Geoff Nicholson - Gravity’s Volkswagen

Of course Barry had to come along. How could he not? How could he be left behind at a time like this? So they had winched him and his dead Beetle on to the back of a flatbed truck and the truck came along too, bringing up the rear, like the final float in a parade, or possibly like a caboose. You could have argued that the flatbed was an inauthentic touch, a seriously un-Beetle-esque item, and I can see your point, but I think you can overdo the quest for authenticity.

I had finished up in Barry’s Beetle because I’d been too slow to claim a place in one of the others. It had been quite a scramble, and as ever, notions of hierarchy had been much to the fore. Motorhead Phil, naturally, was in the lead car, along with two of the sensual freak-show women: the snake lady and the underwater-straightjacket woman.

The actor playing Ronnie the dwarf hadn’t gone away after all, it turned out, and he was riding along with the actress playing Natasha, a contrasting pair that worked equally well on screen and off. Angelo Sterling was also towards the head of the pack, in a black Beetle convertible, a nice touch that allowed his hair to flow freely behind him like a golden wave. He wasn’t driving, however. Leezza was in there with him, a pairing that made me much less happy, although by now my happiness was not on anybody’s agenda, not even my own.

There had been much talk before we left about the terrible things that could and would be done to Josh Martin once we found him. Some were crudely physical, involving punching, kicking, gouging and fracturing. Others were more ambitious and creative: crucifying him, harnessing him to the rear bumper of a Beetle and dragging him round in circles.

Barry and I did our best to be civil in the course of our ride together. We could hardly ignore each other, given the enforced proximity caused by the amount of room Barry took up and the little left for me. There was also the clutter of Barry’s life, a limited life to be sure, but one that certainly left its traces. In addition to the evidence of heroic eating and drinking there were numerous books and motoring magazines, and many sheets of paper, some with handwriting scrawled on them, Barry’s work no doubt. I glanced at some of it, and although much was illegible, the bits I could make out looked like ramblings, or at least quotations, about Volkswagen Beetles. I spotted something about ‘a managerial Volkswagen’. I was hardly surprised. What else was he going to be writing about?

There was an inevitable coolness between us, but that didn’t stop Barry talking.

“Some people might say this Beetle is half full,” he said. “Others might say it’s half empty. But I say it’s both, simultaneously. Which it is. Obviously. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed, though I didn’t particularly.

Then he said, “I always knew that vagina dentata would spell trouble.”

“What?” I said.

“That thing painted on the front of Leezza’s Beetle: the teeth, the hole, you know?”

“Isn’t it just a mouth?”

“Just a mouth?” said Barry. “Don’t be naive. It’s a vagina dentata if ever I saw one, and I knew no good would come of it. But I suppose it’s easy to be wise after the event.”

“You know,” I said, “this whole thing about the vagina dentata has always struck me as pretty weird. Yes, I can see you wouldn’t want suddenly to discover teeth in a woman’s vagina, but that’s mostly because you’re not expecting them. If they were there the whole time you’d soon get used to it. Men don’t find the teeth in a woman’s mouth much of a deterrent to putting their penis in there, do they?”

“The chance would be a fine thing,” said Barry.

I thought it best not to be too sympathetic.

And later Barry said, “I know what you’re thinking, Ian, you look at me and think there but for the grace of God go I. But you see, here’s the thing, God doesn’t have any grace. Because it’s in the nature of being gracious that you don’t hand out the grace unequally. If you’re only gracious to some of the people some of the time, then you’re not really gracious at all. I’d expect God to know that.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.

It didn’t really amount to conversation. And, of course, we didn’t discuss the really important matter of how we both felt about the sexual shenanigans that had gone on last night. Perhaps neither of us knew how we felt. I spent a lot of time looking out of the car window and finding that a lot of people were looking back. A few of the looks were admiring, most of them confused. Somewhere along the way a cop on a motorcycle spotted us and drove alongside for a couple of miles, observing us carefully, but he didn’t pull as over. I didn’t blame him. If you’d been on the freeway and encountered thirty or so Beetle freaks and their cars in full post-Apocalyptic finery, I believe you’d have thought that letting them go on their way unmolested, to do whatever the hell it was they were going to do, would be the very wisest course of action.

We drove along Interstate 10, the western end of a road that could lead you all the way across America. The sun shone, the air was sparklingly clear. Talk of the famous Los Angeles smog seemed much exaggerated. And then we were in the outlying sprawl, then within the boundaries of the city itself, and on the Hollywood Freeway. Even the name had an excitement about it, though in itself I don’t suppose it was so very different from any other bit of American freeway. And although it was nice to think of ourselves as warrior outlaws, we still got stuck in heavy traffic like everybody else. We got even more looks then.

And eventually we saw the freeway exit signs for Sunset Boulevard and then Hollywood Boulevard, which sounded pretty romantic, and then the exit we were taking, called Gower Street, which sounded a good deal less romantic, but it happened to be the one that was most convenient for getting to Josh Martin’s house.

I knew he lived in the Hollywood Hills, whatever those were, and we had every reason to believe he’d be at home that afternoon. Somebody in the production office had intercepted some faxes from Josh Martin’s lawyer. These weren’t absolutely explicit but they referred to some vital and complex financial, legal proceedings that required him to be at his house at four o’ clock that day. It all sounded extremely serious, a matter that even Josh Martin in his current state couldn’t and wouldn’t ignore.

♦

I don’t know if you’ve ever driven on the roads around the Hollywood Hills. I haven’t — I’ve only been a passenger — but I imagine that if you had a small, fast, nippy, European sports car with fantastic acceleration, braking and road holding, then you could really enjoy yourself going up and down the fantastically steep gradients, around the tight hairpin bends and terrifying blind corners. You’d flash by hedges in full flower and by palm tress and banks of escapee cactuses, and every now and then you’d find yourself on a crest and get a view right over the city, not that you’d be able to stop and appreciate the view because you’d be concentrating too hard on your driving.

If you weren’t in a small, fast, nippy European sports car, but rather in a convoy of Volkswagen Beetles or, say, in a car on the back of a flatbed truck, the ride would be a lot less fun, but that wouldn’t stop you seeing the possibilities.

Fortunately Angelo knew his way around these parts — we certainly would have got lost otherwise — and we found our way to Josh Martin’s house with only a few hairy moments, when we encountered oncoming pick-up trucks or postal vans, the drivers of which, understandably, weren’t expecting to encounter the likes of us.

Josh Martin’s home was a perfect little Spanish-style house, with a series of red-tiled roofs, arches and rustic shutters. It was, no doubt, a pricey house, but it wasn’t a mansion by any means. It wasn’t opulent or showy. Unlike the man himself it was restrained, modest, discreet. There were a couple of expensive cars parked outside, but unless Josh Martin had mysteriously acquired these on his way home, they had to belong to visitors. There was no sign whatsoever of Leezza’s Beetle.