Why We Took the Car (9 page)

The sun was beating down, so I opened up the patio umbrella. The wind blew it over. So I put it upright again and laid some heavy things on the base. Then everything was peaceful. But I couldn't read. I was suddenly so excited about the idea that I could do anything I wanted that I did nothing at all. I'm completely different from Count Luckner in that regard. I sat back and went through all the crap with Tatiana again in my mind. Then I realized that the lawn needed to be watered. My father had forgotten to tell me to do it, so I could have gotten away with not doing it. But I did it anyway. It would have bugged me if I had to do it, but now that the house basically belonged to me and the yard was
my
yard, I kind of enjoyed watering the lawn. I stood on the steps in front of the house and sprayed with the hose. I had cranked the faucet all the way open and the water must have shot fifty meters through the air. Still, I couldn't reach the farthest corner of the front yard, despite my trying out all kinds of tricks and messing with the nozzle. Because I had to do it without leaving the front stoop. I'd made that a rule. The White Stripes were cranked up in the living room, the door was open, and there I stood, barefoot, with my pants rolled up and a pair of sunglasses on top of my head, the lord of the manor spraying his acreage. And I could do this every morning! I didn't really want to be seen doing it, but I didn't see anybody around. It was 8:30 on the second day of vacation, and everybody was sleeping in. Two blue tits chirped in the yard. The pleasantly pensive and recently fallen-in-love Lord von Klingenberg tarried all alone, surveying his estate. Well, not entirely alone. Jack and Meg were visiting, as they often did when they were looking to get away from the constant crush of paparazzi, and putting on a little jam session in the back room. The lord of the manor would soon join them and play along to a few rocking tunes on his recorder. The birds chirped, the water rained down on the grass . . . nothing pleased Lord von Klingenberg more than these mornings filled with birdsong as he watered his lawn. He crimped the hose, waited ten seconds for the pressure to build up, then shot a sixty meter surface to surface missile of water at the rhododendrons.
In the cold, cold night
, sang Meg White.

A rickety car came limping down the street. It was a Lada, a small Russian car shaped a little like a jeep. It slowed in front of our house and pulled into the driveway. For a minute, the light blue Lada stood in front of our garage with the engine still running. Then it shut off. The driver's side door opened and Tschick got out. He put his elbows on the roof and watched me spraying the lawn.

“Huh,” he said. Then he was silent for a while. “Is that fun?”

CHAPTER 16

I kept waiting for his father or his brother or somebody else to get out of the car, but nobody else appeared. And the reason was that nobody else was in the car. It was just tough to see that through the dirty windows.

“You look like some kind of queer, or like you just discovered that somebody shat in your garden last night. You want me to drive you somewhere, or would you prefer to just keep sprinkling water around?” He smiled his broad Russian grin. “Hop in, man.”

Obviously I didn't get in. I wasn't completely crazy. I went over and sat down in the passenger seat, with my feet still out of the car. I didn't want to stand there all conspicuously in the driveway.

The Lada looked even worse inside than it did outside. There were a bunch of wires hanging out beneath the steering wheel, and a screwdriver was jammed up under the dashboard.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I just borrowed it. It's not stolen,” said Tschick. “I'll take it back. We've done it a million times.”

“Who is
we
?”

“Me and my brother. He found it. It just sits on the street like garbage. You can borrow it. The owner never notices.”

“What about all that?” I pointed to the jumble of wires.

“You can shove it back in.”

“You're crazy. What about fingerprints?”

“Fingerprints? Is that why you're sitting so funny?” He pulled at my arm, which I had scrunched up against my chest. “Don't wet your pants. That's just police show bullshit. Fingerprints. Look, you can touch anything. Go ahead, touch whatever you want. Come on, let's take a spin.”

“Not me.” I looked at him and didn't say anything more at first. He really was crazy.

“Didn't you say yesterday that you wanted to get out and experience things?”

“By that I didn't mean prison.”

“Prison? You're not criminally accountable — you're a minor.”

“Do whatever you want. But I'm not going.” To be honest, I had no idea how old you had to be to get charged as an adult. And I wasn't sure what “criminally accountable” meant. I mean, sort of. Basically. But not really.

“Nothing can happen to you. My brother always says to me that if he were my age, he'd rob a bank. They can't do anything to you until you're fifteen. My brother's thirty. In Russia, they beat the shit out of you anyway. But here! Nothing. And besides, nobody gives a crap about this car. Seriously. Not even the owner will miss it.”

“No way.”

“Just once around the block.”

“No.”

Tschick let up the emergency brake, and I can't really say why I didn't hop out. Normally I'm a scaredy-cat. Maybe for that reason I wanted not to be a scaredy-cat just once. With his left foot he stepped on the far left pedal, and the Lada rolled silently backward down the driveway. Then he stepped on the middle pedal with his right foot and the car stopped. Then he grabbed the wires hanging from the base of the steering wheel and the engine started. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, we were gliding down Ketschendorf Way, and then we turned right into Rotraud Street.

“You didn't use your blinker,” I said meekly, my arms still pressed to my chest. I was so nervous I thought I was going to keel over. Then I started grabbing for the seat belt.

“There's no reason to be scared. I drive like a champ.”

“Put your blinker on like a champ.”

“I've never blinked.”

“Please.”

“Why? Anyone can see where I'm turning. And there's nobody around anyway.”

That was true. The street was empty. It remained true for about another minute. By then Tschick had turned twice more and we were on the Avenue of Cosmonauts. There are four lanes on the Avenue of Cosmonauts. I started to panic.

“Okay, okay. Let's go back now.”

“I make Formula One drivers look like chumps.”

“Yeah, you said that already.”

“Isn't it true?”

“No.”

“Seriously. Don't I drive well?” asked Tschick.

“Super,”
I said. And when it struck me that this was my mother's standard answer to my father's standard question, I added, “Just super, dear.”

“Don't blow a gasket.”

Tschick didn't drive like a Formula One champion, but he didn't drive too badly either. Not much better or worse than my father. And he had now started to head back in the direction of our neighborhood.

“Can't you follow the rules of the road? That's a double line you just crossed.”

“Are you gay?”

“What?”

“I asked if you were gay.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“You called me
dear
.”

“I called you . . . what? That's called irony.”

“Okay, so are you gay?”

“Because of my use of irony?”

“And because you're not interested in girls.” He looked me directly in the eyes.

“Keep your eyes on the road!” I screamed. I have to admit I was getting a bit hysterical at this point. He was driving without even looking where he was going. My father did the same thing sometimes, but my father was my father and he had a driver's license.

“Everybody in the class is nuts for Tatiana. Absolutely nuts.”

“Who?”

“Tatiana. There's a girl in our class named Tatiana. You never noticed her? Tatiana Superstar. You're the only one who never checks her out. So are you gay? I'm just asking.”

I thought I was going to fall over and die.

“I don't have a problem with it,” said Tschick. “I have an uncle in Moscow who runs around in leather pants with the ass cut out of them. He's totally cool otherwise. Works for the government. And he can't do anything about the fact that he's gay. There's really nothing wrong with it.”

Holy crap. I mean, I don't have a problem with it if somebody's gay either. Though that's not how I pictured things in Russia — people running around in ass-less chaps. But that I acted like Tatiana Cosic didn't exist — that had to be a joke, right? Because
of course
I acted as if she didn't exist. How else could I act around her? For a complete nobody, a walking sleeping pill, that was the only way not to make a fool of myself in front of her.

“You're an idiot,” I said.

“I'm cool with it. As long as you don't try to mess with my asshole.”

“Cut it out. That's disgusting.”

“My uncle . . .”

“Screw your uncle! I'm not gay, man. Can't you see I'm in a shitty mood?”

“Because I'm not putting my blinker on?”

“No, you idiot, because I'm not gay!”

Tschick looked at me, totally confused. He was silent. I didn't want to explain it. I hadn't meant to say a word about it, but it had slipped out. I'd never talked to anyone about something like this before, and I didn't want to start now.

“I don't understand,” said Tschick. “Am I supposed to understand? You're in a shitty mood because you're not gay? Huh?”

I looked out the window, wounded. At least I didn't care when two old people stared at us through the dirty windows when we stopped next to them at a red light — they'd probably call the police. But at that point I hoped the police would pull us over. At least then there'd be some action.

“Okay, shitty mood . . . but why?”

“Because today is
the day
, man.”

“What is today?”

“The party, idiot. Tatiana's party.”

“You don't have to pretend now just because you're sexually disoriented. Yesterday you said you didn't want to go.”

“As if I could.”

“I really don't think there's anything wrong with it,” said Tschick, putting a hand on my knee. “I don't give a crap about your sexuality problems, and I won't tell anyone, I swear.”

“I can prove it,” I said. “Shall I show you?”

“You want to show me that you're not gay? Oooo-kay,” he said, swatting away invisible flies.

We were already close to home. This time Tschick didn't park in front of our house. He parked on a little side street, an alley where nobody would see us get out of the car. When we got upstairs and Tschick was still looking at me as if he'd found who knows what out about me, I said, “Don't blame me for what I'm about to show you. And don't laugh. If you laugh . . .”

“I won't laugh.”

“You know Tatiana is crazy about Beyoncé, right?”

“Yeah, of course. I would have stolen a CD for her if she'd invited me to her party.”

“Yeah. Anyway. Check this out.”

I pulled the drawing out of a drawer. Tschick took it and held it up with his arms stretched out in front of him. At first he didn't pay as much attention to the drawing itself as to the backside, where I'd repaired the rip with clear tape so that you could barely see the rip from the front. He studied the rip and then looked at the drawing again. Then he said, “You have
feelings
for her.”

He said it very seriously, without any crap. It was really strange. And it was the first time that I thought this guy wasn't so stupid after all. Tschick took one look at the rip and knew exactly what the story was. I don't know many people who could figure it out so quickly. Tschick looked at me with a solemn expression on his face. I liked that about him. He was somebody who could definitely play the fool. But when the chips were down, he didn't play around. He took things seriously.

“How long did this take you? Three months? It looks like a photo. What are you going to do with it now?”

“Nothing.”

“You have to do something with it.”

“What am I supposed to do with it? Am I supposed to go to Tatiana's and say, ‘Hey, happy birthday, I have a little something for you here — and, oh, it doesn't bother me a bit that you didn't invite me even though you invited every other idiot, it's no problem, really. And it's actually just a coincidence that I was passing by. Anyway, hope you enjoy the drawing that I worked my ass off on for three months!' ”

Tschick scratched his neck. He put the drawing on my desk, looked at it, shaking his head, then looked at me again and said, “That's exactly what I would do.”