The Spark and the Drive (11 page)

“It’s like having a padlock on the
Mona Lisa
down there,” Nick said. “Anybody with a pry bar could jimmy that bay door.”

“But nobody knows it’s a ZL1,” I said. “Right? I didn’t tell anyone. And I know you didn’t. Does Mary Ann even know?”

When Nick looked up at me, I couldn’t read his stare. He was wise to me, and now that I’d said her name … Suddenly he turned and threw himself over the desk, pounding the parts room window in a deranged expression of his full hatred of me.

But no. On the other side of the glass, Bobby was taking a work order off the peg hooks. “No cherry-picking, Stango,” Nick called. “Take it in order.”

Bobby cussed, put back the second work order, and took down the first. He came in to the parts room and set it on the table. “What the hell am I supposed to diagnose?” he said. I looked at the work order. A 1982 Corvette. Check engine light. Black smoke. Hesitation.

“Course it hesitates,” Bobby said. “It’s got a Tonka Toy motor.”

Nick took down one of the new computer books he’d bought at Carquest and handed it to Bobby. “See what you can figure out.”

“I figured it out when it pulled in,” he said. “Low compression and a shitload of wires.”

“It’s a D and A,” Nick said. “Hook it up to the scope.”

“Rally rims and a spoiler do not a muscle car make.”

Both of us were shocked—at least I know I was—when Nick grabbed the book out of his hand and gave it to me. “Here,” he said. “Go see what you can figure out.”

Bobby came over when I had the Corvette hooked up to the scope. “He’s serious,” I said. “He wants us doing computer cars down there.”

“Down where,” he said. “I look around, I don’t see Eve coming back.” Bobby thought she was dead. He knew a mid-level manager for Fat Tony Salerno in Harlem, who said there was a whole graveyard of out-of-town drug dealers at the bottom of the East River.

The engine was choked with vacuum lines and wiring harnesses. In the center of it a large plastic cover read
CROSS-FIRE INJECTION.
Bobby shook his head. “Best of luck.”

But then he kept coming over to see what I was doing. “So you just ask the computer what’s wrong?”

“That is the plan.”

“One robot talking to another robot. Neat.”

I took the air cleaner covers off the two throttle bodies. “It’s like dual carbs on a Hemi.”

“That,” Bobby said, “is about as unlike dual carbs as a pair of bowling balls. Where do you adjust the float? Where’s the choke and the mixture screws, smart guy?”

I sat in the driver’s seat and read through the diagnosis section twice. It was almost funny what it was telling me to do. I found a paper clip on the ground and straightened it into a V. Under the dashboard was a matchbox-size ALDL connector with twelve cavities. Just like the manual said, I ground the A cavity with the B cavity using the paper clip, then turned the key. There came a clicking from under the hood, and the check engine light started to blink. One blink. Pause. Three blinks. Then one again, three again. Code thirteen. “Holy shit,” I heard myself say.

“It’s the oxygen sensor,” I told Nick.

“You sure?”

“I’ll check resistance, and then yeah. A bad sensor can make it run rich.”

He went over to the book and moved his finger down the page it was open to. I was about 95 percent sure I was right. “It was a code thirteen.”

“I believe you,” he said. He came back over and leaned on the opposite fender. As I was discovering beyond any doubt that it was the oxygen sensor, Nick said, “You’re in it.”

I looked up from my ohmmeter, caught off guard and suddenly looking him in the eye, which was the last thing I was ready to do. He watched me with the admiration of a father grooming his son to take over the family business, and I knew that my voice would break if I opened my mouth.

“Wouldn’t matter if the place was burning down around you,” he said. “You’re working it through. Seeing the patterns, what’s causing what. No surprises. It can’t be any other way than what you’re thinking. You’re in it, partner.” He clapped my shoulder and I had to look again at the quivering dial on the ohmmeter, my face hot, my sinuses melting. I’d been waiting all morning for Mary Ann to show up, but I was suddenly glad that she hadn’t, and that I couldn’t see her and that she couldn’t see me, because I felt, for the first time, angry at her. I couldn’t have said why, because it had nothing to do with the mind.

Nick asked what I was making, and after a moment I was able to tell him.

“Starting this week, you’re up to seven percent commission on top,” he said. “Computer work’s fast and expensive. That’s better than a raise.”

14.

Backing out the Corvette, I glimpsed Mary Ann through the big window as she arrived for the day and set her purse behind the counter. From the low bucket seat I watched like a stalker, feeling lost to myself, thinking the words “crime of passion” and how that was only a way of rationalizing the crime. What was I now? What was she?

I expected her to look like a victim, adrift and betrayed, but instead she wore the expression of any other day, glancing around behind the counter at the work she had to do.

I parked the Corvette and went in with the work order. The lobby was empty, and as I came up to the counter she said, “Good morning,” in a sweet way, and the indescribable thing we had done was in the realm of the possible. All I had to do was seem capable of containing it.

She smiled and glanced down at the counter. “Nick didn’t do last night’s deposit, I see.” And, my God, that she’d allowed my hands over her soft breasts, that her hands had told mine to squeeze, and that she’d kissed me with even some shyness in the backward order of my already being inside her. I was seeing her body and our messy lovemaking on my third try, when I was able to last and she made the sounds of letting go and I let go inside her.

Unlike my own, her eyes were bright and not swollen; already I’d been in the bathroom trying to wash out the bloodshot with tap water, which made it worse, and then pressing a cold Dr Pepper can to the under-eye bags, which did nothing at all.

“So how are you?” she said.

I couldn’t hide my amazement at the question. “I’m not sure.”

She zipped up the money bag and the wrapped change made a thud where she dropped it on the floor. “That can wait.” Then she looked up at me with a sudden smile. “So what are your plans for lunch?”

*   *   *

I fell on her over the front seat and jammed the gearshift up to first with my shin. The backseat would have been more practical, but I was ready to snap off the steering wheel and throw it out the window before I broke from her long enough to climb over the seat. My cock felt harder than any bone in my body when she took it in her warm hand. Under her cotton dress I found that she was as ready as I was.

I stopped to open my shirt because you couldn’t really see my upper body muscle with it on. Then I was tearing at a studded condom package with my teeth. “What are you doing?” she said. “I have my diaphragm in.” She knocked the little red package out of my hand, and I hated to see it go. In the bathroom at Chevron I’d put my quarters in the Ultra Ribbed slot, between Ultra Thin and Extra Sensitive. I would’ve picked No Feeling At All, if that had been an option.

I thought that Nick could probably last with Mary Ann. He could look at her phenomenal face, her sexy lean jogging body, and not feel daunted. It seemed to be a passage of manhood to deaden yourself to the unspeakable beauty of women.

“Are you safe?” she said. “I’m safe. I guess we should’ve discussed that yesterday.” She kissed me. “I trust you, Justin.”

She’d done an extraordinary thing since I’d seen her in the lobby—she’d put on eyeliner. I could suddenly recall the very few times she’d worn it. I don’t know what the occasions were, but now I was the occasion. My God she was hot. I was pumping in her hand before I realized it. “I’m sorry,” I said, agonizing for a final allowance.

“I want this as bad as you do.” She reached down to disentangle one leg from her panties.

It wasn’t long, seconds, before I was thrusting with all my strength. I had to pull back and out and close my eyes, hold my breath, let the still release of the air reset the timer. As we began again and found our rhythm, she didn’t make sex sounds or really let her hips answer my thrusting, but only breathed in lapping rhythm with our slow dance. When she finally did start to move I tried to pull back again but she held me there, and with her first soft, “oh,” I was done. I pressed my mouth down on hers and let go. Then all I could do was hold still, like an invalid, pressing down on her until her eyes rolled back, and I watched her face, watched everything it did. She settled and sighed, and when she looked up at me she smiled with such sweet thank-you, her face flushed, her eyes sleepy and wet.

*   *   *

Only minutes had passed since we’d parked, and we got out of the car at a place that looked like the day after the Apocalypse. Sections of concrete parking lot jutted up like broken ice on a pond, and rusted and peeling chain-link fence opened on mini temples that had been caved in or knocked apart.

It was the remnants of a Waterbury oddity called Holy Land, USA. I’d read that in the ’60s a hundred thousand people every year made the pilgrimage here, some from overseas. Its name had even issued from the Pope’s holy mouth, I forget why, but now it was just a bizarre
Road Warrior
vision of the Bible. Crosses were covered with spray paint, nearly every statue decapitated. The Ark of the Covenant lay half charred and upside-down under the archway for Eden. According to the
Waterbury Republican,
the park was a haven for junkies and gangbangers, and I noticed for the first time the cluster of low-riders parked on the opposite side of the lot.

She wanted to take me on a little tour, and we still had some time. I’d told Nick I was going for a test drive and then to Popeye’s Chicken, where there was always a mile-long line at the register. In a skipping Dodge Dart I’d followed her Malibu out through neighborhoods of turn-of-the-century mansions that were three-family houses now, with round parlor rooms and wraparound porches, and up Pine Hill to a world that was sacred and terrifying.

Through the parking lot she led me around fire pits and glass and rain-puckered porn magazines. Past the broken cinder-block wall of a former gift shop, guys with black bandannas were spray-painting crowns over the Ten Commandment tablets. They weren’t bullies but the murderous badasses that bullies modeled themselves on. Relaxed among the wreckage, they seemed to arise from lawless places, one of them baseballing rocks out into the biblical city with a stick. They were Latin Kings, and according to the paper, they’d left bodies in this very park. They called each other Angels with the unsettling implication that they weren’t afraid to die.

I avoided eye contact and smiled at nothing. Though I couldn’t think of a single word, I strained to give the impression that Mary Ann and I were deep in conversation, and also that I was the last person who would ever report a crime. Someone laughed and I couldn’t swallow. With her olive complexion, Mary Ann could have passed for Puerto Rican, and I saw the danger that holding her hand and being white might put me in. I was afraid enough to let go, but I didn’t let go.

In my periphery I saw one of the Kings stop moving. Then a voice full of gravel: “Yo,” and in a black Yankees cap he glided up on us. He was squinting so hard one eye was almost closed, as if aiming a gun, only the gun would come up sideways. They pointed them sideways to break convention, or to say this is my hand, too, this gun is my hand and you’re so close I can’t miss, as easily as I can slap you I will shoot you.

“Hold up,” he said. “You know about Buicks? I got an eighty Regal. It does this shit like ting-ting-ting, like castanets, you know?”

My brown-and-khaki Out of the Hole uniform. It got me into bars and liquor stores, and now it was saving my life. I looked at Mary Ann, who was waiting for me to speak. “I think he means pinging,” she said.

I found my voice and asked what kind of gas he used.

“High-test only,” he said, and I was stunned by both his somberness and the understanding that this outlaw, this “soldier of the street” according to the paper, used the same grade of gasoline as the CEOs who brought us their muscle cars. With a slight dip of his head, a faint bow of respect, he asked if I could take a look. I allowed myself to smile when I was walking behind him, giddy with a resurgence of faith in my profession. Automobiles were like a great species among us, more vital and abiding than most people in our lives, yet only a handful of us fully understood their complicated language. Even gangbangers were humbled by the ailments of their cars.

The radiator was low on coolant and I showed him a leak at the thermostat housing. From out of a Newport pack he handed me a joint, and though I’d never tried pot I thanked him, as if he’d tipped me in ordinary currency.

Mary Ann laughed about it when we were alone again. She took my hand and I was sure of nothing, a moment gone wild because it wasn’t a casual crossing of the hands but a lacing of fingers that pressed that softest of skin. It was just that everything was working in reverse, and only now was I realizing that she liked me, despite all my fervent denials.

She led me along a path that must’ve been a lawn at one time, though what grew now grew out of magazine pages, cigarette packs, McDonald’s wrappers, broken glass, plastic bags. The weeds looked mutated they were so big, and there were briar bushes and poison ivy and tamarack trees that didn’t know where they were, flying a ripped flannel shirt like a flag, the leaves yellowing underneath, other limbs broken by a tire, a rusted tricycle. And the crawling and flitting bugs didn’t know where they were either, hovering down to a rose petal that was really a torn Doritos bag.

There was a stucco table with stucco benches in a clearing where gravel and concrete kept the plant life down. You could imagine a family having lunch here long ago, but now half the table had been broken off, its rusted chicken-wire skeleton showing underneath. When I lifted a damp newspaper off the bench on my side, two firey centipedes came to life and I knocked them away.