Like everyone else, I had a hard time dealing with politicians. Rarely were they able to let go of things of their own accord.

Heh. Accord. Honda joke.

******

Vladimir Ekranoplan billed himself as an infrastructure guy. He'd rebuild his city from the ground up, never forgetting the people who put him in office. He'd do the grunt work in the background, the unglamorous, thankless oiling of the gears of progress.

"None of what happened was my plan," said Vladimir. If I had been one to judge, I would have rolled my eyes. This really was typical; in death - as in life - politicians were always looking for credit to take and blame to give. It wasn't even that they cared to be loved or hated. Truthfully, if you wanted to be a good politician, you had to be a bit more sociopathic than the average person.

To his credit, he quickly realized he couldn't lie to me, and that it wouldn't matter even if he could. Say what you want about politicians, but they have situational awareness. The competent ones, anyhow.

"So…this is the afterlife," His voice a dead ringer for a car salesman having just spied a confused 19 year old, ripe for an out-of-warranty American sedan and a high interest rate.”

"Not quite."

"Ah. So, some kind of limbo, or something."

One of the things people had found more frustrating about Vlad - and they had a lot to choose from - was that even when he didn't know what he was doing, and his constituents knew that he didn't know what he was doing, he still kept up the charade. He had guessed, bumbled, overspent, sleazed and crawled his way through nine years as mayor. He had enriched his friends, made himself and his mistresses tabloid famous, and presided over the most inept police force the city had ever seen…but everyone loved the tax cuts and parades.

All of this was to say, he had no clue how any of this worked, but he was determined to look like he did. Old habits die hard, pardon the wordplay.

"So. Guess I'll be in Hell in a few minutes," Vlad said glibly.

"No clue," I said, making a point to check the rear view, even though the road was completely empty. No one else wanted to be out at 3 in the morning. 

"Ah well. Guess I'll find out."

There were several awkward minutes of silence as I navigated the empty streets. I was in no particular hurry; Vlad had wanted a leisurely cruise, so I obeyed the speed limit. He bit his fingernails, stared out the window, and eventually laid the seat back. He wanted to give the impression that he thought he'd be here for a while.

"It's OK to ask questions, you know," I said. He made a mindless clicking sound as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Oh, I know. Just…want to watch for a minute."

A simple pleasure Vlad had not experienced since his teenage years teased at the edges of his mind. The memory attached to it was fuzzy, but…

Street lights shone pale orange and blue-white, the only illumination now that the shops were closed. The silence, interspersed only by a brief autumn gust against the windows, felt full, and he felt his mind expanding into it.

"Could we roll the windows down?" He asked.

"No problem," I replied, smiling courteously. The night was humid and just a bit cold, but Vlad reclined himself into his seat with a more genuine smile than what he had given during his "opening moves."

His mind was an interesting, convoluted place, full of contradictory thoughts, wavering convictions and little motivation towards anything in particular. About the only thing he did whole-heartedly was attempt to keep his head above water; not that he felt particularly overwhelmed, but that he had found a niche, practically made it his life's goal to maintain a set level of comfort. It was pretty typical politician fare: if you don't feel it, feign it. It was difficult to follow all its branching roads, and some of them were dead ends anyways.

That was one of the things about reading minds: just because you could see into them, it didn't mean you could make sense of what was inside. If someone died after telling so many lies that they didn't know the truth anymore, they didn't suddenly find it as their life came to an end. I was no more capable of making sense of the rat's nest of his memories than him.

"So. How long you been uh…taking people across the river Styx?" He asked.

"That's…not an easy question to answer," I said.

"Ah come on. Try me, I'm pretty smart."

"Oh I know you are, it's just that time doesn't really uh…work, here."

"Well…how long have I been dying?"

"Answering that isn't going to be as helpful as you think."

"It's simple math. Divide time spent here by time in not-dead world. Boom, instant ratio."

"And do you know how long you've been here?"

He opened his mouth, confident of his answer, until he realized he didn't have one. He didn't remember crossing over. Approaching death hadn't felt like sleeping, but it hadn't felt like anesthesia, either. It was just a featureless void of the mind, a place that made his head feel full of static tingles if he tried to look inside of it.

"I know what you're trying to do," I said.

"Think so?" He said with a sly smile.

"You're trying to stay here as long as you can. It's what you've done your whole life: you've lingered."

He narrowed his eyes. I felt his mind shifting to a different strategy, but I cut him off at the pass.

"I can't help you stay here longer, Vlad. I don't have any control over that," I said.

"Then…who does?"

"Mostly? You."

******

I don't actively wish for my passengers to leave my car, but I do enjoy the company of some more than others. Life is confusing, and I don't fault anyone for letting things spin out of control, but I have nothing to offer to those who intentionally make things confusing for others so that they always gain something from any outcome. This isn't the kind of place where that happens.

To his credit, he was beginning to understand that. He made noises with his tongue as he spun his metaphorical wheels.

It wasn't easy for him to admit he wasn't ready, that he didn't know what to do. He couldn't even admit it to himself. 

"This really is the end, isn't it?" He asked. It was the first really sincere question he had asked in his time here.

"Depends on what you mean by 'the end,' I guess," I said. Most people would have assumed I was talking about a hypothetical afterlife, but Vlad was a nearly-dead atheist, who had long ago made his peace with the idea of a long, dreamless sleep.

"Do you think they'll remember me?" Vlad asked.

"For a little while," I answered. He frowned bitterly.

"I never…thought I cared about legacy. I still don't think I do, but why else would I be asking, if I didn't?" Vlad said. It was a step in the right direction: a tacit implication that he felt lost. 

"Because you don't know yourself," I answered. 

Vlad's face twisted into a sour, confused scowl. 

"You chose the worst of both worlds. You tried to satisfy everyone, but for self-centered reasons. Your identity was built around your polling numbers," I explained. He didn't take it well.

"You don't think very highly of me, do you?"

"Would you care if I did?"

I intentionally interrupted the thought.

"There's your answer. You view people through the lens of how useful they are to you. It's an impulse; at this point, you don't even know you're doing it," I said.

Vlad looked down at his hands, feeling something that wasn't exactly shame, but was a distant relative on shame's family tree. It was true that no one had revelations in my car, but for some, the opposite was true: they worked their way from confidence to despair as their usual coping mechanisms failed to deliver them to a place where they felt comfortable. 

He was starting to get it. This time, there would be no spinning the outcome into something he could influence. It was the end, full stop.

"I didn't want to just fill the seat when I started. I don't think anyone does. Everyone wants to be Bolivar, Kennedy, Lenin. No one wants to be the party man, the gear in someone else's machine. We all want to solve problems. We tell ourselves we can be leaders."

Vlad leaned, putting his hair in the oncoming wind. He stared down the long line of green traffic lights, seemingly focused on the darkness just outside of town.

"Everyone wants to blaze their own trail, but the horse just doesn't want to leave the road that's already there. Easier just to keep going where you know you're going."

I wasn't about to tell him that what he was implying was defeatist nonsense. There were countless examples of his far more barbaric ancestors somehow coming together to defy the status quo. He wanted to say - without outright saying - that it wasn't his fault, and that even if it was, his meager station wasn't one that brought about the kind of change he wanted. If he had even tried, he reasoned, the others on the city council, who were just as powerful as himself, would surely close off his ability to make an impact at all. He had to play the game.

"It just didn't matter what I did," He said, knowing that the words would make no difference to me.

"It always matters, Vlad."

"Does it, Ms. Twiggs? You're the one who told me that people will forget me."

"And that's true of everyone."

Vlad's eye twitched. His first instinct was to lash back, to stand his ground, but he was at least smart enough to understand that he had no more ground to stand upon.

"Well…I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear? That I regret everything?"

"You ought to know by now, that the only person you're lying to is yourself."

"Your mind reading powers tell you that?"

"It doesn't take a mind reader to see your malfunction, Vlad."

He thought about all the angry mail he had received from his constituents as he frowned. In his heart of hearts, he had known they were right to be upset. It hadn't been that long ago that the same deteriorating streets, lingering crime and overall stagnation had driven him to aspire to office in the first place.

He stopped himself before he could follow the thought to completion, as he always did. Down that road lay the realization that he had become responsible for the way things were. Perhaps he didn't actively make things worse, but by hunkering down in the halls of power, he had stood in the way of someone who might have used the position to change things for the better. It was a small chance, to be fair, but with him in office, even that minuscule hope was thwarted.

Maybe that was what a politician needed the most: the ability to keep themselves from feeling the weight of responsibility.

******

Vladimir Ekranoplan, dead of a heart attack at age 67. At his own request, the funeral was a private ceremony.

He had thought it a good thing, that he had kept his deep despair about the futility of the office to himself. No one would have to listen to him complain about a job he asked for. I wasn't without sympathy; most people never learned the difference between being strong and not feeling weak.

If only he had known how ubiquitous the feeling of powerlessness really was. If only he could have understood that, just by aspiring to change and making the first steps towards it, he had shown himself to be "worthy" of the office.

What a stupid concept, worthiness. As if the universe ever cared what someone "deserved."

If I were the type to ask why there has to be an escort between life and death, trips like this one would be the most perplexing. His time in my Civic was just another moment of twisting himself into a political pretzel, the same as he had done for decades. Like all the others, he didn't change, but…I don't know. Sometimes, I want them to. It would be nice to see the ones who convoluted their lives this much, finally stop lying to themselves, making excuses, and let themselves feel something real.