My Temporary Life (5 page)

“
It’s a band, Malcolm. They’re a band, a rock n’ roll band. George thought you’d like it. I told him that you wouldn’t know who they were, but he insisted, so humour him please, Malcolm. Tell him that you like it.”

She’s standing at the doorway to the bedroom, not looking at me but looking at the poster, just as I was.

“
I do. I do like it. It’s great, Mum.”

Still she stares at the wall, arms folded in front of her, wearing her nightdress. Shivering a little, she doesn’t look like my mother. There are lines under her eyes that I haven’t noticed before, and her shiny blonde hair looks duller, less blonde, less vibrant, somehow. I look for her confidence, her cockiness but this morning it just doesn’t seem to be there.

“
Listen, I know this isn’t
great
, Malcolm, none of it, but just try, okay, try to get along.”

I want to touch her, to hold her, to let her hold me. I pull the covers around me and sit upright as I answer. “I will Mum, I always do. I’ll try my best.”

She’s gone though, and I’m sitting holding my knees, with the covers falling away from me, and it feels like she was never really there at all. All I hear is her voice coming from the hallway, telling me to get up, and that I’ll be riding with George, to my new job.

The ride is loud and lively. George is able to turn the big steering wheel with one hand while watching the road, talking to me, and sipping from a huge coffee cup that fits into a special holder on the dash, all at the same time. I thank him for the poster, and with his free hand he pulls out a box filled with cassette tapes.

“
Mostly my stuff, Mal, but some of it’s your mother’s, some of it I keep here for her.”

I think of the two of them riding in the car with the music playing on the stereo, my mother probably touching George’s shoulder just as she was at the airport, and holding her face high and proud, for all the world to see.

“
You see this one, Mal. This is what I’m trying to explain to you. This is crap. It’s sentimental bullshit, sorry Mal, crap. It’s three basic chords, a catchy chorus, and a week and a half in the top twenty. It does nothing for me, nothing at all.”

I nod as he speaks and before long, I’m smiling back at him, enjoying the animated way that he explains things to me.

“
You need to feel it. You need to feel it down here, Mal,” he tells me, gesturing somewhere below his ample belly. “For me to buy into it, for me to accept it as being real, and I mean real now, Mal, it has to move me down here.”

I keep nodding as he points down, while his eyes stay on the road, and he plays with the dials on his stereo.

“
I’ll show you. Listen to this. You tell me which one gets to you. Tell me the one that you can’t describe in words.”

I’m smiling so much that I find myself breaking into a laugh as he pops in tape after tape, letting me listen to a minute or two of each.

“
It’s fine, you laugh at me,” he chuckles back, “but I guarantee you, we’ll find one of them that floats your boat. No problem there, Mal, no problem at all.”

I listen to the sounds of guitars and pianos and other noises that I can’t associate with any instrument that I’ve ever heard. The singers sing of a
highway to hell
, and a man who seems to have a stutter shouts,
my my my my
generation
, and another sings that,
we are the champions.
George never tires of putting in tape after tape, laughing while watching my reaction out of the corner of his eye. I smile and nod at all of them, enjoying the beat, the sound, but still not understanding what he means.

“
Listen to this Mal. This one reminds me of your mother.”

The song is slower and the words are easier to understand as the singer sings about,
her golden blonde hair shining in the sun.

“
Crazy, I know, but it makes me think of her every time. Man, that blonde hair sure turns heads, Mal, that golden blonde hair.” He’s smiling as he says it and obviously thinking about my mother, but the laughter is gone now and he doesn’t look at me. His gaze is firmly on the road ahead of us as he puts another tape into the stereo.

Then, I hear it and I don’t have to tell him. I know that somehow, he knows. He just seems to know.

“
Aha, you little bugger. You little Scottish bugger,” he laughs. “I knew that you’d get it. You can feel it can’t you? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

All of the other sounds in the world have stopped. I know that the car is running and I can see George laughing and hear his words, but nothing else can dampen the music coming from the stereo. It seems to move effortlessly from a thunderous blast of guitars and piano with the singer not singing but yelling, pleading almost, to a softer melody where he’s talking, whispering the story of the song, while the piano plays beautifully in the background. It makes me feel something inside that I’ve never felt before. I feel happy and angry at the same time. There really is no other way to describe it other than that, just happy and angry, all at the same time.

I’m smiling as the song ends and George turns the volume down. Looking at me, then looking at the road, he’s hardly able to contain himself.

“
You see kid, that’s what I mean. That’s the music that you can’t describe with words.”

He’s right. I’ve never heard anything that made me feel that way before. “How did you know, George? How did you know that was the one for me?”

“
You stopped nodding, Mal. You stopped nodding and you got a real serious look on your face, as though something important just happened.”

“
Maybe it did,” I laugh, pleased with myself, “maybe something important did just happen, George.”

“
Yeah, kid, no maybes about it. Something important did just happen.”

We reach our destination and George pulls into the entranceway of a large lot filled with cars of all different shapes and sizes. I wince at the glare coming from the windows on the building in front of us. The windows are huge and behind them, inside the building, there are even more cars. As he turns the vehicle off and parks, in my head I can still hear Bruce Springsteen singing about fast cars and pretty girls, and running away from everything. I smile and think about how the music makes me feel, and when I look over at George, he ruffles my hair and grins back as though he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

CHAPTER 6

The basics of car washing are easy to learn. One-and-a-half scoops of the green powdered soap are mixed with one full bucket of water. This leaves the soap strong enough to take any grime off the cars without wasting any of the expensive green powder. The hoses and soap powder are kept in our shed that is at the rear of the lot, and the shed door must be kept locked at all times. The hose is to be coiled and uncoiled very carefully from the steel spool that holds it. By doing this, there is little chance that the end of the hose could fly up and scratch one of Mr Allister’s cars. They are all Mr Allister, or Bill Allister’s cars. He owns the dealership. I work with Terry. Terry is Bill’s son, and he calls him Dad. I decide to call him Mr Allister, and thank him for giving me a job.

“
You’re very welcome, Malcolm. Terry will show you the ropes. Just listen to Terry and you’ll be fine, and don’t worry if the salesmen squawk at you; they’re all vermin anyway. They just like to show what assholes they are once in a while.” He smiles at Terry in a way that seems to say that they’ve had this conversation before. Terry grins and hands me a brush, nodding and smirking, while leading me towards the little shed at the back where we keep the cherished green soap.

Terry fills me in on what it means to be a
Lot Lizard
. The main part of the job is washing. We’re always washing cars. The important thing is to start from the top down and rinse more than you scrub, and always remember to rinse thoroughly. We unload any deliveries that arrive also. They have to be unloaded at the back door, then, you knock and wait for someone in the office to let you in. Never, ever, ever go in the front part of the office or showroom. We are lot staff, and can only enter the building from the back shop, or the door at the rear. Always listen to the salesmen or the mechanics, but if there’s something that they ask you to do, and you’re not sure that it should be done, then ask Mr Allister whether
he’d
like it done.

The washing part is easy and I catch on quickly. It takes the rest of my first day for Terry to show me around the dealership and train me on the additional duties that we have, but it only takes an hour before he fills me in on all the different personalities that make up the dealership.

“
He’s Marvin, Starvin’ Marvin. That’s what we call him. Don’t look; just keep pulling the hose out towards the centre of the lot.” Terry stifles a laugh as we both glance at a tall skinny man, wearing a suit that seems to be several sizes too large for him.

“
I’m watching you, both of you. That blue Chevy looked like shit when I test-drove it last night. Try a little elbow grease, boys, a little hard work never hurt nobody. You got Snottish Boy to help you now, Terrance, so no excuses, elbow grease, lots of elbow grease.” Marvin is waving his arms as he yells at us, the sleeve of his suit jacket flapping in the wind almost in time with the wide flaps at the bottoms of his pants.

Terry ignores the name that I’ve been called, and just laughs, as Marvin turns and walks away. He doesn’t have to tell me that this is one of the assholes his father warned me about.

“
He bangs his customers, the women ones anyways. He’s our top producer, but he’s always got a jealous husband or two trying to find him. Once he came in all bruised and battered after a close call.”

“
A jealous husband caught him?”

“
No, but it was close. He had to jump out of a bathroom window when he heard the front door opening, and then he fell two stories into a dumpster. True story, true story.” Terry’s eyes light up in a way that they never lit up when he explained to me how to mix the soap.

“
And they call him Starvin’ because he’s so skinny?” I realize that it’s an obvious question right after I ask it, but Terry has no interest in mocking me, none at all.

“
Yep, they call him that because he’s so skinny. He only eats once a day and the rest of the time he sells cars or talks about women. I think he’s banging Sylvia. I almost caught him once, coming out of our shed, dirty old man, still pulling his pants up. I know he’s got a key; I just haven’t caught him with it yet. He tried to look all innocent and kept walking towards me with his arms out so that I couldn’t see behind him, but I know I saw someone and I know Marvin. I know what he’s up to.”

“
Sylvia is someone else’s wife? She has a husband?”

Terry lets his brush drop to the ground and stares at me for a moment before answering, his face almost bursting open with a childish look of delight. “That’s right, you haven’t met Sylvia yet. Well buddy, you’re in for a treat. Sylvia works in the office. Sylvia and Gloria work together. Gloria does all of the work but Sylvia, well Sylvia has
assets
.” He cups his hands in front of his chest, as he says the word and gives me a devilish look. Immediately, I can’t wait to find out more about Sylvia’s assets.

We spend our coffee and lunch breaks sitting on buckets in front of our little shed, watching the rest of the dealership at work, everyone doing their part to try and sell cars. Sometimes Mr Allister comes and stands beside us, visiting. He carefully eats his orange or peach, while slightly leaning forward to avoid spilling any juice on his shirt and tie. It amuses me to see the two of them, father and son, interacting, one a smaller younger version of the other, both of them so similar. While both are short, Mr Allister is wide and stocky where Terry is narrow and lean. Both are strong people. You can see it in the way that they touch things or lift items with little or no effort.

Terry and his Dad speak almost in code about a secret project that Terry has been working on. Every time he visits us, Mr Allister asks his son the same question, with the same smirk on his face. “Is it ready yet? Is it done?”

And every day he gets the same answer, “still some quirks, Dad, still some things that I’m trying to work out. It’ll be done soon.” Terry gives his father
his
version of the Allister smirk and continues munching on his sandwich while the three of us watch Starvin’ Marvin trying to entice a middle aged woman to get into the driver’s seat of a shiny red convertible.