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inane annals
Car Tag, pt.2
by Neil Sholer | 07 May 2007, 0:00

"Here's what I have in mind," Nathan said, gesturing at the four vehicles parked in his driveway and along the curb. "It's a team game. One person drives, one person tags."

Bobby nodded. "Car Tag."

"Precisely."

"What are the teams?" Will asked.

"Well." Nathan smiled with one side of his mouth. "Since Bobby and I have this long standing rivalry, we'll be the drivers."

"Alright. Who are the passengers?" Bobby looked towards me and Will.

"I'll be on Nathan's team." I remembered what he said about the tundra.

"OK. Now for the rules." Nathan looked almost philosophical. "You score a point when anyone in your car tags any part of the opponent's car."

"And we can only use our own body parts." Bobby held his hands out, fingers spread. "No brooms or poles or anything."

Will looked at Nathan. "And we never tag cars that aren't in the game."

"Of course not." Nathan took a long drink, emptying his red party cup. "And one final rule. We only play while under the influence."

*

We began heading north at sixty miles per hour. At one in the morning, Interstate 10 was nearly abandoned.

Bobby was behind the wheel of his black Honda Civic, driving in the far right lane. I sat beside Nathan, who drove his white Chevrolet pickup truck. We were in the far left lane.

"I have the disadvantage because my truck is longer than his car." Nathan rolled down both windows. "So that means you're gonna have to be fast. And crazy."

"Alright." My heart was light and adrenaline-fast.

Bobby's Civic began closing in on us from the right. We were still parallel. Both of his windows were down, too.

The horizontal gap between our cars was down to about four feet. Bracing myself against the floor and doorframe, I leaned out of the car and extended my right arm. My seat belt, though loosened, was still on, and I wasn't able to fully reach Bobby's car.

"Did you get him?" Nathan shouted over the wind.

"No." I slinked back into the passenger seat.

Just then, Bobby cut his speed and began to hook behind us. When the Civic's nose was even with the Chevrolet's rear wheel, Bobby closed the gap to a matter of inches. He deftly slapped the rear of Nathan's truck, then braked to put some distance between us.

Looking in the side view mirror, I saw Bobby laughing triumphantly.

"Shit." Nathan exhaled heavily.

It went on like that for two more rounds. I scored a point by tagging the hatchback of Bobby's Civic. Then, less than a minute later, Will slapped the driver's side of Nathan's truck. The final score was 2 to 1, Bobby's favor.

*

"The only thing I was ever any good at was baseball," Bobby said from across a picnic table at the Foothills park.

I put my bean burrito back on the table. "Bobby, that's not—"

"Hold up, just listen. You don't have to say anything nice."

I bit into the burrito and shrugged.

"And you saw what baseball did for my stepdad." The afternoon sun made his face look blank, oversaturated. "Three hundred grand one year, twenty the next. Even without the big strike in '94, his career wouldn't have lasted much longer. Everyone said he was getting too old to be a pitcher. I mean, Hershiser did it, but still."

I thought of professional baseball players. Their blistering apogee turning the remainder of their lives into one big comedown. The last time I saw Bobby's stepdad he was asleep on the couch, his belly leaking out of a stained grey shirt.

"At least he can say he played professionally," I said. I knew it sounded lame.

Bobby waved his arm and stared at his half-eaten taco. "Well, baseball is out of the question for me. Long odds, even if you work your whole life for it."

He scratched an eyebrow, his squint turning his face into a scowl.

Then continued. "The future is a hard thing to think about it. I'm kind of an anti-futurist."

I heard a baby, its cry attenuated by the hot wind.

"The thing about you, Neil, is you're good with computers. It's a gift. I really admire that. It's just, I don't have anything like that."

I swallowed, trying to remember anything he'd done, anything impressive. "What about in 7th grade, when half the class used to copy your homework because you were the only kid who understood Algebra?"

Bobby grinned with one side of his mouth. "So I should be an accountant?"

"Yeah, or something else like that." I poked a hole in my burrito, feeling the slick sauce on my finger. We both knew he couldn't even get into college with his grades.

"No, I know what I'll do. I want to be a chef." Bobby gestured at his unfinished taco, at my ruined burrito. "Not like this, though. Gourmet food. Remember my sister's ex-boyfriend, Armando? He was going to culinary school and learned how to make all kinds of food."

"Yeah, I can see you doing that. With a chef's hat and everything. You'd have to put on some weight, though."

He laughed. "That can be arranged."

I felt a long minute of pathos for Bobby, for how he'd reneged on the early promise of his youth, for how he'd sold himself short before the race even began. And I recognized it in myself.

*

We were all sitting upstairs in Nathan's loft. Will and I sat on the far edges of the couch, while Bobby and Nathan sat on the floor. It was a heavy, monsoon dusk. The glow from the TV lit up the room.

Nathan and Bobby were playing Halo on the X-Box. They sat side by side, legs crossed, the wires from their controllers swaying erratically. They had been engaged in a death match for the past 45 minutes.

I looked over at Will. He yawned, staring in the general direction of the bedrooms.

"I don't know how you guys can play this game non-stop. Me, I'm bored after the first round," I said.

Nathan responded about ten seconds later. "Neil, you obviously don't understand the fine art of combat. That's one thing I've always known about—"

"Take that, bitch!" Bobby said as his grenade detonated and killed Nathan.

"Damn. It looks like Bobby might finally win." Will leaned forward and stifled a yawn.

"Jesus, guys, stop distracting me," Nathan said.

Bobby and Nathan continued their death match. They were playing best of 25, and so far they were both tied at 12.

Bobby was holed up in a two story building. Nathan ran by, strafing, trying to send a stray bullet into Bobby's hideout. Bobby retreated down a ramp and waited just beside the main entrance. A few seconds elapsed. Then Nathan ran in, straight into Bobby's gunfire.

Just as Nathan was about to die, he broke the rules. He unplugged Bobby's controller. Then he shot Bobby, killing him deftly. It was over before Bobby could even plug his controller back in.

"What the fuck, man!" Bobby, still sitting, shoved Nathan so hard that they both toppled over.

Nathan covered his head until he realized Bobby wasn't going to strike him. Then he started laughing.

Bobby shook his head, snorted, and walked downstairs. Nathan stood up, backlit by the TV and grinning smugly. "I don't lose."

Will and I shifted awkwardly on the couch.

*

We were on Interstate 10 again. The monsoon had brought rain earlier that day and now, even at 2 a.m., the air had a musty, elemental feel.

Will had just scored a point by tagging Nathan's hood. The cumulative score was 8 to 7 and Nathan and I were losing. The Civic was a twenty yards behind us and slightly to the left.

We held the same distance for a mile. There was something almost meditative about it.

"OK, OK, we can still recover." Nathan hit the brakes. His truck slowed so dramatically that Bobby had to swerve to avoid hitting us.

Nathan laughed. "That spooked him."

Bobby's Civic was a hundred yards ahead of us now, one lane to the right.

Nathan accelerated, homing in on him. Somehow, he managed to stay directly behind the Civic despite Bobby's serpentine arcs across the interstate.

"Now." Looking straight ahead, Nathan pursed his lips. "Take off your seat belt."

I looked out the window and saw the lane dividers whipping by. "Hell no."

Nathan squinted. "It's the only way you're going to get the extra six or ten inches that you need." The Civic was only a few yards ahead of us.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and started to lean out of the window. Nathan punched the gas, and, with the arc of a boomerang, swerved to the left then to the right. We were closing in on the driver's side of Bobby's car with a dizzy, mathematical precision.

As I leaned out the night air was pure chaos around me. Bobby looked rapidly at Nathan's car and then his face took on a panicked expression. We were too close, too fast.

Bobby shouted something but I couldn't understand it.

I slapped the Civic's hood and almost fell out of the truck as Nathan lurched even closer. Somehow I slid back into my seat just before the two vehicles grazed each other. There was a crunching sound as something rocketed down the highway behind us.

*

Five minutes later. Bobby's Civic was under a floodlight in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes. It reminded me of a patient in a hospital bed.

"Fuck." Bobby's voice was low, somber.

The four of us were staring at the driver's side of his car. Besides some white scratches along the door, the only damage was an utterly absent side view mirror.

"That could've been a lot, lot worse," Will said.

I nodded, feeling lightheaded. "I know, man. I almost fell out the fucking window."

Nathan chewed the inside of his mouth, not saying anything.

"Alright." Bobby kicked his front tire. "We're not playing anymore. I don't want to see any of us get maimed."

Will nodded. "It's just not fucking worth it."

"Yeah." Nathan cleared his throat. "Look, I didn't mean for that to happen. I guess I got caught up in, in the game."

"That's alright." Bobby grinned. "At least we ended in a tie, right?"

Nathan chuckled. "How do pancakes sound? Come on, I'll buy."

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