Rant

looked. The week after, I came home and Sarah was washing the girl’s hair in the kitchen sink. Sarah gave her a permanent wave with blond highlights, and paid two hundred dollars for each of the three hours it took.
    If Sarah could boost her self-esteem, we hoped the girl might find a new career. Talking to her, praising her, we lost track of our plan to have a child of our own. The girl cost so much and took up so much of our free time, I couldn’t afford to buy a dog. To this day, we still see her every week. And I do think we’re making some headway.
    Echo Lawrence: My perfect accident turned out to be some guy with a dead deer tied across the roof of his car. Some fucking Bambikiller, a guy wearing a camouflage jacket and a hat with ear flaps. He’s driving a fuggly four-door sedan with the dead deer roped lengthwise, its head laying at the top of the windshield.
    In the city, a dead deer’s not something you can lose sight of very easily, so I keep my distance and track him through neighborhoods, biding my time, looking for the perfect spot to nail his killer ass. Somewhere an accident won’t block traffic or endanger bystanders. Get this. I’m hunting him the same way he stalked that poor four-legged creature. Waiting to get my best shot.

I mean, I’m really getting off on this. I’m so fucking excited. I scoot through yellow traffic lights, staying a field of cars behind him. I slow and drop back when he turns, then make the same turn. I let cars slip between us so he won’t notice how long I’ve been in his rearview mirror.
    At one point, I lose the fucker. A light goes red, but he runs it and cuts a right turn around the next corner. All my months of tracking, and my perfect accident’s escaped. The light goes green, and I sprint to find him, turn the same corner, but he’s gone. Down another block, I’m scanning my way through intersections, hoping for a glimpse of that deer corpse, that poor, sad murdered deer, but there’s nothing, fucking nada. Nobody. My watch was ticking toward morning curfew, and the last thing I needed was a fucking fivehundred-buck ticket for getting caught outside in the daylight.
    Sarah Mercer: We called the Tyson-Neals, and they admitted to never having sex with the girl, either. The reason they’d finally decided to have a child was because it penciled out as cheaper than seeing Echo every week.
    Echo Lawrence: Listen up. I’m driving home, at least happy that I won’t get a past-curfew ticket or be facing some redneck hunter over his crushed quarter-panel—when I see the dead deer. The car’s pulled off the street, idling in the drive-through lane of a fast-food place. The driver’s window is rolled down, and a bearded face is barking at the menu speaker. In the fluorescent drive-through lights, the car looks spotted with rust. The paint, scratched. Most of the car is piss yellow, but the driver’s door is sky blue. The trunk lid is beige. I pull over and wait.
    A hand passes a white bag out the drive-through window, the driver gives the hand some paper money. Another beat, and the pissyellow car eases across the curb, moving into traffic. Before he can disappear again, I’m on his tail. I pull my seat belt tight across my hips. A heartbeat before my front bumper should smack his backside, I take a deep breath. I shut my eyes and stomp the gas pedal. And again, fucking nada. The car’s jetted ahead, darting between other cars so fast the deer’s dead ass waves its tail back and forth in my face.
    Chasing him, I forget I have a bum arm and leg. I forget that half my face can’t smile. Chasing him, I’m not an orphan or a girl. I’m not a Nighttimer with a crummy apartment. The deer’s ass dodges through traffic, and that’s all I see.
    Up ahead, a light turns red. The piss-yellow car, its brake lights flare red as it slows to turn right. For a blink, the deer’s gone, until I follow it around the curve. And there, on a quiet side street, without bystanders or police, I shut my eyes and…kah-blam.
    The sound, that sound’s still recorded in my head. It’s time frozen solid. My only wish is that I’d out-corded the chase and attack, but I’ll still never forget it.
    My front end is buried so deep in his trunk that the dead deer’s swung loose. The ropes broke, and the deer’s busted open. At about the belly, the carcass has torn into two pieces. And inside, instead of blood and guts, the deer is—white. Solid white.
    The driver throws his