Page 9

8

Vehicular Combat

Owen sat in the front, the other two in the back. The Escalade was roomy but worn-out. A soft decay had taken hold of it—scuffs on the leather seats, dings on the dashboard. It smelled strongly of old man cologne and air freshener, and Owen detected the ancient scent of cigarette smoke clinging to the car like a ghost refusing to leave this mortal coil. It made him want one; he hadn’t had a cigarette in ten years. For some people, outside the nicotine buzz, what they loved was the oral fixation. Owen had cherished having something to do with his hands—something that prevented him from fidgeting, biting his nails, clenching and unclenching his fists. (The trazodone helped, but imperfectly.)

It was noon on a Friday. Traffic getting out of Boston was ugly—a lot of stop-and-go, a chorus of honking.

“Normally, hour drive,” Roman said to them. “But ’cause of accident, ehm, two hours. Maybe little less.”

“Cool,” Hamish said.

The ride was quiet for a while, though the silence among them was loud.

Then Lore leaned toward Hamish and said, “So you said you have kids? How’s that going for you?”

Owen’s ears perked up. Lore, to his knowledge, gave literally zero shits about other people’s children. And hadn’t Hamish already told her about them?

“Ah, yeah, man, it’s good. It’s weird, it’s hard, but it’s like they say, it’s really rewarding. It changes your life, totally, totally.”

“So, how did you tell them that you were voting for Creel?” she asked, the question like a wrecking ball aimed right for Hamish.

Owen blanched, and turned around to rubberneck this conversational collision. Hamish looked like a raccoon caught in a trap. Lore on the other hand looked predatory—she’d twisted her torso around and was pinning Hamish to the seat with a hawkish, talons-out stare. It was a familiar look. Long as he knew Lore, she could get like this—zeroing in on a topic and launching herself at it like a human piranha swarm. She loved debate class in high school and could debate you about anything—from why Star Wars was more politically relevant than Star Trek to how hatred of MSG in food was a white supremacist tool. She got off on getting her opponents to tap out. And even when they did, sometimes she kept going.

“We don’t have to—” Owen started to say, but Hamish was already answering her question.

“Man, you’re coming in hot, Lore. Nice to see you, too. Shit. Uh. Yeah, I fuckin’—I voted for Creel. First time, not second or third. How’d you—”

“C’mon, you posted it to Facebook and shit. You had the red hat selfies and went to one of his Nazi rallies and everything.”

“Maybe it was just a Phillies cap.”

“It wasn’t—no, it was so not a Phillies cap, I know what a Phillies cap looks like, we all know what a Phillies cap looks like. Don’t bullshit me.”

Owen said, “That guy ruined Phillies hats. Every time I see one…”

But they didn’t even seem to hear him. Lore continued on:

“You were proud of it, and you know it.”

“Then,” Hamish corrected. “ Then I was proud of it. Not so much now.”

“Why not now?”

“Well, look at him. I mean—you know. I dunno.”

“C’mon, please.” Lore shook her head. “He always was what he was, and he told us from the beginning. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Isn’t that the saying? You knew who he was and who you were voting for. You probably voted for him the other times, too, you just won’t say it out loud. You took the hat off, oooh, but I bet you still own it. If I squint, I can still see it on your head.” She rolled her eyes. “Half of America put the hat on and took the mask off and that was that, and that’s where we’re at now.”

At that, Hamish struggled uncomfortably in his seatbelt. “Fine, you’ve made up your mind, can we talk about something else?”

“You still a Republican?” she asked.

“Y—no? Libertarian, kinda. Technically independent—”

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Lore,” Owen said, “c’mon.”

“No, no, you hate this, too,” she said to Owen, accusing him, pointing a finger. “Don’t deny it. You don’t get it, either. That isn’t Hamish. It’s like a—a clone of him, a Thing-version of our old friend.”

Hamish shot Owen a desperate look, as if to say, Save me, bro, but Owen gave a soft shrug and refused to throw a life preserver when he said, “Yeah, no, I—I really don’t get it.”

“Dude,” Hamish said, half pleading. Owen felt cowardly. But sometimes you just wanted to stay out of Lore’s way.

“Just say it,” Lore challenged Hamish.

“Say what?”

“Say you don’t think people like me should exist.”

“Whoa!” Hamish said, laughing a big laugh that was more a defense mechanism than anything else. He held up both hands. “What the fuck, Lore. I surrender. Okay? I don’t know what you are talking about, so I give up.”

“You don’t just get to give up. You can’t back out of this. You think people like me shouldn’t exist. We shouldn’t have books to read where we see ourselves, we shouldn’t be able to get married or have kids or, fuck, own fucking property; no, you think we should be legislated out of existence.”

“People like you?”

“Yes! A queer woman—”

“Queer? I thought that was a slur…”

“ A queer woman, ” she said again, louder, “who is pansexual—”

“The hell is that?” Hamish asked. “You bang pots and pans?”

“Hamish, Christ,” Owen protested.

“I’m genderfluid, pansexual, aromantic, AuDHD—”

Hamish’s eyes went wide. “I seriously don’t know what any of that shit means, Lore. They don’t hand out manuals for this stuff—”

Lore held up her fingers and began to count them off, loudly explaining each item on the list, each at higher volume than the last: “Genderfluid, meaning I currently go by she —or sometimes they —as pronouns. Pansexual, meaning I’ll fuck anyone regardless of what their gender presentation is.”

“I thought aromantic meant you didn’t have…sexual partners,” Owen interjected.

“No,” Lore answered, sounding freshly irritated. “That’s asexual. I’m aromantic. It just means I don’t form romantic bonds or have those kind of lovey ooh-la-la feelings for people.”

“See?” Hamish said. “Even he doesn’t have the, the, the fuckin’ glossary, and he’s a lefty like you—”

“Sorry,” Owen mouthed to her, quietly.

Lore ignored him, kept on. “ Finally, AuDHD means I meet the diagnostic criteria for the overlapping conditions of both autism and ADHD.”

“You’re kidding,” Hamish said, looking bewildered. “You’re not really autistic, right? There was an autistic kid in Emma’s grade this year and, I mean, that kid wasn’t okay. Sweet kid but, uhh. You’re not like that .”

“Autism is a spectrum.”

“Like gender,” Owen said, and he realized suddenly it sounded like he was trying to earn, what, brownie points from Lore for having the correct answer? It made him feel suddenly selfish and a little stupid. You should just shut up.

“What, is everything a spectrum?” Hamish asked, but it wasn’t a serious question. He didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have.

“Yeah, actually,” Lore said. “Everything pretty much is a spectrum.”

“Everything but politics, I guess.”

Lore was about to lay into him further, her cheeks blooming with something beyond just indignation. She was angry now. Spitting mad. This wasn’t just Lore’s usual heat-seeking missile. She was pissed. Wanted blood. Hamish saw it, too, and quickly stammered out an apology: “Hey, hey, sorry! Sorry. Okay? I’m sorry I voted for Creel. I regret it. It was stupid. I’m an asshole, I get it, but like, relax, I’m not some frothy QAnon fuckin’ Creel-mouth who’s out there burning books and telling people vaccines are poison, okay? It’s fine. We’re fine.”

Owen watched Lore settle back into her seat—but while the hot anger dissipated, something cold lingered. Her mouth formed a stiff line when she said, “No, you’re not a true believer. In a lot of ways, you’re worse. You’re one of those just asking questions guys. Some devil’s advocate dickhead dumbass who passes along someone else’s disinformation and bigotry with a shrug and a wink, and maybe you say you’re done with Creel but you’ll vote for one of his Diet Fascist lackeys. You’ll say, Oh, I don’t care about trans people, but what you mean is, you don’t care for trans people. Even if one of your kids is trans, or gay, or autistic.” There, Hamish seemed to flinch. “You won’t ever vote to help them, and you’ll probably think, But kids shouldn’t be trans or see trans people or have a gay teacher, or Why do my white kids have to have shame over slavery—hey, it’s not like we personally enslaved Black people, and If homeless people don’t want to be homeless, maybe they should just get a job, and, you know, whatever helps you sleep at night, Ham. I vote the other way, and frankly I don’t know that shit’s getting much better anyway—the homeless are still homeless and the Middle East is still a fuckshow and Russia is still ruling the roost and the earth is really starting to boil now, so fuck it, what does it matter anyway, right?” She threw up her hands. “Fuck it all to hell.”

At that, she slumped back in her seat, arms crossed. She wrangled her headphones off her neck and popped the cups back over her ears. Music began leaking out from around the edges—a dull throb of something electronic. Her eyes closed as if she was shutting them, and the broken world, out.

Owen and Hamish looked at each other, and each made that awkward eyebrow-raise half-smile combo.

“Yeah,” Owen said.

“Yeah,” Hamish said.

“So, ahh. What do you do for a living now?”

“Mortgage broker. You?”

“Oh. Used bookstore. Clerk. Part-time.”

“Sorry.” He winced. “I mean, cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Another awkward smile.

Then Hamish looked out the window and Owen turned around and the car drove on, in silence. The only other thing anyone said during the whole drive was five minutes later, when Roman said, mostly to himself, “I think people are all big mess and the sooner we realize that, the better. Psh. ”