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“But you don’t—”

“—know you? Do you think I run around giving lifts to just any du around corners at the studio, pretending to be the White Rabbit at the coers—“bastard son of Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Warlord of Mars—the illegiti of H G Wells, out of Jules Verne Stow your bike We’re late!”

I tossed my bike in the back and was in the car only in time as it revved up to fifty

“Who can say?” shouted Fritz Wong, above the exhaust “We are both insane, working where ork But you are lucky, you still love it”

“Don’t you?” I asked

“Christ help me,” he muttered “Yes!”

I could not takewheel to let the wind plow his face

“You are the stupidest goddaet yourself killed? What’s wrong, you never learned to drive a car? What kind of bike is that? Is this your first screen job? How come you write that crap? Why not read Thomas Mann, Goethe!”

“Thomas Mann and Goethe,” I said, quietly, “couldn’t write a screenplay worth a daood screenplay? or a short story like one ofyou believe it? Hell, no How come you drive with that monocle?”

“None of your damn business! It’s better to be blind If you look too closely at the driver ahead, you want to ram his ass! Let me see your face You approve of me?”

“I think you’re funny!”

“Jesus! You are supposed to take everything that Wong the ospel How come you don’t drive?”

We were both yelling against the wind that battered our eyes and mouths

“Writers can’t afford cars! And I saw five people killed, torn apart, when I was fifteen A car hit a telephone pole”

Fritz glanced over at my pale look of remembrance