They’re off the turnpike, across the big bridge and past the first rest stop on the left and about an hour and a half from home if they don’t run into any heavy traffic or tie-ups, or even closer, hour and a quarter, hour and ten, but around that time in the trip when he usually starts thinking of what he has to do when he gets home and in what order and how much time it’ll all take before he can sit down with the newspaper for fifteen minutes and have a drink, like unpacking the car — they didn’t bring much stuff and this time his in-laws didn’t load him down with presents for the kids and a couple of bags of deli and food his mother-in-law made, maybe for some reason because his wife didn’t return with them — get the various things in their various places and the emptied valises back to the basement, but what else? Raise the thermostat from the 58 he put it at when they left. Open the curtains and shades, take the automatic light timer out of the socket and reconnect the lamp plug into the wall and replace the bulb in it with the hundred-watt rather than the twenty-five he put in for these few days. Turn the oven on even if he doesn’t know what he’s going to cook them. Maybe there’ll be something in the refrigerator to reheat that hasn’t started to spoil, or from the freezer but which can be thawed while baking — he, he’ll just have wine and some mustard and cheese on the good bread he brought from New York and part of the salad plate or tossed salad he makes for them, but his own vinaigrette dressing, not their bottled creamy Italian kind they like, when a car in the fast lane a few feet ahead of him starts moving into his lane without signaling and he honks and it keeps coming and he slows down and starts moving into the slow lane and is halfway over the dividing line when he looks at the right side mirror and sees a van coming on fast. The van honks and he cuts back into the middle lane and waves without looking at the van and says “I know, I’m sorry, it’s that stupid car,” and honks at it, though probably the van will think the honk’s for it. The car moves slowly back into the fast lane and honks twice and he says, as the van passes him, “Oh Jesus, honk honk, bunch of geese we all are, heading south for the summer, though, and with no camaraderie or cooperation or concordance or just plain plan or whatever you want to call it — fool, fool,” in the car’s direction and Margo says “What, Daddy?” and he says “Nothing, I should’ve expected it or at least expected anything and then corrected it better — it’s essentially and evidentially partially my fault,” and she says “What is, correct what?” and he says “Oh, again, nothing, just talking faultily to my littlest self with my biggest words,” and she says “Huh?” and to Julie “Do you get it?” and he says “You know, you both do, the brain, for that’s about how it feels right now, pea-sized, miniaturized, but without the intricate technics — forget it, my honeys, Daddy’s just a-kiddin’ again and wouldn’t want to give you the impression he has a bad image of himself or any command of the language when he this minute does not — just a-kiddin’ again, oh, can I never ever stop? — boing boing,” rapping his temple, “sorry, getting myself even deeper into what I won’t be able to get out of unless I switch subjects or shut up.” Car to the left stays beside his and he wants to see who’s driving, what kind of person, really, could be such a lousy driver, though he can try and guess if maybe only to see, even when he’s thinking seriously, how far off the mark he can be: unaccompanied man, not a woman, alone because the passenger, if it were an adult, and this one wouldn’t have a kid, would have tipped him off that he was driving recklessly and he would have corrected it sooner, and a woman wouldn’t stay alongside the car she cut off and risk being needled if not taunted and propositioned and cursed, around forty and with a hat on, hunter’s or trucker’s cap or one they used to call and maybe still do a pork-pie, fatty face and about a hundred pounds overweight, torpid from his bloat and also the huge snack with a couple of tall sodas or shakes he had at the last rest stop, so another reason he was so slow to react, package of opened, no, open package of small powdered doughnuts or bonbons on the passenger seat, beanbag ashtray half-filled with butts on top of the dashboard, messy car, lots of dumb bumper stickers and window decals, dirty T-shirt, that should be it and he actually doesn’t recall any stickers or decals but he wasn’t looking for them then, looks and there are two men, young, passenger must have been bent over when he honked at them or could he have seen him from behind and completely forgot? look like brothers though driver’s clean-faced and other’s got a shaggy mustache, lean if not weightliffer-mus-cular, thick necks, beefy shoulders, work clothes or just not dress clothes — fancy catalog-type casual clothes, both staring stolidly at him, driver not glancing front once, as if saying “What’s with you, dummy, got a problem?” and he nods and faces forward and thinks maybe he should move to the slow lane — checks the right wing mirror, that’s what it is, wing mirror, no car there — nah, that’ll just…that’ll just what? — suggest to them he’s intimidated or scared and thinking him weak that could start who knows what with them, where they stay alongside trying to rile him even more: gibes, glares, threats, fingers, fists, as if he almost got them killed in an accident, dumb idiot, but they stay even with him anyway and he’d like to know why, hasn’t looked to the side at them since that one time and he didn’t do anything then but nod and maybe flash a nothing smile, doesn’t try going faster for he’s already doing seventy and that’s about as fast as he wants to get when the speed limit’s fifty-five and if they stick with him at that clip it could make driving even more dangerous than it now is and they also might take his going faster as some kind of whatever they take it as, a contest they’re going to win no matter what, and he’s seen lots of cars stopped by cops on this road in the past and he doesn’t want to get tagged when he’s sort of anxious to get home, and really, he might be exaggerating the menacing from them and also with the ticket he doesn’t want to pay through the nose, for he thinks the fine’s up to around a hundred fifty now. Fact is he’s never been ticketed, all his years driving. Been stopped a few times, maybe twice, and once, second the cop reached his window, he said “I’m sorry, I must’ve been doing ten over the limit,” and the cop said “Twelve, but at least you’re honest about it; most drivers, you wouldn’t believe the excuses. I’ll let you off but don’t let me catch you going even five over on this street or I’ll ticket you for both at the same time,” and another time, twenty years ago, made a U on some boulevard and two cops stopped him in their car. Early morning, five-thirty, six and he was driving home from a woman’s house because she wanted him out before her kids awoke, didn’t want them seeing him in bed with her, just seeing him in the kitchen, even, and they could tell their father and it could hurt her chances in the divorce, and the cops warned him about making a U. “It’s not heavy traffic, so no big danger now, but in an hour you could get killed doing it, so don’t, as a standard rule, make a U.” “What’s the law on it, just out of curiosity?” and they said they didn’t know. Those, far as he remembers, were the only two. Looks over, casually, blank expression, as if something caught his attention on that side and he’s going to have a peek and then look back to the road, hoping those guys aren’t looking at him anymore and he can take his mind off them. Passenger’s staring at him with a tough look, driver’s just driving, pinky reaming his nose. Should he face front quick? but nods, passenger nods and then a little smile and then a broad one, throwing up his shoulders and raising his hands as if “What can I tell you? We made a mistake and we’re sorry,” and then points to the backseat, still smiling, as if “Hope we didn’t scare your girls none,” and then salutes him and waves to the girls with wiggling fingers and the car shoots ahead and soon they got to be doing eighty, eighty-five, maybe even ninety or more and he watches them awhile speeding out of sight and then turns on the radio and moves the dial around. Maybe now would be a good time to go seventy-five or so, he thinks, for if anyone’s going to get caught by radar somewhere or just a police car on the road, it’s them, but no, sixty-five’s fine. They could be slowing down, now that he can’t see them — all that shooting out and speed for his benefit, for whatever reason — and he could end up being the sole speeder on the road.