Unconventional

“But you were stealing cars,” I had to point out.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I see that now. Back then though, I looked at it more like borrowing. People always got their rides back, usually within a day or so. Sometimes a little worse for wear…”

He paused again and shook his head. “Okay, most times a little worse for wear. We rode those things hard. But yeah. Like I said, I wasn’t into the whole robbery thing.”

Noah continued eating as he told his story, one french fry at a time. I followed his lead, working slowly on my salad. It had stuff in it I didn’t like — those bitter, frilly greens they always seemed to put in everything — but I ate it anyway.

“So what happened?”

“What happened was I thought I was hot shit,” Noah sneered. “I drove for a robbery. Somehow I convinced myself that I wasn’t involved, I was only behind the wheel.”

“And you got caught?” I asked.

“No. They got caught. The two guys I was with.”

I watched as Noah sunk his spoon into his cottage pie. Steam rose up, thick and fragrant. The inside of the thing looked to be about a thousand degrees.

“They stayed in too long,” he said. “Never heeded their own advice about silent alarms. The police showed up and nailed them both. When I saw the two of them handcuffed, I took off.”

“And then you got caught?” I guessed playfully.

“I wish.”

His statement was as ominous as it was perplexing. For the next several moments I just watched him eat, first blowing on each bite, then shoving the minced beef into his mouth.

“That any good?”

“Actually yeah,” he said. “Best cottage pie I’ve had since I’ve been over here.”

I smiled broadly. “Which brings me back to the question…”

“How’d I get over here?” he chuckled. “Yeah, I was getting around to that.”

Noah wiped his brow — apparently the meat was spicy — and took another hit from his iced-tea, which was almost gone.

“I drove,” he said finally. “I drove like a fucking demon. The police chased me from Ditmas Avenue down to Seaview, then back up one-hundred-and-eighth street. I must’ve lost three of them,” he said proudly. “Maybe four. But the last one… he stuck on me. He was good. Almost as good as me.”

I pictured him behind the wheel, just a teenager. Racing around in some powerful ride, before he even had the privilege of a driver’s license. It was scary. Scary but also stupid, just as he said.

“Anyway I got to the Marina,” Noah said. “I made a series of very quick turns, and I thought I lost him. But then I looked up… and there he was. The asshole had doubled back, and pulled his squad car across the middle of the road in front of me. I was going too fast to avoid it…”

I shuddered, thinking about what happened. Realizing now the whole story had just gotten a lot more serious than before.

“I swerved to the right,” he said. “Hard. As hard as I could, really.

I got around him and I got away, and I drove for another ten minutes before ditching the car and ducking into the nearest subway station.”

Relief flooded through me. “That’s good, no?”

“I clipped his bumper,” Noah went on. “Just a little bit, but enough to rip it off the front of his car. That’s what did it. He was embarrassed. Totally uninjured, but humiliated that I’d beaten him.”

“Who?”

“The officer who showed up at my house the next day,” he said. “The one who’d chased me. The one who’d been tipped off by the two guys I was driving for, who’d given me up for practically nothing.”

“But he was fine, right? Physically?”

“Vehicular assault on an officer,” Noah murmured. “That’s what they gave me.”