The Highway Kind(3)

I mean, look, you always get cuckoo birds out there. Alone in a car with a stranger, driving around in circles, that’s just the name of the game. You get people who think a test drive is therapy; people who think it’s The Dating Game; people who think they’re in a confessional booth. One time, poor Graham had a fella who pulled over on the side of Via Marina, asking Graham to suck his ding-a-ling. I liked to rib Graham about that one. Anything for a sale, Graham, I liked to say. Anything for a sale!

“All right, Steve,” I said. “So tell me. Where are you from?”

“Indiana,” said Steve in that cold, shovel-flat voice of his. “Vincennes, Indiana.”

“Huh,” I said. “Well.” I mean, Indiana? What the hell do you say to that? “You’re a long way from home.”

Steve grunted. The more time I spent sitting next to this guy, the less comfortable I felt, and I gotta tell you, I have a very broad tolerance for strangeness. That’s how you get to be manager, you know? That’s one of the ways.

“All righty,” I said. We passed the Cheesecake Factory. We passed Killer Shrimp. “And how many kids you got?”

“Zero.”

Now, that pulled me up short. Zero kids was even weirder than Vincennes, Indiana. I have sold a lot of Odysseys over a lot of years, and every one of them was to a parent. Soccer moms and lawn-mower dads, lawn-mower dads and soccer moms. Same as with the Toyota Sienna, same as with, I don’t know, the Kia Sedona. You’re talking minivans, you’re talking young couples, you’re talking about hauling the kiddos around, volleyball practice and ballet class and all the rest of it.

“Stepkids?” I ventured, and Steve shook his head tightly, and now I did not know what to say. Was I supposed to make some kind of joke here? So what are you, then, Steve? Scout leader? Child molester? But I didn’t even try it. Not with that look on the man’s face, that faraway stare, that death grimace, whatever you want to call it.

Next thing, he blew past the right turn back onto Admiralty.

“Hey—hey, now. That was—hey!” I craned around, looked down the roomy interior of the Odyssey and out the back window, watched a string of other cars making the right. I turned to Steve. “You missed it, man. You’re gonna have to make a U-turn, just up here—”

But Steve hadn’t made any mistakes. No, sir. He stomped on the accelerator, and the V-6 roared.

“Whoa,” I said. “Hey!”

His cheeks were pale; his knuckles were tight and white; his eyes stared darkly down the road. The word came to me then, the word I had been feeling around for. The word for that look on the man’s face: purposeful.

“I did have kids, you see,” said Steve, and he careened the Odyssey across three lanes toward the entrance to the 405. Horns bleated around us. “But they’re dead. They’re all dead.”


“I will tell you the whole story, Mr. Roegenberger,” said Steve. “It won’t take long.”

That’s me, I’m William M. Roegenberger, although I can tell you for a fact that I hadn’t told Steve that. I never introduced myself with my last name, my last name is just too much of a mouthful for customers to deal with. “I’m Billy” is what I’d said, same as I always said, when we were getting into the Odyssey for the test drive.

But here we were, him calling me by the name I’d never told him, and we were on the 405 barreling northward in the HOV lane, and my tight-lipped test driver had started talking at last and now he would not stop. He gunned that engine and gunned it again, taking the Odyssey up past ninety miles an hour, his hands still driver’s-ed correct, leaning forward and talking nonstop.

“We were on the way home from a soccer tournament. This was our car. This exact car. 2010 Honda Odyssey LX. Same color. This exact same car.” He lifted one hand off the wheel and made it into a fist, punched the steering wheel three times: exact...same...car. Exits for Mar Vista and Bundy Drive flew past outside the window. I looked at them with longing.

“Sean played in a lot of tournaments. That’s my boy, Sean. Thirteen years old. And I don’t know if he was the best player in the state, but I do know that this was the highest-scoring middle-school soccer team in the state of Indiana, and I do know that Sean was the best player on that team. By leaps and bounds.” He did it again, made a fist and punched the wheel. Leaps...and...bounds.

I looked at the odometer. We were inching up toward a hundred and ten. Where were the cops? I thought helplessly. Where were the darn cops? Rousting hard-luck cases for public urination down on Skid Row. Pulling over black guys for busted taillights.

“Now, this particular tournament, this was in Iowa, and this was the first one to take place out of state, you see? He had been to tournaments before with this team, all over Indiana, but this was special, and so we all went. Me and Katie, and the girls. Three little girls.” He took one hand off the wheel, showed me three fingers: three little girls.

What if I just...jumped out? I mean, really, I was thinking as the minivan bounced and flew, what would happen if I jerked open the door of the car and rolled out onto the highway? Well, Christ. I would smash into the road at a thousand miles an hour and my body would burst open and I would be hit by a series of cars and I would die. That’s what would happen. I would die.

“Steve,” I said. “Steve?” But he wasn’t listening. He was lost in his story.