Demon Box

Thud adjusts the mirror so he can see his reflection, brushes back an oily lock, then “peels out” is, I believe, the term: lays rubber in a squealing fishtailing brodie away from the Mena House turnaround off down Pyramid Boulevard, the pedal to whatever metal there is in a Fiat floorboard. Too late we realize we are in the sainted presence of Brainless Purity; as Las Vegas has distilled Western Materialism down to its purest abstract, so Thud is the assimilated essence of motormad Egypt. Blinking his headlights and blaring his terrible warhonk, he charges the afternoon traffic ahead, fearless as the Bedouin! wild as the Dervish! He reaches the creeping tail end of the traffic pack at full fifty. Never touching the brake he goes rocking shockless over the shoulder to the right of a poky VW, cuts back sharply between two motorcycles, and guns into the left lane to pass a tour bus, the passengers gawking horrified as we cut back just in time, then to the other lane around one of those big six-wheeled UAR machines the two soldiers on top with a cannon-passing left or right, again and again, just making it each time by the skin of our grill, finally getting in front of the pack to what looks like a promising clear stretch a chance to really unwind—except for one minor nuisance, a little accident jam ahead, about thirty cars, coming up fast—

“Thud!”

There is the sickening metal-to-metal cry of brakes screaming for new shoes; then the shudder of the emergency against more scored metal; finally the last-minute cramping skid. My door is inches from the rear of a flatbed full of caged turkeys.

“Jacky for the love of God, tell him no more! I’ve got a wife and kids! Tell him, Muldoon!”

It’s no use; both interpreters are in tongue-tied shock. Thud can’t hear anyway, has his horn full down and his head out the window, demanding to know the meaning of all this mangled machinery impeding us. He eases ahead so we can see. It’s two flimsy Fiat taxies just like ours, amalgamated head on, like two foil gum wrappers wadded together. No cops; no ambulances; no crowd of rubberneckers; just the first of those skinny street jackals sniffing the drippings, and what apparently is the surviving cab driver groggily standing on the center stripe with a green print handkerchief pressed to his bloody ear with one hand, waving the oncoming traffic around with the Other. Thud keeps shouting until he provokes a response. He pulls his head back in and passes the information on to us, so matter-of-factly that Jacky is brought from his trance to translate.

“He says that’s a relative, mother’s side. The dead cabby is also a relative. Was a good relative but not a very good driver—not amin, not reliable.”

“Tell him about my unreliable heart!”

Too late—Thud has spotted what looks to him like a remote possibility, is peeling around the rival driver—the green paisley handkerchief hanging unheld to the injured ear as the man shakes both fists after us in outrage—Thud paying no heed—all under control—situating the rumpled map on the dash so he can study it as he simultaneously scans the road checks his face in the rearview honks his horn drives down the wrong side of the center line straight at a big fucking yellow Dodge panel oncoming with furniture all inside packed clear to the windshield a brass bedstead lashed to the grill in front springs on top while Thud—[Here, the page of the journal is smeared]

October 20. Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, just after dawn and before breakfast… out in back of my cabana in chaise lounge without the chaise.

Jacky went to the desk last night and raised a dausha about them not putting his call through to Jann Wenner and us not getting separate rooms yet. He was so effective they moved us right out of our nice room into two poolside cabanas, tiny cement cells intended for bathing-suit changers, not residents: a hard cot, no windows, no hot water, costing as much apiece as our other room. But Jacky was going nuts with me prowling weird in the wee wired hours from all that Turkish coffee and Pakistani hash…