Canada was the logical destination, but if they had profiled me, they would not expect me to act logically. And even if they knew for certain I was heading for the northern border, there were literally hundreds of roads that would get me there. Laura had done a smart thing dumping my GPS on a trucker; if they were tracking that, they by now were heading in a completely different direction. The Marshals Service might well be monitoring my credit cards, computer and ATM usage, and phones, but I had stayed completely off the grid.

What else? There always was something else that could be done. I was running through my checklist for the umpteenth time when Laura asked, “What do you think this is all about?”

Here we go, I thought, road trip talk. We’d skipped right over favorite movies, places we’d lived, worst vacations, dates from hell, bad jokes (Me: What do major-league ballplayers and dieters have in common? You: I don’t know. Me: Plate discipline. You: Huh?), even questions about my disability; heck, we hadn’t even harmonized on a single Beach Boys song. We’d just gone from zero to infinity, smack-dab from “Does that come with fries?” to the meaning of life. “What particular this?” I asked warily.

She turned in her seat to face me, but this time did not push back. In body language that meant her defenses were down. “Wrightman. I just don’t get it. Why’s he doing all this?” She shrugged her left shoulder. “I mean, he’s destroying everything this country stands for. Why?”

She couldn’t have asked something easy, like what would it be like to visit a black hole? “I wish I knew,” I told her. I flipped a hand into the air, stumbling for an answer that made sense. “Maybe he really believes this is necessary to reunite the country, save it from being ripped apart between right and left. Maybe he really thinks this is what he has to do to protect the country from terrorists.” I looked at her. “Or, I guess, he simply could be a megalomaniac…”

“Or a narcissist?”

“Or a narcissist,” I agreed. “Or he has an inferiority complex. Or it’s better than working on an assembly line in Dayton. Or some department secretary has pictures of him in flagrante delicto with a moose and is bribing him. Maybe he’s insane, who knows. It could be any of those things, or all of them.”

“But do you think he understands the damage he’s doing?”

This was shaping up to be just another one of those lighthearted discussions about good and evil, original sin and the essence of man. Another question hit me: Could Dr. Freud have driven while explaining the psyche? “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Questions like that are why psychiatrists can afford swimming pools.

“Whatever his reasons, I’m pretty certain he doesn’t see it as damage. I’ll tell you what surprises me. Wrightman is a pretty bright guy. He was a decent senator. Middle of the road, go along to get along. Nothing like Trump, for example.” I glanced at her—no reaction. I continued. “Trump was easy to figure out. His megalomania left him unburdened by self-doubt, his insecurity made him a bully, his lack of common knowledge made it easy for him to destroy tradition without the slightest guilt, and his ignorance made him the champion of poorly educated and easily manipulated people. For him, being president was as easy as dating was for Neanderthals. But Wrightman…” I shook my head.