Final Stroke (52 page)

When he saw Jan in the rearview mirror he thought he’d had another stroke, the signals inside his brain bouncing off the inside of his skull the way images bounce off a mirror. Marjorie Gianetti ricocheting around inside his head with everything else. Marjorie saying some thing about her husband being interested in politics, so interested he’d struck a deal to rig votes during a Presidential election. And now, sud denly, Steve recalled trying to tell Jan about this confession Marjorie
had made, but failing. Jan staring at him as if from a distance with a confused look on her face as he tries to reveal Marjorie’s secret. Jan staring at him as they sit in the television lounge on the third floor. His confusion keeping Jan at a distance.

But they were not in the television lounge. He was not having a stroke. Jan was staring at him from a physical distance. She was in the mirror!

The Lincoln. The parking lot. One good hand and one bad hand on the steering wheel. Jan here in the parking lot. Jan behind him in the mirror. It wasn’t in his head. It was real.

There was a whole man and a half man in the mirror with Jan. The whole man had a gun and was alternately pointing it toward him, then back at Jan. The half man was on the ground tilting back and forth as if bobbing in water. The half man had hold of Jan’s ankle and Jan had fallen to her knees and was trying to crawl away, crying out and looking in his direction. At him!

As he became certain Jan was really there, that this was really happening, there was a rapid dip, as in an elevator. In the mirror the earth came from below and swallowed Jan, along with the whole man and the half man. When this happened he looked back through the windshield and reacted.

The ramp. The Lincoln nosing down. When he jammed on the brake, the van continued down the ramp, slamming into the concrete loading dock wall as the Lincoln skidded to a stop behind it. He reached across with his left hand and shoved the Lincoln into reverse. He turned in the seat and began backing up. Jan was there. The whole man and the half man were there. He accelerated hard. No time to trifle with whether this is real or imagined. No time to analyze.

Gun aimed at him, so he buried his head behind the seat. Then, not hearing a shot amidst the din, he looked out the rear window and saw the man with the gun running off to the side. But not fast
enough. The man dove to the side and there was a muted thud and a shout as the Lincoln clipped the man’s legs and sent him spinning on the asphalt.

Jan and the half man separated. She stood and limped to one side. The half man clamored along the ground like an elf. She kicked at something and the elf went in the direction she had kicked.

Steve could tell she was injured. One leg collapsing beneath her so badly she had to struggle to hold herself upright. Her raincoat was buttoned on top but flew open below and he could see the tails of her blouse and her bare midriff.

For a moment he thought he was in the midst of a stroke again, or a dream, or a seizure. He was with Jan back in his room on the third floor. They had propped the chair against the door and he was in bed and she was unbuttoning her blouse. But it was too real to be a dream.

He cranked the wheel of the Lincoln violently, bringing it to a stop with its passenger side facing Jan. In a way he had become the Lincoln and the Lincoln had become him. Jan was there, seeing him, reaching out for him, touching him.

The image of Steve, looking at her through the window, was beautiful. When she pulled open the door he was still there. His wheelchair was on the floor leaning against the seat, so she crawled in next to him, kneeling on the seat while she slammed the door shut.

The car was already moving when she turned to him. He was real.

He was beautiful. “Steve!” “Yeah!”

She hugged him. She wanted to tell him this is all she wished for, all she ever wanted in the world. To be able to hold him and tell him she loves him.

Another plane took off from O’Hare, its rumble beginning to shake things. If the 767 had been able to linger for a minute or two, hover
ing over Hell in the Woods instead of hurrying off toward Orlando, passengers on the starboard side with window seats would have been able to see it all.

A Lincoln trying to leave the parking lot. A Ford Crown Victoria ramming the Lincoln from the side before it could reach the entrance road. An injured man dragging himself toward another Crown Vic and, after great effort, crawling inside. A fat elf-like creature without legs crawling toward a van with a damaged front end parked nose-in against a loading dock. Two men leaping from the van, one of the men holding his head, both of the men running past the elf-like crea
ture toward the parked Crown Vic into which the injured man had crawled. The Crown Vic with the injured man and the two men from the van pulling out of its parking space. The van with the elf-like crea
ture inside backing away from the loading dock.

When the Crown Vic rammed the Lincoln’s rear fender, they were spun around facing back the way they’d come. He did not want it to end this way. He wanted to drive out of here. He had Jan and he wanted to drive the hell out of here! But the Lincoln was turned around and the Crown Vic that had rammed them was turned around and was backing toward his door.

It was a demolition derby. Steve floored the Lincoln just in time and the Crown Vic sped past the tail of the Lincoln in reverse, then
quickly did a half turn, reversing its direction and coming after them.

He wanted to tell Jan to hang on, but there was no time for that, and she was hanging onto him, he could feel her hands squeezing his bad arm. In spite of all that was happening, the pressure of her hands squeezing him felt wonderful.

He drove ahead and picked an aisle amongst the parked cars. But when he drove halfway down the aisle, headlights appeared at the other end of the aisle and the other Crown Vic sped toward them.

From above, if the 767 had lingered instead of moving off, the parking lot would have appeared like a video game, a video game played amidst the thunderous roar of the 767’s engines as it climbed and turned hard south so it would not disturb the west side of the city. The game had four moving parts: a dark van, two dark Crown Vics, and a white Lincoln.

The Lincoln avoided a collision with one of the Crown Vics by turning into vacant parking spots and getting over to the next aisle of the parking lot. The other Crown Vic came down that aisle chas
ing the Lincoln. The van circled the perimeter of the parking lot, ap
parently waiting for the Crown Vics to chase the Lincoln out from amongst parked cars.

When the Lincoln made a run for the only road leading out of the parking lot, it was rammed in the rear driver’s side by one of the Crown Vics. The Lincoln drove a wobbly path, turning away from the road because the van had now stationed itself there. The Lincoln drove back toward the building along the edge of the lot, ventured off the pavement when the other Crown Vic sped past in reverse on a col
lision course, fishtailed in the mud, almost getting stuck, then came back on the pavement and continued toward the building.

The Crown Vic that had rammed the Lincoln was still running, but its airbags had gone off and one headlight was out and instead of
rejoining the pursuit of the Lincoln, it drove slowly out of the lot on the access road.

As the Lincoln neared the back end of the building, the other Crown Vic did a half-circle of the lot and was back again, turned around and driving in reverse down one of the aisles. It sprung from the aisle like a blade concealed in the handle of a knife and hit the Lincoln in the front passenger side, slowing the Lincoln’s already slow progress toward the building. Then the Crown Vic pulled off, going forward back down the aisle to the far end of the lot.

The windshield of the Lincoln was fogging up from steam emerg
ing from beneath the hood. The sweet-sour scent of antifreeze filled the inside of the car. Both front wheels were damaged, the right front tire apparently flat from the last collision.

The Lincoln was no longer useful as an extension of himself. And because of this, he was no longer useful. Jan would have been better off running into the woods instead of joining him. He had done what he had set out to do. He had made waves, injecting chaos into the situ
ation. And Jan had done what she was supposed to do. She had run. Except she should have run away instead of running to this crippled fool! She was alive and healthy. Goddamn it! She needed to live!

Jan had reached over and was helping him steer, keeping the wheel from spinning back in the opposite direction when he had to let go of the wheel to reposition his left hand on it.

“They’re coming around again!” she screamed.

But they would not hit him again. He was heading for the ramp that led up the side of the loading dock, the ramp he had sailed down in his wheelchair earlier that night.

“Is it wide enough?” shouted Jan.

He nodded and held onto the wheel, steering the Lincoln directly toward the ramp.

The railings were welded steel pipe. He wasn’t sure if it was wide enough, but he felt it was their only chance. The railing on the right side did a ninety degree turn to the right and continued along the loading dock drop-off until it stopped where trucks backed in. If they made it through to the top and he put the nose of the Lincoln against the build
ing, there would be just enough room to open the passenger door.

“Not wide enough!” shouted Jan. “But we can scrape through to the top! If the door opens we can get out and run inside before …”

“You out!”

“No, Steve! Both of us or neither of us!”

Ramp coming up fast. Like threading a needle. A little to the right. More to the left.

As the Lincoln climbed the ramp, the steel railing bent outward but also tore into the side of the Lincoln. Inside, it felt and sounded like huge grinding wheels had been applied to both sides. They had threaded the needle, but too fast, and he slammed on the brake.

Her head throbbed and a female voice came from somewhere, a mat-ter-of-fact female voice saying something about an accident reported at Saint Mel in the Woods. At first she thought she was still in that other world between a man with legs and a man without legs. At first she thought one of them had hit her so hard she’d been thrown into the front seat closer to the police scanner. But the voice came from beneath her and she realized she was lying on the radio. Steve’s radio! He had driven up the ramp and they had crashed into the building!