Crash

Carly is driving, and she never drives. She’s too timid – can’t make a left if there’s another car within 200 yards. I am in the front passenger seat, though I never turn my head to look at her. I see everything through the windshield.

We’re driving at freeway speeds, too fast for this one-way single-lane alley. A grey brick wall on the left blurs by, just feet from Carly’s window. Ahead, a white sports car with a patchy paint job doesn’t see the brake lights. He slams into the little blue hatchback that’s in front of him, and instead of stopping, he seems angered by the collision - he stomps on the gas and keeps pushing the other car. They swerve off to the left and smash into the wall. Somehow Carly avoids the accident, and we continue on our way.

But the mood turns dark. The carnage seems to follow us psychically. We drive on, but we’re tense, scared, cringing. Like someone is going to jump out to stop the car, or the police are going to pull us over and blame us for the crash.

It seems relatively normal when figures start appearing in front of the car – policemen with their badges out – hands up gesturing for us to stop. But they’re not real cops, they’re TV cops. Pembleton. Columbo. Goren. I grip the steering wheel with my left hand and talk Carly calmly through the storm of authority figures streaking past the car. Nothing to worry about, keep going, don’t stop, it’s not real. You always see ghostly, projected images of TV detectives passing through your car when you drive down dark alleyways.

We take a right down an even smaller alley, to try to escape the gloom and the ghosts. I’m still holding the wheel, talking her down, driving with my voice. The alley gets smaller, the walls closing in, until it’s not even an alleyway, but a passage leading to somebody’s back yard, and we have to stop and put the car in reverse before we drive into their den through the sliding glass door.