Objectively, Richie Tozier held no mystery. He was crass, filterless, and he Tweeted pictures of his food. Not even good food. Once it was a half-eaten cinnamon raisin bagel. Untoasted. Untopped. Not even cut. Eddie had spent twenty-three minutes staring at his Instagram feed in a helpless rage.
Because Richie was a mystery for him. There was a draw. He wanted to compare it to a car crash, but while Richie was gruesome and frequently horrifying, Eddie could, in fact, look away. He just didn't want to.
Speaking of car crashes….
It was a fender-bender— technically a door bender. Benders of any kind were normal for New York City drivers, but this one was going to cost a fortune if he couldn't get the dents out with a plunger. Eddie had found a YouTube Tutorial after his first paparazzi pileup. He hadn't brought himself to watch it yet. They used the bathroom plunger.
"Fuck," said Eddie. He started checking himself for injuries, limb by limb. "Are you okay?"
Richie was rubbing his forehead. It was raw and already swelling. A cut bisected it, like crack in his goose egg, ready to hatch.
Suddenly, Eddie felt like crying. He had to watch the plunger video, and Richie was bleeding, and no one was wearing gloves. (Sometimes Eddie wished he'd been born a woman, but most of the time he knew he couldn't take it.)
"Why are they backing up?"
"Huh?" Eddie turned to look, and sure enough the cab that had dented his tank of a limo was now reversing. "Are they— Are they doing a hit and run?"
"I still don't understand why it isn't called a hit and drive," Richie muttered, distracted, like they were carrying on an age-old argument.
"Because that's football terminology," said Eddie.
"Is it?" asked Richie. "I'm not familiar with the ball sports."
He still sounded a little concussed. Eddie started to reach for his head, despite the lack of gloves. "Hit and drive is that thing when football players just run headlong at each other, like—"
"That?" Richie asked, but it was really more of a shout, because the cab had reversed its reverse and was heading straight for them.
It was too fast. The best Eddie could do was put them in neutral, so they rolled with the force. He used that momentum to pull off a very jerky J-turn and floored it.
"What the fuck?" Richie's voice was still louder than necessary.
"I don't know!" said Eddie.
"How the fuck did you do that?"
"I'm trained in defensive driving because the kind of rich assholes who ride in limos get kidnapped a lot!"
"I'm not rich!" Richie yelled.
"I know! Stop yelling!" Eddie yelled back.
Richie took a few deep breaths— probably too deep. For diaphragmatic breathing, exhalation was more important than inhalation. Eddie was about to tell him as much, when Richie said, "I am kind of an asshole, though."
"I know," said Eddie, and for some reason, Richie grinned. It was like a time-lapse of a flower blooming. Eddie was reminded of the top comment on NatGeo's latest video. "Flowers have the greatest puberty."
A voice in his head that for once sounded nothing like his mother said, "You'll grow into your looks."
"We're still being chased."
"For a given definition of the term," Eddie agreed, chancing a glance in his rearview mirror. The cab was three cars behind them, and none of those cars were moving. As a cabbie, any kind of cabbie, Eddie resented having to be grateful for New York City traffic.
"What do we do?"
"Police?" Eddie hazarded a guess. "I think the 17th is the closest precinct."
"Is that part of your Secret Service limo training too?"
"It's called being prepared."
"Were you a Boy Scout?" It should have been a joke, but Richie didn't sound like he was joking.
A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous...
"Not me," said Eddie.
"Eddie…" Richie trailed off and stopped, as if unsure where the trail had led him.
"Yeah?" Eddie encouraged.
"I think I'm going to hurl."