Motherless Brooklyn

Highway driving was maximally soothing. The steady flow of attention and effort, the nudging of gas pedal and checking of mirrors and blind spots with a twist of the neck subsumed my ticcishness completely. I was still bleary, needing sleep, but the novelty of this odd chase and of being farther out of New York City than I’d ever been worked to keep me awake. I’d seen trees before-so far Connecticut offered nothing I didn’t know from suburban Long Island, or even Staten Island. But the idea of Connecticut was sort of interesting.

The traffic tightened as we skirted a small city called Hartford, and for a moment we were bricked into a five-lane traffic jam. It was just before nine, and we’d caught Hartford’s endearing little version of a rush hour. Tony and the giant were both in view ahead of me, the giant in the lane to my right, and as I cinched forward a wheel-turn at a time, I nearly drew even with him. The red car was a Contour, I saw now. I was a Tracer following a Contour. As though I’d taken a pencil and followed the giant’s route on a road map. Mlane crept forward while his stood still, and soon I’d nearly pulled up even with him. He was chewing something, his jaw and neck pulsing, his hand now moving again to his mouth. I suppose to maintain that size he had to keep it coming. The car was probably brimful with snacks-perhaps Fujisaki paid him for his hits directly in food, so he wouldn’t have to bother converting cash. They should have gotten him a bigger car, though.

I braked to keep him in front of me. Tony’s lane began to slide ahead of the others and the giant merged into it without signaling, as though the Contour conveyed the authority of his brutish body. I was content to let some distance open between us, and before long Hartford’s miniature jam eased. Heartfood handfoot hoofdog horseradish went the tinny song in my brain. I took a cue from the giant’s chewing and rustled in the bag of sandwiches on the passenger seat. I groped for the hero, wanting to taste the wet crush of the Zeod’s marinated peppers mixed with the spicy, leathery pepperoni.

I had the hero half devoured when I spotted Tony’s black Pontiac slowing into a rest area, while the giant’s Contour soared blithely past.

It could mean only one thing. Having reached this point behind Tony, the giant didn’t need to trail him anymore. He knew where Tony was going and in fact preferred to arrive sooner, to be waiting when Tony arrived.

It wasn’t Boston. Boston might be on the way, but it wasn’t the destination. I’d finally put men of peace and place of peace together. I’m not so slow.

And appropriate to the manner of the evening’s stakeout and the morning’s chase, I still stood in relation to the giant as the giant stood to Tony. I knew where the giant was going-a freakshow chasing a context-I knew where they were both going. And I had reasons to want to get there soonest. I was still seeking my edge over the giant. Maybe I could poison his sushi.

I pulled into the next rest stop and gassed up the car, peed, and bought some ginger ale, a cup of coffee and a map of New England. Sure enough, the diagonal across Connecticut pointed through Massachusetts and a nubbin of coastal New Hampshire to the entrance of the Maine Turnpike. I fished the “Place of Peace” brochure out of my jacket and found the place where the Turnpike left off and the brochure’s rudimentary map took over, a coastal village called Musconguspoint Station. The name had a chewy, unfamiliar flavor that tantalized my syndrome. I spotted others like it on the map. Whether or not Maine’s wilderness impressed me more than suburban Connecticut, the road signs would provide some nourishment.

Now I had only to take the lead in this secret interstate race. I was relying on the giant’s overconfidence-he was so certain he was the pursuer he’d never stopped to wonder whether he might be pursued. Of course, I hadn’t spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder either. I twitched the notion off with a few neck-jerks and got back in my car.

She answered on the second ring, her voiancittle groggy. “Kimmery.”

“Lionel?”

“Yessrog.”

“Where did you go?”

“I’m in-I’m almost in Massachusetts.”

“What do you mean, almost? Is that like a state of mind or something, Massachusetts?”

“No, I mean almost there, literally. I’m on the highway, Kimmery. I’ve never been this far from New York.”

She was quiet for a minute. “When you run you really run,” she said.

“No, no, don’t misunderstand. I had to go. This is my investigation. I’m-invest-in-a-gun, connect-a-cop, inventachusetts-” I mashed my tongue against the cage of my gritted teeth, trying to bottle up the flow.

Ticcing with Kimmery was especially abhorrent to me, now that I’d declared her my cure.

“You’re what?”