Downers Grove (6 page)

“All right already,” she said.

The house was a mess, several dirty plates were stacked on the paisley-shaped coffee table. Twice as many dirty glasses ornamented the counter space. Clothes were strewn randomly about, and the carpet was buried in newspapers and magazines: the usual chaos. The television was barking a Live Action Report from Chopper 9 about the petrochemical fire in Lemont.

“They say people can see the smoke all the way from downtown
Chicago,” Tracy said, pointing at the screen. I fell onto the couch, fanned myself with the
TV Guide.
Tracy plunged into the big orange vinyl chair opposite me.

“I did it,” I said.

“Did what?” Her eyes were glued to the television set.

“The mechanic.”

“You did the mechanic?” Tracy sat up and pressed her cigarette onto a dirty plate.

“I asked him out on a date.”

“No way.”

“Just now at the Steakhouse.” I took a cigarette out of Tracy's pack. “We're gonna go see the fire in Lemont tonight.” I struck a match and lit a cancer stick.

“Well, that sounds like a hot date.”

“It was my idea. I just thought it would be fun, you know, at least we'll be parked.”

“Why don't you go to a motel, at least there's a bed,” she said, mimicking my voice.

I threw the
TV Guide
at her, propped my legs up on the coffee table. “Have you heard anything about those guys?” I asked.

“What guys?”

“Last night!”

“What's to hear?” She laughed to herself. “Action speaks louder than words.”

“A couple of Chuckie's friends showed up at the Steakhouse while I was talking to Bobby. I freaked out. Do you think I hurt him?”

“I hope so.”

“What if they come after us?”

“Did you give him your phone number?”

“Of course not.”

“Well how are they gonna find you? He doesn't even know your name.”

“It's a small town. They'll ask around. They might see your car!”

“If they see my car they better duck.” She pulled me out of my chair. “C'mon, you're making me nervous.”

We went upstairs to Tracy's room. The shades were drawn, the bed unmade. Red shag carpeting smothered the floor. Her walls were buried with posters of various rock stars and CK boys posing in their underwear. There was a scratched-up desk and matching dresser, both originally painted white, now graf-fitied with swirling rainbows of Magic Marker. She had a collection of old dolls and stuffed animals piled in the corner, which seemed like an installation dedicated to her past life, and a corkboard with souveniers of one-night stands pinned one over another as a celebration of her present one: buttons, bottle caps, concert tickets, dead flowers, even torn-open condom wrappers. Her dresser was brimming with stolen merchandise. Tracy was a kleptomaniac at the mall.

There were three library books stacked up on the edge of her desk. “What's with these books?” I picked up the top one.

“I have to do that stupid report,” she said.

“What's it about?”

“Look at the covers.” She nodded toward them.

“So?”

“They all have clouds on them, don't you think that's weird?”

“So what's your point?”

“That is my point. How many points do I need?”

“I've heard of
Generation X
and Bret Easton Ellis, but what's this big fat one?”

“It says he lives in Bloomington, Illinois. Not much happens here, so you can just imagine what it's like in Bloomington. He probably has a lot of time to write. Check out the author photo. He's kind of cute in that thirty-something English teacher way.”

“What's with the bandanna? Is he in a gang?”

“I'll speculate on it in my report,” she said.

Tracy clicked open her tape player and slipped in her sleazy-listening compilation. Mancini meets Manson is how I would describe her latest musical tastes. She calls it wife-swapping music.

“What do you wear to a fire?” Tracy opened one of her drawers and pulled out one item after another: short pants, leather pants, suede skirts, cotton T-shirts. In the next half hour Tracy put together just about every ensemble imaginable, then suddenly turned around with a devilish smile. “Why don't you wear nothing at all? Just a long gray raincoat and high heels.”

“I'm not a slut!”

“Yeah, but you want to be.” She laughed knowingly, holding up the brown suede halter top she swiped from her mom's collection. “You're as horny as a Prince song.”

“Should I make the first move?” I asked.

“Only if you have to.”

“When will I know?”

“You stare at that fire long enough and you'll know.” Tracy handed me her baby blue angora sweater. Its hairs stood on
end from static, wiggling with a cosmic life all their own. “Wear this,” she said. “It works every time.” She held the sweater over my chest. We both looked in the mirror.

“Do you think he's Mr. Right?” I asked.

“I think he's Mr. Right Now!” Tracy laughed.

T
IME
crawled away with the helpless tempo of a traffic jam. The summer light seemed to last forever. Lingering through dinner, it was one of those never-ending sunsets that delayed drive-in movies—a swollen haze of pollen and air pollution, a glowing gaseous orange with wispy vapors of purple and blue.

I cranked up the volume of my hair, did some overtime in the t-zone, then painted my nails ultraplatinum. It was a night meant for high-beam gleam. I wanted to sparkle like waxed chrome under streetlight. After a couple of preliminary failures I settled on a sliver of metallic mascara and a light dusting of pearly pink iridescent powder. Clothing is never easy and it took several dress rehearsals, but I decided on blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and Tracy's fuzzy blue sweater: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

It was only nine o'clock but I couldn't wait any longer, so
I went downstairs and told Mom I was going over to Tracy's. I hate to lie but sometimes the truth is just impossible. I took the shortcut through the field, which was not a good idea, because it was dark and the weeds were sparking my fertile imagination. I'm not usually a paranoid person, but lately everything's been getting a little weird. Whenever I'm alone I feel like I'm waltzing through a crime scene.

I landed at the Chicken Shack and ordered a small Diet Coke, then sat on a stool by the window and watched cars come and go from the gas station across the street. My mechanic went car to car, washing windshields, pumping gas, sometimes disappearing into the garage for a can of oil. He looked so sweet with that little pink rag drooping from the back pocket of his black jeans. Pushing a broom under bright white fluorescent light, he was my own private movie star.

I watched him wheel in the oil can cart, roll up the air hose, and measure the gas in storage below the surface with a long yellow pole until finally, a little after ten, the overhead lights were turned off. The gas station was closed. I coated my lips with a fresh dose of lip gloss, tossed my paper cup in the can, and strolled across the street. I tapped on the garage window and saw my mechanic turn with surprise. He walked over to the door and fumbled with the lock.

“You made it,” he said, then turned his back to me and bent over the sink to scrub his greasy hands. He wore a tight, gray short-sleeve T-shirt and black jeans pegged over steel-toe boots.

“Nice place ya got here.” I leaned against the Coke machine
and slid my hands into my front pockets. The garage smelled like old motor oil. Hundreds of crushed cigarette butts littered the greasy black floor like little white bugs.

He turned off the water and dried his hands with a white paper towel. “It's a job,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, then dropped the towel into the trash. “Where do you work?”

I stumbled on that one, my head swimming with responses. He turned around and pounded some quarters into the cigarette machine. “You got a job or you some kinda psychokiller chick who preys on gas station mechanics?” He picked up his cigarettes and tore open the cellophane wrapper.

“Heard about me, huh?” I gazed at my shoe.

Bobby tapped the cigarette pack against the palm of his hand, then tapped out two cigarettes and offered the first one to me. I pulled it from the pack, slipped it between my lips. He seemed tense under all that cool, his face didn't seem as sure as his demeanor. I could tell there was some vulnerability under all that swagger. Silence swelled and sucked up all the air. He clicked open his silver lighter and ignited its blue and orange flame. I dipped my cigarette into the fire and inhaled. The lighter fluid was so rich it tasted like I was smoking gasoline.

“So, you still want to go see that big fire?” he asked.

My right leg took on a life all its own, swinging forward and back. I twisted my arms into a pretzel. “Isn't much else to do,” I said. “You got any other ideas?” I flipped my hair away from my face.

He looked over my body and I returned the compliment. Bobby closed the bottom drawer of the desk with his knee, then turned around and grabbed his black leather jacket from
the coatrack. “The fire it is.” He turned off the office light, opened the door for me, then locked it behind us.

The purple-flake paint job on his '78 Charger glittered like the prizes in a gumball machine. The interior reeked of history—dead smoke and worn leather—somehow it already smelled familiar to me. This was my vehicle into the next chapter. I just wanted to be there, now.

My mechanic latched his seat belt and told me to do the same. He started the engine, pushed in a cassette, and the car burst to life. Nine Inch Nails crept out of the stereo. When he pressed the accelerator the first thrust of gasoline exhaust ripped through the tailpipes and the engine's sweet rumble turned to a fearsome roar. He shifted into gear and peeled out of the lot.

I slipped my hand under the black vinyl seat, feeling for trinkets like lost earrings, bottle caps, or torn condom wrappers, anything that might help me look into the past or predict the future. My mechanic concentrated on the dark road, shifting through the gears, both hands locked on the wheel. Sometimes his eyes squinted or his head tilted, as if he saw something lurking in the black perimeter. He looked so intense driving. I was speechless.

Bobby's face was dominated by large lips and long sideburns. His nose was twisted as if it had once been broken and never reset. A thick purple vein bulged from his slender neck, his flat chin balanced the twitching muscles of his jaw. He looked powerful and reckless, like somebody who's already tasted the pavement.

I rolled down the window, folded my arms over the windowsill, and let the warm wind blow through my hair. The scenery slid by like an ambient movie, a zillion frames a minute;
white lines disappeared under the car, warped reflections peeled over the windshield. I saw the pink eyes of an opposum hunched over a dead raven in the gravel shoulder of the road. It stared into the headlights, then scampered behind the guardrail and into the weeds.

We passed the Johnsons' abandoned farmhouse. The windows were broken, the weathered gray boards buckling. A large white billboard stood out front announcing the new development. The entire farm was mapped into tiny green squares with a black line snaking around the land in S-shaped curlicues. Mr. Johnson died last year and his farm was instantly swallowed up by some big-time developer. The cornfield already had sewer lines and streetlights in place. It all happened so fast, it seemed like they were waiting for him to die.

“So where are you from?” I asked.

“How do you know I'm not from here?”

“'Cause I've been here long enough to know.”

He turned and checked me out but didn't say anything. I tipped my head back out the window, crossed my legs, and stared at his reflection in the windshield. The curve of his lips reminded me of the bending hills of a roller coaster. I closed my eyes and felt myself sliding down the first hill.

“I'm from Southern Illinois.”

“What brings you up here?”

“Work.”

“They don't have any gas stations down there?”

“Yeah, but they already have mechanics. Everybody down there is a mechanic. Up here everybody is a businessman. Businessmen don't know shit about cars. They bring them to me and I charge whatever the hell I want.”

“You came up here to take advantage of us?”

“It's called the redistribution of wealth.”

“Are you a Marxist?”

“Are you a spy? You sure ask a lot of questions. What do you know about this fire?”

“Saw it on TV,” I said. “Biggest celebrity in the area, I guess.”

We came over a ridge, and the fire everybody's been talking about came into view. A huge petrochemical storage tank was on fire, and its plume of thick black smoke had burned a hole in the sky for about two days now. From across the canal it looked like the earth had cracked open and the entrance to hell was slithering from its hideaway. Fireboats projected lazy streams of water onto the steel casings of the nearby tanks. Old tires and half-sunk houseboats floated beside a rotting pier that sloped down under the oil-slick water.

“That fire is bigger than I expected. It looks so greedy and wild, like an angry ghost or something.”

“You believe in ghosts?” he asked.

“Sure, why not?” I looked over at him.

“You believe in UFOs too?”

“There wouldn't be UFOs if UFOs didn't exist,” I explained.

Bluff Road was clogged with double-parked vehicles. People were slouched on the hoods of their cars drinking beer. Everyone's face was shaded with an orange glow, reflecting the fire's leaping light. Bobby couldn't find a parking spot and ended up being detoured into a long snaking line of sight-seers rambling over the canal bridge. A few people stood outside the lawn mower repair shop, one of them pointing up into the sky.