The Chevy Chase

I spent Sunday chasing Jack London's ghost. When I woke, early in the morning, I found the day sun-filled and bristling with curiosity. It leapt through my window and danced around my room, then, hesitating briefly, it escaped out the window, after several suggestive backward glances. I chased it outside with a lusty exuberance, ready to capture and conquer, to dominate the dreams of the day, but it fled quickly around a corner. It fastened itself to the back of a motorcycle and sped off. Without any obvious alternatives, I dragged an old, affluent man from his yellow Lamborghini, beat him mercilessly into submission, and followed it.

We raced over the Golden Gate Bridge like birds in flight, darting and dipping between cars, soaring over the speed limit. I called Q and told him I was in pursuit of a golden haired, blue eyed matron, pregnant with love and possibility. He told me to pick him up, that he's been trained for this sort of thing. I boomed over the pavement toward his little abode, sweating and frantic, fearful I might lose her scent.

Soon Q's house was in sight and I saw him waiting. He was wearing a bright orange jockstrap and a black gas-mask. He was covered in baby-oil and clutching a tennis racquet in one hand and a large fisherman's net in the other. Black combat boots laced up the length of his legs and stopped just below his knees. I slowed to a roll and he hopped in. Looking like a sweaty, sunburned circus elephant, through the gas-mask he trumpeted a furious war cry. His dedication was barbaric and fierce.

Why the oil, I asked him. I could understand the jockstrap and combat boots, the giant fishnet and tennis racquet, but the oil seemed counter-productive. His head jerked in my direction, the hose of his gas-mask swinging limply, all shriveled and flaccid, and sounding a like an airplane pilot over a PA system, said: you need a handicap, dumbass. It's for the love of the chase...they were out of baby powder.

There it goes, he yelled, pointing toward a cloud. I saw it hiding itself behind a white, fluffy lake-fart, and peeled out after it, the tires squealing and kicking up rocks. It ducked behind mountains and hid inside dense copses of trees, lied itself down in tall grass and shallow streams. By this point the car was pretty banged up. We were leaking gas, oil, and probably transmission fluid, because the car was lurching and becoming completely uncooperative. They don't make stolen Lamborghini's like they used to, I told him. The windshield had been cracked after we hit a pregnant woman; we hit her so hard the baby shot out of her pussy-crack like a wet sprocket. The child went sliding off down the street like a bar of soap.

We had to abandon the car once we got to Jack London, because of an electrical fire, and we pursued the creature on foot. We ransacked Jack London's cottage. Q, swatting at priceless antiques with his tennis racquet, tripped over an old typewriter and crushed a 13-year-old girl with his mostly naked, slippery body, saying: that's the way nature intended it, let's go. So we promptly vacated the cottage and headed toward the charred remains of The Wolf House. We posed for pictures and took photos of Asian tourists.

Then the unthinkable happened: we lost the day. Grey skies rolled in, militant and monochrome, threatening rain. We scrambled up the trail and out of the park, finding refuge in a nearby cafe just as it started to rain. The sign on the door said NO PANTS NO SHOES NO SERVICE, but because Q had those combat boots on, they let us sit at the bar. I hadn't realized I'd worked up such an appetite until the waitress arrived and told me about the special. Her eyes were olive green and glowing. She had Slavic features that were simultaneously soft and sharp. She begged to be broken, and to break. I imagined leaving Q and riding off with her in the sizzling Lambo, speeding madly into the dark wet clouds.

When I stood up to approach her, I heard a strange yet familiar sound, like a shrieking siren approaching. Then, it pierced my ears: the crescendoing doppler shift, the howling of an infant, the shattering wine-glasses on the counter. Suddenly, it came sliding through the doors, clobbering my legs like a bowling ball. As I fell I grabbed onto Q's greasy arm to stabilize myself, but my hand just slipped off. I cracked my head off a stool and lost consciousness.

When I woke up, Q, the baby, and the waitress were all gone. There was a post-it note stuck to my head.

It said: you're it.