With the intention of getting back in the game, Fred went off to Louisiana to train, just him and a former teammate juggling, lifting, eating right, and heading to the cages to hit off the tee. I missed him, and I missed driving. To visit him I rented a car from a shady outfit that was fine with my debit card and responded to my happy banter with an upgrade to an appalling cobalt Mustang, its bucket seats so low that even fully forward I could barely see over the deep neon-studded display. From my sunken position, it was then 50 miles of spooky nighttime highway to Gonzales along marsh and bayou that I drove at about 90 miles per hour, leaving the airport at midnight and reaching Fred by 12:30. His teammate ribbed him the next morning about a dorky purple convertible, but he didn't mind—he just laughed.Once the season started, I went to many an away game, all away games for me. I siphoned a Zipcar subscription to reach one stadium on Long Island. I took the New Jersey Transit to Camden, bringing the Pom Wonderful–brand pistachios his father and I liked, whose shells he said it was OK to toss under the seats.From my sunken position, it was then 50 miles of spooky nighttime highway to Gonzales along marsh and bayou that I drove at about 90 miles per hour.
In a Bentley Continental GT, ladylike and relatively understated at $250,000, I drove six hours south to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Fred had been unhappily traded to a minor league team. It was a downgrade with an upside—he was closer to New York City. I parked in the players' lot, a dark triangle of asphalt overlaid by the stadium's undergirding. The guys had the nice rides of relatively recent stints in the big leagues—a lot of Audis, Lexi, an M-Class Mercedes truck. Butch Hobson, Fred's coach, emerged with him from a side door and made his way over to a steroidal pickup parked next to me, a Ram I think, puffed up on platform wheels and painted Tonka red. I searched for the button on the walnut console that would make my passenger window go down. I found it. The window went down, very slowly. Butch, who had coached the Red Sox for a hot second before being fired for receiving cocaine in the mail, gave me and the car the once-over. "Nice," he pronounced, as Fred rolled his eyes and I searched for the button to unlock the passenger side.We'd been biggish fishes in biggish ponds, and now we'd entered strange waters and were having private identity crises.
Next up was Cadillac, a big quick Escalade with invisible fencing sewn into the seats that zapped you in the hindquarters if you drifted too close to the margin. We drove it upstate for a dismal weekend of rain and weeping babies. I got a different Caddy for Detroit, where we flew for the first of three summer weddings. Vanilla in color and flavor, it was more boring than a Prius, so boring that I fell asleep at its wheel on one of Michigan's very wide highways for a few seconds, and luckily, or frighteningly, the car didn't drift at all. The wedding was in Homer, and afterward we drove to the bottom of the Upper Peninsula to stay in a town called Manistee. Although it was the height of the season, no one was there. Even the casino was empty. Our historic inn was totally silent. It was like The Shining, only boring. We walked along a Great Lake, arguing about aliens. We returned to Detroit, arguing as we reached the outskirts of the city on the brink of bankruptcy. "Blight is only poetic to white people," Fred said, and I conceded he was right.Vanilla in color and flavor, it was more boring than a Prius, so boring that I fell asleep at its wheel on one of Michigan's very wide highways for a few seconds.
The Friday after we broke up, I woke up flush with the intermittent magic that has made my life sparkle darkly from time to time. I felt Fred's mind flickering at me; I wondered where he was going and what he was doing. I dressed carefully. I went into the office and edited an article about Japanese keratin treatments that reshape the hair follicles for incredible Roz Chast–to–Rapunzel results. Then I texted my buddy at Maserati to see whether they had a spare. The veneer of my title meant that such a preposterous ask did not get me laughed out of the bank. On the contrary, the producers and purveyors of astronomically priced items tended to bend over backward to oblige my fickle whims. I was in luck. My friend had a zippy little number he could give me for the weekend, though they needed it back by Monday, when it would travel south by flatbed to an auction block in Miami.My first, perhaps my only, legitimate religious experience took place in my last borrowed car.
It was all fun while it lasted, a time-stamped high I had to give back, beautiful but unreal, not mine to keep. After crumpling two cars, the Maserati was towed away to get its nails done. Fred left for Managua. I parted ways with my glamorous job.I re-quit driving for the rest of the year, but in the summer, I briefly entertained a deadbeat for access to his wheels. He had seven of them: a Piaggio MP3—a three-wheeled scooter that looked like Adam West's Batcycle—and a beige Toyota Sienna in which both rows of back seats had been replaced with a short stack of Oriental rugs. For a little while I drove the van around town and sat on the back of the bike like a morphed Power Ranger. I've been a borrower through and through, but I'm finished with it. The dude was dumb, he just made me miss Fred, and I kicked him to the curb. I won't be getting on a motorbike unless it's mine and I'm driving.After crumpling two cars, the Maserati was towed away to get its nails done. Fred left for Managua. I parted ways with my glamorous job.