BooksBarbecue
Back Afraid of the Light
Chapters (29)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Also by Douglas Kennedy
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. one
  7. two
  8. three
  9. four
  10. five
  11. six
  12. seven
  13. eight
  14. nine
  15. ten
  16. eleven
  17. twelve
  18. thirteen
  19. fourteen
  20. fifteen
  21. sixteen
  22. seventeen
  23. eighteen
  24. nineteen
  25. twenty
  26. twenty-one
  27. twenty-two
  28. twenty-three
  29. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

‘I could fine you $280 for what you just did. I could take down your license and have your car banned from UCLA. I could cause you all sorts of shit. But you look like someone who doesn’t need such grief. Can you give me your word that you will never be so stupid again?’

‘I won’t be stupid again.’

‘Smart guy,’ he said. Then with the curtest of nods he walked off. I shouted thanks after him. He didn’t turn around.

I drove off. I gripped the wheel, trying to maintain calm. I was anything but calm … but still grateful for this flash of decency in a hard town. The GPS told me I had two minutes to my next ride. I couldn’t afford to be late. I couldn’t afford …

five

THE ADDRESS WAS on the west side of Santa Monica Boulevard. A nice, calm residential area. 1710 Malcolm Avenue was a white apartment building. Probably built in the early 1960s. A little drive in front of it where I could park for a moment and wait for my ride to show up. I checked the GPS. Going to an address far from here. On Van Nuys Boulevard in Van Nuys. A straight shot up the 405. 12.8 miles – but with the usual rush-hour traffic we were looking at a thirty-five-minute trip.

Be right there came the text from the pickup. One of the standard lines that Uber provides for its passengers to send to the driver to let them know of their progress. I was still feeling jumpy from that encounter with the UCLA cop. I experienced something new: a trembling of the hands, a shortness of breath. Panic. I told myself: but you managed to walk away from both incidents without complaints to Uber. I needed a good night’s sleep. Ever since starting as an Uber driver five hours had been the norm. Frequently the best I could do. My wife Agnieska slept nine–ten hours a night. Unlike me she did so without medication. I’d started needing the sleeping pills when I was tossed under the bus by the Human Resources guys in the company that I gave far too many years to. They’d been told by Head Office to ‘trim’ the sales force by forty-two. I was one of their chosen victims, I got six months’ salary and a year’s health insurance – and that was the extent of their benevolence. When I spent the next half-year scrambling for new sales jobs and none came my way, the sleeplessness started.