Eileen slumped back in her leathery seat, eyeing Nicky uncomfortably as he guided their car around the curve of the steep mountain drive. They zoomed along on a narrow two-lane road.
The car stereo was pumping rock n’ roll out the speakers: The low bass shook Eileen's bones and the high treble tore at the inside of her ears.
She cast her gaze through the windshield past the single twisting guardrail set to catch any runaway car from splashing into the vast white-capped ocean expanse below. In the distance, the dusk sun was dyeing the sky red as her part of the earth slowly spun away.
Nervously, Eileen reached out and snapped off the car radio. “No, I want to talk about this now,” she said with a crack in her voice. She was losing her patience with Nicky. She grabbed his right forearm digging in her nails above the falcon tattoo.
Nicky eyed her in anger, the whites of his eyes yellowish with jaundice. He had contracted viral hepatitis from God-knows-what, and it was getting worse, now making his skin coppery. They had just left the natural pharmacy with a refill of his recently prescribed witchdoctor medication. He shook her grip loose.
“Hey,” Nicky said. “Relaaax.”
“What? Relax?” Eileen countered. “How would you like it if I can home with another man?”
Nicky chuckled, and then turned the back of his downy head to her, looking out the window. “The more the merrier.”
“I hate you!” she shouted. “I really hate you!” Only Nicky could find a tacky slut willing to go home with a copper skinned man with yellow eyes.
“Darling we just came home,” -- Nicky looked at her legs, shrugged his shoulder and grinned -- “to go to town.”
“Well, you can go to town from now on in someone else’s house!” Eileen punched Nicky in the bicep; he winced.
“Ow, that hurt baby doll,” Nicky said, rubbing his arm. He inspected the red mark forming where she had hit him. “Careful, now that I’m sick, I bruise easily,” he warned.
Eileen splayed her fingers on her lap, realizing she had hit him with her engagement ring -- one with a puny diamond, sparkling weakly upon her finger. But, it was never the lack of a big rock that concerned her, rather his ever-putrefying derelict lifestyle. They had been arguing on and off for months --after the first two peaceful months as newlyweds -- and now this is how it was; it kept adding up. She threw her hands in the air and thought about divorce for the hundredth time, only this time she made up her mind, she was sure she would file as soon as she got out of this car.
“Hey Eileen” -- Nicky grinned -- “if you hit me again…I hit back.” He craned his neck and snapped his teeth at her.
“Don’t!” she said, taken unaware. What drug was he on now?
He did it again closer and bit the edge of her earlobe.
“Aiiiee!” Eileen squeaked, grabbing her ear and cringing against the passenger door, banging her head to the window. “Nicky stop it now!” she said, checking her ear for blood. She looked at him, shocked.
He unfastened his shoulder belt and leaned back over her; she held up her hands up in defense. He was scaring her; she could see his eyes prying though her fingers. Nicky had bitten her before -- sharp pecking nibbles when they had been in bed -- but she had let him, back when the thought of being alone scared her more than his unpredictable behavior; she admitted now she had married for looks. But as of last night, bringing home another woman was proving to be too much to turn her face away anymore even if Nicky’s face belonged to Valentino’s reincarnation.
“Eileen?” Nicky cooed softly, faking a hint of concern in his voice. “Eileen?”
Eileen lowered her hands tentatively and looked at his profile watching the road. One hand on the wheel, he ran his finger down the hook shape of his sharply formed nose.
He turned on her; his yellow ringed eyes grew angry. “Get this now you little rodent. I do whatever I want, when I want!” The veins in his throat poked out beneath the skin.
“Don’t,” she squeaked. Her mind raced to soothe him. “Nicky was it something the doctor said? I can help -- “
“Shut up!” He glared at her. “I just wish” -- Nicky lowered his window halfway and spat; red tainted spittle oozed down the glass -- “you would for once shut up….” His voice softened. “Go away for awhile.” He rolled up the window.
Eileen reluctantly turned her shoulder to him: She was hoping he would calm down if she stayed quiet. God knew he hated any challenge to his authority. She looked out the passenger window to the gray-rock face, thinking. What had the doctor told him? She raced the possibilities through her head. Outside the window, the mountainside began to move by quicker as Nicky sped up the car.
The engine roared.
“Nicky? What are you doing?” Eileen straightened herself in the seat. Her eyes widened. They were streaming by the oncoming traffic at an alarming rate. She feared that he might lose control of the car and veer out of their lane.
Nicky ignored her and turned the radio back on, once again to an ear deafening level. A soaring guitar solo filled the car.
“Slow down please!” Eileen pleaded, reaching for the radio. It hurt her ears!
Nicky slapped her hand away before she could reach it.
“Slow down please!” Eileen repeated, rubbing her stinging hand, and looking out the windshield in wide-eyed horror.
“Why, am I scaring you!” Nicky pulled one hand off the wheel. “Whoohoo!” he howled, as the car swerved dangerously to the left. Then he waved both arms in the air, brushing the ceiling. “Look ma’ -- no hands! Hahaha!”
“Goddamn you!” Eileen hissed. She sat bolt upright in her seat as her body tensed, her arms stiffened at her sides; her heart rate increased. She had the urge to grab hold of the wheel, but was too frightened of what he might do if she tried.
Nicky arched his fingers like claws and slapped his palms down on the wheel like a maniac and pressed the gas pedal down further.
Eileen eyed the speedometer: Nicky had it up past eighty miles per hour, much too fast for this winding road.
They approached a BMW from behind, racing up to its taillights. Nicky gritted his teeth and guided his car into the oncoming lane. Headlights raced toward them and a horn blew as Nicky narrowly avoided a head-on collision and swung back into the correct lane.
Eileen screamed.
“Whoa! Close call!” Nicky said, leaning as he eased the car around a curve in the road. The force pressed Eileen’s shoulder to the door. Nicky’s focused his narrow-set eyes on her, watching for movement. Was he playing cat and mouse with her before he killed them both? Is that what he wanted?
Eileen pulled at her brown hair in frustration. “Slow down!” she said. She forced her stiffening body to move; and pressed the button to lower her window. The wind rushed in. She unfastened her lap belt; then strained against the shoulder restraint pulling it slack and leaned her head out. The swift air current immediately blew back her hair from the side of her head as she watched facedown the painted white line of the shoulder and gravel speed by below in a blur. Her heart was thudding in her chest.
“Go ‘head, jump!” Nicky said. “The cars will squash you like a bug.”
Eileen pulled her shoulders and head back in the car and dropped back in her seat.
Nicky turned the wheel as they hit a curve and Eileen struggled to keep her weight from being thrown into him.
Nicky approached another slower moving car. He smashed his palm against the horn; then began flashing the headlights. “Come on grandpa! You’re slowing me down!” He pulled up to within a few feet of the car’s bumper.
Eileen could read the license plate. “SKEETER” it read.
“Move the hell out of the way, Skeety!” Nicky bellowed. The car scooted over, bumping and kicking up dust onto the narrow gravel shoulder as Nicky raced by.
“Hahaha!” Nicky roared with laughter, looking back at the driver. “Sucker!”
Nicky was suddenly looking beyond Eileen. “Hey, roll up that window dear!” He intoned in falsetto. “I’m sensitive and the wind is chafing my skin!”
Eileen refused and leaned back out the passenger window, waving her arm like a broken windmill, hoping other drivers might call the police on their cell phones.
Suddenly, the power window began to move underneath her hand -- Nicky was raising it from the driver’s side controls -- and she pulled her head back in before it closed shut.
Nicky winked at her and then with a quick turn of the wheel moved back into the oncoming lane. They pulled up beside a SUV. Eileen stared as the driver waved his hand uncomprehendingly in the air at Nicky. Nicky shook his head and gunned it by the SUV, moving back into the right lane.
God, we’re gonna hit someone head on, Eileen thought, looking ahead to a long line of oncoming traffic.
Eileen’s sweaty hands shook uncontrollably as she fumbled to refasten her lap belt. Before the two ends clicked together she let the belt retract back between the seat: She heard the wail of a siren clash with Nicky’s pumping stereo. She whipped her eyes toward the side view mirror. On the surface she could see the flash of red and blue lights. Thank God, the cops!
Nicky raised his chin, looking in the rear view mirror. He flexed his jaw-line.
Eileen hoped he would pull over. But she didn’t dare say it: He was decidedly suicidal at this point; she figured his medical case was believed by him to be hopeless. Was it something he learned at this last visit to the doctor? Was he given a death sentence? She knew one thing for sure: He wasn’t planning to let her out of this car alive.
Eileen thought Nicky was hesitating to make up his mind. Maybe he would pull over. He grinned at her, spreading his thin lips back from his teeth. His yellow eyes flashed. “We can outrun them!”
“Nicky no! You’ll go to jail!”
The engine revved; the car increased its pace as they approached a sharp curve. “I’ll go to hell before I go to jail.”
“Ooosh,” he said, as he leaned over the wheel, slowing with the brakes and guiding the car through a tire-squealing hairpin curve.
Eileen rocked in her seat crashing against the door.
Nicky floored the gas pedal and the engine roared against gravity taking them down a straightaway.
Eileen reached again to snap off the radio; and he grabbed her forearm and twisted.
“Eeek!” Eileen yelped, yanking her arm away, the skin burning.
While keeping his eyes focused on the road, he pointed a finger at her. “Do not touch the music!”
Eileen’s vision coalesced with Nicky’s bronze skin. She looked from the jutting finger to his forearm. The falcon tattoo was glistening with beads of sweat; she deluded it coming to life. Its beak was masked in a scream; its head turned at an odd angle.
It made her dizzy. Distantly, she thought about attacking Nicky to try and make him stop the car, but was afraid that might make him crash.
Instead, Eileen turned her head around and looked over her shoulder for the cops out the rear window.
“Hey!” Nicky roared at her. “All passengers face forward!” He pushed at her shoulder; and then pulled her hair painfully when she didn’t comply.
Eileen turned forward.
Nicky came up on a Volkswagen Beetle.
Why aren’t they pulling over? Eileen wondered.
The oncoming lane was full, so Nicky swung right onto the bumpy shoulder; the car vibrated roughly coming perilously close to the rock wall. Nicky sped by the orange car, then pulled back onto the pavement.
Eileen’s mind confronted the heightening probability of death any second in a horrible crash. She conjured up the image of her parents answering the call from the police. She pictured some of her friends finding out. Oh Lord let me at survive this, at least for my parents -- so they don’t have to bury me.
She began to scream in frustration.
“Shut app!” Nicky said, slapping at her.
Sweat ran down Eileen’s forehead. She turned her eyes back to the side view mirror. Nervously, she brushed damp strands of mousy hair from her eyes. The flashing lights were still in pursuit: now appearing a little closer in the mirror.
God let them pull out a gun and blow out our tires, Eileen prayed.
Up ahead, a slow moving trailer-truck blocked their lane.
Nicky slowed down behind the trailer and Eileen felt a new sense of hope.
The oncoming traffic was too constant for Nicky to pass. And the mountainside crept close, rendering the shoulder on this stretch too narrow for a car to sneak by.
Eileen watched the speedometer arc downward to forty miles per hour.
Nicky pounded his horn and then rolled down his window. He stuck his hand outside and began gesturing at the truck driver. He shrieked loudly in frustration, ”Kaaaaahhh!”
Where did he want him to go? Eileen thought angrily. There was no place to pull over. She was hoping the truck driver -- surely alerted to the pursuant police -- would brake in their lane forcing Nicky to stop.
Eileen dared a peek over her shoulder and saw the cop car closing in on them. She reopened her window, tugged at the shoulder belt, and stuck her head outside. She could see through the police car’s windshield, noticing the uniformed driver in sunglasses behind the wheel direct his line of vision toward her.
She beckoned at him with waves of her hand; then moved herself back inside.
Nicky turned the wheel sharply to the left and Eileen screamed.
There was a violent head-on collision and Nicky was catapulted through the shattering windshield. Eileen saw the front end of a Lincoln Towncar for an instant as sprays of tinkling glass flew; then there was a second stronger concussion; and the horizon line swung in an arc as Nicky’s car upended. The metal of the passenger seat crushed in around Eileen’s legs as the car skidded along backwards on its roof.
Nicky’s car struck something immovable and rocked to a stop. Eileen’s head, neck and shoulders were against the car ceiling and her legs were dangling above her stuck under the dashboard. The car stereo fizzled away to silence. Piercing screams of rubber against pavement crossed the air and crunching metal chorused with whirring sirens.
Eileen struggled and twisted, pressing the shoulder belt emergency release button and pulling her legs from the wreckage. She fell awkwardly to the car ceiling, sending quivers up her spine. She turned over and scooted along on her side, hauling her body though the window frame.
She lay staring at the sky outside Nicky’s car, amid flashing red and blue lights. She clenched her hands in the soft dirt. Blood pumped copiously from a neck wound where the shoulder belt had cut through the skin. Her body hurt like hell despite the painless state of shock she was expecting.
She heard honking and shouting; two doors slammed shut sequentially.
Eileen rolled to her stomach and got to her hands and knees; then began to crawl alongside the guardrail -- she found if she kept moving it lessened the pain. Her blood dripped to the dirt below and she was afraid she might lose consciousness.
“Ma’am are you okay?” she heard a man’s panicked voice call.
She heard another squealing of tires and compaction of metal.
Eileen kept on crawling past wrecked cars. Black smoke from a raging engine fire clouded the air.
Up ahead, twenty-five yards or so, on the other side of the guardrail, lay a body -- supine. Eileen crawled faster, then stumbled upright to her knees; and then pressed with her palms upright to her feet. She began to run on spindly legs.
“Ma’am hold still, you’re injured,” a sharp voice behind her commanded.
Eileen approached a blue pickup truck, with a smashed right fender. The headlight hung down loose by the wires.
She brushed by the truck’s door, leaving bloodstains.She heard the pickup’s door squeak open. “Are you okay?” the driver asked.
Eileen heaved out fumy air, ignoring the voice, focusing her eyes on the body.
She came to it and gasped. Nicky lay spread-eagled in the dirt. One bloody hand hung limp over the guardrail and the other dangled precariously over the cliff’s edge.
Eileen crawled, half-fell, over the guardrail and rested on all fours beside Nicky.
“Ma’am, don’t move!” she heard the sharp voice call again.
“Oh Nicky,” Eileen whined, looking at his mangled face. It was covered in blood and embedded with shards of glass, but she kissed the lips anyway; she flashed back to their wedding kiss, briefly. Presently, Nicky murmured something unintelligible.
Then with all her waning strength, Eileen shoved his body off the sloping edge of the cliff and watched it fall far down to the rocks below. Surf crashed over the body.
Eileen felt something fleshy and warm grasp her ankle.
“No!” she said, kicking it away. Her vision began to dim.
She turned to look and saw the blurred figure of a fat police officer grabbing at her ankle from behind the guardrail.
“Ma’am there’s been an accident, stay put and we’ll help you!” His sheriff’s hat fell off as he stepped one leg over the rail and re-reached for her leg.
Unexpectedly, the sound of beating wings struck Eileen’s ears. She looked out over the cliff into the crimson twilight; where the water met the sky, two yellow eyes hovered just above, watching her.
And then she dropped to her stomach and rolled to the cliff’s edge, finally understanding that she had all along, preyed upon herself.
The sky arced by and turned ocean blue. Two strong hands grabbed her legs just above the ankles. She stared as the ocean below swung like a pendulum.
“Hold on Jake!” a voice shouted.
Eileen’s torso hung limp in the air, banging into the side of the cliff, thumping air from her lungs. Down below seagulls scattered from the rocks and appeared to float upwards toward her. She held up her dangling arms and spread them like wings.
Her body began to rise as strong bonds pulled her back onto level ground, dragging her along in the dirt.
Eileen lost consciousness to the sound of human voices.
In a dream she fell through the sky until a giant seagull caught her on its back. It flew her softly through the sky until she was able to alight gently onto solid ground.
“Thank you,” Eileen told the gull. She touched the bristly, white plumage on the side of its head. And then it flew away, leaving her standing there. The sequence occurred repeatedly. “Until you change,” the gull finally spoke to her. And then it stopped.
When she woke up, she was aware of lying on a bed in an instantaneously recognizable hospital room.
Vaguely, as her eyes adjusted to light, she saw the back of her father’s white haired head and the curly brown hair of her mother’s being escorted out a doorway by a doctor walking behind them.
The doctor spoke, “This one deserves a second chance,” and closed the door behind him once he exited.
“Thank you,” Eileen whispered.