Geoff Nicholson - Gravity’s Volkswagen

“Aren’t you going to get out?” I called.

“No,” he said flatly, and then added. “I can’t.”

I thought a bit more explanation was required but none was forthcoming. We could have stayed like that for ever.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I can’t get out of the car,” he said, “I’m too fat. It’s really depressing.”

I looked at him more closely, and yes, he was a whale of a man, shapeless and blubbery and apparently far wider than the door of a Volkswagen Beetle.

“How did you get in there?” I said.

“I wasn’t this fat when I got in,” he replied.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but I didn’t want to drag this out any longer than necessary. I summoned up such strength as I had and I started to push the Beetle with the guy inside. The car moved, but not very far and not very fast, and it certainly didn’t pick up enough speed to make a bump start possible. After a prolonged bout of pushing we had barely got through the speedway gate to the road outside. The road was straight and flat without the kind of easy downward slope that would have encouraged the car to start. I looked around to see if there was anybody to hand who might join in with the pushing but the whole area was utterly deserted.

“If you could just push me over there, that would be great,” the fat man said.

He pointed down the road in the direction of a long, low building made of pink-painted cinder blocks that I could just make out as a diner. It was tucked in under a concrete ramp, and it had a sign outside that told me I was looking at an establishment called El Puerco Loco, the Crazy Pig if I remembered my Spanish. It was adorned with a large plastic figure of a cheerfully demented cartoon porker. It was perhaps two hundred and fifty yards away, a fair distance when you’re pushing a Volkswagen Beetle and its occupant, but I felt I had no choice.

“I haven’t eaten for ages,” the man said.

This wasn’t much encouragement in itself, but the knowledge that when I finally got to the diner I could have some lunch did sustain me, at least for a while. By the time I was halfway to the diner I felt sure I would never have the strength to make it all the way there. By the time I actually did get there I didn’t much care whether I lived or died. And yet I managed to push the Beetle into the car park of El Puerco Loco, and by some fluke positioned it so that the driver’s door lined up nicely against the take-out window. The window now opened and a broad, smiling Mexican woman’s face appeared.

“The usual, Barry?” she said.

“That’s right, Maribel. You know what I like.”

“Yes I do. And how about your friend?”

Through my sweating and heavy breathing I managed to order a cheeseburger and fries. That sounded like a thing a human being might order, though I felt anything but human. I’d have preferred to go inside the diner to eat but I thought it would have been unfriendly to leave my new pal outside, stuck in his car.

While we waited for the food I had to push the car just a little bit farther so that it didn’t block the takeout window and it came to rest right next to an outdoor table where I could sit and eat, and be in range of the Beetle and its driver.

“I’m Barry,” he said, but I already knew that.

“I’m Ian,” I offered, but he didn’t seem very interested. And I thought about explaining what I was doing in Fontinella, my involvement with the movie, my role as writer of the novel, but something told me that a man in Barry’s position would be unlikely to be interested. I feared it might sound as if I was just showing off.

In due course our order was ready, and I was reminded how much I enjoyed American food: greasy, salty, sugary and far too much of it. Who could resist that? Barry’s ‘usual’ seemed to consist of everything on the menu — various all-American items but with a distinctly Mexican influence — pancakes, chorizo omelet, a breakfast tortilla, retried beans, and a number of things I couldn’t identify. They were stacked up on a tray that I handed to him through the car window. The tray fitted snugly into the angle created by the steering wheel and his large, but yielding stomach.

I sat there at the outdoor table, in that blank, sunless, cheerless spot, eating my cheeseburger and fries, and I have to say I felt perfectly content. It was a blighted spot in most ways, but a writer spends so much of his time all alone in his own room, that to get out, even to a blank, sunless, cheerless spot, sometimes feels like a great treat.

More than that, I reckoned that Barry must be a man with a story to tell. I was a writer who still believed in stories. I thought that hearing this one would be a small reward for the pushing I’d done. But eating and speaking were incompatible as far as my new pal was concerned. He was far from silent, there was much loud chewing, gulping and lip smacking, but no words came out of him. I finished eating long before he did, but I waited patiently for him to ingest the contents of the tray, and then I thought he’d tell me about his life and times. Call me a fool. The moment he was done he said, “Any time you’re ready to push me back is fine by me.”

I could have argued. I suppose I could even have left him there and walked off, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t. I suppose it had something to do with retaining my sense of self-worth, of making myself believe I was a decent person, one of the good guys, but as I pushed and strained and sweated all the way back to the speedway gate I had plenty of thoughts that weren’t decent or good.

When I’d looked around before, hoping to find someone to help me push the Beetle, there had been no sign of anybody. Now as I entered the gate there was a knot of tattooed, tightly muscled, freakish men standing around sniggering among themselves, and I don’t believe it was just paranoia that made me think they were sniggering about me.

I pushed the Beetle back where it had come from, more or less. I didn’t say goodbye to Barry, because I was having difficulty both speaking and breathing at that moment. And he didn’t say anything either, least of all thanks.

Iarrived back at the gate of Idle Palms to find the same security guard on duty. He was dozing now, seated on a folding stool that I’d have thought provided nowhere near enough support. I gave a nod in his direction, though I didn’t expect anything in return, and I attempted to enter the trailer park. At that point the guard burst into life, sprang up from the stool and interposed his body between me and the entrance.

“Yes?” he demanded.

“It’s me,” I said.

“That’s what they all say.”

“I went out a little while ago. You saw me. You must remember me. We nodded at each other.”

“I don’t nod,” he said, and that sounded all too likely to be true. At that moment he didn’t look anything like a nodder.

In other circumstances, if I’d been in my own country, if I hadn’t still been suffering from jet lag, if I hadn’t been on a film set, if I hadn’t just been pushing a Beetle and its weighty occupant, I might have been calmer, more tactful, more persuasive and reasonable. As it was, the guard and I began arguing, quietly at first, then louder and louder, and before I knew it I was yelling uncontrollably. I don’t remember exactly what I was saying, and I’m sure it wasn’t coherent and it certainly wasn’t having any useful effect on the guard who was yelling back, just as loudly though with rather less passion. But then I became aware of a third voice some distance away, someone else yelling much louder than either of us, though certainly no more coherently. It was Josh Martin and he was running as he yelled, running across the trailer park, coming straight towards us.