Free Driver's Education by Grant Ginder Page B

up, Yip .
    â€œAnd—I’m sure he told you this—but that was when we made our bet.”
    I think back to the conversation I had with my granddad a few nights ago, the way his voice sounded pushed and desperate. There was the map, the one he’d sent me. And also, he’d mentioned his endings. But, “No. No bet.”
    Yip pulls at the half beard that hangs from his chin. He says, “Your ye ye, he told me he’d never be back for the car, and I disagreed. So, he said, Yip, if I’m ever back for this car I’ll take that goddamned cat off your hands. ”
    There’s still that soundtrack of haggling and customers wrestling with their discontent and the occasional thud of a cleaver blade coming down on flesh.
    Wedged in the corner of Randal’s eye: a hint of soul-folding terror as the cat on the desk stretches its three legs and yawns, showing us a collection of broken teeth.
    â€œAnd then on Tuesday he calls to tell me you’re coming! Right out of the blue. He says, Yip, give him the keys and have him bring her to me . I tell him he’s crazy. I tell him if he wants her out there, I’ll drive her myself. But—no. He said again, Yip, give him the keys . So I told him, You got it, bub: one car, and one cat. ”
    â€œBut technically, he’s not the one who’s picking up the car.”
    Yip ignites his cigarette, lifts an eyebrow. He whirls it again in that same dismissive way: Anyway.
    I start: “Yip—”
    Randal finishes: “—we’re not taking that fucking cat.”
    He looks at both of us, making a tepee with his hands and setting his chin atop the point formed by his thick fingers. Mrs. Dalloway licks her front paw, gets bored with it, sticks the whole thing in her decaying mouth and chews.
    He states simply, “No cat, no car.”
    â€œBut my granddad—”
    â€œIs a man who’d honor the terms of a bet.”
    â€œBut don’t you want to see her die?” Randal says. “Alive for fifty years! Don’t you think it’d be something amazing when she dies?”
    Yip’s fingers press into the creases of his chin until there are two, then four, then eight. No—no, Yip does not want to see Mrs. Dalloway die. For reasons that are practical and unsentimental, Yip has no interest in seeing Mrs. Dalloway die. Mrs. Dalloway missed her chance for a performative death about thirty-eight years ago. Now the whole idea of it is just taking up space.
    â€œThose are the terms.”
    In a voice that’s above a whisper but below a squawk, Randal says to me, “This is some motherfucking hardball .”
    I tell him, “Open your backpack.”
    â€œYou have got to be kidding me.” Then: “ You open your goddamned backpack.”
    â€œNo really, yours is bigger.”
    This is true: Randal’s pack is massive, the sort of multistrapped, countless-buckled contraption reserved typically for mountaineers andmothers of triplets. Reluctantly and theatrically, he unzips its largest pouch.
    Yip pets Mrs. Dalloway once on her orange skull as I reach across the table for her. When my hand is inches away, she flops on her back. She reaches her front paw out to me, as if to say, Oh, God, just get this over with, it’s not as if it matters, really. Before I nestle her into Randal’s backpack, she regards both of us. Bored.
    â€œAll right,” I tell him. “We’re ready.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    He leads us out of George Meat Market International, through the maze of hanging meat, past the brute with the cleaver, out onto Mott Street, where the light has dulled and a breeze—practically unnoticeable—has picked up. He moves quickly again, slowing only to light cigarettes, to yell, You following Yip! and as he walks the throngs of pedestrians part for him, or at least that’s how it seems to us. We reach the south end of Mott, where it