Free Spider’s Cage by Jim Nisbet Page A

dully at him. Mad Bruce shrugged and killed the motor.
    Windrow checked the brakes, the automatic transmission fluid, the lights, the dimmer switch, the turn signals, windshield wipers, and the tires. Everything he tested was legal. He slammed the hood and they took a drive. Mad Bruce tuned in a salsa disco station, loud, and made yipping noises along with the music.
    The sun was out in the Mission District. Windrow let the red Ford loaf along under the palms of Dolores St. At the end of the block, pigeons circled the tower of Mission Dolores and the brakes did their job at the stop sign. Young girls in uniforms, just out of Catholic school, stood in groups in front of an ice cream store. Each clutched an armload of books, and wore a pleated skirt and knee socks, in brown or grey or navy blue, with matching sweaters and white blouses. Without exception, they all looked too big for their clothes.
    Windrow turned down 16th street. A 1967 Impala with fender skirts, curb feelers, twinkling wheel covers and its rocker panels perhaps two inches off the ground came the other way. Its rear end suddenly leaped up with two discreet bounces and just as suddenly collapsed, until it seemed that its undercarriage must surely drag the ground.
En passant
, its radio was louder than the Fairlane’s.
    Mad Bruce leaned between Windrow and the steering wheel, honked the horn, and screamed at the Impala as it passed.
    â€œAieee hermanito! Arriba arriba abajo abajo. Low and slow del camino!” He leaned back and slapped Windrow on the arm. “Cruisin con la gente Martín, aieee!” He threw his head back and howled like a Bedouin woman in mourning. In his rear view mirror Windrow could see the Impala, stopped for the light at Dolores. The Impala’s rear end raised and lowered, raised, raised some more, dropped again, like an insect deep into a mating ritual.
    Mad Bruce adjusted his shades and grinned. “$595,” he screamed over the blast of the radio.
    Windrow drove and said nothing. At the intersection of 16th and Guerrero the light was red. He stopped. An early seventies model Pontiac, immaculately waxed, pulled up next to them. It contained a man and a woman. As they all waited for the light to change the Pontiac’s front end slowly began to rise in the air, until the entire car was at about a fifteen degree angle to the street. Then its rear began to rise. The man and woman stared straight ahead. The man’s teeth were clinched in a grin. His passenger was trying not to laugh, but the side of her face close to Windrow wrinkled and contorted. Her eyes stole a glance at Windrow and she blushed and giggled as she jerked them forward again. The front end of her car lowered a few inches and stopped. The back end lowered a few inches, stopped, then fell a foot. The woman was giggling. Abruptly, the front end dropped all the way to the street, and the rear end of the car shot back up. The woman could no longer control her laughing, and she slapped the driver on his shoulder, as if to make him stop. The front end of the car rose again in a series of coy increments. The woman hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter. The driver stared straight ahead and grinned sheepishly.
    The light turned green. Windrow left them at the crosswalk, the Pontiac still jerking about, going nowhere.
    â€œAwright,” Mad Bruce said, squirming in his seat and looking out his window. “You’re buying today, right? Cash? O.K. For you-today-only-right-now; E-Z terms; five seventy-five take it home.”
    Windrow said nothing. At the intersection the light was red. As he stopped he turned the radio down and looked at Mad Bruce. The Pontiac pulled up next to them. Mad Bruce looked at Windrow. Windrow turned and yelled to the driver of the Pontiac.
    â€œHey ’migo, how much you think this Ford is worth?
    The woman, closer to Windrow, looked at the driver. The driver slowly turned his head toward