He hit the gas coming out of the s-curve winding around the canyon, his diesel engine rattling, the sky an overcast of glare and gray trees throwing jagged shadows on the narrow road.
⠀
He would do these drives now. Early afternoon, less traffic. Often quite stoned. Why not? He was getting that script he wrote—that one about Monty Clift and his car accident—made. By HBO no less. He was on cloud nine. ⠀
⠀
The most wonderful thing that could have happened to him, happened. The Universe, like this road, had unraveled before him like he was its guest of honor, swinging his car along the ridge and underneath into the cool tunnel.
⠀
His phone was buzzing in the glove box but he didn’t hear it. It was his manager. Bad news. A reshuffling of executives with a de-emphasis on biopics. But Lovick just drove on, blissfully unaware, as the tunnel’s aperture opened and he flew back out into the glare.
⠀
Then, a hallucination of sound — a face-wash of glass and metal and terror but it lasted only a second before everything returned to normal. “One toke over the line,” he thought. But, when he checked his rearview, he saw his car crunched against a telephone pole. The terrible tableau scrolled down his back windshield, as his car ascended the road.
⠀
He shook it off, pushing skyward, nothing would kill his buzz. The sun had broken apart the overcast and rays of light filtered through the trees that flanked the road. Trees outlined in orange, their branches clutching above like an archway. He drove past a lake with toy sailboats reflected in the water like butterflies.
⠀
He found himself pulling up to a flat-roofed house tucked into a hill. He walked around the forested yard, where the house opened up, revealing Monty Clift inside, sitting in a chair reading. He watched Monty—his old muse—with a look not unmingled with desperation.
⠀
A jolt of pain shot up Lovick’s spine knocking his vision out-of-focus. The sparkle of Monty’s eyes became swirling ovals multiplying before snapping back into focus as ambulance lights, which Lovick saw in a shard of mirror as he lay pinned under the steering column.
