Collection Date

Dave Olvetti loved to shoot his Porsche out of the back lot of Universal onto Forest Lawn  

Drive at the end of a long hard day.  The four-mile stretch to his freeway onramp became pure pleasure, long sinuous curves flanking the hillsides, and there’s be little traffic at this hour.  In the long days of June, twilight had barely begun at 8:15.  

His car seemed to anticipate what was coming shivering to life in the near empty lot.  He pumped the throttle reveling in the throaty roar of the turbo charged engine.  Checking the rearview, he saw clouds of blue white exhaust envelop a great set of legs.

    “Hey.” Cheryl Miller said coming around to tap on the passenger window.  “Run me up to Disney, will you?”

The Disney Studios where Cheryl’s husband Frank worked were on his way home.  How could Dave refuse?  Well, because he’d have to take Riverside Drive and wouldn’t be able to race along Forest Lawn for one.  Besides, last time he dropped her off at Disney, Frank was waiting out front, and the man kept looking daggers at him.  Cheryl never tired of telling how crazy jealous Frank got.  Her smile now promised ever so much more so Dave let her in.  

Have the best of both worlds. the voice inside his head was saying.  Take her the long way round on Forest Lawn Drive.  Show her what it’s like to be handled by a pro.  You know how excited she got that time you sped to lunch.  Maybe you could even take a ride up to the observatory. Plenty of twists and turns on that road up past the dump.

Cheryl’s face was freshly tanned and looked the more so with darkness falling.  Dave was already imagining them necking in the parking lot below Mount Hollywood while the city lights twinkled on.  Her eyes were twinkling now, her voice a soft purr much like the motor idling low.

    “Dave. you’re a dear for doing this.  I’ll have to find a special way to pay you back.”

Her gay laughter and perfume filled the car and made his heart race as did the engine.  Dave put her in first, and the car lurched ahead burning rubber.  Cheryl squealed a little at the terrific acceleration past all the parked cars.  When they reached the intersection at Barham Boulevard, they were lucky enough to catch the light, a very long wait coming this direction out of Universal Studios, and they shot across the avenue onto Forest Lawn Drive.

    “Aren’t you taking Riverside?” Cheryl asked.

She was turned half sideways towards him, the way she’d originally sat down, and she was unable to resist staring wide eyed out the windshield as the car wound up to speed around the first turn.

    “We’ll go the long way around.” Dave said.

He risked taking a long look at her sitting eager with excitement, a smile playing over her full lips, a bit of fear and delight in her eyes as she locked herself into the seatbelt in one fluid sweep.  Something peripheral on the left pulled Dave’s eyes back to the road.

   “Oh look, there’s Frank now.” Cheryl said pointing with her finger practically making a mustache under Dave’s nose.

He glanced over at the Cobra coming out of the lot at the sports fitness center.  The complex of tennis courts and gymnasium was wedged into the narrow space between the road and the concrete enclosure of the L.A. River.  The bullet-like vehicle, white with pinstripe blue trim, swung out in a wide arc from the driveway that brought it momentarily broadside to the Porsche.  Dave’s eyes locked momentarily with Frank’s as they sped by.  There was shared anger and alarm to the look.  They both knew something was up, something over Cheryl.  Dave watched in the rearview as the Cobra pulled in behind him shrinking to something insignificant then growing large anew.

    “Honestly, first it’s that ridiculous car, and now he’s into a fitness kick.  I keep telling him, ‘Frank, you’re a fat old man,’ but he’ll never face it.”

Cheryl’s laughter was like music swelling to a crescendo.  Dave glanced at the speedometer.  Near eighty.  He needed to be watching the road, but couldn’t keep his eyes off the mirror.  The Cobra was gaining on them.  Was fat old Frank going to race him?  

The Cobra was coming up too fast to be doing anything else.  It flew by as the road hugged the hillside in a tight turn before opening out onto the vast sloping lawns of the first cemetery on this stretch of road.  Dave downshifted and accelerated down the long straightaway.

    “Catch him.  Catch him.” Cheryl chanted.

Christ, they were doing a hundred and twenty, and she couldn’t get enough.  What was a woman like this doing with Frank, and why wasn’t she with him?  More to the point what was her ready for retirement slug of a husband doing racing his beloved show car like this?  Dave told himself to stop worrying about such questions and concentrate on beating the man.

Barely slowing, they entered the next turn running neck and neck ready to haul flat out along the following straightaway, but a lumbering dump truck was straddling the lanes coming out of the curve.  The Cobra cut to the left into incoming traffic.  The only way that Frank’s car could avoid a head-on was to stay the course.  Cheryl gave a helpless yelp while watching her husband’s car smash through the chainlink fence.  The Cobra vanished from view into the concrete canyon of the Los Angeles River.   

Dave swung the wheel wildly to the right in a panic move to get around the truck.  Then he jerked the wheel back to the left to avoid hitting the mountainside, but they were already in the dirt by the side of the road, and the quick move sent the Porsche sliding sideways.  They’d  

reached the flat space before the second cemetery.  Dave’s pretty machine, a bright shade of yellow only a Porsche could wear with dignity, seemed to willingly mate with the great marble pillar that graced the entrance of the Mount Zion Cemetery.

The dump truck driver had his dispatcher phone for an ambulance that was on the scene in two minutes flat.  Fast work by the paramedics saved Dave, but Frank and Cheryl had been instantly killed.  A prepaid family plot was waiting at Mount Zion to receive Frank and Cheryl, and the mortuary, a mere stone’s throw away from the accident site, managed to make them presentable enough for an open casket funeral.

Dave was able to recuperate at Saint Joseph’s Hospital less than a mile distant.  The dump truck driver was waiting outside Emergency when Dave regained consciousness.  The man began to visit him daily.  At first, Dave assumed the man felt guilty, but the fellow never expressed any remorse.  He also never gave a straight answer to why he was driving his truck on Forest Lawn Drive at such a late hour.  What he did talk about, and this was just so creepy, was the need for everyone to make funeral arrangements ahead of time.  It seems the man moonlighted as a salesman for cemetery plots.  Dave ended up purchasing a policy just to get rid of the guy.  Since Dave was Jewish, Mount Zion was his pick.  The bond this made with Cheryl and even Frank was also somehow a comfort.  He had a nice view of the place from his hospital room.  

When Dave returned to work after a lengthy convalescence, he found he’d been transferred upstairs to an office on the top floor of company headquarters.  He’d end every day looking out the window at that damned straightaway and never dared drive it.   

Until today.  It had been a year exactly, and Dave was determined to conquer his fear once and for all.

He hadn’t intended taking the run down Forest Lawn Drive at the very same fatal time, but events at work conspired to keep him late.  As he gunned the engine of his Porsche, a new lime green model that replaced the one he’d totaled, Dave half expected to spot Cheryl’s lovely legs in the rearview.  But of course they weren’t there, and certainly there was no Cheryl tapping at the window so after a  moment’s reverie, he put the car in gear and tore across the lot.

He just barely made the light as on that fateful day.  As he sped through the first turn, he glanced over to the sports center and said a little prayer of thanks that there was no Cobra pulling out of the driveway.  With no one on his tail, there was no reason to speed, but Dave had something to prove to himself.  Besides, there wouldn’t be any dump trucks out.  The Toyen Canyon landfill had been closed late last summer.   

He sped by Forest Lawn Cemetery doing near a hundred.  It felt ever so much faster.  Coming out of the blind curve into the next straightaway, Dave was astonished to see a dump truck straddling both lanes on his side.  He had to make a dangerous pass on the left into oncoming traffic.

He narrowly avoided a head-on and almost spun out darting back into his lane.  Before even completing the maneuver, his eyes focused on the rearview while he wondered what that dump truck could possibly be doing here.  Too late did he look ahead to the entrance to the second cemetery and the post looming up in front of him.   

For the second time he crashed into the marble pillar.  The air bag stopped him from slamming into the steering wheel, but the shoulder harness would have done that.  The bag’s chief benefit came from the mercifully stunning blow it gave his face.  Dave only vaguely felt the life drain out of him from the myriad cuts in his legs that were crumpled into the twisted metal that once was the car’s front end.   

Dazed, he heard someone tapping at the window.  Could that be Cheryl?  No, it was the dump truck driver.  The man knocked the fractured glass clean out of the frame with his rapping.  The glass fell tinkling onto the fast deflating air bag.  The rearview mirror’s had been jolted crazily askew.  Dave watched his own death mask face in it.  Superimposed beyond, two figures were walking up the road towards him.

    “What are you doing out here?” Dave asked struggling to turn and stare at the bland blank face of the dump truck driver.

The figures in the mirror were close enough now for the faces to be discernable.  Dave just didn’t want to admit to himself who and what they were.

    “I got a pickup order.” the driver said.

    “But the dump’s closed.” Dave gasped.

A death rattle was welling up his throat.  This time it was Cheryl tapping on the passenger window.  She was leaning down, smiling in welcome.  Her head was transparent enough for Dave to see through it to Frank standing directly behind her.  The man looked grim but triumphant.

    “They’re always open.” the dump truck driver replied pointing up at the tombstones dappling the grassy lawn.           

the end