The most immediate thing that happened was that his worn sneaker slipped off the clutch pedal. The second was that the rearview mirror fell into his lap, as Madame Schumann-Heink rose up on her back wheels and danced ponderously into the middle of Gonzales Avenue before she came down again with a smash that threw Pierce/Harlow face-first against the dashboard. The switchblade sagged in his fingers.

Farrell had no chance to take advantage of the moment; he was half-stunned himself, and Madame Schumann-Heink was frisking in second gear toward the left-hand curb, heading straight for a parked van with MOBILE IMMENSE GRACE UFO MINISTRY stenciled neatly on its sides. Farrell hauled desperately on the wheel and found himself veering under the nose of a garbage truck that bore down on him like a ferryboat through the fog, glowing and hooting. Madame Schumann-Heink spun in a surprisingly agile U-turn and scurried before the truck, rocking cripplingly on dead shocks, her tail pipe farting in tin-can bursts and something Farrell didn’t want to think about dragging just back of her front axle. He pounded on the horn and kept howling.

Beside him Pierce/Harlow, sand-pale with shock and rage, knuckled blindly at his mouth, sputtering blood. “Bit my tongue,” he mumbled. “Christ, I bit my tongue.”

“I did that once,” Farrell said sympathetically. “It’s a real bear, isn’t it? Try to put your head back a bit.” Without turning, he began walking his hand shyly toward the knife lying forgotten on Pierce/Harlow’s lap. But his peripheral vision was also sleeping in this morning; when he struck a second time, Pierce/Harlow made a sound that was all inhale, snatched up the switchblade, and missed medical immortality by cringing inches, getting the seat cover instead. Farrell swung Madame Schumann-Heink hard to the left, cutting in front of a bellowing semi, and careened down a side street lined with office furniture warehouses and bail bondsmen’s establishments. He heard everything loose in back go booming from one side of the bus to the other and thought oh, sweet Jesus, the lute, sonofabitch. The new worry kept him from noticing for two blocks that such traffic as there was was all coming toward him.