T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

The man jerks his chin and B. looks out at a blaze of light on the dark horizon, light dropped like a stone in a pool of oil. As they draw closer he’s able to distinguish a neon sign, towering letters stamped in the sky above a complex of offices, outbuildings and hangars that melt off into the shadows. Eleven or twelve sets of gas pumps, each nestled under a black steel parasol, and cars, dark and driverless, stretching across the whitening blacktop like the reverie of a used-car salesman. The sign, in neon grid, traces and retraces its colossal characters until there’s no end and no beginning: GARAGE. TEGELER’S. BIG. GARAGE. TEGELER’S BIG GARAGE.

The truck pulls up in front of a deep, brightly lit office. Through the steamed-over windows B. can make out several young women, sitting legs-crossed in orange plastic chairs. From here they look like drum majorettes: white calf boots, opalescent skirts, lace frogs. And — can it be? — Dale Evans hats! What is going on here?

The towman’s voice is harsh. “End of the road for you, pal.”

“What about my car?”

A cigarette hangs from his lower lip like a growth, smoke squints his eyes.

“Nobody here to poke into it at this hour, what do you think? I’m taking it around to Diagnosis.”

“And?”

“Pfft.” The man fixes him with the sort of stare you’d give a leper at the Inaugural Ball. “And when they get to it, they get to it.”

B. steps into the fluorescent blaze of the office, coattails aflap. There are nine girls seated along the wall, left calves swollen over right knees, hands occupied with nail files, hairbrushes, barrettes, magazines. They are dressed as drum majorettes. Nappy Dale Evans hats perch atop their layered cuts, short-and-sassies, blown curls. All nine look up and smile. Then a short redhead rises, and sweet as a mother superior welcoming a novice, asks if she can be of service.

B. is confused. “It … it’s my car,” he says.

“Ohhh,” running her tongue round her lips. “You’re the Audi.”

“Right.”

“Just wait a sec and I’ll ring Diagnosis,” she says, high-stepping across the room to an intercom panel set in the wall. At that moment a buzzer sounds in the office and a car pulls up to the farthest set of gas pumps. The redhead jerks to a halt, peers out the window, curses, shrugs into a fringed suede jacket and hurries out into the storm. B. locks fingers behind his back and waits. He rocks on his feet, whistles sotto voce, casts furtive glances at the knee-down of the eight majorettes. The droopy greatcoat, soaked through, feels like an American black bear ( Ursus americanus ) hanging round his neck.

Then the door heaves back on its hinges and the redhead reappears, stamping round the doormat, shaking out the jacket, knocking the Stetson against her thigh. “Brrrr,” she says. In her hand, a clutch of bills. She marches over to the cash register and deposits them, then takes her seat at the far end of the line of majorettes. B. continues to rock on his feet. He clears his throat. Finally he ambles across the room and stops in front of her chair. “Ahh …”

She looks up. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“You were gong to call Diagnosis about my car?”

“Oh,” grimacing. “No need to bother. Why, at this hour they’re long closed up. You’ll have to wait till morning.”

“But a minute ago—”

“No, no sense at all. The Head Diagnostician leaves at five, and here it’s nearly ten. And his staff gets off at five-thirty. The best we could hope for is a shop steward — and what would he know? Ha. If I rang up now I’d be lucky to get hold of a janitor.” She settles back in her chair and leafs through a magazine. Then she looks up again. “Listen. If you want some advice, there’s a pay phone in the anteroom. Better call somebody to come get you.”

The girl has a point there. It’s late already and arrangements will have to be made about getting to work in the morning. The dog needs walking, the cat feeding. And all these hassles have sapped him to the point where all he wants from life is sleep and forgetfulness. But there’s no one to call, really. Except possibly Dora — Dora Ouzel, the gay divorcee he’s been dating since his wife’s accident.

One of the majorettes yawns. Another blows a puff of detritus from her nail file. “Ho hum,” says the redhead.

B. steps into the anteroom, searches through his pockets for change, and forgets Dora’s number. He paws through the phone book, but the names of the towns seem unfamiliar and he can’t seem to find Dora’s listing. He makes an effort of memory and dials.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Dora?—B. Listen, I hate to disturb you at this hour but—”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“That’s nice, I’m fine too. But no matter how you slice it my name ain’t Dora.”

“You’re not Dora?”

“No, but you’re B., aren’t you?”

“Yes … but how did you know?”

“You told me. You said: ‘Hello, Dora?—B.’ … and then you tried to come on with some phony excuse for forgetting our date tonight or is it that you’re out hooching it up and you want me — if I was Dora and I bless my stars I’m not — to come out in this hellish weather that isn’t fit for a damn dog for christsake and risk my bones and bladder to drive you home because only one person inhabits your solipsistic universe— You with a capital Y — and You have drunk yourself into a blithering stupor. You know what I got to say to you, buster? Take a flyer. Ha, ha, ha.”

There is a click at the other end of the line. In the movies heroes say “Hello, hello, hello,” in situations like this, but B., dispirited, the greatcoat beginning to reek a bit in the confines of the antechamber, only reaches out to replace the receiver in its cradle.

Back in the office B. is confronted with eight empty chairs. The redhead occupies the ninth, legs crossed, hat in lap, curls flaring round the cover of her magazine like a solar phenomenon. Where five minutes earlier there were enough majorettes to front a battle of the bands, there is now only one. She glances up as the door slams behind him. “Any luck?”

B. is suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. He’s just gone fifteen rounds, scaled Everest, staggered out of the Channel at Calais. “No,” he whispers.

“Well that really is too bad. All the other girls go home at ten and I’m sure any one of them would have been happy to give you a lift…. You know it really is a pity the way some of you men handle your affairs. Why if I had as little common sense as you I wouldn’t last ten minutes on this job.”

B. heaves himself down on one of the plastic chairs. Somehow, somewhere along the line, his sense of proportion has begun to erode. He blows his nose lugubriously. Then hides behind his hands and massages his eyes.

“Come on now.” The girl’s voice is soft, conciliatory. She is standing over him, her hand stretched out to his. “I’ll fix you up a place to sleep in the back of the shop.”

The redhead (her name is Rita — B. thought to ask as a sort of quid pro quo for her offer of a place to sleep) leads him through a narrow passageway which gives on to an immense darkened hangar. B. hunches in the greatcoat, flips up his collar and follows her into the echo-haunted reaches. Their footsteps clap up to the rafters, blind birds beating at the roof, echoing and reechoing in the darkness. There is a chill as of open spaces, a stink of raw metal, oil, sludge. Rita is up ahead, her white boots ghostly in the dark. “Watch your step,” she cautions, but B. has already encountered some impenetrable, rock-hard hazard, barked his shin and pitched forward into what seems to be an open grease pit.