Free Driven: The Sequel to Drive by James Sallis Page A

couch.
“Bad idea,” Driver said.
The guy sat down. The two of them were dressed almost like twins, loose-fitting tan slacks, blue broadcloth shirts, soft, costly leather slip-ons. As Cole got back to his feet, this one slid furtively down to reach for the cell phone in what had been designed a century ago as a watch pocket.
“Worse idea,” Driver said. The guy held up both hands, palms out.
Cole looked at his friend, made a disgusted face, and looked back. His forehead was turning dark. “Who are you?”
“A delivery boy. Like Donnie.”
No response.
“Donnie—who, at your urging, carried a padded envelope into Mail N More this morning?”
Still nothing.
“What you’re going to tell me is where your urge came from.”
“Get out of my house.”
Driver turned as if to go, then spun back, right foot hooking Cole’s knee, pulling his legs out from under him. The man went down with a loud crack that probably heralded concussion. Driver planted the foot on his stomach.
“Please,” Driver said.
Cole didn’t try to move, but his eyes were going everywhere, north, south, east, west. White ceiling. Beige walls. Furniture legs. Ivory carpet. His friend’s feet showing beneath the couch. None of it any help.
That’s how suddenly the world you were sure you understood can change , Driver thought.
— • —
     
Cities were so various, they wore so many different faces. Leaving the easy, spare opulence of Cave Creek and Carefree behind, he drove in past Deer Valley Road and the federal prison to the dry-stalk stretches of outer Phoenix, and it was as though he drove through not one but half a dozen cities stacked beside and atop one another. Churches had re-upped as tax offices. A huge store and lot once given over to selling farm machinery was now a swap meet. The Dairy Queen, nothing changed but the sign, had become Mariscos Juarez.
Turn left at a gated community, two blocks away people are hauling mattresses down outside stairs and cooking on driveways in vats the size of cannibal pots.
Darkness was well on its way, spreading its hand flat against the city, as he drove back in. Billie had offered her uncle’s place to him. “For as long as you need it,” she’d said, Uncle Clayton currently residing several thousand miles away “helping repair some of the damage we’d done earlier,” whatever that meant. She’s saying for as long as you need it, but he’s thinking until they find me there, and declined. So he was at an extended-stay hotel two blocks up and another over, a knight’s move, from Colter and Twelfth. One room with a single entrance and the windows bolted shut, but they weren’t anymore. And he had full view of the approach, driveway, parking lot.
He also had a diner across the street, where he and Billie were meeting. Enough red—roof outside, booth covering, tiles, seats at the counter, aprons, napkins—to send you away color blind, but good, cheap food. Waitresses, like the diner itself, looked to be from the fifties. They took your order, stepped away, turned and came back with your food, that’s how it felt.
Billie had come directly from the garage in work clothes and boots, grease under her nails, a Nike swoosh of it down one cheek. Everyone in the diner gave the impression of having barely arrived from one place while being eager to depart for another. Feet fidgeted under tables. Eyes swung toward windows.
Not just here, Driver told himself. The whole world’s like that now.
He remembered standing over Bernie Rose’s body in L.A., there at frontier’s end, as Bernie’s final breath hissed out. Remembered getting back in the stripped-down Datsun, feeling comforted by its throb, thinking that he drove, that was what he did, that was what he’d always do.
“Interesting group,” Billie said. “Starting with the waitresses’ costumes.”
“If you mean the hair and all, I don’t think that’s a costume.”
“Uh-huh. And the cook?” Periodically his head had appeared in the