend. He told us his housemates were friends from high school and technically that was accurate. The only problem was, they weren't his only housemates. The tension in the place was palpable the minute I walked in the door. On one side of the main room were Harris and Bennett, drinking and laughing, watching a videotape of Dolomite on the television next to the fireplace, backs turned away from everybody else. On the other were a group of a people who looked like a missionary group, the males in jorts and sneakers, the women with that female serial killer hair - a cross between Dana Plato's Diff'rent Strokes cut and a shortened version of Mel Gibson's mullet in Braveheart.
The room was split in two and I could tell in an instant there was no blending the groups. It wasn't so much the hair, or that "the others" were playing quarters with Coors Light and howling with glee like it was freshman year in the dorm all over again. It was the jorts. They're a sign, a badge - an irreducible statement saying everything and anything about a person that ought to be unspoken, buried and never disclosed. It's one thing to wear cut-offs, like Bob Weir used to sport on stage (though never as short as his). Maybe you're a hippie throwback, a biker or a guy with a Freddie Mercury moustache spending the weekend in Provincetown. But jorts? Those things are tailored and crafted, and for what? For whom? The man who'd really like to wear denim on the beach but can't abide frayed hems? A lot of people would say making fun of jorts is snobby, picking on Red State attire or less "fashion forward" sorts. I don't think so. Jorts aren't a geographic thing. They're as wrong in St. Louis as they are in Boston or Georgetown, and they aren't a passive mistake. Jorts are a crime of intent. Somebody looked at them, took in their full aesthetic glory and decided he wanted a pair. "I like those 'mini-jeans' over there, but I was wondering.... Do you have them with pleats?"
To be continued...
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1Yeah, greed fuels the engine of industry, but the gears are greased with ignorance.
Posted by PhilaLawyer at 9:56 PM