Defending Jacob(81)

Laurie: “Maybe you should stay off Facebook and all that, Jacob. At least until this is over.”

“I just read, Mom. I never write anything. I’m a lurker.”

“A lurker? Don’t use that word. Do me a favor, just stay away from the Internet for a while, will you? You could get hurt.”

“Jacob, I think what your mother is saying is that the next couple of weeks may go easier if we just try to stay on an even keel. So maybe we should all just close our ears a little bit.”

“I’ll miss my fifteen minutes of fame,” he said. He grinned, oblivious and blithely brave, as only a kid can be.

Laurie looked horrified.

“That’d be a real shame,” I grumbled.

“Jacob, let’s hope you have your fifteen minutes of fame for something else.”

We all went quiet. Silverware clinked on plates.

Laurie said, “I wish that guy would turn off his engine.”

“What guy?”

“That guy.” She gestured with her knife toward the window. “Don’t you hear him? There’s a guy sitting in his car out there with the engine running. It’s giving me a headache. It’s like this buzz in my ear that won’t go away. What’s the word for that, when you get a buzz in your ear?”

“Tinnitus,” I said.

She made a face.

“Crossword puzzles,” I explained.

I got up to look out the window, more curious than concerned. It was a big sedan. I couldn’t make out precisely what model. Some oversized end-of-the-American-auto-industry crap four-door, maybe a Lincoln. It was parked across the street, two houses down, in a dark area between streetlights where I could not see the driver at all, even in silhouette. Inside there was a dot of amber light like a star as the driver took a drag from a cigarette, then the little star winked out.

“Probably just waiting for someone.”

“So let him wait with the engine off. Hasn’t this guy heard of global warming?”

“Probably an older guy.” I was inferring from the cigarette, the idling engine, the aircraft-carrier-sized car—all habits that belonged to an older generation, I thought.

“Asshole’s probably a reporter,” Jacob said.

“Jake!”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Laurie, why don’t I go talk to him? I’ll tell him to turn it off.”

“No. Who knows what he wants? Whatever he’s up to, it can’t be good. Just stay put.”

“Honey, you’re being paranoid.” I never used words like honey or sweetie or dear, but the gentle tone seemed necessary. “It’s probably just some old geezer smoking a butt, listening to the radio. He probably doesn’t realize he’s bothering anyone leaving the engine running.”

She frowned skeptically. “You’re the one who keeps saying we have to keep our heads down, stay out of trouble. Maybe he wants you to come out there and try something. Maybe he’s trying to bait you into it.”

“Laurie, come on. It’s just a car.”

“Just a car, huh?”

“Just a car.”

But it was not just a car.

Around nine I took out the garbage: one plastic barrel of trash, one awkward rectangular green bucket of recycling. The recycling bucket was sized in such a way that it could not quite be carried in one hand comfortably. Your fingers always began to cramp halfway up the driveway, so that carrying both items to the sidewalk in one trip involved a fast-waddling race-walk out to the street before the recycling spilled all over. It was not until I had put the barrel and the recycling bucket down and arranged them neatly side by side that I noticed the same car again. It had moved. This time it was parked a few houses away from ours in the other direction, again across the street. The engine was off. No firefly of a burning cigarette inside. The car might even have been empty. It was impossible to tell in the dark.

I peered into the dark to make out some details about the car.

The engine came on, then the headlights. The car had no front license plate.

I began to pace toward it, curious.

The car backed away from me slowly, like an animal sensing a threat, then it backed away fast. At the first cross street, it did a quick, expert turnaround and drove off. I never got closer than twenty yards. In the dark, I could not make out anything about the car, not even the color or the make. It was reckless driving on such a small street. Reckless and good.

Later still, after Laurie had sensibly gone to sleep, I sat watching Jon Stewart with Jacob in the living room. I had spread myself across the couch with my right foot propped on the cushion and my right arm dangled over the backrest. I felt an itch, a faint sensation of being watched, and I lifted the blind to peek out again.

The car was back.

I went out the back door, through the neighbor’s backyard, and emerged behind the car. It was a Lincoln Town Car, license plate 75K S82. The interior was dark.

I walked up slowly alongside the driver’s door. I felt ready to knock on the glass, to open the door, pull the guy out of the car, to pin him down on the sidewalk and warn him to stay away from us.

But the car was empty. I looked around briefly for the driver, a man with a cigarette. But I was being a fool. Laurie was making me paranoid too. It was just a parked car. Probably the driver was in one of the adjacent houses sound asleep or screwing his wife or watching the tube or doing any of the things normal people do, the things we used to do. What had I really seen, after all?