Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (23 page)

He might decide to do nothing, to ignore it. Or he might, at any moment, decide to come after me, or more likely to radio other police cars and have them come after me. Especially the car patrolling this road. I should get off this road anyway. Not safe here.

I watched for the place where my things were. On the left, in the illumination of my headlights, I picked out the sequence of trees. I kept going. I didn’t dare stop. I was watching the right side of the road now, hoping the patrol car wouldn’t appear yet. Both sides of the road were wooded now. In another quarter-mile there was a dirt road off to the right. I pulled up just past it, switched down to my parking lights, and began backing up the dirt road. By the time I saw the lights of the police car appear through the trees to my right, I was a good twenty yards off the main road. I switched off the parking lights and turned off the ignition.

The police car cruised slowly past, heading toward the roadblock. If the police in it were looking anywhere, they would be looking at the opposite side of the road toward MicroMagnetics. The police car’s tail-lights disappeared from view. I waited. Several minutes later it reappeared, coming back toward me. I let it pass. When the taillights had disappeared again, I switched on the ignition and started the engine. I made myself count to ten. Mustn’t hurry it. Don’t take an unnecessary chance. I switched on my headlights, slammed into gear, and drove for all I was worth out the dirt road and left onto the asphalt road. When I got to where my things were I pulled several yards past the spot, made a U-turn, and pulled over to the left side. I wanted to be facing away from the roadblock: I was not going to drive past the roadblock again. The van was half off the road at a slight angle with the motor running and the headlights on so that I could see my footing.

Leaving the door by the driver’s seat open, I ran back to the rear of the van and pulled open the double doors. Then I charged over to my cache, grabbed the first sack my hands encountered, lugged it back, and swung it as far into the van as I could reach. I had at least six or seven minutes, maybe more. One at a time, and then two at a time, I hauled the sacks into the van. Seven. I was certain there were seven. Then the toolbox, the table, the broomstick. I had to search awhile for the broomstick. I must have wasted half a minute looking for it. I swung the rear doors shut again. No sign of the patrol car yet. I ran back, went down on my hands and knees, and groped around on the ground for anything that might have slipped out of the sacks. My hand ran against the edge of a large, hard object. The folding chair. I had forgotten about the folding chair.

At that moment the headlights of the patrol car appeared in the distance ahead as an expanding glow over a rise in the road. I lunged for the van with the chair in my hands, and heaved it in through the open door as I clambered up into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. The glow had turned into two distinct beams of light aimed directly at me. Release the hand brake. Clutch in; shift into low gear; let the clutch out carefully — don’t take a chance on stalling now. I pulled away, crossing obliquely over to the right side of the road. They were still more than fifty yards away. No reason for them to think I had been stopped: it should look to them as if I had been driving toward them the whole time.

I accelerated steadily. Looking into my headlights, they would not be able to see the empty driver’s seat, and by the time we passed each other I was going forty miles per hour. Not much time for a good look. I saw, or thought I saw, their brake lights go on in my rearview mirror. I was terrified, but I resisted the temptation to accelerate past fifty. I kept watching the rearview mirror. No headlights appeared.

After I had driven what seemed like a very long time and was probably under five minutes, I came to an intersection. There was no road sign. I turned right, onto the other road, simply because it made me feel as if I was getting further away. At the next intersection I turned left onto still another road. I drove along like that, making random turns, for fifteen minutes until I gradually began to calm down. There was no reason to believe that the police had decided to look for the van. And by the law of averages I must be getting further and further away.

Then suddenly I found myself entering a town. When I saw the first streetlight, I felt as if someone had shone a searchlight on me. I slammed on the brakes, wheeled the van around in a violent U-turn, and headed right back out of the town. I imagined the grotesque spectacle I would create. Some aging couple stepping carefully out onto the main street from the bowels of the local “Colonial Inn” would look up and see a driverless van roll by. Or it would be the local teenagers loitering in the center of the village. Or perhaps the local policeman, parked by the side of the road in his unlit patrol car, would watch as an absolutely empty vehicle pulled magically up to the town’s only stoplight. There would be shouting and pointing. There would be pursuit.

At the next intersection I made another random turn. Where was this going to get me? How far could I go in any direction without encountering towns or lights or people? It was ludicrously unfair that invisible I created a spectacle, when in my normal state I would have been utterly inconspicuous. What was the point of driving around in circles in the middle of New Jersey until I ran out of gas?

A moment later I found myself stopped at a red light. Across the intersection was an automobile whose headlights stared straight at me. The driver must be looking right at me. Or right at my absence. How would he react? What would he do? It struck me abruptly that I had no idea how he was reacting, because I could not see him: his windshield revealed nothing but the reflected glare of my own headlights. The light turned green, and as we passed each other, I looked at his side window. On the glassy black surface there was a meaningless movement of reflected shadows; behind it, I thought I could just make out the vague form of a driver. Why had I never noticed till now how little one could see through car windows at night? Because I hadn’t been paying attention. Fortunately, people are rarely paying attention — which is the only reason I have ever had a chance of remaining at large. I rolled up my side window.

I began to calm down again. No one was going to notice that my van had no visible driver. I could probably drive wherever I liked in complete safety. Except that eventually I would run out of gas or the sun would come up. The gas tank was three-quarters full. Where was I going?

I slowed down. I had to think things through. I had a van full of irreplaceable objects. Ideally, I would like to take them home. The trouble was that I lived on the other side of the Hudson River, and to cross the Hudson River you have to be prepared to drive up to a well-lit tollbooth and hand a toll collector two dollars. I had in my pocket about $150 worth of invisible bills, which I ought to remember to destroy at the first good opportunity. But even if I were somehow to get hold of some visible money, I did not see how I could pay a toll. Or buy more gas. I had to find a temporary storage place for my things on this side of the Hudson. Someplace I could reach on half a tank of gas.

Everything was becoming clearer as I thought it out, and I could see now where I had to go. It occurred to me, however, that I still had no idea where I was.

I began at each intersection to choose the most important-looking road. Like someone lost in the wilderness always following running water downstream: sooner or later you will encounter civilization or the sea. I was rewarded eventually with a route number, although not one I recognized. It was labeled South. I slowed down, making sure that there were no headlights approaching, and made a U-turn. I stayed on that road until I arrived at a well-marked intersection with a sign for Route 202. I was fairly sure I wanted that: I made the turn marked 202 North.

There was much more traffic now, and other vehicles were passing me. I went through an enormous, well-lit traffic circle where there were cars all around me. I drove through towns. No one seemed to notice my apparent absence, and I found that my unreasoning panic had subsided to nothing more than gnawing anxiety. I noticed that I was tensely hunched over the wheel, and I forced myself to sit back in the seat and try to relax.

In less than forty-five minutes I was in Basking Ridge, and in another few minutes I had found Richard and Emily’s house. My memory was that there was no other house in sight, but to be sure I switched off my headlights before turning into the drive, and I drove the van up onto the lawn and around behind the house, so that even if someone should come up the drive, they would not see it.

The night air was cool, and I devoted several minutes to locating my jacket in one of the sacks. Then, taking the flashlight from the van, I went over and retrieved the keys to the house and barn from their hiding place under the porch steps. I pocketed them and set out to reconnoiter the grounds. There was the house itself, a small barn, a pump house, and an old icehouse. I settled on the icehouse. It was unlocked and empty, both indications that no one would have any interest in it. Lying on the sawdust floor were some old, weathered pieces of lumber. I fetched a ladder from the barn and used it to lift several pieces of the lumber up and across the rafters so that they made a sort of platform well out of reach of any caretaker or child who might wander in. They looked as if they might have been up there for fifty years. I drove the van around and backed it right up to the door of the icehouse. In twenty minutes I had stored all my invisible things securely in the rafters and smoothed the sawdust floor again so that there was no sign of my visit. I assumed that I would be back in a few days to retrieve everything. But barring some extraordinary piece of bad luck, everything should be safe there indefinitely. When they were in the United States, Richard and Emily came down here on weekends, but most of the time the house stood empty. As long as no one had seen the van here, there was no reason Jenkins should ever learn of the existence of this place.

I climbed back into the van and drove back out the drive, not turning on the lights again until I was a quarter of a mile down the road.

A
s I got further away from basking ridge and closer to New York, I began to feel, for the first time, almost secure. I had successfully escaped; I had hidden all my supplies; and in another hour or two I would be safely back home in my apartment in New York. There I would have everything I needed, and once I had had a few days rest, I would retrieve my invisible things as well. I should be able to live there indefinitely. I would have to work out something with my office. And I would be declining all invitations. Melancholy. But if I was discreet I ought to be able to live quite comfortably on my own, unnoticed, unsupervised, unexamined. Colonel Jenkins would be busy following college students about; there should be no reason for him ever to bother me.

Unless someone reported me missing.

Anne, for instance. Because I had, in fact, been missing for over thirty-six hours now. Why hadn’t I thought this through until now? My mind was not working properly. She couldn’t have said anything right away, or Jenkins would have suspected my identity from the beginning. That meant she must have thought I had been outside the building and had left on my own. There had probably been a lot of confusion. But by now a day and a half had gone by without her hearing a word from me. At some point she would start to worry. Or at least to wonder what had become of me.

I slammed on the brakes and turned abruptly into a closed gas station, pulling up alongside a telephone booth. I dialed the
Times,
billing the call to my credit card, and asked for Anne Epstein. It must be nearly eleven by now, and I could be reasonably confident that she would not be there.

“Steve Beller,” said an impatient and flatly unfriendly male voice.

“Hello. I’m trying to reach Anne Epstein.”

“She’s not here now.”

“Do you have any idea where I can reach her? I’ve been trying to get her all day.”

“We can’t give out home numbers. Try in the morning.”

“I have her home number. I’ve been trying to catch her all day. Could you possibly take a message? I realize it’s—”

“What is it?” he asked curtly.

“If you could just say
Nicholas Halloway has been trying all day to reach you.”
I said it slowly, with emphasis, in the hope that he would write it down just like that.

I thought of calling her at home and actually speaking to her, but that would have meant deciding what I wanted to say to her.

In a few more minutes I was in Newark. The brightness of the streetlights made me anxious, but the streets were nearly empty, and I tried to make myself stop thinking about it. For twenty minutes I drove in circles, trying to locate the railway station and wishing I could ask someone for directions. When I had finally encountered the overhead tracks and followed them to the station, I drove back away from it again, to find a suitable parking place for the van. I was confident that Newark would offer the kind of parking I wanted.

I pulled up alongside a fire hydrant, several feet out from the curb, and switched off the ignition, leaving the key in it. The street was relatively deserted, but further down the block there was a group of people, probably in their teens and twenties, sitting on a stoop or leaning against the cars parked in front of it. On the roof of one car they had set up a large portable radio — as large, come to think of it, as any stationary radio I have ever seen. They were drinking beer and smoking and intermittently shouting along with the music in Spanish. When I pulled up, several of them glanced over in my direction.

I climbed back through the van, opened the rear doors, and slid out onto the street. I could smell the fragrance of marijuana and hear little shrieks of laughter over the music. I went to work with my penknife unscrewing the license plate, and when it clattered onto the ground, I kicked it along the curb and through a metal grill into the sewer. The young people down the street were all eyeing the carelessly parked van now. Several of them had stood up to get a clearer look. Leaving the rear doors open, I walked across the street to watch. Two of the young men were ambling slowly down the sidewalk. One of them peered in the side window of the van, while the other walked around to the rear.