Unsafe at Any Speed

The day after his forty-eighth birthday was the same day Theo Bitner’s seventy-five-year-old mother friended him on Facebook. It was also the same day his wife told him he needed to see a doctor. Or a therapist. “It’s your mood,” she said. “It sucks.” Counting his mother, Theo now had eight Facebook friends. Sherrill, his wife, had 609. It was just past dawn, in the perfidious part of the day that implied anything was possible when, really, nothing was very likely. He regarded his Facebook profile, the faceless blue bust of a man staring from the margin of the screen where he should, by now, have uploaded a photo of himself. “Theo Bitner is new to Facebook,” the caption read. “Suggest a friend for Theo!” Sherrill finished dressing and left the room, and Theo leaned back in his chair. He stared at the ceiling in the corner of the bedroom, where he’d propped his computer, a hulking dinosaur of a tower, on a tiny table made of pressboard. By contrast, Sherrill had a Mac laptop the size of a place mat. She carried it around in a zippered rhinestone bag and took it with her to Starbucks and Crispers.

The estrogen levels at the house, a smallish Tuscan number in an uninspired neighborhood south of St. Augustine, were through the roof, in Theo’s opinion. With his daughter Ashley, unemployed and fresh from FSU with a degree in Women’s Studies (what the hell?), ensconced back in her childhood bedroom, with his mother Bette now living in the spare room he’d once fancied his office (the “bonus room,” Sherrill called it), and with Sherrill herself generally holding court over the rest of the house, Theo had begun to feel increasingly scuttled, shunted, reduced. There was a conspiracy, he reckoned. He didn’t like it.

He turned off the computer and picked up the Craigslist ad he’d printed out. “Corvair!” the ad read. “$5,000. Two models. Call for details.” The photo showed a pristine ermine-white Corvair coupe, ’66 he was guessing, just sharp as Jesus it was, shot against a lush green backdrop of palmettos. He studied the photo and mentally ran down the specs: 95 hp in a rear-engine design, voluptuous Coke-bottle styling, and a seductive glimpse of red upholstery. The car looked like salvation. Beneath the photo was the address for a car auction in Lakeland.

He took a shower and got dressed. He chose a yellow button-down shirt and a pair of dark blue chinos. No tie. Independent sales representatives for dental equipment did not wear ties. He’d learned this. He picked up the Corvair ad and put it in his pocket. In the kitchen, Sherrill and Ashley were eating bagels, and they stopped talking when he entered the room. Sherrill looked at Ashley knowingly and raised her eyebrows.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Tell him,” Sherrill said.

Ashley sighed.

“Tell him,” Sherrill said. “It’s the only way he’ll learn.”

“Tell me what?” Theo said.

Ashley put her bagel down on her plate and turned to regard him. Her eyes were rimmed with a pasty blue sparkly substance, and Theo looked at her, blinking, having lost sight many years ago of the plump, pliant little girl who liked to sit on his foot as he clomped around the house, her arms wrapped tightly around his calf.

“My laundry,” Ashley said. She looked at him sadly, enunciated her words clearly, as if he had a hearing impairment. “My laundry is in a separate basket. It’s not to be touched.”

“Did I touch it?” he said.

“Yes, you touched it,” she said. “You mixed it in with all the other laundry—the towels? The sheets? Your underwear? I mean, gross.”

“Well,” he said.

“She doesn’t want you to touch her laundry,” Sherrill said. She gave him a smile that was not really a smile at all. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

“Well, maybe I just won’t do any laundry at all,” he said. “That way...