"Isn't it wild?" Rune asked. The orange lights flashed by, the gassy sweet smell of exhaust flowing into the car.
"What?"
"There is probably a hundred feet of water and yuck on top of us right now. That's really something."
He looked dubiously up at the yellowing ceiling of the tunnel, above which the Hudson River was flowing into New York Harbor.
"Something," he said uneasily.
It was his car, the Dodge they were in. This was pretty odd. Richard lived in Manhattan and he actually owned a car. Anybody who did that had to have a pretty conventional side to them after all. Paying taxes and parking and registration fees. This bothered her some but she wasn't really complaining. It turned out that the nursing home where the writer of Manhattan Is My Beat lived was forty miles from the city and she couldn't afford to rent wheels for this part of her quest.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing."
And they drove through the rest of the claustrophobic yellow tunnel in silence. Rune was careful; when men got moody, it could be a real pisser. Put them with their buddies, let 'em get drunk and snap their jocks and throw footballs or lecture you about Bunuel or how airplane wings work and they were fine. But, holy St. Peter, something serious comes up-especially with a woman involved-and they go all to pieces.
But after twenty minutes, when they were out of the tunnel, Richard seemed to relax. He put his hand on her leg. More sparks. How the hell does that happen? she wondered.
Rune looked around as they headed for the Turnpike. "Gross." The intersections were filled with stoplight poles and wires and mesh fences and gas stations. She looked for her favorite service station logo-Pegasus-and didn't see one. That's what they needed, a winged horse to fly them over this mess.
"How did you get off work?" Richard asked her.
It was Sunday and she'd told him that she'd been scheduled to work.
"Eddie covered for me. I called him last night. That's a first for me-doing something responsible."
He laughed. But there wasn't a lot of humor in his voice.
Richard removed his hand and gripped the wheel. He turned southwest. The fields-flat, like huge brown lawns-were on either side of the highway. Beyond were marshes and factories and tall metal scaffolding and towers. Lots filled with trailers from semi trucks, all stacked up and stretching for hundreds of yards.
"It's like a battlefield," Rune said. "Like those things-what do you suppose they are, refineries or something?-are spaceships from Alpha Centauri."
Richard looked in the rearview mirror. He didn't say anything. He accelerated and passed a chunky garbage truck. Rune pulled an imaginary air horn and the driver gave her two blasts on his real one.
"Tell me about yourself," she said. "I don't know all the details."
He shrugged. "Not much to tell."
Ugh. Did he have to be such a man?
She tried a cheerful "Tell me anyway!"
"Okay." He grew slightly animated; the hipster from the other night had partially returned. "He was born in Scarsdale, the son of pleasant suburban parents, and raised to become a doctor, lawyer, or other member of the elite destined to grind down the working class. He had an uneventful boyhood, distinguished by chess club, Latin club, and a complete inability to do any kind of sport. Rock and roll saved his ass, though, and he grew to maturity in the Mudd Club and Studio 54."
"Cool! I loved them!"
"Then, for some unknown reason, Fordham decided to give him a degree in philosophy after four years of driving the good fathers there to distraction with his contrarian ways. After that he took the opportunity to see the world."
Rune said, "So you did go to Paris. I've always wanted to see it. Rick and lisa… Casablanca. And that hunchback guy in the big church. I felt so sorry for him. I-"
"Didn't exactly get to France," Richard admitted. Then slipped back into his third-person narrative. "What he did was get as far as England and found out that working your way around the world was a lot different from vacationing around the world. Being a punch press operator in London-if you can get to be a punch press operator at all-isn't any better than being one in Trenton, New Jersey. So, the young adventurer came back to New York to be a chic unemployed philosopher, going to clubs, playing with getting his M.A. and Ph.D., going to clubs, picking up blondes without names and brunettes with pseudonyms, going to clubs, working day jobs, getting tired of clubs, waiting to reach a moment of intersubjectivity with a woman. Working away."
"On his novel."
"Right. On his novel."
So far he seemed to be pretty much on her wavelength-despite the car and the moods. She was into fairy stories and he was into philosophy. Which seemed different but, when she thought about it, Rune decided they were both really the same-two fields that could stimulate your mind and that were totally useless in the real world.
Somebody like Richard-maybe him, maybe not- but somebody like him was the only sort of person she could be truly in love with, Rune believed.
"I know what's the matter," she said.
"Why do you think something's the matter?"
"I just do."
"Well," he said, "what? Tell me."
"Remember that story I told you?"
"Which one? You've told me a lot of stories."
"About Diarmuid? I feel like we're a fairy king and queen who've left the Side-you know, the magic land." She turned around. Gasped. "Oh, you've got to look at it! Turn around, Richard, look!"
"I'm driving."
"Don't worry-I'll describe it. There're a hundred towers and battlements and they're all made out of silver. The sun is falling on the spires. Glowing and stealing all that energy from the sun-how much energy do you think the sun has? Well, it's all going right into the Magic Kingdom through the tops of the battlements…" She had a sudden feeling of dread, as if she'd caught his mood. A premonition or something. After a moment she said, "I don't know, I don't think I should be doing this. I shouldn't've crossed the moat, shouldn't've left the Side. I feel funny. I almost feel like we shouldn't be doing this."
"Leaving the Side," he repeated absently. "Maybe that's it." And looked in the rearview mirror again.
He might have meant it, might have been sarcastic. She couldn't tell.
Rune turned around, hooked her seat belt again. Then they swept around a long curve in the expressway and the country arrived. Hills, forests, fields. A panoramic view west. She was about to point out a large cloud, shaped like a perfect white chalice, a towering Holy Grail, but Rune decided she'd better keep quiet. The car accelerated and they drove the rest of the way to Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, in silence.
"He hasn't had a visitor for a month," the nurse was saying to Rune.
They stood on a grassy hill beside the administration building of the nursing home. Richard was in the cafeteria. He'd brought a book with him.
"That's too bad. I know it's good for the guests," the nurse continued. "People coming to see them."
"How is he?"
"Some days he's almost normal, some days he's not so good. Today, he's in fair shape."
"Who was the visitor last month?" Rune asked.
She said, "An Irish name, I think. An older gentleman."
"Kelly, maybe?"
"Could have been. Yes, I think so."
Rune's heart beat a bit faster.
Had he come to ask about a million dollars? she wondered.
Rune held up a rose in a clear cellophane tube. "I brought this. Is it okay if I give it to him?"
"He'll probably forget you gave it to him right away. But, yes, of course you can. I'll go get him. You wait here."
"They don't come to see me much. Last time was, let me see, let me see, let me see… No, they don't come. We have this party on Sundays, I think it is. And what they do is, it's real nice, what they do is put, when the weather's nice, put a tablecloth on the picnic benches, and we eat eggs and olives and Ritz crackers." He asked Rune, "It's almost fall now, isn't it?"