Lurid & Cute (32 page)

that is surely our hero's right

In the street, happy people among the damp palmettos were shopping or speed-dating and were delighted. In a parked car a man was sitting, listening to some cool jazz, tapping drumsticks on the steering wheel. Whereas here I was, with a dead dog in my arms, and Hiro sparkling and beeping beside me. It saddened me how I could not be absorbed in the verdant scene at all. There I was, in the same street, and I had forgotten what happiness was. I hugged this thought to me, as if it were some hot-water bottle to soothe me in the dark. The only possible conclusion was that a cruel injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly complicated for me? If you thought about it long enough, it was all incredibly unfair. I really did deserve, it seemed to me, a small vacation, perhaps panning for gold, or exploring the South Seas. I owed myself, I thought, at least that much. It did not seem unreasonable. For perhaps, I wondered, as we slammed the car doors shut, it was possible to do good in different ways? The effort that is necessary to create a better world! No bravo in a mass brawl in a pastiche hostelry had it worse than me … I looked at Hiro beside me in the car, holding the dead dog very tenderly, and I felt so tenderly about him too, just as I tenderly also remembered the similar way in which Candy had carried our dog home, in the car, when he was only a month or so old, and she looked into his eyes with love.

 

THE CUTE

or so it seems

To drive at high speed in a built-up area is a very specific thrill. To complete the mafiosi picture, we only needed to be shooting out the windscreen from inside so it crumbled up, like icing sugar. And if in the annals of history other children have been transformed by time into drug baronistas, or hit men, why couldn't I be transformed too? I felt like an outlaw and in many ways, I reflected, I think I was, if by outlaw you include those excluded from their normal world. I was so grand I was benevolent, and it occurred to me that in this matter of trying to restore some calm, before I went out to the woods I could take this sorry car, whose paintwork might well be briefly stained with canine blood, to the car wash. And this was especially generous because that kind of situation is never one I like – to be served by sad waterproofed people who do not disguise how unhappy they are to serve you. But still, I will let myself be served, after all, even if this kind of practical situation always perplexes me with the various things I do not know. Behaviour is difficult, and perhaps the difference between those who can do things and those who cannot is one of the hidden divisions of our time – much more than capitalists and workers, or blacks and whites. Like for instance people were tapping on the bonnet and asking me to open it, while looking concerned at some miniature piles of sodden leaves that had gathered in the well in which the windscreen wipers sat – but I had never opened the bonnet before and did not know how it might happen. So I gave a gesture that was intended to mean that really I did not care, but they did seem still to care and I cursed this obsession with professional appearances. So to indicate how unimportant these leaves were I tried to move forward but this only made them shout, and therefore I tried to argue that it really was no bother but they were implacable and so finally I admitted that in fact the task was beyond me, and with this admission I thought that this would disarm or charm them, because in general such honesty is to be admired, but instead a man just opened my door, a gesture I found perhaps intrusive, especially in my nervous state, then leaned down beside my leg where the catch was, and in obedient unlikeable response the bonnet gave its miniature sprung spring. I did a gesture of thank you but it was possibly too late, if by that gesture I intended to imply a kind of level between us, a sort of flatness of equality as men. Silently they opened the car doors and then vacuumed the inside edges. Then silently they were putting the bonnet down and telling me to be on my way, and in good-bye I raised a confident hand. For I was trying to maintain a careless blissed-out mood, the kind of equable excitement that makes you basically divine, according to some philosophers and sages – even if, talking of such sages, what I was about to discover in the environs of Toy Town was how many more depths and darknesses in reality existed, as the talmudic sages have known all along. But then, to understand the workings of Fate, it needs no study of the ancient texts. You can do it with that cartoon – where the cat relaxes and is all happy before being malleted by the mouse. I think such cartoons should play on endless loops in every high school and other college.

even if Fate seems also to be lurking once again

For the wisdom of such cartoons is the only wisdom that might prepare you to survive such terrible things, as when for instance you are driving out to the woods in the suburbs of a giant city, in order to give your beloved pet a decent burial, and are in your mind just trying to maintain a small bouquet of happiness, and then in the rear-view mirror you minutely notice that one car seems to have been on the same journey as you – the same mini roundabouts and traffic signals, the same views of tennis courts and funeral parlours and vegetable markets – and while I suppose in every city there are people mimicking each other's journeys, that's just one feature of a giant city and its mania for multiple coincidences, this one did seem strange to me. Not perhaps so strange that I had to consider it a threat, but still, it seemed of let's say
interest
. I could not after all forget that we had just done much violence, and I suppose no act of violence can be assumed to exist without its consquences, possibly no act at all. Although to be chased still seemed a little exorbitant, for surely in paying back the money we had done what we needed to do? So that it was also possible, I had to admit, that if we were the object of a pursuit, the range of our pursuers could be much more vast than I had first considered. And I would argue that in such a situation the best thing to do next is to do outlandish things, like explore a train station forecourt or make a reconnaissance tour of the area's business parks. And if the same car keeps on following you then perhaps the chances of this being a giant coincidence are maybe slightly diminished. With such thoughts in mind I drove zigzaggingly and disordered, with Hiro just slightly querying the general sense of direction and my possible concentration.

— Kid, said Hiro. — Let us keep our eyes on the road.

It was very good advice and very sober. For to be chased in these places is not the exciting experience the video games and other educational environments have imagined. It requires a much more stressful concentration than the videastes seems to think, since while they imagine constant bursts of speed and a grand disregard for the safety of others, I found that it was not possible in any way to reach the desired acceleration I might need. There were old people crossing roads quite slowly, a funeral cortège involving a Caddy Hearse filled with flowers, and then roadworks with temporary traffic signals, or also at one point a procession for many saints, which made me pause for at least ten minutes, with a Jesus carrying a bright white helium cross on his shoulder. Such a chase is more like the complications of a driving test or proficiency exam, and not some pixelated swirl.

in the guise of an adversary

And also it forgets that if this is an area you know well, then it will have some sad connotations. There was one point when we zoomed down the underpass, then up alongside the hospital and away down the street with the eastern restaurants, then the street with stores for sewing-machine parts, past the zoo, and it occurred to me that this was always the route I had taken with my parents if we drove into the city. It had always been the most romantic route for me, and it still was, even if now it had such danger and tempest attached. I wondered very fleetingly if my parents ever knew, I mean knew how tenderly I thought about this small collection of streets. The nostalgia was very great, even if really I was just one car among the many other traffic items, the ambulances and caravans and bikers in scrambled formations. Beside me, kids were in trucks smoking weed while in a more compact sports thing a probably coked-up girl was probably going to see her orthodontist who was probably superhot. While it was also possible in this system of blockages and slowness that in the limousine behind me a philosopher was being driven to a conference where he was going to prove the non-existence of time, which was one thing I would have liked to believe as I very slowly entered and exited the outer lanes. I do not recommend it, a car chase in the megalopolis traffic. I think to be in such traffic makes it even more difficult for the beginner hoodlum, especially if driving was never that hoodlum's thing. Had I been choosing a location for my first ever car chase I would not have chosen a major city in the twilight, but something more akin perhaps to a deserted freeway in the steppes at night. There was a vast gap as usual between the real and ideal – about as wide as in that story of the screenwriter who wrote down his dream ideas one night on a notepad beside his bed, only to discover in the morning that his big idea was Boy Meets Girl. We were on a road somewhere between the city and the suburbs and not really in the direction of the woods, since that destination was for the moment just suspended while I tried to lose whoever was intent on hunting us down, and I realised that our journey had led me to go past the hotel where I had returned to find Romy bleeding, and yet as I examined it with its pool and palmettos, I could only assume that something was wrong, that to search in this place for that previous time was not possible: since the fact that the time had passed meant also that the place had disappeared, as well. It was the same and not the same, which was just one more demonstration of the world's non-existence. Meanwhile I was feeling more and more frightened and distracted. At the junction for one of the largest shopping centres in the world, I did not make for the quieter roads but instead entered the funnel to one of the city's outer speed routes.

— Well, it's an adventure, Hiro said.

He was so cool it was extravagant. And if perhaps, in retrospect, I could have finally paused, then this is where I would have paused, at this moment of the highest speed. Just look around you! The stars were starting to get scattered in the upstairs loft of the sky. Beside the autoroute, in the distance, the paintball signs, in the twilight, were doing this stammering thing in neon. While below the underpass as we zoomed onto the freeway and into the sky, some tired men who presumably probably came from distant war zones were selling a range of remote controls for absent televisions and a few dead video cameras. Far away, beside the canals, grasshoppers were probably folded up like nail clippers. But the sad thing is that you cannot pause. Because you really cannot avoid a fate. By which I mean, the method by which you avoid it in the end will be the means of your destruction. You prove your new machismo and the very means you use to prove it will be that machismo's takedown and general beating. That's how it is. The dog-god in the end will hunt you down.

pursuing them in an auto chase

We were up there on the Presidential Freeway and to go at the turbo speed I was going made me very much afraid. Whereas the car which was following us was in contrast a very happy automobile. It was careering joyfully among the other cars with a freakish allure of abandon. There were moments when I began to worry that I would soon confuse the accelerator and the brake. I was overwhelmed. The entire scene was so much action that I felt just felled – the way you feel when you've forgotten seventeen appointments and then as you remember them you feel them descending on you just like the lava descended from Vesuvius to Pompeii, or maybe worse, because unlike Pompeii the petrified inhabitant of such everyday cases does not have the luxury of being immediately calcified and therefore excused from further diarising. You have to continue instead, amid the continuing disaster, and for instance try to figure out exactly who this car might be, and why they had such an interest in our persons, since in general I think it's fair to say that most people are able to live very much obliviously to other people, and that's in general the perfect state in which to live. But also as well as thinking these impossible thoughts I had to make many quick decisions, and the decisions I then made were maybe not the best. That should be no surprise when you consider how confusing thinking can be. Now, of course, as I consider the matter from up here in the dulcet clouds of the future, it might well appear that the best would have been to drive for ever on the endless highways until this car behind me disappeared – I should have relied on the gift of speed, and also for safety kept to the open and public roads. But that was not what in fact happened. I was very scared and confused and not after all sure that the acceleration on my vehicle would match that of the car that was so patiently behind us, so that is not what did in fact happen. What happened was that in my panic – and this whole account if it is anything is a description of a panic – I took the very first exit off the motorway and went back down into the ordinary roads and roundabouts. I wanted to make for the woods, after all – for if you have once decided to do the right thing, then you should do it, despite all present dangers. Or at least, I think that's why. I can't be always sure of my motivations. And maybe this absence of a deep reason is just natural. Maybe always when the end point finally comes, and it always will, you will think that it arrives for no good reason at all. I think I also had the idea that in such wilderness and suburb undergrowth I might have the upper hand, because in such a competition it's important to choose your territory, and in particular to choose a territory where you feel at home, the way other creatures choose a burrow. Quickly I entered smaller roads, looping round the cemented village greens, past the water troughs and the mini golf courses converted into car washes, until again we were out of the urban system and instead in some kind of greenery. We were driving through the outer villages that were really just ferocious roads. Still behind me hovered the terrible car. It was a very interesting experience, to know that you are being followed and chased and not have in any way the capability to stop it. I was pausing at every zebra crossing for pedestrians and when I slowed this car slowed as well – which gave me hope because I thought that if you are doing this then you have some respect at least for civilised behaviour. You may not be all blunderbuss and death squads. I wondered if in fact such obedience to the law might represent my only chance. There was night just softly descending its million nets over the houses and the breweries, and I accelerated through the cross-coming traffic with the klaxons doing their diagonal streaming thing behind me, and for a moment I believed that I was free. We were speeding along and I turned down towards the forest and I was thinking that perhaps as usual I would be exempt from major trouble. Then in the mirror I saw that behind me still followed this terrible car.