I am filthy.

I am perched on the hood of Ren's car, waiting for Glen to arrive.  It's about thirty-five degrees and I'm covered with three days' worth of accumulated oil and grime and smell, and I've got a skullcap of blood from where Gray hit me with a toaster.  My hair is matted with blood and flour.  I feel earthy, and natural, which is a nice way of saying that I probably stink like a dead hippie.  And I don't intend to stop to bathe until this thing is finished.  I've had enough distractions, and the only person whose opinion of how I look matters at all is dead anyway. 

Frost scores the edges of the car's fenders and the house's windows, but at least the sun is out.  The car is running, and the hood's warm from the engine's heat.  I took Molly to the airport, then bought some snow tires with a credit card that miraculously still works, then got Ren's mixtape from Cygnet, then went to an ATM and took out $300 and chucked both tape and card in the glovebox.  I came home and put a homemade firebomb in the trunk.  The roads are dry, so there's not even a hint of salt spray on the car yet. 

I sit with my eyes closed and feel the car rumbling underneath me, alive.  This thing is almost done.  I'm coming, Ren.  Soon.

I hear a car turn into the driveway behind me.   I know it's a BMW without even opening my eyes.  I don't know anyone who has one though, so I open my eyes and see that it's Glen, driving a 540 with New Jersey plates.  A press car.  I smile at it, and at its driver, and decide not to be irritated with him for hurting Molly's feelings until I know what it's all about. 

"Ready to go?" I ask him as he rolls up next to the Crane-Packard I'm sitting on.

"Go where?"

"For a drive."  I pat the car's hood.  "You helped build it, you should get to ride in it."

"Do I get to drive it?"

"No.  It belongs to Ren."  I can't help the implacable school-bus driver tone that leaps into my voice.

The sudden shift from cheerful to firm surprises him; everyone thinks that just because I'm all sunshine-y I'm some sort of kewpie doll all the way through.  "I didn't know you wore glasses," he says, changing the subject gracefully.

"Just to drive in," I say, resuming my previous light tone.  "My depth perception is ganked and I can't read street signs too well.  Otherwise I can see just fine."  I slide off of the Crane-Packard's hood and bounce to my feet in front of him.  "Let's go.  I got it aligned this morning, and stuck fresh snows on it too."

"There's no snow in the forecast," he says.

"There will be."

Glen frowns.  "Should I pack a toothbrush?"

"This is America, sillyhead.  The necessities of life can be found wherever you go.  The rollercoaster is leaving the gate.  In or out?"  If he wants to think about things, he can jolly well stay home.  I open my door and get in. 

I needn't worry though; the passenger door opens and Glen slides into the passenger seat as if it was magnetic.  I have the Crane-Packard in motion as soon as he closes the door.  "Glad I brought my tape recorder," he says.  As we back out of the driveway he locks the BMW's doors with the remote.

"What makes you think I'll consent to being taped?"

"Nothing.  But if you will, then I don't have to ask you to go and get it."

"Smart man," I say, and squeeze the pedal down.  I don't stomp, just squeeze, like firing a powerful handgun, and the little coupe surges forward with authority.  I learned to drive on this street, although the condos weren't here then, and now I'm driving a car I helped design on it.  Such a wonderful world, in some ways.  I let the car roll up to forty-five and then coast.  The limit's thirty-five, but speeding through here is a habit.

Glen's eyes are closed and he's grinning like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.  "It's so nice to build a car, and then hear it run," he says.  His voice is dreamy.

"It's barely running, yet," I say, smiling at the joy in his voice.  Glen is the sort of person who'd enjoy dragging a dead car out of a junkyard and resurrecting it, I think.  That's good.  That makes him one of my kind of people.  I make a couple of quick turns and we're on Michigan Avenue, headed for the freeway.

"What was the output again--oh, do you mind if I...?" he indicates the microcassette recorder and lets the question hang.  I shrug, and he turns it on.  "I know it's a blown 4.6, but what was the specific output?"

"It's a 4.7, actually."

"It isn't based on the Ford engine?"

"No.  Ren designed it.  And it's making about 385 horsepower, because it's young yet.  Once it's broken in it should do a bit better."

I cut off Glen's next question by flexing my calf, flooring the pedal, and racing up onramp to I-275.  The acceleration crushes Glen's words right out of his mouth, and he gasps with a giddy sort of glee that I feel too.  We mount the freeway going almost twice the speed of traffic, and Ren's delicious, delirious motor isn't even working hard.

I squeeze myself back in the seat and let the car fly, not thinking about it much.  I'm watching the road through the car's eyes now, each lane of traffic a line of motion, its speed dependent on the cars in it.  I can see the lines flowing in relation to one another, a sort of big-picture view of it all, surging in currents, and I drift from one to the next as their speed varies, using them to push me faster and faster like thermals propelling an albatross.  The gaps I need seem to open up magically; the car knows how to find them.  As the traffic around us fades I'm free to go as fast as I like, and I do.  The Crane-Packard will happily scream up to over 170.  Ren had one that fast, on a racetrack once, but I don't didn't need to stress it that much for now.  Maybe after a hundred miles or so.

Even while I'm looking through the car's eyes, sensing rather than seeing the motion of the cars around me and the condition of the road, another part of me is noticing every car we pass, too.  I like to watch them drive, love the way they look at speed, when they're propelling themselves along.  I want to grab Glen's shoulder and show him how friggin' wonderful it is, that these big hunks of metal are moving themselves around like that--but of course, he already knows how wonderful it is.  That's why he's here in the first place.  Well, that and because Molly would try to talk me out of what I'm going to do.  And she'd probably succeed, too.

And maybe she'd be right.  But right now, with the frenzied-feeling fading underneath a swirl of motion, I feel better than I have in weeks.  In months, maybe.  I feel over ninety percent. Perhaps I can find a way for them to make driving fast my therapy, and then I'll be able to get it prescribed.

We're approaching the Ohio border, fast.  "Good God," Glen says, realizing where we are.  "We're almost to Toledo."

"That's what going one-forty will get you."

"It'll get you thrown in jail, too."

The grey landscape continues to whip madly past.  "Already been there, got the T-shirt.  Want me to cut it out?"

Glen grins.  "Nope.  Have you raced before?"

"Once or twice," I say evasively.

"You drive like you have.  You're relaxed at this speed."

"Maybe I'm just insane."

"No, if you were just insane you'd have never managed to make it between that Ranger and the Roadway truck back on 275."  He's nice and relaxed in the seat, completely trusting of my driving.  That's always a good sign in a co-driver.

"Ren and I did a lot of racing.  He got most of the attention, because he was better at it.  He probably had more track time than I did.  And when we rallied, I usually navigated."

"That's a shame.  You're a fantastic driver," Glen says.

"Ren was better."  He starts to argue, and I click my tongue at him and raise my hand.  "Let's don't discuss that right now."  It already seems like Ren is everywhere; I'm not sure I can deal with talking about him right now.

"Let's don't.  Tell me more about the Crane-Packards.  Does this one have a name yet?"

"It does now," she said.  "I'm calling it Rainier."

"After the prince?"

"After the mountain."  It doesn't make sense, even as I think of it, but then it doesn't have to make sense.  The point of it isn't to make sense.

Glen seems to know this, and doesn't ask any dumb questions about the name.  "Obviously, you enjoy driving them.  Were there any cars that inspired you?  What did you and Ren drive, when you were deciding what your car should be like?"

That makes me laugh.  "What a cool question!  Of course, they were all really, really fun cars.  We wanted the C-Ps to be friendly too, though, so we played with fun cars like Miatas and MGBs in addition to experimenting with the absurdly powerful.  Ren liked cars that would bite your head off if you treated them just the tiniest bit wrong, and I liked the ones you can just melt into, the ones that'll be your friend.  We tried to reconcile those two opposites."  I'm laughing again.  "Listen to me, I'm talking in my PR-voice now.  I created one, you know.  I was so disappointed when no one ever wanted to interview me."

"Why put so much thought into it?"

"Stage fright.  I was terrified of meeting the press.  I wanted to be ready, and to sound like I knew what I was talking about.  I think I have a bit of an inferiority complex."

We reach the Ohio Turnpike in another few minutes.  We've been on the road less than half an hour, flaunting speed limit laws the entire way, and Glen hasn't shown the slightest bit of interest in where we're going yet.  I give him another hour before he figures out that we aren't going back to Michigan tonight.  I spin Rainier's wheel and shoot through a narrow gap between a motorhome and a minivan.  Ahead of us, the sky is getting dark with heavy clouds; more snow.  Right on schedule.