T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

Two men, flaxen-haired, in work clothes and caps, step from the shadows. Each grips a crescent wrench big as the jawbone of an ass. “Was gibt es, Klaus?”

“Mein Herr vants to know haff we got und Aw-dee.”

“How do you say it?” The two newcomers are standing over him now, the one in the wire-rimmed spectacles leering into his eyes.

“Audi,” B. says. “A German-made car?”

“Aw-dee? No, never heard of such a car,” the man says. “A cowboy maybe — family name of Murphy?”

Klaus laughs, “Har-har-har,” booming at the ceiling. The other fellow, short, scar on his cheek, joins in with a psychopathic snicker. Wire-rims grins.

Uh-oh.

“Listen,” B. says, a whining edge to his voice, “I know I’m not supposed to be in here but I saw no other way of—”

“Cutting trew der bullshit,” says Wire-rims.

“Yes, and finding out what’s wrong—”

“On a grassroot level,” interjects the snickerer.

“—right, at the grassroot level, by coming directly to you. I’m getting desperate. Really. That car is my life’s breath itself. And I don’t mean to get dramatic or anything, but I just can’t survive without it.”

“Ja,” says Wire-rims, “you haff come to der right men. We haff your car, wery serious. Ja. Der bratwurst assembly broke down and we haff sent out immediately for a brötchen und mustard.” This time all three break into laughter, Klaus booming, the snickerer snickering, Wire-rims pinching his lips and emitting a high-pitched hoo-hoo-hoo.

“No, seriously,” says B.

“You vant to get serious? Okay, we get serious. On your car we do a compression check, we put new solenoids in der U joints und we push der push rods,” says Wire-rims.

“Ja. Und we see you need a new vertical stabilizer, head gasket and PCV valve,” rasps the snickerer.

“Your sump leaks.”

“Bearings knock.”

“Plugs misfire.”

B. has had enough. “Wiseguys!” he shouts. “I’ll report you to your superiors!” But far from daunting them, his outburst has the opposite effect. Viz., Klaus grabs him by the collar and breathes beer and sauerbraten in his face. “We are Chermans,” he hisses, “—we haff no superiors.”

“Und dammit punktum!” bellows the snickerer. “Enough of dis twaddle. We haff no car of yours und furdermore we suspect you of telling to us fibs in order maybe to misappropriate the vehicle of some otter person.”

“For shame,” says Wire-rims.

“Vat shall we do mit him?” the snickerer hisses.

“I’m tinking he maybe needs a little lubrication,” says Wirerims. “No sense of humor, wery dry.” He produces a grease gun from behind his back.

And then, for the first time in his life, B. is decorated — down his collar, up his sleeve, crosshatched over his lapels — in ropy, cake-frosting strings of grease, while Klaus howls like a terminally tickled child and the snickerer’s eyes flash. A moment later he finds himself lofted into the air, strange hands at his armpits and thighs, swinging to and fro before the gaping black mouth of a laundry chute—“Zum ersten! zum andern! zum dritten!”—and then he’s airborne, and things get very dark indeed.

B. is lying facedown in an avalanche of cloth: grimy rags, stiffened chamois, socks and undershorts yellowed with age and sweat and worse, handkerchiefs congealed with sputum, coveralls wet with oil. He is stung with humiliation and outrage. He’s been cozened, humbugged, duped, gulled, spurned, insulted, ignored and now finally assaulted. There’ll be lawsuits, damn them, letters to Congressmen — but for now, if he’s to salvage a scrap of self-respect, he’s got to get out of here. He sits up, peels a sock from his face, and discovers the interior of a tiny room, a room no bigger than a laundry closet. It is warm, hot even.

Two doors open onto the closet. The one to the left is wreathed in steam, pale shoots and tendrils of it curling through the keyhole, under the jamb. B. throws back the door and is enveloped in fog. He is confused. The Minotaur’s labyrinth? Ship at sea? House afire? He can see nothing, the sound of machinery straining at his ears, moisture beading along eyebrows, nostril hairs, cowlick. Then it occurs to him: the carwash! Of course. And the carwash must give onto the parking lot, which in turn gives onto the highway. He’ll simply duck through it and then hitchhike — or, if worse comes to worst, walk — until he either makes it home or perishes in the attempt.

B. steps through the door and is instantly flattened by a mammoth, water-spewing pom-pom. He tries to get to his feet, but the sleeve of his coat seems to be caught in some sort of runner or track — and now the whole apparatus is jerking fprward, gears whirring and clicking somewhere off in the mist. B., struggling to free the coat, finds himself jerking along with it. The mechanism heaves forward, dragging B. through an extended puddle of mud, suds and road salt. A jet of water flushes the right side of his face, a second pom-pom lumbers out of the haze and pins his chest to the floor, something tears the shoe from his right foot. Soap in his ears, down his neck, sudsing and sudsing: and now a giant cylinder, a mill wheel covered with sponges, descends and rakes the length of his body. B. shouts for help, but the machinery grinds on, squeaking and ratcheting, war of the worlds. Look out!: cold rinse. He holds his breath, glacial runoff coursing over his body, a bitter pill. Then there’s a liberal blasting with hot wax, the clouds part, and the machine turns him loose with a jolt in the rear that tumbles him out the bay door and onto the slick permafrost of the parking lot.

He staggers to his feet. There’s a savage pain in his lower back and his right shoulder has got to be dislocated. No matter: he forges on. Round the outbuildings, past the front office and on out to the highway.

It has begun to get dark. B., hair frozen to his scalp, shoeless, the greatcoat stiff as a dried fish, limps along the highway no more than a mile from the garage. All around him, as far as he can see, is wasteland: crop-stubble swallowed in drifts, the stripped branches of the deciduous trees, rusty barbed wire. Not even a farmhouse on the horizon. Nothing. He’d feel like Peary running for the Pole but for the twin beacons of Garage and Lot at his back.

Suddenly a fitful light wavers out over the road — a car coming toward him! (He’s been out here for hours, holding out his thumb, hobbling along. The first ride took him south of Tegeler’s about two miles — a farmer, turning off into nowhere. The second — he didn’t care which direction he went in, just wanted to get out of the cold — took him back north about three miles.)

B. crosses the road and holds out his thumb. He is dancing with cold, clonic, shoulder, arm, wrist and extended thumb jerking like the checkered flag at the finish of the Grand Prix. Stop, he whispers, teeth clicking like dice, stop, please God stop. Light floods his face for an instant, and then it’s gone. But wait — they’re stopping! Snot crusted to his lip, shoe in hand, B. double-times up to the waiting car, throws back the door and leaps in.

“B.! What’s happened?”

It is Rita. Thank God.

“R-r-r-r-ita?” he stammers, body racked with tremors, the seatsprings chattering under him. “The ma-ma-machine.”

“Machine? What are you talking about?”

“I–I need a r-r-r-ride. Wh-where you going?” B. manages, falling into a sneezing jag.

Rita puts the car in gear, the tires grab hold of the pavement. “Why — to work, of course.”

The others smack their lips, sigh, snore, toss on their cots. Rusty, Brown Suit, the Cougar woman. B. lies there listening to them, staring into the darkness. His own breathing comes hard (TB, pleurisy, pneumonia — bronchitis at the very least). Rita — good old Rita — has filled him full of hot coffee and schnapps, given him a brace of cold pills and put him to bed. He is thoroughly miserable of course — the car riding his mind like a bogey, health shot, job lost, pets starved — but the snugness of the blanket and dry mechanic’s uniform Rita has found for him, combined with the country-sunset glow of the schnapps, is seducing him off to sleep. It is very still. The smell of turpentine hangs in the air. He pulls the blanket up to his nose.