Free Drive by James Sallis Page A

Your Name engraved on it, and spoke so softly you had to ask him to repeat half of what he said.
    “( ),” he said that first day as they took a lunch break.
    “Sorry?” Driver said.
    “Said you drive well.”
    “You too.”
    They sat quietly. Ligocki was tossing back cans of Coke. As Driver ate his sandwiches and fruit and sipped coffee, he was thinking how if he did that, he’d be calling time out halfway through every stunt to pee.
    “( ).”
    “What?”
    “Said you got family?”
    “No, just me.”
    “Been out here long?”
    “Few years. You?”
    “Close on to a year now. Hard to get to know anyone in this town. People’ll talk to you at the drop of a hat, just never seems to go much beyond that.”
    Although over the next year or two they’d spend time in one another’s company, having the occasional meal together, going out for drinks, that was the longest string of words Driver ever knew Ligocki to put together. Whole evenings could go by with not much at all between “How’s it going” and “Next time,” something they were both comfortable with.
    That movie was the hardest Driver ever worked on. It was also the most fun he’d ever had. One stunt in particular took him most of a day to get down. He was to come barreling along the street, see a roadblock, and go for a wall. Had to take the car almost completely sideways without turning over, so the speed and angle had to be perfect. First couple of run-throughs, he rolled. Third time he thought he had it, but the director told him afterwards that there was some sort of technical problem and they’d have to run it again. Four tries later, he nailed it.
    Driver didn’t know what happened, but the movie never got released. Something about rights maybe, or some other legal issue, could be any one of a hundred problems. Most things that start out to be movies don’t ever get made. They’d had this one in the can, though, and it was good.
    Go figure.

Chapter Twenty-two
    Six a.m., first light of dawn, world stitching itself back together out there, reconstituting itself, as he looked on.
    Blink, and the warehouse across the way reemerged.
    Blink again, the city loomed in the distance, a ship coming hard into port.
    Birds skittered from ragged tree to ragged tree complaining. Cars idled at curbside, took on human freight, pulled away.
    Driver sat in his apartment sipping scotch from the only glass he’d kept. The scotch was Buchanan’s, a mid-range blend. Not bad at all. Big seller among Latinos. No phone service here, nothing of value. Couch, bed and chairs came with the rent. Clothes, razor, money and other essentials waited in a duffel bag by the door.
    Just as a good car waited in the parking lot.
    The TV, he’d found sitting beside garbage bags at curbside when he put out his own glasses, dishes and miscellaneous goods for pickup. Why not? he thought. Ten-inch screen, and pretty much banged to hell, but it worked. So now he was watching a nature program in which four or five coyotes chased a jackrabbit. The dogs were relaying: one would chase the rabbit a while, then another would take over.
    Sooner or later they’d come after him, of course. Only a matter of time. Nino’d known that all along. They both had. The rest was no more than dancing, fancy footwork and misdirection, figure-eight of the bullfighter’s cape. No way they were going to just let this lie.
    Driver poured the last of the Buchanan’s into his last glass.
    Guests soon, no doubt about it.

Chapter Twenty-three
    In his dream the jackrabbit stopped dead still and turned on the coyote, curling its lips back to reveal huge razor-sharp teeth just before it sprang.
    That’s when Driver woke and knew someone was in the room. A change in the quality of darkness at the window told him where the intruder was. Driver turned heavily in bed, as though restless, bed frame banging against the wall.
    The man stopped moving.
    Driver turned again and kept going, springing onto his feet.