The Red Car (11 page)

Was I worth a shot?

I didn't think so.

I wasn't sure.

I poured myself more coffee. I read Hans's scene. I read it right on the screen without bothering to print it out. Using track changes, I fixed sentences, sometimes flat out rewriting them, not concerned about making them sound like his voice. I wrote some new sentences. I was beginning to feel attached to his book, to feel like it was my book. Usually, he would delete
my sentences anyway. “This sounds too Leah,” he would say. Anyway, it was not my book. I would write it differently. I would not write that book. I emailed him back the edited file. Boom. I felt as if I had bought myself some time.

I did not read his review. That was too much. I simply hit reply, wrote: “This is great.” I hoped there were no typos.

I did not write my mother after all. Even though I knew I should. I felt restless, wanted to be away from the computer.

“What now?” I said to the empty room.

The fog had lifted. Sunlight was pouring in from the window. It was a beautiful day. Like a gift. I didn't need Judy to answer me. I had lived in San Francisco for years. I knew what to do.

T
HE SEA LIONS WERE STILL
there, still taking over Pier 39, still putting on a wonderful show for the tourists. For me. Come on, they were there for me. I gazed at them, filled with love, filled with longing.

“Oh my god, I have missed you,” I told the sea lions.

In New York, I sometimes went to the Central Park Zoo, just for the sea lions. They had three sea lions in a clear glass tank, where you could watch them swim underwater. It was a wonderful spot, but it was not the same.

I leaned on the railing and I watched them. I wanted to say that the sea lions had missed me, too, but that was going too far. The sea lions climbed on one another, jockeying for position. The sea lions slept. Slick and black and shiny from the water, they rolled over each other, and then slid into the water, coming up onto another dock, only to sleep some more. They made wonderful noises, honking loudly at one another.

I grinned at them.

They would not tell me what to do, my beloved sea lions, because they did not care about me, they did not love me, and that was also fine. They were sea lions. I was trying to figure it out. Love. Maybe it was all about love. The other Lea, for instance, who lived in my room, she did not love me. I knew where she lived, but that was not the point. She had a girlfriend.
She had told me that because she wanted to keep on having a girlfriend.

Diego did not love me. Of course, he would let me give him a blowjob. I was drunk and stoned and probably so was he. What was wrong with that? He had been on a date earlier that night. He did not bring me into his bedroom. He was amused by me, he always had been. I wondered why it wasn't more. Maybe it was because he knew we weren't right for each other. We weren't. Though I would give it a try if he let me. I would.

But Hans, Hans loved me. Hans loved me and Hans wanted me to come home. Hans wanted me, body and soul, and the idea of it was enough to make me want to cry. Why had we started dating each other in graduate school? Could I remember? I remember being lonely when I started graduate school. The UPS man delivering my boxes had asked me why I left San Francisco and I had no good answer. Why was it that I had found someone to love me and I felt like I was being strangled?

I stared at the sea lions.

I was glad they had taken over this pier.

My mother loved me.

Look at what Judy had accomplished in dying. She had gotten me back to San Francisco. So many nights, lying in bed, Hans snoring, listening to him snore and to the car alarm across the street that invariably went off every night, I used to wonder if I would ever make it back.

It felt good to be back.

“You are welcome,” Judy said.

E
VENTUALLY, I LEFT THE PIER
and walked up Columbus Avenue. It was a steep hill, and I took big breaths, as if to fill my lungs with San Francisco air.

I got a cappuccino and a slice of Sicilian pizza at an Italian café across from City Lights Books. I sat at a table outside. I felt like myself, not in an expensive funeral dress, but my own clothes again, a cotton skirt and a black T-shirt, no makeup, my long hair back in a ponytail. This didn't feel like a bad thing, being me. It seemed within the realm of reason that I could actually choose to like myself. I realized that I never wanted to go home.

“I am sorry,” I said, wondering if Hans could hear me, knowing that he would not forgive me. It was just a thought, not even an actual idea. I wished that I had not had it. Because I had to go home. I had a plane ticket. I would have to go back.

“No, you don't,” Judy said.

What did she know?

I shook my head. I had no answer.

“Fight with me, why don't you?” she said. “I mean it. Give me what you've got.”

I hated to fight. She knew that, Judy. I shook my head. The waiter returned to my table, asked if I needed anything else. I ordered the tiramisu.

I
CALLED THE MECHANIC FROM A
pay phone in the back of the café.

“Something strange is happening with the car,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the car fixed itself.”

“What?” I said.

“Fixed. The body of the car has, essentially, regenerated itself.”

“I don't know what you are saying.”

“The smashed door. The metal was like putty, like I was working with clay. The car is fixed. I painted the door. The tail light fixed itself. Car looks as good as new.”

“That is impossible.”

“I agree,” the mechanic said. “But it is also true. So I'll try to sell it?”

I was not sure. Maybe I wanted to see it again after all.

“I might want to see it,” I said.

“It's a car miracle,” he said.

I decided. “I'll come see it.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“North Beach,” I said.

“I tell you what,” he said. “I want to drive this thing. See how it feels. I'll pick you up.”

I gave him the address of my café.

“See you soon.”

It seemed like an okay idea. I liked waking up and not knowing what would happen. First, the sea lions. Tiramisu. Now a car that had regenerated

“I loved that car,” Judy said.

“But you died in it, Judy. You died in that car.”

“Since when are you superstitious?”

She had me. But she was also wrong. There was something called karma. A car that she had died in, that had to be bad karma.

“Have an open mind,” Judy said.

At least we were not fighting.

W
E DROVE FROM ONE END
of the city to the other. I had my seat belt on. I sat in the passenger seat. I had a driver's license but it had been years since I had driven. We drove through Golden Gate Park. We drove past the buffalo. We drove all the way to the ocean and parked. I hoped that the mechanic understood that none of this was romantic.

We walked to the edge of a cliff and looked out at the scenery. I stepped up to the edge. Hans was scared of heights. If I was with him, he would have asked me to take a step back. We had had fights before, loud yelling screaming fights, in otherwise idyllic places, when I would get too close to the edge. It was not like I was ever going to fall off a cliff.

I looked at the ocean.

Sea lions. Ocean views. It was so beautiful here, but I had left San Francisco and it was no longer my home. I really needed to call my mother. I didn't want her to worry about me.

“It feels good,” the mechanic said, startling me. “Your car. A little heavy on the gas.”

I had forgotten about the car. My brain was holding on to small bits of information. I had forgotten about the mechanic.

“Can you change that?” I asked him.

“Nope,” the mechanic said. “This car is built to go fast.”

“But you think it's safe now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

I did not know what I meant. “Like.” I searched for the words. “The car won't spontaneously combust on the middle of a highway?” I asked. “Or start losing parts. A tire falling off while I'm on the highway. Or the door. The steering wheel coming loose in my hands. Like a bad dream. Only real.”

The mechanic looked at me, confused.

“It's a good car,” he said.

I looked at the ocean. It seemed impossible that Judy could be killed and that the machine that had killed her could come out unscathed. It had failed in its job to protect her. It was not a car. It was an instrument of death. That was what it was, exactly.

“But that is what I wanted,” Judy told me. “You can't blame the car.”

The mechanic leaned over and tried to kiss me.

I took a step away. I realized I was in a high place. I could actually fall. I sadly shook my head. It seemed unfair. After Lea. After Diego. But I did not want to kiss the mechanic.

“A guy has to try,” he said.

“No, you don't,” I said quietly.

I looked at the view. I took a deep breath. I realized that I had not done my job yet that day. I had not picked the news.

“Go do your job,” Judy said.

I was glad that the voice of Judy was still prudent. Focusing on the small things. She did not want me to fall off a cliff.

“I am on your side,” Judy said.

Earlier that day, she had wanted to fight.

“I have to go,” I told the mechanic. I felt sympathetic toward the mechanic. He had been kind to me.

“It's a nice view,” he said.

“I still have to go.”

“You still want to sell the car?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“Insurance will pay for the repairs. I submitted the claim,” he said.

“That's good,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Okay then.”

I nodded. Something had changed. The mechanic. Maybe he seemed angry. I wanted to leave.

“You want to drive?” he asked me.

“It's been a long time,” I said.

We walked back to the car. It was my red car, restored, a present from the dead. I got behind the wheel. I hoped for a moment of epiphany: a sense of empowerment, driving my red car though San Francisco. The car, though, it was heavy on the gas. This time, I noticed the smell. Judy's flowery perfume. It smelled like Judy. Though earlier I had been fine as a passenger, in the driver's seat, I felt as if I could not breathe. The feeling came over me suddenly. I realized I was driving too fast. I was afraid.

“Pull over,” the mechanic said.

He could see right away that I was in trouble, gripped with terror, my foot pressed on the gas. I could kill us both but that wasn't what I wanted to do.

“Right now,” the mechanic said, his voice firm. “Signal and pull over. It's safe. You don't even have to look. No one is there. Trust me.”

I did what he said. I rushed out of the car and took deep
breaths. The last thing I wanted to do was throw up, there on the sidewalk.

“I am okay,” I said. I felt embarrassed. Inexplicably miserable. I walked around to the passenger side and got back into Judy's red car.

“I am going to take this baby back to the shop,” the mechanic said. “I'll drive you back to where you are staying.”

I nodded. “Judy died in this car,” I said. “The car wanted to kill her. It is not a good car. It is a murderer.”

“Sweetheart, that sounds a little bit outlandish to me,” the mechanic said.

“This car had it out for her from the start.”

“It's just a car.”

“I don't know.” Saying them out loud, the words sounded outlandish to me, too. “I don't think so.”

I waited for Judy to say something, but she held back. The mechanic drove the car back to the shop. The joy of driving, it was gone. I did not look out the window. Whatever we passed, the Victorian houses, the hippies on Haight Street, the streetcars on Market Street, I did not see it.

“I would drive the car to where you are staying and give you the keys, but I don't think you can drive it.”

I wanted to disagree with him. I wanted to be all done with this mechanic, but he was right. Anyway, his shop was close to Diego's apartment.

“Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?” he asked, when he pulled up to the curb.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry.”

I didn't feel right. I still felt whatever I felt. I had my window
open wide, letting out the bad air, but it didn't make a difference. Like there was a toxic gas filling the interior and I couldn't breathe. The mechanic was unaffected. My leg shook nervously.

“It's okay,” he said. “You don't have to go out with me. You don't have to sweat it.”

I managed to laugh. I sort of liked it, that the mechanic still wanted to go out with me. That he wasn't angry. It was just that I couldn't breathe properly.

“Thanks,” I said.

I got out of the car, unsteady on my feet. The earth was unsteady; the piece of land in which I stood was on a steep angle. San Francisco and its hills. I actually lost my footing and fell, landing on my ass. It was embarrassing. I hated falling. I got back up. I shrugged as if I was not embarrassed. I looked at the ground.

“You take it easy,” the mechanic said.

He drove off in Judy's car. My car. I owned that red car. Maybe Judy hadn't wanted to die. Maybe the car had wanted to kill her.

“Ridiculous,” Judy said.

I had read her letter only once but the words stayed with me. She had wanted to die. The car listened to her thoughts, complied with her wishes. Maybe I had been reading too many Haruki Murakami novels. I let myself into Diego's apartment and sank down to the floor. I wished that Diego had a cat. I would have given anything at that moment to pet a cat.

I
DID MY TELECOMMUTING JOB.

It was ingrained in me, the desire not to get in trouble. I was three hours late, and so with the time difference, six hours late, but I would probably get away with it. I picked news stories, fixed headlines. There were things happening in the world. Everything I knew, I knew from my job. I knew about the pharmaceuticals market. I knew if stocks were up or down. I knew if it was football season or baseball. I knew the top film at the box office each week and what was happening in the Middle East. It was a good job. Today, opening the feed for finance, I picked a story about Jonathan Beene, founder of the hot tech crowdsourcing company currently changing the state of microfinancing. He was giving a speech at Stanford.