26

The steering wheel was very slightly smudged with finger oils. The vinyl seat covering sighed and squeaked under my weight. The glove compartment was crammed with maps of L.A., the Southwest, and assorted gas station receipts. The seat was just about the right distance from the steering wheel, but I made a minor adjustment to convince myself that I knew how to do this.

It took me a long moment to find the ignition. The engine caught, and failed, and caught again. Even then I felt the awkwardness, gear into neutral, parking brake sticking. I fumbled at the dash until the headlights blazed, too bright. I gripped the gear shift. The engine made a chorus of low, vibrant sounds. Some mechanism in the car released. The car charged forward. My feet fumbled. I stood on the brake.

There was a small shelf in the dash, a plastic packet of facial tissues and an oversized plastic paper clip around neatly folded currency. A pair of sunglasses peeked from a flap in the sunvisor. I had an instant of insight into the owner of the car, his name on a parking place. He wanted a boat, a new house, children. He liked to drive. He was good at numbers, hated cats, a natural second-in-command. I had taken the keys from someone at the party, not even deceiving him. He watched me do it, and I told him not to worry, I’d be back in a minute.

I squeezed past the parked cars, clipping a fender on the right, a bumper on the left. I swung from one side of the street to the other. I overcorrected, steered too hard, scraped another parked car, chrome squealing.

Something broke off a sports car and fell, glittering in the rear-view. I picked up a little speed. A mailbox sprang up ahead of me, and I careened over it, the post snapping and scraping the bottom of the car. I was grinding across someone’s front garden, a bed of daisies ahead.

They floundered, a small hill of flowers going under, the car rocking gently. Weeds leaped ahead of me, green oats, foxtails. I steered down a vacant lot, plowing through the tall grass of a hillside. I felt a sense of dislocation rather than panic. The vehicle rocked, suspended. The car teetered off an embankment, a small avalanche cascading.

The four wheels landed heavily. The car swung, and came to a stop. Gently, the car began to roll forward again. I steered the car down the correct side of the street, a boy taking a driving test and failing it. This was an orchestration of heavy steel, and the tires turned with a dozen concurrent whispers over the reflectors on the roadway and the fine, random spots of oil.

I should be perspiring, I thought, that cold, novice-driver’s sweat. But I wasn’t. The palms of my hands were dry, my heartbeat steady. I didn’t feel anything like normal anxiety.

But I wasn’t exactly pleased. The freeway was a mistake. As soon as I took the onramp I wanted to slam on the brakes. Lights flared everywhere, and the car made insane noises. Every car was a box and in the box was a human head, or maybe two, faces staring straight ahead, lips moving.

The toll plaza. The Bay Bridge. I tried to remember what to do next, but the car would not obey. Someone leaned on their horn, a brassy noise that made me cringe. I killed the engine, and restarted laboriously. I slipped a bill from the money clip.

A toll taker’s hand accepted it, a new bill, barely creased, but already scented with finger oils. I did not make contact with his hand, but I could sense it, calloused, hot. I didn’t know if he would offer me change. I left the toll gate before I could find out.

The bridge traffic was aglow, brake lights seeming to pull me unward, entranced. I still had trouble reading words. The markings on the green-and-white traffic signs looked only vaguely like language, and the words on the various dashboard instruments, which I knew told me how to turn on the heater or squirt the windshield, were meaningless hieroglyphics.

The weight of the car was disturbing, directing a chassis of so much mass by turning a wheel. Aiming the car down the stuttering stripes of traffic lanes was enough to make me hang on to the steering mechanism with desperation, gripping it with both hands, like an overcareful drunk, steadying himself to a constant speed, weaving all the while.

Each car in the rearview mirror skulked behind me like a Highway Patrol unit. I was like someone performing a familiar task backward. When I followed the traffic into the tunnel through Treasure Island I was sure I would never reach the end of the light, the shaft of echoes.

I approached each stop sign with painstaking respect. I braked, came to a complete stop, and then gradually depressed the accelerator. I parked badly, tires squealing against the curb.

I got out of the car, locked it, and pocketed the keys. I kept everything step by step, a driver’s education manual. The air tasted salty, with an undertone of moist earth, mulch, and lawn clippings.

There was a moss-furred quality to the seams in the curb. The world was green, potted plants waiting to be put into the ground. Each knot of leaves had a plastic stick bearing the name of its variety and a few words, how to keep the plant alive.

I had expected it to be difficult. It was not. I was up the trellis, and on the roof of Stella Cameron’s house, aware of every sound in the neighborhood.

Stella would be startled, but I would calm her. After all, we had legal business to discuss. How much did the water district offer, I would ask her. And don’t tell me Steve Fayette decided to put you on retainer. I wanted to ask if she would help me sort out the insurance, and have a nice, discreet chat about Connie.

I knelt beside the chimney. The warmth within the dwelling rose up, invisibly, through the roof. I moved silently. I had never been acrobatic, but I found it easy to hang before one window, and then another, listening, my head upside down, ear pressed to the glass. The shingles were redwood, fine splinters breaking off as I shifted.

Someone was awake in the house, a soft tread and a creak as a door opened. I listened as the steps returned to another part of the house, and a body let itself fall into a chair. Tiny, persistent, a new continuous sound broke the silence—a television, volume turned down.

Did I hear a quiet, animal gurgle somewhere near me? I did not move, listening. Then I dug my fingers into the sill, working my fingernails into the window frame.

I was close to falling headfirst from the roof, and even when I began to slip I did not release my grip, digging my fingers harder into the frame, through the widening gap between frame and sill. The catch broke, and the window opened easily, all the way.

I was quiet, tumbling gracefully to the hardwood floor. How was it possible that I could be so skilled at this? There was a smell in the air, talcum, plastic, and warm flesh.

I crept to the crib, and leaned over the slumbering infant, the warmth from the baby’s body rising up from where it lay, a palpable glow. A cloth frog, a beanbag, stood guard in one corner of the crib.

The infant made an almost inaudible sucking sound, the lips pursed to draw milk, dreaming that primal reverie, the dream of nourishment.

The infant’s pulse was not located merely in its neck and its wrists. This small human’s heartbeat was visible throughout its body, in the dome of its skull, in the wrinkles of its eyelids.

I wanted to kiss the infant. That was all I wanted to do. I was awed by its perfect, undefended sleep, and I wanted to express my love for it, my love for each child, my affection for the living. I reached down, and the heat made me flinch.

I straightened for a moment, and then resolved to try again, and this time I gathered the infant in my hands. The baby arched its back. Its feet kicked within the bed clothes, a sleeping bag with legs. The baby opened its mouth, a gray crescent of gums. It made one, single bleat. I cupped my hand over its skull.

The hair was fine, thick. I brushed the baby’s forehead with my lips. Surely the baby must have a fever, I thought. It was so warm! It was why I was here. I had brought it a gift, not of gold or frankincense. A gift of myself, my smile, my tongue.

The baby took a breath. It boxed the air with its fists. Hush I commanded, sending the message with my touch. Be still. There is nothing wrong. I lifted the infant to my lips.

And paused. Downstairs a door opened. She was listening. She was listening, and she could hear me. I don’t know how, but she knew her baby was not alone.

She ran up the stairs, and I barely made it to the window before she burst into the room, turning on the light.