I turned right again—and noticed only as I went by it the sign that said no outlet.
I had turned down a cul-de-sac. I was trapped.
For some reason, I slowed and waited for the other car to follow me. I suppose I just wanted to be sure that the white Avalon was really there. It was. I continued to the end of the street, where the road widened into a small circle for turning around. There were no cars in the driveway of the house at the top of the circle. I pulled in and stopped my engine, waiting, amazed by the crashing of my heart and my inability to do anything more than sit and wait for the inevitable teeth and claws of whatever was chasing me.
The white car came closer. It slowed as it reached the circle, slowed as it approached me . . .
And it went past me, around the circle, back up the street, and into the Miami sunset.
I watched it go, and as its taillights disappeared around the corner I suddenly remembered how to breathe. I took advantage of this rediscovered knowledge, and it felt very good. Once I had restored 94
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my oxygen content and settled back into being me, I began to feel like a very stupid me. What, after all, had really happened? A car had appeared to follow me. Then it had gone away. There were a million reasons why it might have taken the same route as I had, most of them summed up by the one word: coincidence. And then, as poor Dithering Dexter sat sweating in his seat, what had the big bad car done? It had gone past. It had not paused to stare, snarl, or throw a hand grenade. It had just gone by and left me in a puddle of my own absurd fear.
There was a knock on my window and I bumped my head on the ceiling of the car.
I turned to look. A middle-aged man with a mustache and bad acne scars was bent over, looking in at me. I had not noticed him until now, further proof that I was alone and unprotected.
I rolled down the window. “Can I help you with something?”
the man said.
“No, thank you,” I told him, somewhat puzzled as to what help he thought he could offer. But he did not keep me guessing.
“You’re in my driveway,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, and it occurred to me that I probably was and some explanation was called for. “I was looking for Vinny,” I said.
Not brilliant, but serviceable under the circumstances.
“You got the wrong place,” the man said with a certain mean triumph that almost cheered me up again.
“Sorry,” I said. I rolled up the window and backed out of the driveway, and the man stood and watched me go, presumably to be sure that I did not suddenly leap out and attack him with a ma-chete. In just a few moments I was back in the bloodthirsty chaos of U.S. 1. And as the routine violence of the traffic closed around me like a warm blanket, I felt myself slowly sinking back into myself.
Home again, behind the crumbling walls of Castle Dexter, vacant basement and all.
I had never felt so stupid—which is to say, I felt as close to being a real human being as it was possible for me to feel. What on earth had I been thinking? I had not, in truth, been thinking at all, merely reacting to a bizarre twitch of panic. It was all too ridiculous, DEXTER IN THE DARK
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too patently human and laughable, if only I had been a real human who could really laugh. Ah, well. At least I was really ridiculous.
I drove the last few miles thinking of insulting things to call myself for such a timid overreaction, and by the time I pulled into the driveway at Rita’s house I was thoroughly soaked in my own abuse, which made me feel much better. I got out of my car with something very close to a real smile on my face, generated by my joy in the true depth of Dexter Dunderhead. And as I took one step away from the car, half turning to head for the front door, a car drove slowly by.
A white Avalon, of course.
If there is such a thing in the world as justice, then this was surely one of the moments it had arranged just for me. Because many times I had enjoyed the sight of a person standing with their mouth hanging open, completely incapacitated by surprise and fear, and now here was Dexter in the same stupid pose. Frozen in place, unable to move even to wipe away my own drool, I watched the car drive slowly past, and the only thought I could muster was that I must look very, very stupid.
Naturally, I would have looked a great deal stupider if whoever was in the white car did anything other than drive past slowly, but happily for the many people who know and love me—at least two, including myself—the car went by without pausing. For a moment I thought I could see a face looking at me from the driver’s seat.
And then he accelerated, turning slightly away into the middle of the street so that the light gleamed for an instant off the silver bull’s head Toyota emblem, and the car was gone.
And I could think of nothing at all to do but eventually close my mouth, scratch my head, and stumble into the house.
There was a soft but very deep and powerful drumbeat, and gladness surged up, born from relief and anticipation of what was to come. And then the horns sounded, and it was very close now, only a matter of moments before it came and then everything would begin and happen again at last, and as the gladness rose into a melody 96
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