But in the morning she is late as well and dead tired and wants to go right to sleep so you don’t really get to talk to her much and then it all bleeds into the next few days and then eventually a barbecue at Aaron and Maureen’s that at the last minute neither of you go to because of a tiff over Johnny and would he be there and would she be speaking with him and, if so, why the fuck would that be? Of course, sadly, you get the feeling she’s dying to, but you’re too chicken to actually accuse her of it, and she tries to scuttle the whole issue entirely, pouting behind one of her magazines at the other end of your huge space. So instead you’re both at your place and grumpy and letting the drone of the TV apply the soundtrack to your lives when you hear the familiar strains of Liz Hunter’s news theme come floating out, whereupon you both drift over from different directions until you each have a view of the screen.
And it’s the final instalment of the hunted, airing a full week from when you last saw her, and it’s more of a post-mortem than anything else, summary statements set to a montage of older footage. Little of that afternoon on the canal survives. She doesn’t even bother including you and Honey, edits in only the parts where Henry acknowledges his regrets. The piece just sticks to the facts, like Liz promised. As it should. It recounts what happened and tallies the score. It documents the beginning, middle, and end. A seventeen-year-old girl’s life will never be the same. A twenty-five-year-old man will go to prison for the third time in his young life. And Henry was simply a distraction, inconsequential. You, even more so.
And it’s almost over and you’re reaching for the clicker when suddenly the camera is tracking the Firebird on its way to drop Honey at the hospital immediately afterwards, up University, everyone’s hair billowing in the wind, and then following you all the way down to Your Dealer’s building, watching as you park, get out, Henry sliding over. And you can’t figure out why they’re even showing this — and why there’s no voice-over, no music even, just the ambient street sounds — when you feel the camera abruptly lurch and hear the van door open and suddenly it’s walking hand-held across the street, Camera Guy’s point of view, step by step towards Honey’s car, still double-parked with Henry fidgeting in the front seat, an eerie suspense to it all, the lens getting closer and closer, Henry utterly oblivious, still putzing around with every button and lever on the dashboard, you long gone, until we see his head jerk up and hear Camera Guy’s voice — not Liz Hunter’s, you realize she’s not even with him — say, “Hey, Henry! Buddy! Whatcha doing there, man?”
And Henry gurgles and swallows and looks around for your help and finally looks back at the camera.
“I’m not doing nothing.”
“Where’s Lee?”
“I don’t know.”
And all you can think of, watching Henry squirm, riveted by his panicked face trapped on the screen in such close-up as he says this, is, Uh-oh, better drive away, dude.
Camera Guy swings his lens over now towards Your Dealer’s building, refocuses until your outline can be made out through the reflection in the glass, talking into the lobby intercom. Then he turns it back to Henry and asks his next sinister-sounding question.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Don’t know.”
“Well, he’s in that building.”
“Don’t know.”
You can barely watch as Henry’s thumbs begin rubbing the steering wheel, his sideburns sweating, licking at his lips, not knowing where to rest his gaze, trying so hard not to glance over at you, call out to you, run over to you, while all you can think again now is, Drive away, dude.
The camera moves in a bit closer. You hear Camera Guy muse, “Hey, don’t I know that building? Isn’t that a building that’s . . . been . . . on the news?” And he swish pans over to it again, this time widening and framing it top to bottom all at once, with his signature awkward flourish.
And then immediately tightens back up on Henry again.
“Or am I wrong?”
And you take a deep breath and beside you Honey takes a deep breath and you look at each other but it’s nothing compared to the helpless look in Henry’s eyes and his stunted breathing and his incessant fidgeting and all you’re thinking, you want to shout it at the screen now, is, Please, drive away, dude.
“Wasn’t there . . . an investigation . . . there? For drugs? Wasn’t that on the news — that they had that place under surveillance? Just last year?”
The camera pushes even tighter on Henry.
“What’s Lee Goodstone doing in there, Henry?”
And, oh Lord, if this is the new and improved Henry, clued-in Henry, you can’t even begin to imagine how the old Henry would have held up, because Camera Guy’s stunning little nugget of in-depth, behind-the-scenes, beyond-the-fucking-call-of-duty fluky reporting has Henry close to hyperventilating, perspiring profusely and tugging at his chin and nose and ears and hair, not to mention you, who could jump out the goddamned window right about now, the feeling of panic in you is so urgent, and Honey has lit a nervous cigarette now, so that’s making you feel even worse, like throwing up on your way out the window, and you’re still watching Henry stammer and squirm until finally he shakes his head a few times and croaks, “I don’t know . . .” in the hoarsest of confessions, and then you can’t help it, can’t control yourself, you scream at the TV at the top of your lungs, “Drive away, dude!”
At which point, mercifully, he does.