Bill said, “Too many miles. I can’t take it. My mind’s all over the place. I’m seeing rainbows. I’m seeing rainbows, goddamn it.”
Tom folded the map. “You’re fine. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“Why aren’t you driving in the first place?”
“You insisted.”
“Well, you should have insisted otherwise.”
“Fine; pull over and stop. I’ll drive, for Christ’s sakes.”
They swapped places. Tom had a look in his eyes, like someone who was supposed to care but did not. It wasn’t an angry look but rather one of extreme agitation. His hands shook a bit on the wheel. Neither one of them wore safety belts. They slung them to the side. Bill kicked his feet up on the dashboard. Tom looked over as if he had just been kicked in the shin.
“You don’t need to put your feet up there.”
“What’s the difference with this old piece of shit?”
“We drove to Tallahassee for a vacation. You ruined it and now you’re ruining my dashboard. Take your damn feet down.”
Bill took his feet down and looked into all the space that surrounded them, and anyone could have seen that he was either on drugs or seeing things or both. He crossed his arms as if to hold himself steady in declining gravity. His astronaut pose was altogether real and he was soon floating. It seemed that everything in the car had tipped and lifted into the air, and he kept grabbing at the empty soda cans that drifted past him.
“Just try to quiet down,” Tom said. “You got any more benzos?”
“If I had ‘em, don’t you think I’d take ‘em?”
“Well, it’s too bad you had to waste ‘em all back in Tallahassee. There was nothing there to make you nervous, not any more than usual, but you popped those things like Pez, and now look at the holy ass screwup you’ve gotten us both into. You’re full-out manic and I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“Remember that time you got depressed in Fort Myers? I sure the hell do. You were lower than dirt, down, way down, and you left it to me to figure it out. I didn’t know where we were and I had to find the hospital and you know I can’t drive so well. And there’s cans floating past me now and all you can do is put me down and I really could run out this door right now, just jump out and run. You think I could make it? You think I — what if I did? You can’t stop me. What if I did? This is the kind of shit that drives me crazy. You think I might fly if I think hard enough? If I believe it? Because I believe it. I’m sure I can fucking fly.”
“Will you shut up so I can drive? I’m not the one who went off my lithium, goddamn it. I told you it was a stupid idea, but you had to try it anyway. Try it again, I mean. How many times is it now you tried? Just like drinking. You keep trying that, too, and look where it gets you.”
The road was so boring, just a highway through rural patches, nothing at all to see except the occasional cops who jackrabbited out of their hiding places. Tom wasn’t speeding, though, despite the emergency. In fact, his speed was decreasing from 70 to 60 miles per hour.
“Why you slowing down?”
“Up ahead’s a hospital zone,” Tom said.
He pulled into the exit and then, with the car still rolling, opened Bill’s door and gave him a shove so that he rolled straight into the “Hospital Ahead” lane. He was still rolling as Tom hit the gas. Tom felt a little better. The lithium was working again.
Paul A. Toth lives in Sarasota, Florida. He is the author of three novels. The majority of his short fiction and other works, as well as information on ordering his novels, can be accessed from www.netpt.tv.
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