GOOD, I THOUGHT, when the horrible old thing disappeared.
No more having to watch it come creeping up the street, low-slung and close to the ground, slow and heavy and brown, eighteen foot nose to tail like some gigantic salt-water crocodile; Myron’s hat just visible above the steering wheel.
Myron was beside himself, you should have seen him.
For weeks he went round distributing flyers and taping up posters, the way people do when they have lost a cat or a child. Sometimes he’d just stand and stare at the empty driveway. He couldn’t believe what the police said, that they had no leads, that all they could do was make out their report and let us know if it turned up.
These days he’s much better. He’s been going through the automobile classifieds circling anything he likes the sound of. There’s a dark blue Buick station wagon he fancies, a cream Oldsmobile saloon. He’s stopped going out with his flyers, his posters; when he comes in at five-thirty he eats his dinner and then he goes to the den and turns on the TV and after a half-hour he’s asleep. He’s like the old Myron again.
Me, I just can’t seem to settle. I keep thinking about that old Chevrolet, slouching down the street, past Walgreens, past Dunkin’ Donuts. Rolling west across the desert, taking in the sights: Mesa Verde, the Hoover Dam, Vegas. Nosing north maybe, across the border, into the cool air of the Rockies.
Myron’s car, making a break for it.