Now Wouldn't You Like to Know by Curtis Bennett

out and how far I had driven since I had left. I told him that I was in South Carolina and expected to be crossing the border over into North Carolina in a couple of hours. Before we ended the call, he gave me an update on the mail I had received in my absence and told me that Tiger Woods was twelve under for this week’s tournament and sat comfortably at the top of the leaderboard. The closest player was three shots behind. I then returned my attention back to Diana.
    “So, that was your cousin Michael,” she said.
    “Yep, that was Mike.”
    “I noticed that you didn’t mention me.”
    “I thought about it but decided that this wasn’t the time to get involved in a long conversation while we were eating,” I said cautiously.
    “Was that the only reason?”
    “The only one I could think of,” I said honestly. “Why?”
    “I was just wondering.”
    “You seem to do a lot of that, I’ve observed.”
    “A lot of what?”
    “Wondering.”
    “Oh, now you’re observing me,” she mused.
    “Well, I mean we have had quite some time to observe one another.”
    “Just admit it, you just couldn’t keep your eyes off of me, just admit it big boy.”
    “This isn’t about keeping my eyes off of you or on you; it’s about what I’ve observed during our interactions, plain and simple.”
    “Plain and simple, huh,” she said smiling. “Well, I’ve observed a few things myself.”
    “Like what?” I asked, tilting my head and giving her an inquisitive stare.
    “You like to analyze people, for one,” she began.
    “Look, what can I say? I am an analyst at heart.”
    “I can tell,” she said with a pleasant smile.
    “Anything else?” I was curious to know.
    “Well, you seem to be a pretty decent driver. Thank goodness for that.”
    “You’re welcomed, anything else?”
    “Oh, and you like to sing,” she said, rubbing her forehead momentarily.
    “Yes, I love to sing, anything else?”
    “Well, I’ve also noticed that you can eat the hell out of some KFC chicken.”
    “Hey, I’m not the only one,” I said, hunching my shoulders, my palms facing up. “Now, what else?”
    “Let’s see, I know you like drumsticks. You tore that one up really good. But you took your time savoring that chicken breast, I noticed.”
    “Hey, what can I say? I loves me some breasts,” I said defensively, with a smirk.
    “Yeah, I can tell,” she replied in agreement, then added, “Okay, you got me on that one.”
    We both broke out in laughter.
    Wrapping things up, we ditched our trash, refilled our drink cups, grabbed a few napkins for the road, and returned to the Navigator. This time Diana decided to seat herself just behind the front seats to watch television on one of two pull down television monitors. Logging onto Netflix, she began her movie search. She opted on watching a romantic comedy. Within minutes we were traveling north on I-95. So far the ride had been uneventful. And I was hopeful that Jack would stay out of the picture and out of our conversation, at least until we got to Philadelphia. I could only keep my fingers crossed.
     
     
    T hirty miles into our drive, I tilted my head to the left and glanced at my outside rear view mirror and noticed a black Pontiac Firebird coming up from behind at a high rate of speed. It seemed to be the same driver I had witnessed driving erratically thirty miles earlier before he pulled off at a rest stop. At the time he was dodging in and out of lanes like a madman. Once again, the driver appeared to be switching lanes and passing other cars with little regard on how close his car came to the vehicles he was passing and without concern for how much clearance between the cars his car actually had. Several cars honked at him angrily in protest. Reckless driving the law would call it. It wasn’t long before the Firebird charged by me on my left. He must have been doing around 95mph or more. I looked to see if he was being pursued by law enforcement, just like one of