With Friends Like These... (27 page)

The car that had been behind me did the same. Too closely.

And honked. Not the short honk that’s a semi-irritated notice to get out of the way or get moving, but a long, impatient, hostile honk.

I could see nothing in the rearview mirror except two blinding circles of light. They seemed high. A minivan or a pickup, perhaps. I didn’t know anybody with either vehicle.

I accelerated and nearly rear-ended a car waiting for the light at the corner.

I had a momentary sense of relief that had nothing to do with averting a collision and everything to do with no longer being alone with the car behind me. But of course, if I honked at the car ahead, he’d be as confused and nervous as I was about my caboose’s honk. And if I jumped out and ran to him, he’d bolt if he had any sense, and I’d be an easy target for the person behind me. My minor moment of elation evaporated.

I had never thought through the loneliness of being in a car.

“I am making this up,” I said out loud. I wasn’t convinced, so I kept on talking, more and more loudly. “I’ve spooked myself with dumb stories. Mackenzie waving that envelope of threats. Bad things have been happening lately, but this isn’t one of them. This is how people become mentally ill. This is coincidence. A car behind me, not after me. Another impatient driver. Heavy-footed, heavy-handed.”

I wasn’t completely sure I believed me. The car behind me was dangerously close, and it had been right behind me on the Parkway, too. So to test—to prove that I was only imagining danger—I waited until the light was in my favor and the car ahead of me across the intersection, and then, having crept to the middle of the street, I floored the accelerator, twisted the steering wheel to the left and made a sharp, semiwheelie onto Arch Street.

And the car behind me—a pickup, I saw, as I swiveled my head—did the same, complete with squealing tires, its driver honking and speeding until he was once again nearly on my car. And there he stayed.

Okay, I told myself. I’m not paranoid, I’m in trouble. It is happening. Think.

All I could think of was doing more of the same. It hadn’t worked once, so why not repeat it? I made a second unannounced turn, right this time, onto a one-way street. I immediately regretted the choice. I needed opposing traffic, someone I could wave to, scream to, someone who would miraculously rescue me. But why should traffic patterns be any closer to fulfilling your heart’s desire than anything else was?

Don’t panic, I told myself, dropping my former, more ambitious advice to think. Stay calm.

It is a real challenge to consider one’s options while your car, of its own volition, is violating the speed laws and you are brainless and paralyzed, eyes straight ahead, pulse hammering, hands locked on the wheel like a crash dummy.

I crossed JFK Boulevard and Market in that mode, with all the terrified prisoners in my brain cells screaming do something! Easy for them to say.

Do what? Where?

I wasn’t about to lead the crazed pickup home. Certainly couldn’t go to my parking lot. There was no attendant at this hour, and I wasn’t walking the few blocks home from it. The streets had turned more than mean.

And apparently I couldn’t even get myself arrested for speeding tonight. Wherever everybody was on this foul night, the traffic cops were among them.

I was afraid the pickup was going to bump my car, push it around, force me off the road, but it didn’t. My pursuer seemed only to want to harass and frighten me. He was succeeding, too. He stayed inches away, blaring his horn into the night.

If we were going to play cat and mouse, I would much rather play the cat. I hated this—hated being alone, vulnerable, pursued. I was in a burgundy ’65 Mustang in Center City Philadelphia, but in my mind I wore a cloak, and all around me were desolate moors and howling wind. A woman alone. A victim.

And my epitaph would read: this was Mackenzie’s fault. he should have been there.

Damn! I was so shocked by my own thoughts, I stomped so hard on the gas pedal the car nearly broke the sound barrier.

It nonetheless did not lose the pickup.

But all the same—what had provoked that thought? That woman on the moors? Had I become an urbanized damsel in distress, waving my arms, calling for Mackenzie, ripping my bodice and fleeing up the stairs into the haunted house? A whining, puling girlie girl?

The horror of it made my brain kick back in. I made a plan.

“Okay!” I shouted, presumably to the pickup, more honestly to myself. Loud felt good. Much better than the tears that otherwise threatened. “Follow me, if you want to so much!” I accelerated again—over across the Chestnut Street Transitway, which, luckily, was empty of pedestrians. I saw a very startled street person jump back.

“Sorry,” I shouted. And the next time it was possible, after Walnut, I made a sharp left and floored it.

The pickup had figured it out and didn’t hesitate.

I saw an arm, a gloved hand come out of its window—but the wrong one. The passenger side.

There was more than one of them. I took deep breaths, one for each of my pursuers, two for each. Three. Do not panic.

I looked around for an open store or restaurant. I could fling open the door, leap out, run, but the ground-level shops were all closed, and brownstone homes and medical offices gave no clue as to whether anyone was in them. An East Coast ghost town.

The street numbers bisecting us dropped. Faster, faster I drove, praying frantically at each intersection. Oncoming cars squealed to a halt, swerved. At least if they hit me, they’d become involved, have to notice what was going on—but they were amazingly fine drivers and they didn’t.

And every inch of the way the pickup stayed on my tail.

Cars followed our procession for brief stints, falling back as they observed the speed laws. If they thought anything was odd about the two cars joined at the fender, they kept their opinions and questions to themselves.

I didn’t care. I’d be there soon. I’d be safe.

Time for me and my shadow to turn left. It didn’t bother me this time. We were on the road to the slaughterhouse—I was leading them to police headquarters. “Tailgate all you want, sucker!” I screamed.

I came to a screeching halt. For once there were cars. Lots of them, all stopped. Somewhere ahead, a red light. A very long red light, it began to feel. I changed my diagnosis. There was an accident or other inconvenience ahead. I had come to a stop in the middle of the block. Again there were no all-night diners or other refuges on the street, only a shuttered children’s boutique to my left. To my right, a photogenic and silent old Philadelphia street remarkably like, but unfortunately not, mine, one block long and narrow as a back alley, split the block. It made me acutely homesick.

This waiting wasn’t good. The point was to get to headquarters, to snare my pursuers, but now I was the one who felt trapped in a metal cage.

There was nobody on the sidewalks, no gapers nearby. Perhaps they were all ahead, watching whatever was blocking progress. But there was nobody to call to, nobody to answer a cry for help.

Not good, not good. The pickup honked, but so did the whole line of irritated drivers. I was a sitting target. Any moment now the men behind me could decide not to wait for their game to play through. I double-checked that my doors were locked, my windows all the way up, although of course a rock, a gun, any number of things would make those precautions worthless.

Do not panic! I told myself over and over and over. I sounded remarkably panicked as I thought it, however.

My tormentors lost patience. Perhaps they had figured out why I was retracing my path, heading north. Who cared why? The point was: the passenger door of the pickup opened. A long black-jeaned leg emerged.

I wasn’t going to lead them anywhere. This was coming to a bad end now. Here.

My girlie-girl impulses kicked in again—my breath grew raggedy and I wanted to scream and I made me so mad I twisted the steering wheel until I thought it would rip off, switched into gear, and pressed on the accelerator as hard as I knew how.

The car shot right, in a wide arc into the alley-thin street, miraculously missing the corner house. Saved, I thought. Safe! The pickup, bigger and clumsier and slower, was still on the cross street, its passenger not yet back inside.

The moment was indescribably sweet. I was away, I was safe, I was free. Face it, I was a genius!

Maybe not. The moment was interrupted by a sickening crunch of metal. Think of fingernails on a blackboard, then make the nails iron spikes and the board my beloved auto. The effect on the spine and small neck hairs was intense. The effect on the frame and paint and trim of my car was undoubtedly worse.

I had missed the bricks and front steps, but not the wrought-iron fence surrounding a curbside tree.

I drove on, turning furiously again at the end of the street, then again one more block down. Only after four similar maneuvers was I convinced that nobody was behind me any longer.

There was no point heading for the police station now. I had lost the pickup—in every way. I hadn’t even ever seen the license plate. I had nothing to report but terror.

And only then, on what felt the very long way home, did I give in to an attack of the girlies and do some serious crying, so in a rather perverse manner I got my wish. After the cry, the tension was almost dissipated.

As they say, be careful what you ask for.

* * *

I slept fitfully, waking from a variety of nightmares to check and recheck the locks. By the time I reached school Thursday, I was beyond exhaustion, and at the sight of the school, intensely anxious. What did the pickup driver/lurker—because I had to believe they were one and the same and that there weren’t hordes of people wanting to rid the world of me—have in mind next?

I stood at my mailbox, gingerly extracting what turned out to be innocuous notices. Next to me Harvey Porter snorted and sighed like a proper Type A. “It’s one thing if kids forget assignments,” he said, almost visibly fuming, “or turn them in late, but it’s a whole other issue when they lie. Swear they gave it to me and that I must have lost it.” He had a new tic, an involuntary pull at one end of his mouth. During any given academic year, the staff develops enough nervous habits to keep the city’s neurologists solvent.

Poor Harvey, teaching all day and running rats at night. “Maybe you should do a unit on the psychology of revenge when lied to?” I suggested. “Kind of a gentle, academic warning.”

“I don’t know what to do about her.”

“Don’t cave in,” I said as we left the room. Other people’s problems were fun. So tidy, so open to solutions, unlike mine. “It’s a very familiar ploy. Make her write a new paper.”

“It’s not a paper that’s missing, it’s clippings.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Newspaper clippings?”

“Do you think I ask students for their toenail clippings?”

Perhaps his rats found his wit entertaining. I didn’t. “What kind of news stories?” I held my breath.

“That’s the point: I’ve never seen them!”

“Harvey!” He looked startled. I worked to lower my voice, make it less obviously anxious. “There must have been a topic. What was it?”

“I should have assigned her psychological abuse, because she’s a champion at it. Look how she’s trying to manipulate me. Bad enough the essay was late—kid said she had the flu—but where’s the evidence? Can’t do research without data. She promised it’d be in my box Monday morning, but here we are at Thursday and there’s still nothing, and I am, frankly, furious.”

“Teacher violence, am I right?” I could hardly breathe.

“No matter how furious I say I am, I am not out of control.” He sounded huffy.

“The report, not you. That’s what it was about, am I right?”

“How’d you know?”

I felt light-headed. Giddy. “If kids would only write their names on their work,” I said. “I tell them, all the time, but do they remember?”

“Mandy?”

“Your student did hand it in on Monday, but her hand went into my mailbox. Easy mistake. Pepper, Porter…”

He looked annoyed that this was a case of stupidity, clumsiness, or poor alphabetizing skills, not of malicious intent. Here was another person who wanted to be angry. I, on the other hand, felt a four-day unintentionally aerobic heartbeat slow down. Almost. There was still the issue of the pickup.

“Could I have it, then?” Harvey said.

“Actually, it’s with… I, um, took it home by mistake. Tomorrow I’ll bring it.”

He looked suspicious, as if I perhaps had lied to protect his student, or had not lied but had stolen the clippings. Then he nodded and wandered off toward his homeroom. I climbed the stairs, wishing I could enjoy the moment, experience real relief. After all, nobody had wanted to write my name on that gravestone with the apple for the teacher on it. The articles were only articles. A rose was a rose was a rose, and Wilde was once again proven right. The things one felt absolutely certain about were never true.

Except for the pickup. That had been true, not a case of the wrong mailbox, mistaken identity. The pickup had terrorized me, not Harvey Porter.

Maybe they’d been my statistical terrorists. The ones I had a better chance of being killed by than of getting married. And why didn’t that cheer me along with the idea that I might never know what drugged-out stranger had decided to have some malevolent fun with me and my car last night?

I trudged toward my classroom, bothered even by the question of whether I could get the police to release the students’ clippings without going through eons of red tape and delay and mortifying confessions to Harvey, Mackenzie, and the entire force.

“Yo, Miss Pepper!” Raffi galumphed up the stairs two at a time and entered the classroom with me. I found myself casing the room, checking for lurking bodies. Pickup trucks. But nobody else was there.

“We booked that place, The Scene?” He smiled excessively. Ah, yes. We had to deal with that, too, in some delicate ego-saving fashion. “It’s great, so thanks for finding it. The guy who owns it’s weird, though. Like a citified hermit.”

Yes. Just so. I could see unsociable Quinn with a long beard, hiding inside the restaurant office.