Forty
A Tesla sporting an Uber windshield ornament glided to the curb with battery-powered silence. I pulled open the passenger door. Checked out the driver. Fat face, fat stomach, fat legs, and fat stubby arms. The guy filled the seat the way pudding fills a bowl.
“Mind if I sit in the front seat?”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Aloysius Tucker.”
“Then come on in.”
I climbed in. The Tesla slid off down Beacon Street, took a right at Dean, and lost itself in a warren of residential housing.
I said, “You don’t see many Teslas doing Uber.”
“Are you the Aloysius Tucker?” the driver asked.
Uh-oh.
“You mean the as in ‘the famous Aloysius Tucker’ or as in ‘the infamous Aloysius Tucker’? Because if it’s the second one then no, I’m not me.”
“You’re the guy they’re talking about on the #TuckerGate hash, right?”
“And you are?”
“Derrick James. On Twitter I’m @BosUberTesla.”
I treaded carefully. “And how are things on Twitter?”
“Did you really slap that guy on the head?”
“Yes.” I opened my Twitter app, searched for @BosUberTesla.
“I don’t think it’s right to slap people.”
“I don’t think it’s right to insult women. Ah, here you are,” I read from the app: “‘Tucker is just a dumb asshole.’”
Derrick’s fat face flushed red.
“I’m a dumb asshole?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Really? How else does one mean ‘Tucker is just a dumb asshole’?”
“I was defending you.”
“You were defending me? Let’s see. What else did you have to say in my defense? Oh, here’s one. ‘If that dumb fuck tried to slap me I’d beat the shit out of him.’”
Derrick’s blush started to fog the windows. “I was angry because—”
“You were angry? Why? Did you have some dick try to handcuff you?”
“No, but—”
“Did he call your friend the C-word?”
“No, but—”
“Should I keep reading? Did you have other things to say about me?”
Derrick kept his eyes on the road.
I flipped through Derrick’s comments. Found a good one. “You called me a ‘motherless son of a bitch.’ That doesn’t even make sense. I should give you a one-star rating for slaughtering logic.”
Derrick whispered a comment.
“What? I couldn’t hear you. But, you know, I’m just a dumb asshole. Probably deaf too.”
“I’m sorry,” Derrick said, barely audible above the nearly silent electric motor.
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry for what?”
“I’m sorry I called you those things. But—”
“Everything before the but is bullshit, Derrick.”
“I mean, I said those things but I was defending you. Can’t you see that?”
“You mean when you wrote, ‘You guys should take it easy on Tucker, the poor motherless son of a bitch.’”
“Yeah. I mean, they’re not being fair.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“So I was defending you up and down, and then you slapped that guy and I looked like an idiot.”
“Why are you even defending me at all?”
Derrick negotiated a rotary at Chestnut and drove between stone walls separating the road from a park. The brown grass and leafless trees of the Emerald Necklace in April did nothing to suggest that spring was on its way. The Tesla’s tires made the only noise in the car.
“I don’t understand,” said Derrick.
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why wouldn’t I defend you? People are being stupid.”
“How is this your problem?”
“I don’t know. I just like Twitter.”
“So I’m just an online character to you?”
Derrick tightened his lips and tapped the giant Tesla touchpad with fat fingers. Soft jazz slipped from the speakers. Apparently, we were done talking. As Derrick popped out onto the Jamaicaway, I realized what a disappointment I’d been. Derrick had been excited to meet his Internet hero, the guy he’d been defending against hoards of misinformed trolls, and that hero had just turned out to be a gigantic douche bag.
“Thank you,” I said.
Derrick flicked his thumb. The music got a little louder.
“Thank you for defending me,” I said. “I’m sorry I was a jerk to you.”
“You should have read the whole thread.”
“I know.”
“Instead of just taking things out of context and looking for the bad stuff.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
More jazz. I tried a different tactic. “Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?”
“You mean so that I can afford a Tesla?”
“Yeah.”
“I wrote an app.”
“Which one?”
“Dumpster.”
“The one that finds the nearest public bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a pretty cool app.”
“Yeah, I made a ton in royalties to start, then I sold the whole thing to Google.”
“So then why are you doing Uber?”
“I like to drive.”
“That’s cool.”
Traffic clogged at a light.
“So what are they saying?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The Twitter people on #TuckerGate.”
“There are three camps. First, there are the people like me and Epomis who say that you’re innocent.”
“Epomis? That’s sweet.”
“You know her?”
Whoops. “Just online.”
“Yeah, so she’s one of the folks defending you. Then there’s the people who say that you killed Runway. They say you’re the HackMaster.”
“Who’s the HackMaster?”
“Some guys on Reddit did analysis of the pictures of Runway. They had a long, technical reason for why it had to have been done with a samurai sword. So they called the killer the Samurai.”
“Why not the Ninja? They’re assassins too.”
“Right? That’s what I said. There was another group arguing for the Shinobi, because that’s Japanese for ninja, and it was disrespectful not to use the Japanese word. Then someone accused everyone of cultural appropriation, so they dropped the whole samurai thing and—”
“By the power of the collective intelligence settled on the HackMaster.”
“Yeah.”
“Why does the collective intelligence think that I’m the HackMaster? There’s no connection to me.”
“That’s what I said! No one has ever shown that you can use a sword.”
“That’s because I can’t.”
“Right.”
“You said there were three groups.”
“The third group says that you’re not the HackMaster, but that you did kill your wife.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For the money. I guess you got a lot of money from your old company?”
“They say that I killed my wife for a severance package?”
“Yeah, and the FBI helped.”
“Why would the FBI help?”
“It was a lot of money.”
“So now I’m paying off the FBI?”
“You have to admit that you have friends in the FBI.”
I didn’t mention that I was heading to coffee with my friend from the FBI. “This is ridiculous,” I said.
“When you spin it all together, it creates a pretty good case.”
“So you’re on their side?”
“No! No! I never would have picked you up otherwise. Are you kidding me?”
Derrick parked on Pond, across the street from a little coffee bar. Mel sat in the front window at a counter. She waved.
I opened the door to get out. “So what do you think?”
“I think she’s cute.”
“No, I mean about #TuckerGate.”
“I think you’re innocent, but—”
“But?”
“I also think you’re screwed.”