Ren drove the truck to New York three days ago, so I get to drive it north.  Which is perfectly excellent by me, seeing as how I like driving Deus better than I like driving Darkside anyway.  Deus is a lovely double blue F-350 crew cab pickup, complete with fat fenders covering dual rear wheels, and he's a diesel so he's not particularly bothered by having to drag a forty-foot trailer.  The trailer doesn't match and it's borderline garish, all red over black with a huge Crane-Packard logo on the side.  Inside are our show car, about fifty boxes of press kits, and the disassembled components of our stage setup, which is nicknamed, "The Device."

As for the car ahead of me, Darkside is a Capri that Ren had his way with--insane Ford Motorsport crate engine, Tremec tranny, the works.  If you ask him how much horsepower it's pushing, he'll do his best Johnny Dangerously imitation and say, "It shoots through schools."  I'm as big a fan of torque as the next girl, but driving Darkside gets kind of tiresome, like walking a panther.  For long trips I'd rather be in Deus, or one of the other kids.

Yesterday felt like three days, between our press conference at the New York Auto Show (stage fright!) and running out to Staten Island to pick up Ren and the cocktail reception that followed.  All of the meeting and greeting is fun, but it makes me tired.

My ankles still hurt, too.  I should've worn my boots , or All-Stars, or gone barefoot, even.  Anything other than those stupid heels.  More than once, I wanted to step out of my shoes.  Later, in the hotel room, Ren promised we'd take a machete to them when we get home.

Eventful days aren't a terrible thing, though.  It gives me a lot to think about while I drive, and between upstate New York traffic, Boston traffic, and maneuvering fifty-odd feet of truck through twisty state roads once we leave the interstate, the day passes quickly.  I'm not even tired when we cross into Vermont, some time after the sun goes down.  There was talk of trying to make it before dark, but that was prior to a detour to Chinatown on our way out of NYC.  This is okay, though, I don't mind driving with the dark wrapped around me.

I keep saying to myself (and to Malice, who's sleeping in her cat carrier on the back seat), Holy shit, we started a car company yesterday.  Technically it started months ago, a year or two ago, but it wasn't real until yesterday when we introduced them to the world.  Even the media drive we did four months ago for the car magazines didn't seem real--it was more like throwing a party than work.  

But it's all done now, we're the stars of the 1996 edition of the New York Auto Show, almost as newsworthy as Kirk Kerkorian's attempt to buy out Chrysler last year.  Now we can be alone for a while.  I need it.  When I don't get enough time alone, the world seems to be louder, more intrusive.  Everything springs from backdrop to foreground.  It used to be almost overwhelming, everything so alive and real it was trembling, blurry.  But that was before Ren.  He balances it all for me, and I for him.  Last night it was bad.  I was worn out, burned out on people and the noises were too loud again, journalists and bartenders and the Rainbow Room swirling around me like a tornado, and it felt like it'd pull me off my feet but I knew it wouldn't, not with Ren there.  He got up and spoke and everyone laughed (people like him) and that defused things somewhat.  Then I talked to horny automotive journalists for a while.  For the most part they save the cool technical questions and car stuff for Ren, and do a lot of asking me how I like the fast-paced world of cars which I must not know anything about, being a girl.  That's the implication, anyway.  I kind of hate it.  And I didn't even get to say hi to David Letterman, he was there and gone too quickly.  Ren talked cars with him though, and it sounds like we'll get to be on Late Night some time.  How cool would that be?  Thinking about this and imagining what it will be like eats up about twenty miles of driving, easily.

The trouble at the mill comes from behind.  We're on a twisty road, somewhere halfway up a mountain.  Ren's been enjoying himself, taking off in Darks and slowing down for me to catch up, and I'm coming back up on him after one of his speedy trips when I see another set of lights coming up behind me, fast freight indeed.  There's nothing even resembling a passing zone, but the car pops out from behind me and passes anyway.  Dangerous move.  It's a limousine, a big Lincoln, and I scowl at it as it comes past.  The driver can't see me, it's too dark.

Headlights burst over the top of the hill ahead of us.  Dammit, I knew that would happen.  The limo driver swerves into my lane and stomps his brake pedal, hard, clearly heedless of the fact that he can stop a lot faster than me and my dually truck with a ten-thousand pound trailer.  I crush the brake pedal to the floor, grab the hand-activated trailer brake, but it doesn't do any good, he's too close, and I let out a justified, "Fuck!" as I rear-end the limo.  I see his trunklid buckle and feel the shards of his taillights go under my tires.  My toes curl as I will Deus not to keep going, to just punt him forward instead of crawling up on the back of the car and turning over.  The cat squawks in surprise in her box, but it's belted in so she doesn't go flying.  Behind me, the trailer is starting to dance a dance of frustrated inertia, crabbing right, gathering dirt from the narrow median, then getting ready to go left.  I hear myself saying, "No, no, no," begging physics to give me a pass just this once, because I do not want to jackknife this trailer here, in the lovely central Vermont woods.  Do not want to crunch up our irreplaceable Crane-Packard show car, which is scheduled for three major magazine photo shoots in the next two weeks.  Not because of this idiot.  Hell, not for any reason.  I gear down, to bleed off some more speed before I try to brake again.  Brakes will just make it worse now.  

Up ahead, I see Ren's brakelights flash; he saw what happened.  We crest the hill and the road curves gently downward to the left.  The trailer is still trying to pass me on that side, starting to shiver across the yellow line.  Luckily there's no oncoming traffic.

The limo has slewed a bit from the impact, but he hasn't slowed down.  In fact, I see a cough of smoke from his exhaust as he speeds up, and swerves over the double yellow to pass Ren, too.  He hasn't got line-of-sight, and I see the lights before he does, a big truck coming from the opposite direction.  

Oh, shit.