Zachary Karabashliev - 18% Gray

“Don’t touch me-e-e-e-e!” Overalls cowers even lower.

“I’ll break your fucking head open, you fuck!” I dial 911. “Don’t move, I’ll brea. .” And then it crosses my mind what could possibly happen if somebody at the other end of the line picks up.

The police sirens. The excitement. The trigger-happy cops in a small town where nothing ever happens. The screeching tires. The car chase. The panic. The turns. The chase. The getting closer. The loudspeakers. The rollover. The sirens. The open car doors. The broken windshield. The gaping trunk. The bag. The marijuana. I notice one of Overalls’ eyes through his interlaced fingers. I grab the telephone receiver by the cord and hit him in the fontanel. His head shrinks back between his shoulders like a turtle’s. The receiver jumps back into my hand.

“Ooooh,” he bellows.

“I said don’t move!” In the receiver, I hear a female voice. “. . emergency, your names and teleph. .” I hang up. “You fucking shit! Go clean the bathroom! Right now! Go, go, go!” I don’t even wait to see if he reacts. I get out. I look around. Nothing. I drop my arms and sit down on the curb. Stella. Where am I, Stella-a-a-a-a? The loud noise of a bad muffler lifts me back to my feet. A beat-up brown Dodge, ugly as hell, is driving toward me. I wave and, of course, it passes me by. If it were me, I’d pass myself by, too. Just look at me. Shitty ass. I’m calling the cops, whatever. I’ll. . well, look now — the Dodge slows down, stops and backs up, rumbling. I run toward it. I open the door and. .

“Melody!” I yell. Still in her uniform, weary but smiling, she — my guardian angel — cleans pizza boxes, McDonald’s bags, Pepsi cans, Penny Savers, and the like off the passenger’s seat. I reach out to hug her. “Drive, Melody, drive. They ran away. Disappeared. Motherfuckers!” She’s looking at me with her wide-open, bad-makeup-day eyes. In disbelief.

“What happened?”

“They stole my car, Melody! Go, please, go.” She accelerates down Main Street. “I was at the gas station and somebody. .”

“I can’t believe it. Here? In Pamona!” Melody shakes her head incredulously.

“I know.” I shout.

“Where should I drive?” She presses the gas and narrows her eyes, ready for the chase.

“Just drive.”

“Where?” She yells, driving as fast as she can.

“Straight ahead!” I try to imagine how far my car could be. I look left and right at every street intersecting Main Street. Something, however, tells me that we have to keep going. Not more than ten-fifteen minutes — that’s how much time I give the stupid fuck who complicated my life. The fuel level warning light was on and that’s exactly why I got myself into this mess in the first place — I needed gas and lemons for the load in the trunk. Ten or fifteen miles, no more. Then I notice that after the initial shock, Melody has been throwing me odd looks. She looks at me weird. She sizes me up from head to toe. . oh, no. . not this, Melody. Her eyes shoot down to my. . You thinking about love, woman? Melody? In a moment like this? Wow. Is that what you are thinking about? And just then my sense of smell returns. I stink. I roll down the window.

“The bathroom in the gas station. . Someone shit all over. . I slipped on the floor and look what happened,” I say.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“About the shitter?”

“About the car.”

Then I see something white in the distance.

“Right there, Melody.” Stealing a car from a gas station, huh? Great idea. There’s a reason it was there, moron.

*

A monitor’s job is simply common sense and concentration. A well-trained seventh grader could do it. I grasped the routine in a couple of months and managed to finish my weekly load in just a few days. The job required me to travel throughout California. Because I worked quickly and efficiently, Scott started sending me to other states as well to help short-staffed teams. This was a sort of unspoken promotion and it brought me a great bonus at the end of the year.

Stella found a new studio space in the industrial zone and painted a lot.

*

— zack, you really understand nothing about the world

— nothing

— absolutely nothing

— and you?

— i understand everything perfectly well

— why don’t you explain it to me then, stella?

— because you have to understand it on your own, my dear

— you tell me and I promise I’ll forget everything and then understand it by myself

— you promise?

— move to the left a little, please. no, left, your left

— like this?

— yes. now hold still

*

The white thing in the distance is a sign reading FOR SALE: 74 ACRES. BY OWNER. I almost start bawling like a baby — I was so damn sure that I had the bastard. After the sign we keep going for about five more miles until I’m convinced that we are not going the right direction. It’s impossible that I had that much gas left in the tank. Before I give up, I decide to do what I’ve heard that good detectives do. I close my eyes and try to imagine that I am the thief. There — I steal my own car. What do I do now? What do I do? I drive as fast as I can, get on Main Street, I put the pedal to the metal, jerk the wheel toward the first electric pole I see and. . finish with this comedy once and for all. I open my eyes.

“Melody.”

“Yes?”

“Stop.” She stops. I jump out of the car, I walk alongside the road, search the ground until I find four dry wooden sticks, then I shape them like a square in the dust.

“What are you doing?” She stands behind me.

“S-h-h-h-h, quiet, please,” I say without lifting my head, focused on the magic. Actually what I am doing is closing up the little devil . I know this magic from my grandmother. Every time I lost something as a kid and I tried to find it and couldn’t, I’d get angry and be impossible to calm down. My grandma would tell me to close up the little devil . You close up the little devil with whatever is at hand — tree branches, pencils, or what have you. The important thing is to make some kind of a square and to imagine the little devil inside it. Then you find whatever you’ve lost. This magic works flawlessly. Always. And I’d forgotten all about it for almost twenty years. I stand up quickly: “U-turn!”

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s go. U-turn.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.” In a few minutes we are back in Pamona. Before the last turn on Main Street I tell her to turn left. We drive to the first big street running parallel — Henderson. We take a right and another right, and drive in the direction opposite of the one I saw my car disappear in. We are now heading not toward the freeway, but toward Ramona. Before the end of town, we take a right again and get back on Main. We drive east and about three miles down the road, off to the side, between the asphalt and a corn field, in the shade of a lonely tree is my car. Stella’s car. Stella’s white Mercedes. Even from a distance I can see there’s a man in the passenger’s seat doing something I really doubt would please me. My adrenaline surges, my heart races like I’m sprinting, my throat dries up instantly. I recognize these symptoms.

“Melody!” I scream. “That’s it. Stop right behind it. Right behind the car!” Melody speeds up and at the same time, who knows why, puts on her turn signal, and makes a sharp right. We edge toward the car with a roar. I swear I see Melody hitting the brakes but the effect is minimal. Her face stiffens, her eyes grow wide, her mouth opens with a scream “Oh, M-y-G-o-d!” I pull the hand break and spin the wheel to avoid the crash. Unsuccessfully. Stella’s car jerks and turns ninety degrees. A cloud of dust and the trunk gapes open. I jump out, throw myself over the car, grab the door handle, but it’s locked. I jump across the hood to try the other door, but it’s also locked. And then I see the Iron Maiden T-shirt. The motherfucker stares at me with his gray eyes exactly like he did at the intersection in Ramona an hour ago — without emotion. Only his pimples seem riper. I guess he ran out of gas right here, and just so he didn’t leave empty-handed, Iron Maiden is busy with the stereo — half pulled out, wires sticking up.