The Collective(65)

I suppose it isn’t just the dead that have been watching me.

There’s a lot of traffic around the Prius and me—it’s been stop and go since the bridge. The late-afternoon light being the way it is, I can only see the driver’s outline in my rearview, but once I get an opening, I move into the left lane and make a point of staring into the car as I pull alongside it. The driver’s wearing enormous sunglasses, bright red lipstick, a red scarf around her neck, and she has a big head of yellow-blond hair that could easily be a wig. I’ve clocked you, bitch. I see you. And even though I have no idea what she looks like underneath this strange disguise, I say it out loud, clear enough for her to read my lips. “I see you.”

The red lipstick stretches into a toothy smile—a rictus joker grin. I see you too, she mouths. Sister.

I turn back to the road, my heart crashing into my ribs. Anxiety kicking in. Okay. Point well taken.

I push forward, and the Prius slides in behind me.

I see the glint off her sunglasses in my rearview, and it replays in my head, that bloodred mouth, that baring of teeth. “Get away from me.”

When I turn back to the road, I’m racing for the bumper of the car in front of me. I pull to the right and switch lanes just in time, avoiding hitting it but cutting off a truck. Its horn blares, and I shift into the right lane, and then the one next to it, my eyes peeled for the Prius. Lost you, you psychotic . . . But there she is again, maybe a car length back, two lanes to the left.

How can a Prius go that fast?

It’s now in the lane next to me, the bumper parallel to my own.

“What the hell?”

There’s a clear stretch ahead of me, and it feels like a gift. I jam my foot into the accelerator, taking my Subaru up to eighty-five, then ninety, shifting lanes whenever I can. In my rearview, I can see the Prius surging forward. I move into the fast lane and take it up to ninety-five.

I’m scaring myself. This isn’t me. Emily and Matt used to tease me about what a boring, by-the-book driver I was, hands always at ten and two, never more than five miles over the speed limit, and though I’ve certainly been a lot more reckless in recent years, a car chase is not me.

Is it? I flash on three weeks ago, riding the bumper of Edward Duval’s Porsche, pulsing with anger at a man I didn’t know, then five days ago, on the steadiness of my hands as I pushed the Mercedes into the lake. It is me. Now it is. The collective changes you to suit its needs, magnifying the ugliest parts of your broken faith, weaponizing you. Who knows what Rictus Grin was like before she gave into her grief and rage and became a monster? She was somebody’s mother once. That much, I know.

I’m going close to one hundred. I can’t look for the Prius. I have to keep my eyes on the road. I shift one lane to the right and swerve around an eighteen-wheeler like this is just some big video game. Its horn wails.

Once I reach a less congested area of the thruway, I search for the Prius in my rearview, then in both of the side mirrors and through the windshields, front and back, my breathing shallow until finally, finally I feel as though I’ve escaped it.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

I slow down to seventy and take the center lane, as though none of this had ever happened. As I pass the Harriman exit, Woodbury Commons spread out beyond the trees, I let my mind travel back to the time I first met Luke there, at Applebee’s—a simpler, sweeter time, when my marriage was still on life support and I had never played a role in anyone’s murder.

How can I fix this? Can I fix this? Can Wendy help me? Please, Wendy. Please show up at the park and ride. . . .

The short burst of a police siren slaps me out of my thoughts, the flashing lights in my rearview like some maniacal Christmas toy.

Oh sure, now I get pulled over.

I shift into the right lane, then onto the shoulder, making sure to put my blinker on as I do it. By the book. Thoroughly respectable middle-aged lady in a suit. I’m not sure when this cop started following me, but I feel like I’ve been going seventy long enough to merit acting confused when he asks if I know why he pulled me over.

It’s worth a try anyway, though I don’t really care. Traffic tickets used to give me serious agita, but considering everything else I’ve been through today, this feels like a much-needed time-out. I roll my shoulders and crack my neck, and when the trooper’s uniform fills my peripheral vision, I open my window readily.

“Yes, Officer?”

“License and registration, please,” says the cop—a powerfully built woman in mirrored aviator glasses that cover most of her face.

I think about asking her why she pulled me over as I get my driver’s license out of my wallet and then open my glove compartment for the registration. But then I figure, what’s the point? There’s something almost welcoming about the normalcy of a speeding ticket. And my record is spotless—well, outside of my drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace charges of earlier this month. And those were mere violations.

As I hand it all over, I try a cheery smile. “Here you go, Officer.”

She takes them in a gloved hand, gives the license a quick read. “Get out of the car.”

“Wait, what?”

“Get out of the car.”

She opens my door and steps back, her hand resting on her holstered gun. “No sudden movements,” she says.

What is happening? I get out of the car slowly, my hands spread and raised. My knees feel weak and wobbly. I may fall. Don’t fall, don’t fall.