A Scanner Darkly

“This must be bad on you,” Arctor said to the two elderly people.

“It goes on all the time,” the elderly man said. “We hear them all night, night after night, fighting, and him saying all the time he’ll kill her.”

“We should have gone back to Denver,” the elderly lady said. “I told you that, we should have moved back.”

“These terrible fights,” the elderly man said. “And smashing things, and the noise.” He gazed at Arctor, stricken, appealing for help maybe, or maybe understanding. “On and on, it never does stop, and then, what is worse, do you know that every time—”

“Yes, tell him that,” the elderly lady urged.

“What is worse,” the elderly man said with dignity, “is that every time we go outdoors, we go outside to shop or mail a letter, we step in … you know, what the dogs leave.”

“Dog do,” the elderly lady said, with indignation.

***

The local police car showed up. Arctor gave his deposition as a witness without identifying himself as a law-enforcement officer. The cop took down his statement and tried to take one from Kimberly, as the complaining party, but what she said made no sense: she rambled on and on about the pair of boots and why she had gotten them, how much they meant to her. The cop, sitting with his clipboard and sheet, glanced up once at Arctor and regarded him with a cold expression that Arctor could not read but did not like anyhow. The cop finally advised Kimberly to get a phone and to call if the suspect returned and made any more trouble.

“Did you note the slashed tires?” Arctor said as the cop started to leave. “Did you examine her vehicle out there on the lot and note personally the number of the tires slashed, casing slashes with a sharp instrument, recently made—there is still some air leaking out?”

The cop glanced at him again with the same expression and left with no further comment.

“You better not stay here,” Arctor said to Kimberly. “He should have advised you to clear out. Asked if there was some other place you could stay.”

Kimberly sat on her seedy couch in her debris-littered living room, her eyes lusterless again now that she had ceased the futile effort of trying to explain her situation to the investigating officer. She shrugged.

“I’ll drive you somewhere,” Arctor said. “Do you know some friend you could—”

“Get the fuck out!” Kimberly said abruptly, with venom, in a voice much like Dan Manchen’s but more raspy. “Get the fuck out of here, Bob Arctor—get lost, get lost, goddammit. Will you get lost?” Her voice rose shrilly and then broke in despair.

He left and walked slowly back down the stairs, step by step. When he reached the bottom step something banged and rolled down after him: it was the can of Drano. He heard her door lock, one bolt after another. Futile locks, he thought. Futile everything. The investigating officer advises her to call if the suspect returns. How can she, without going out of her apartment? And there Dan Mancher will stab her like he did the tires. And—remembering the complaint of the old folks downstairs—she will probably first step on and then fall dead into dog shit. He felt like laughing hysterically at the old folks’ priorities; not only did a burned-out freak upstairs night after night beat up and threaten to kill and probably would soon kill a young girl addict turning tricks who no doubt had strep throat if not much else besides, but in addition to that—

As he drove Luckman and Barris back north, he chuckled aloud. “Dog shit,” he said. “Dog shit.” Humor in dog shit, he thought, if you can flash on it. Funny dog shit.

“Better change lanes and pass that Safeway truck,” Luckman said. “The humper’s hardly moving.”

He moved into the lane to the left and picked up speed. But then, when he took his foot off the throttle, the pedal all at once fell to the floor mat, and at the same time the engine roared all the way up furiously and the car shot forward at enormous, wild speed.

“Slow down!” both Luckman and Barris said together.

By now the car had reached almost one hundred; ahead, a VW van loomed. His gas pedal was dead: it did not return and it did nothing. Both Luckman, who sat next to him, and Barris, beyond him, threw up their arms instinctively. Arctor twisted the wheel and shot by the VW van, to its left, where a limited space remained before a fast-moving ‘Vet filled it up. The Corvette honked, and they heard its brakes screech. Now Luckman and Barris were yelling; Luckman suddenly reached and shut off the ignition; meanwhile, Arctor shifted out of gear into neutral. The car slowed, and he braked it down, moved into the right-hand lane and then, with the engine finally dead and the transmission out of gear, rolled off onto the emergency strip and came by degrees to a stop.

The Corvette, long gone down the freeway, still honked its indignation. And now the giant Safeway truck rolled by them and for a deafening moment sounded its own warning air horn.

“What the hell happened?” Barris said.