The Second Coming

do what the German light expected him to do, start the engine. The Mercedes was waiting for him.
    But he did not start the engine. He sat shaking and smelling the car. It smelled of leather and wax and car newness. The shaking came in waves but he paid no attention. Three hundred yards away a naked yellow light bulb shone in the gable of a shed where electric carts were stored, each parked in its stall, plugged in and recharging. The shed hummed. A stray cart had been abandoned in the woods. Its roof supports were tilted at an angle but an empty Coke bottle hung vertically in its gimbel. The shaking stopped. Suddenly he became sleepy. It is possible, he thought, to drive home now, go straight up to the bedroom from the garage, sleep until eight, bathe, shave, dress, and appear for breakfast as usual in the sun parlor. In good weather the morning sun flashed on the polished silver and the soft white napery. Yamaiuchi’s hand came twirling down with a melon, orange juice, shirred egg.
    On the other hand, he was sleepy, as sleepy as he had ever been in his life. Sleep came down around his ears like an iron hat.
    Now sitting on the back seat, he felt for Marion’s lap robe. It was thick, gray, heavy as a rug, smooth on one side and curly with lamb’s wool on the other. It was the “cheap” lap robe, he remembered, which Marion had chosen rather than use the fur robe from the Rolls. Something winked in the feeble yellow light. It was the miniature bar fitted into the back of the front seat. She had given him the “little” Mercedes for their own outings. As she saw it, and as it pleased him to see her seeing it, in the Mercedes they were more or less like other Carolina couples in their Plymouths and Fords, which for a fact did look more and more like a Mercedes. No Rolls, no chauffeur, no fuss. Zip they went up the Blue Ridge Parkway, down to town for shopping, into Asheville to see her attorneys, over to Charlotte, Chapel Hill, and Durham for football and basketball games. What a pleasure for her and him, as much a pleasure for him to show her how the pleasure could be taken as to take it for himself, to set out on a fine football Saturday morning, meet the McKeons and Battles for a picnic at an interstate rest area, swing Marion into her wheelchair, tuck her legs in with the “cheap” lap robe, stand around drinks in hand, hampers open on tailgates, and with that festive fondness and the special dispensation conferred by the kickoff two hours away—and the extra pleasure too of the very publicness of the place, their own sector of clean public concrete staked out amidst the sleeping eighteen-wheelers and Florida-bound Airstreams, we taking pleasure from them, we on our way to the game, they coming and going in the old unheeding public world—tend the tiny bar, pour whiskey into gold-lined silver jiggers, and finally simply stand in the wine-colored Carolina sunlight sleepy and smiling and look at the colors of the leaves and of the bourbon whiskey against gold.
    Now sitting in the back seat in the dark, he switched on the light and opened the bar and lifted the silver flask. It was full. He poured a drink and set it on the rectangle of polished walnut. His hand began to shake again.
    There he sat in the same Mercedes, a 450 SEL 6.9-liter sedan, a badly flawed frazzled shaky American, as hollow-eyed as a Dachau survivor, still smelling of cave crud, in a perfect German machine redolent of leather, polished wood, and fine oil on steel.
    The bar light was still on. By moving over to the right corner, he could see himself in the rearview mirror. How do I look in the face? Like General J. E. B. Stuart, whose last words were: How do I look in the face? Except for the beard, not different from the way I always looked, the same veiled eyes as dark and uncandid as Andrea del Sarto, the same curve of lip, the same sly uptilt of head showing nostril.
    So he had looked thirteen years old when he had driven West with his father in a new Buick convertible. It took a week. It was the summer after the “hunting accident,” as it became known. His father wanted them to be pals. But there was nothing to talk about. He didn’t want to be anybody’s pal. His father put the top down and drove faster and faster. The hot desert air roared in their ears. All day every day they drove in silence watching the center stripe on Texas highways and out old U.S. 66 for a thousand miles, two