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The Driver - Part Two

By Andrew Foster Altschul

She inherited them from Susie, whose older sister had graduated with Sam. Susie had lost her virginity to Trey -- an event she'd described, enigmatically, as "really intense" -- then spent her senior year driving them all around until she left for college. They were semi-legends in the high school, older kids who'd never left town, the kind that Chick's mother referred to as "hoodlums." Trey's was a name whispered among smokers and jocks alike, one that required a brief, respectful silence after it. When Susie invited her to meet them, Chick hesitated; the idea of meeting them felt strangely threatening, the allure too strong.

On a hot night early in summer, they'd all hung out in Susie's backyard and drunk beer, Chick sitting quietly on a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes until her scalp tingled. Trey and the others talked excitedly about saving up money to go live in Mexico. Someone had told them you could live on the beach for just a few dollars a day. They would take a bus to the border, then hitchhike south until they found the right place. They'd know it when they got there, they said.

"Do you speak Spanish?" Chick asked, piping up from her lounge chair.

They stared at her as though she'd appeared out of thin air. "Hola, señorita!" Billy leered. His girlfriend elbowed him and he pretended to fall off the picnic table.

"How can you live there if you don't speak Spanish?" she said. "How will you get jobs?" The plan sounded outlandish, the kind of thing people only did in movies. How could a bunch of kids from Upstate just move to Mexico?

"Who is this kid?" Billy said. "What the hell is she talking about?"

Trey turned to her and she felt his eyes move across her face. They tugged on her skin, like the tiny lead weights her father used when he used to take her fishing.

"Do you speak Spanish?" he said.

"She's in Mitchell's honors class," Susie said. "She's totally his little pet."

Trey was still watching her. "He says I have a good accent," she shrugged. He leaned closer, as though he had pulled a cloak over the two of them. When he smiled something warm stirred under her skin.

"You should come with us," he said.

Amid the insect sounds of summer, and the lemony smell of candles, all she could think to say was, "Okay."

She dreamed about him that night, and for days she couldn't get his face out of her mind, his deep eyes and plump lower lip, thin shoulders, the vulnerable way he ran his hand through his hair. On the last day of school, she had to recite Keats' "When I Have Fears" to her English class; it was Trey's face she envisioned while memorizing the lines, Trey standing alone on the shore of the wide world.

The next weekend, the five of them drove from party to party in Susie's station wagon, then walked through the woods to the old train trestle and smoked a joint. They stared into the trees while Trey walked across the trestle, arms out for balance, blending with the shadows on the other side. The tracks were out of service now, but Chick could remember when she was little, how the freight trains rumbled and clattered through town in the dead of night. Her father would sit on her bed when she couldn't sleep, describing the far-off places those trains were going. It gave her an odd feeling to realize how long ago that must have been.

She watched the spot where Trey had vanished, until his shape filled in the darkness again. He crouched next to Susie and whispered, "Is she cool?"

Susie shrugged. "Do whatever you want. I don't care."

While Chick watched, he pulled off his belt and cinched it around his arm. There was the flick of a lighter, Billy burning the bottom of a soda can -- their movements were so practiced and easy, but until she saw the syringe Chick refused to admit that she knew what was happening. Susie kept her back to them, legs dangling over the trestle, arms braced at her sides as though she might push off and fly away.

Billy took the needle and nodded in her direction. "Does she want any?"

Now Susie turned. "Are you fucking nuts? What are you, fucking stupid, Billy?"

"Alright, forget it," he muttered. He handed the can to Sam and pulled a length of rubber from his back pocket. Chick caught a whiff of something pungent, almost familiar. "You don't have to be a complete bitch."

Trey sat back on the gravel. "None for the new chick," he hummed. He lowered himself until he was lying across the old railroad ties. Chick felt herself leaning forward, not wanting to let go of his gaze. "She's just a little baby," he sang, improvising the tune, the words drifting into the night and the tracks speeding into darkness beyond him.

---

Another Friday night at the Iron Horse, they take a table near the back and wait for Pete Cavallaro. He says he has great stuff for them, and they've managed to scrape together five hundred dollars, raiding the Mexico fund for the last hundred. If the dope is as good as he says, it might last them a month. Still, they would have missed the appointment entirely if Chick hadn't dragged them out of the garage. She knows their habits better than they do, can tell them at any given moment how much shit they have, how long it will last, who to call to get more. Where they put the number.

The restaurant is mostly full, families sharing burgers and baskets of fries, the bar lined with men in their twenties and thirties, t-shirts stretched tight over strong shoulders. Black and white photos hang on the walls, railroad workers leaning on sledgehammers, hobos waving from departing trains. The old freight yards are next door to the tavern, derelict boxcars and dead machinery glinting dully in winter light.

"That's what I call living," Trey says, pointing at an old photo, leaning his chair against the wall. "They'd just go from one end of the country to the other, like Jack Kerouac. They didn't even know where they'd end up."

"That's how we could get to Mexico," Billy says. "We'll just jump on trains and save all that money for weed."

"There are no trains anymore, dumbshit," Sam says.

"There are trains somewhere, dumbshit," he says.

"What about food?" Chick asks, taking her own cigarette from the pack. "How are we going to eat?"

"We've been through this," Trey says. He rolls his eyes at her in mock condescension. "That's your department. You're the sugar mama."

"Chick's not your sugar mama," Sam says. She puts an arm over Chick's shoulders. "She's a woman. Besides, she's not coming to Mexico. She's got better things to do than hang out with a bunch of losers."

"Who are you calling a loser?" Billy says.

"I could go to Mexico," Chick says, avoiding Trey's stare. "Why not?"

Before she met Trey, she'd only ever been in the Iron Horse with her parents, for birthday hamburgers or other small extravagances. The night before her father left for L.A., he brought her here, just the two of them. It was the first time she'd drunk beer in front of him -- he poured it into her glass when no one was looking, winking as he held the bottle under the table. When they got home, her mother was hurrying from room to room with a bottle of cleanser, scrubbing light fixtures and windowsills with violent strokes, polishing picture frames and mirrors until they squeaked.

Trey's father comes out from behind the bar, wiping his hands on his apron. He's a big man, tall and fleshy, with thinning white hair. He has the same sad eyes as his son -- heavy lids, irises dark and glassy as hot coffee.
"I thought you were going to work tonight," he says.

"I'll work tomorrow," Trey says, blowing smoke at the ceiling. Chick secretly likes Trey's father. She likes the sureness of his hands when he's working the beer taps and the way he sometimes gives her a free Coke and says, "A cocktail for the lady."

"When you say you'll work tonight, I expect you to work tonight," he says, straightening a photo over Trey's head. "Tomorrow I don't need you."

Trey smirks. "What a nice thing to say to your son, Claude."

"Trey," he frowns, "your mother and I have talked about this--"

"Don't talk about my mother," Trey says. His father crosses his arms. A few of the men at the bar are watching them; one of them catches Chick's eye and smiles. The front door opens, Pete Cavallaro shakes snow off his coat and heads their way.

"It was my fault!" she blurts out, half rising from the chair, spilling her soda glass across the table. Trey's father squints. "I thought he was supposed to work tomorrow. I'm sorry. I swear it won't happen again."

"He doesn't need you to tell him when to go to work, Chick."

Trey spots Pete across the room and gets out of his chair, drops his cigarette to the floor and steps on it. "I don't need anybody to tell me anything."

"Obviously you do," his father says. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I have to go puke. This conversation is making me sick." His father puts a hand on his shoulder, but Trey shrugs it off and heads to the bathroom, throwing open the door so it smacks against the wall. Pete follows him inside and they all watch the door shut. Ice cubes and soda drizzle onto the floor.

For a long moment, no one says anything. One ice cube glides across the table. When Trey and Pete come out of the bathroom, slapping each other on the back, Billy and Sam quickly mutter goodbyes and follow them to the door. Chick puts on her coat slowly, avoiding Trey's father's eyes.

"You ought to be careful," he says, turning to watch them leave. The snow has started again, glittering orange and silver in the streetlights out the door. "You seem like a smart girl. Too smart for a kid like Trey."

Chick fingers the keys in her pocket. "Trey's smart," she shrugs.

"You know, I didn't know your dad too well," he says. "But if I were him, I wouldn't want you hanging around a fuckup like my son."

She can feel the men at the bar watching. She knows how quickly Trey will grow impatient, waiting outside in the cold, the little bags in his pocket waiting to be opened. An hour from now, the three of them will be rolling around like kittens, a soft, loose affection she can only watch, wondering what it would be like to be inside of it.

"My dad doesn't live here anymore," she says. She hurries past the stares and out the door. As it closes behind her, she gets a last look at Trey's father, stooped over the table, wiping up their mess with a rag.