The One-oh-one flows north from its mouth in downtown Los Angeles, rises above Hollywood, transverses the San Fernando Valley, where it’s fed by tributaries—the One-seventy and the One-thirty-four and others—then drops into Camarillo and continues to Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Salinas, San Francisco, Eureka, then up into Oregon, past sequoias and rugged coastline and pockets of population gathered at its banks as in ancient times, then into Washington, where it disperses in Olympia, running with the Five. Of the Southern California freeways, the One-oh-one is the most traveled.
Teddy drove it with the Beemer’s sunroof open, the metal station’s volume up and the bass down. Slower drivers, which was almost everyone, spotted the Beemer’s buffed candy-apple lacquer up their tailpipes and stubbornly held their positions at first, not ceding the road—No way—sick of all the aggressive creeps empowered by tons of steel—Go around, jerk—until Teddy got so close that they closed their eyes and they remembered the freeway snipers looking for an excuse and they figured, Let him have it if it’s that important to him. And Teddy grinned even more and waved merrily as he shot up the tailpipe of the next driver.
The CHP motorcycle spotted the red Beemer west of the junction with Sunset Boulevard. It looked like the car. The cop swung out of his hiding place in a nook of a putty-colored retaining wall and closed in on the Beemer to get a closer look. MAKE ME. It was him. The cop radioed for backup.
“Turn it up and piss off your neighbors!” the D.J. yelled in a whiskey voice. Teddy obeyed. He twisted the bass down and the treble up but they were already maxed out. He wrapped his big chest around the steering wheel and steered with his shoulders and drummed his paws against the dash in time.
He drove up the tailpipe of a new Japanese compact.
The driver changed lanes.
“Wimp!” Teddy waved his hand in a V out of the sunroof anyway. Have a beautiful day.
Teddy bore down on a woman with henna-red hair driving a new Jaguar and talking into a car phone.
“Get that exhaust-spewing relic from a faded empire out of lane one!”
The woman glanced in the rearview mirror with the smallest shift of her head, her tinted designer glasses camouflaging her eyes.
“Hyped-up yuppie,” she sneered.
“The fast lane means fast, bitch!”
The woman ended her call and looked full on in the rearview mirror. She flipped Teddy off with a porcelain-tipped nail.
Teddy laughed. “A Pink Coral Frost bird. I’m scared now!” He blew her a kiss. “Go home to Calabasas! Close the gate! Keep the Mexicans out! Except Thursdays when they do the lawn.”
The woman looked at her speedometer. Teddy had inched her up to eighty. She saw the red Beemer nervously swerving back and forth in the lane behind her like an itchy trigger finger. Goddamn. You go along, minding your own business, and turn around and there’s some guy dressed in battle fatigues carrying an assault rifle or some guy on your ass on the freeway because he doesn’t like your car.
She turned on her signal indicator.
Teddy gave her two thumbs up. No hard feelings. She should yield to superior German technology. She should yield lane one. He waved two fingers at her through the open sunroof. Peace and love, baby.
The CHP motorcycle swung in behind Teddy. Backup was on the way. A black-and-white was already cruising two miles ahead. You could never tell. This guy could go down easy, meek and mild, or he could want a fight. The APB said he’d just put a bullet through some girl’s head. The motorcycle decided to clear the freeway.
Teddy sidled up next to a topless jeep with zebra-striped seat covers. The driver was female and blond and tanned and fetching in that sun-kissed, twisted-hair, strawberry-ice-cream, Southern California sort of way. She raked her long mane with her hand and tossed her head, over and over again. I’m young, I’m beautiful, I have a Jeep.
Teddy gave her a drop-dead, come-hither look. Yo, baby.
She looked at him sidelong, up from underneath her eyebrows, pushing her glossed bottom lip out, affecting every ad in Cosmo. She raked her hair again and breathed fire.
The yellow halogen lights lining the freeway sparkled on the Beemer’s fresh hand-wax job. It looked beautiful. Teddy’s chest swelled with pride. He sat tall, sucked in his gut, and angled a crooked smile at her. He was Brando, he was Nicholson, he was going for it. You’re beautiful, baby. I love you. Make me forget.
An American-made sedan, going about twenty miles per hour slower than Teddy, slipped in front of the Beemer.
Teddy slammed on his brakes. The Jeep sped away on the right, out of his life. He saw her hand go up. Was she waving farewell or raking her hair?
Teddy narrowed his eyes at the American sedan and assessed the driver. Male, forty-something, short hair, white shirt, driving with his left hand at 12:00 the steering wheel, his right arm draped lazily over the empty passenger’s seat. A plastic cup holder hanging from the passenger window held a jumbo-sized Styrofoam coffee container that probably had a corner of the plastic lid torn off to sip and drive. Small boxes were scattered across the shelf beneath the rear window.
Recognition washed over Teddy. Samples. The boxes were samples. He was a salesman. A freaking salesman driving a freaking company car.
Teddy flashed his high beams. “Get off the road, peddler!”
The man wearily raised his hand, made a formidable bird, then dropped his arm back across the passenger’s seat. It’d been a long day.
Teddy flashed his high beams again and again, then left them steady on.
The man slowly raised his resting arm and flipped his rearview mirror to the “night” position, deflecting the glare of the high beams onto the ceiling of the car. He punched another radio station and held his speed steady at sixty-five miles per, his left hand at twelve o’clock.
Disarmed of his high beams, all Teddy could do was bear down.
Two motorcycle cops five miles behind Teddy started to slow traffic by swinging back and forth across all lanes. The black-and-white two miles ahead was ready. The motorcycle following Teddy decided the time had come. He whooped his siren once.
Teddy didn’t hear. He was focused on the American sedan’s rubber-faced bumper. He was half an inch away. It was a feat of nerve, skill, and timing and Teddy was king. The salesman’s arm didn’t move from the passenger’s seat. He knew better. The yuppie wouldn’t damage his fine German car on his white-bread company sedan. The expensive car implied weakness.
The motorcycle cop turned his spotlight on Teddy and whooped his siren again.
Teddy was momentarily blinded and took his foot off the gas, losing ground. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the cop for the first time. Busted. He’d get off the road. In a minute. Teddy made up lost ground and swerved to the right of the sedan as if he was going to nick its rear bumper. He saw the peddler’s right hand fly to the steering wheel. Ha haaaa! Teddy fell back in behind. Only kidding.
The motorcycle cop left his siren steady on. He pulled next to Teddy and thumbed toward the side of the road.
Teddy looked over at the cop, then back at the peddler. The cop gestured again, his jaw tight. Teddy patted the air with his hand. Okay, okay. The cop dropped behind Teddy and turned his siren off. The guy was going down voluntarily.
Teddy inched closer to the peddler, focusing on his rear bumper like a mantra.
The man’s brake lights flashed red. The peddler was slowing down!
Teddy braked hard. His face flushed red. He accelerated into the American sedan’s rear bumper. A love peck.
The sedan swayed with the impact.
The motorcycle cop drove next to Teddy, gesturing. Get off!
Teddy slowed a little then sped up, righteously ramming the sedan. The driver swerved into the right lane, almost hitting the cop, who swerved into the lane to the right of him. Cars made impact and scattered like a broken trail of ants. In thirty-five seconds, all four lanes of traffic were blocked.
Teddy cut across three lanes in front of the commotion and headed for an off ramp, nicking a compact car and spinning it across two lanes.
“Argghhhh!” Teddy screamed. He took his hands off the steering wheel and waved two clenched fists out the sunroof. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. Argghhhh!” He rotated his fist around his right ear, “Rwoof, rwoof, rwoof, rwoof!” He was king. King of Lane One.
He ran the red light at the bottom of the off ramp, turned left underneath the freeway, and got on the One-oh-one in the opposite direction. He saw a black-and-white on the northbound side with its lights flashing. Gooseneckers on the southbound side slowed down to look at the accident on the other side. Two cars collided in a distracted fender-bender in front of Teddy.
He pulled the Beemer onto the shoulder and headed for the next off ramp. Too much traffic. He’d take the surface streets.