Megan Rible
Autograph
	There are really no words to classify my friend Max, except perhaps his name itself.  Saddled at 
birth with the ponderous title of Augustine Maximilian Thompson and then nicknamed the possibly more 
unfortunate "Augie" for most of his formative years, I have always felt his character was inevitable.  
Anyone who could survive high school with this double handicap was destined for greatness or insanity.
	"Hey, Tom, you ready?" Max's thin freckled face is alight with conspiratorial glee as he bounds 
to meet me, opening his jacket to reveal the thin copper coat hanger he is hiding inside, and then closing it 
again with a wink.  Not waiting for an answer, he grabs my wrist and drags me down the dark deserted 
street, away from the neon lights of the arcade, now closed for the night, where we had agreed to meet.  
Max has grown several inches this summer and I can no longer keep up with his long bouncing strides, so 
I am breathing harshly by the time we turn right onto a side street a couple blocks down.  
	"There she is Tom.  She's the one."  He delivers this line with a level of drama and awe that 
might indicate Julia Roberts is standing across the street in black lacy underwear and cascading red hair, 
beckoning us to follow.  Instead I see a dingy brown Volvo, at least fifteen years old, looking forlorn and 
tired beneath a solitary wavering street light.  I heave a small sigh of relief.  For a second there his 
presentation had had me expecting a slick new Beemer, complete with alarms and automatic locks.  Max 
may be crazy, but at least he's not stupid.  
	Max darts over to the car and, after surreptitiously glancing around for unwanted observers, 
begins to bend the coat hanger into a long hook.  I follow more slowly.  We found the instructions on a 
web site while surfing for schematics of the Rebel hangar bay in The Empire Strikes Back.  It gave 
detailed instructions on how to break into a car and jump start it using only a "hangar," and Max, deciding 
in his unique way that this was a skill that could come in handy at college, immediately devised a plan to 
practice on an abandoned car he had seen in town.  It had sounded like fun at the time of conception, one 
last hoorah to celebrate sixteen years of a wacky friendship, but by this morning visions of revoked 
scholarships and dorm rooms with iron bars had begun to revive my natural tendency toward caution.  
I come to a stop a few feet away from the car, the fuzzy outer rim of the light just bumping the 
toes of my sneakers, while the synapses of my brain execute an infinite loop between cowardly fear and a 
certain voyeuristic excitement that feeds my already over-active imagination.  I watch Max as he jimmies 
the wire hook between the window and the door frame, carefully feeling for the rod that will raise the 
lock.  His hunched form is bathed in the muted yellow glow of the flickering streetlamp, his features 
alternately sharpening and fading into the brown-black of the car door, his movements the jumpy 
gracelessness of an old horror film.  The wire scrapes along glass and metal, clicking and scratching like 
the mandibles of a giant cockroach, or the clank of a metal club against the bars of jail cell.  I swallow 
convulsively.  "Can you feel the lock rod?"  My whispered question elicits nothing more than a grunt as 
he pauses to wipe a light sheen of perspiration from his brow, but I'm not really expecting an answer.  
Max's ability to concentrate on a task, to the complete exclusion of his surroundings, never ceases to 
amaze me.
After several minutes of uneventful silence, marred only by the scrape of Max's wire and his 
occasional mutterings, I start to relax.  Instead of envisioning phantom sirens and patrol cars full of ex-
football-player cops with night sticks, my mind summons an image of Dana Scully striding up to me in 
her sexy four-inch heels and demanding the Truth.  I smile, prepared to confess everything to her sultry 
blue-green eyes, and it's so real I can almost hear her shoes clipping on the pavement.  I can almost… 
Fully alert, my eyes fly to Max, back out toward the street.  "Max, we have to go now."  I can hear voices 
now as well, a man and a woman.  The woman giggles.  Definitely not Scully.  "Max!" I hiss, trying to 
drag him away from the car, away from the revealing light.  "I've almost got it," he says excitedly, 
pushing me back.  He must hear them now.  A drop of sweat collects on his nose, hovers, and splashes 
onto the road.  Each collision of her heel with the cement ricochets into my chest like a lead bullet.  In a 
few seconds they'll come around the corner and see us.  There's no time to hide.  Max's wire winks at me 
in mocking bronze flashes. I close my eyes, waiting in terror for that last click and the ensuing fateful 
silence.  Oh, God, Scully save me!  Max grabs my arm and hurls me into the car, jumping in after me and 
closing the door.  
We're safe.  
I know from standing outside before that the streetlight does not penetrate enough through the 
dirty glass to reveal us within the car, so the couple will pass us by without suspicion.  I lean back into the 
passenger seat, sinking into the cool worn vinyl, eyes closed, shivering, listening as our harsh breathing 
fills the car with stormy relief.  And then it happens.  A key grates in the lock, Max's door opens, and we 
all freeze.  The man stands poised, one hand on the door, the other holding out his keys, an expression of 
pure shock wiping his face clean of any other defining features.  The woman is a statue carved of shadow 
standing behind him.  No one breathes as time seems to slow down, and I watch in awe as Max proves my 
theory of his extraordinary destiny.  Before the man can react, Max grabs the keys from his outstretched 
hand, slams the door in his uncomprehending face, jams the keys into the ignition, and hits the gas.  With 
the squeal of the tires, time resumes its forward motion and we stream away, leaving the couple standing 
in the hazy half-light of the dying streetlamp and choking on the acrid smoke of burnt rubber mixed with 
Max's sweat, an asphalt autograph from my friend, Augie the Great.