In the dream, I have a son. He’s about five, but he speaks with the voice and intelligence of a fifteen-year-old. He sits in the seat beside me, buckled tightly, his legs just barely reaching the edge of the car seat. It’s a big car, old, with a steering wheel as large as the rim of a bicycle tire, and we drive it through a late December morning the color of dull chrome. We are somewhere rural, south of Massachusetts but north of the Mason-Dixon Line-Delaware, maybe, or southern New Jersey-and red-and-white-checkered silos peek up in the distance from furrowed harvest fields frosted the pale gray of newspaper with last week’s snow. There is nothing around us but the fields and the distant silos, a windmill frozen stiff and silent, miles of black telephone wire glistening with ice. No other cars, no people. Just my son and myself and the hard slate road carved through fields of frozen wheat.
My son says, “Patrick.”
“ Yeah?”
“ It’s a good day.”
I look out at the still gray morning, the sheer quiet. Beyond the farthest silo, a wisp of dusky smoke rises from a chimney. Though I can’t see the structure, I can imagine the warmth of the house. I can smell food roasting in an oven and see exposed cherry beams over a kitchen constructed of honey-colored wood. An apron hangs from the handle of the oven door. I feel how good it is to be inside on a hushed December morning.
I look at my son. I say, “Yeah, it is.”
My son says, “We’ll drive all day. We’ll drive all night. We’ll drive forever.”
I say, “Sure.”
My son looks out his window. He says, “Dad.”
“ Yeah.”
“ We’ll never stop driving.”
I turn my head and he is looking up at me with my own eyes.
I say, “Okay. We’ll never stop driving.”
He puts his hand on mine. “If we stop driving, we run out of air.”
“ Yeah.”
“If we run out of air, we die.”
“ We do.”
“ I don’t want to die, Dad.”
I run my hand over his smooth hair. “I don’t either.”
“So we’ll never stop driving.”
“No, buddy.” I smile at him. I can smell his skin, his hair, a newborn’s scent in a five-year-old’s body. “We’ll never stop driving.”
“ Good.”
He settles back in his seat, then falls asleep with his cheek pressed to the back of my hand.
Ahead of me, the slate road stretches through the dusty white fields, and my hand on the wheel is light and sure. The road is straight and flat and lies ahead of me for a thousand miles. The old snow rustles as the wind picks it off the fields and swirls small tempests of it in the cracks of tar in front of my grille.
I will never stop driving. I will never get out of the car. I will not run out of gas. I will not get hungry. It’s warm here. I have my son. He’s safe. I’m safe. I will never stop driving. I will not tire. I will never stop.
The road lies open and endless before me.
My son turns his head away from my hand and says, “Where’s Mom?”
“ I don’t know,” I say.
“But it’s okay?” He looks up at me.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
My son goes back to sleep. I keep driving.
And both of us vanish when I wake.
1
The first time I met Karen Nichols, she struck me as the kind of woman who ironed her socks.
She was blond and petite and stepped out of a kelly-green 1998 VW Bug as Bubba and I crossed the avenue toward St. Bartholomew’s Church with our morning coffee in hand. It was February, but winter had forgotten to show up that year. Except for one snowstorm and a few days in the subzeros, it had been damn near balmy. Today it was in the high forties, and it was only ten in the morning. Say all you want about global warming, but as long as it saves me from shoveling the walk, I’m for it.
Karen Nichols placed a hand over her eyebrows, even though the morning sun wasn’t all that strong, and smiled uncertainly at me.
“Mr. Kenzie?”
I gave her my eats-his-veggies-loves-his-mom smile and proffered my hand. “Miss Nichols?”
She laughed for some reason. “Karen, yes, I’m early.”
Her hand slid into mine and felt so smooth and uncallused it could have been gloved. “Call me Patrick. That’s Mr. Rogowski.”
Bubba grunted and slugged his coffee.
Karen Nichols’s hand dropped from mine and she jerked back slightly, as if afraid she’d have to extend her hand to Bubba. Afraid if she did, she might not get it back.
She wore a brown suede jacket that fell to midthigh over a charcoal cable-knit crewneck, crisp blue jeans, and bright white Reeboks. None of her apparel looked as if a wrinkle, stain, or wisp of dust had been within a country mile of it.
She placed delicate fingers on her smooth neck. “A couple of real PIs. Wow.” Her soft blue eyes crinkled with her button nose and she laughed again.
“I’m the PI,” I said. “He’s just slumming.”
Bubba grunted again and kicked me in the ass.
“Down, boy,” I said. “Heel.”
Bubba sipped some coffee.
Karen Nichols looked as if she’d made a mistake coming here. I decided then not to lead her up to my belfry office. If people were uncertain about hiring me, taking them to the belfry usually wasn’t good PR.
School was out because it was Saturday, and the air was moist and without a chill, so Karen Nichols, Bubba, and I walked to a bench in the schoolyard. I sat down. Karen Nichols used an immaculate white handkerchief to dust the surface, then she sat down. Bubba frowned at the lack of space on the bench, frowned at me, then sat on the ground in front of us, crossed his legs, peered up expectantly.
“Good doggie,” I said.
Bubba gave me a look that said I’d pay for that as soon as we were away from polite company.
“Miss Nichols,” I said, “how did you hear about me?”
She tore her gaze away from Bubba and looked into my eyes for a moment in utter confusion. Her blond hair was cut as short as a small boy’s and reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of women in Berlin in the 1920s. It was sculpted tight against the skull with gel, and even though it wouldn’t be moving on its own unless she stepped into the wake of a jet engine, she’d clipped it over her left ear, just below the part, with a small black barrette that had a june bug painted on it.
Her wide blue eyes cleared and she made that short, nervous laugh again. “My boyfriend.”