Flirting In Cars

  Instead Mack frowned, looking bewildered. “So you were in a car crash as a passenger. Why would that make you scared to learn? I’d think you’d be scared to have other people drive you.”

  Exasperated, Zoë ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m not saying it’s logical. My mind agrees with you completely. But my body has a different reaction.”

  “You tried getting behind the wheel?”

  “Once. With my father. I had a complete panic attack and passed out.”

  Mack nodded, as if she were confirming something he’d suspected. “You get on well with your dad otherwise? He good at teaching you other stuff?”

  Reluctantly, Zoë shook her head.

  “All right, then. How about this. If you’re willing to work around my EMT schedule, then you pay me fifteen dollars an hour, which is my fee for teaching students to drive. And you let me keep trying to change your mind.”

  “Fair enough.” They shook hands, and Zoë felt the tug of physical attraction again. His hands were rough, calloused. She hadn’t touched a man’s work-toughened hands in more years than she could recall.

  Mack, however, seemed unaffected. “You want me to come by tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” said Zoë, not knowing exactly where she wanted to go, but certain that she wanted a way out of the house. “Can you come pick me up at noon?”

  “You got it. In the meantime, how about you take a look at this.” He pulled a booklet out of his back pocket.

  Zoë took it. It was a driver’s road instruction manual.

  “I think you’re jumping the gun a bit,” she said, alarmed. “I said you could try to convince me, but only because you don’t stand a chance.”

  “I wasn’t talking about starting this minute,” said Mack, already walking away. “I still need to order the passenger-side brakes and install them before we begin.”

  “In your truck?”

  “No, in a car. Of course in a car,” said Mack with a little laugh, getting into his truck before she could say anything else. Back inside the house, she looked down at the booklet in her hands as Claudius rubbed his large orange face against her ankles. “Dear Friend,” said a letter from the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles on the first page, “Whether you are a new driver or an experienced driver reintroducing yourself to New York State’s traffic rules and regulations, this manual will provide the basic information you need to be a knowledgeable, safe motor vehicle operator.”

  The second page suggested that the new driver consider enrolling in the New York State Organ and Tissue Registry, presumably in the event that he or she turned out to be something less than a knowledgeable or safe motor vehicle operator.

  Claudius yowled and leaped onto the counter. Zoë rubbed his whiskered cheek and looked out the window. “I know, puss,” she said, picking him up. “I want to go back to Manhattan, too.”

  But Claudius didn’t want to go home. He wanted to go out, which he demonstrated by leaping out of her arms and onto the screen, where he hung by his claws, gazing fixedly at the brave new world beyond the front door.

  Part Two

  Zoë Goren

  My Car, My Self: A Gas Guzzler’s Manifesto

  Everyone agrees that it would be nice not to be so dependent on those durn Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, what with their strange headgear and their peculiar notions about religion and such. And yeah, it sure would be swell if we could find something else to make our cars run, like vegetable oil or batteries. But notice that no one ever suggests that Americans try something radical, like taking the bus or the train, or, God forbid, riding a bicycle. Because while effete Europeans may opt for these sissified options, Americans tend to talk about their cars the way cowboys in the Old West used to talk about their horses.

  It’s my baby. My pal. My buddy. It’s not a means of transportation, it’s my independence, testimony to my taste and skill and wealth, the symbol of my freedom to wander at will, the proof that I am old enough to take charge, but still young enough to ride fast and live free.

  Plus, who wants to be dependent on somebody else’s schedule, or have to sit next to strangers? Americans, not content to idealize car culture, have made damn sure that it’s nigh unto impossible to live without a set of wheels. We build our houses and our towns and even our cities sprawled out so that it would take a Lance Armstrong to bicycle from home to shops. We build those shops in giant malls at the edge of huge four-lane highways, and then spend next to nothing on our public transportation.

  With the notable exception of New York City, there are few places in this country where not having a car is not a handicap. In most of Europe, on the other hand, cars are a luxury, not a necessity.

  Which means that while we cling to a symbol of independence, Europeans have a shot at the real thing.

  New York Chronicle Op-Ed

  Ten

  H ello, Redneck,” said Skeeter Davis, with an amused glance at Mack’s flatbed Ford. “I knew you’d show up one of these days.”

  In the army, Mack had gotten used to being called a Damn Yankee. He’d forgotten that Skeeter liked to rag on him for liking dirt-track racing and driving a pickup. “Yeah, well, sorry it took me so long.”

  “Guess you must have got lost without your GPS.”

  Mack gave a polite chuckle, glancing around the garage where he’d spent most of his adolescence and trying to come up with a good excuse for why it had taken him six months to pay his old friend a visit. He couldn’t think of any reason other than the real one: he wasn’t the same gearhead kid obsessed with building stock cars and smashing them up in dirt-track races. And as far as he could tell, Skeeter hadn’t changed at all. He even looked the same, from the long, lank ponytail hanging down his black Ford racing T-shirt to the intricate tattoos on his bony arms.

  Well, maybe there were a few more tats, and a bit less hair under the NASCAR baseball cap, but the slightly crazed light in Skeeter’s husky-pale eyes was undimmed by the years.

  “Shop looks good,” Mack offered, passing by a poster of Jessica Simpson orgasming on the hood of the General Lee. He stopped to inspect the cop car in the corner. “Hey, is that a dough mixer in the trunk?”

  “Cool, huh?” Skeeter picked up a welder’s helmet and indicated the conveyer belt running through the body of the car. “The whole car is like a doughnut maker. I copied it from a segment on Monster Garage.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I’m out of dough, but yeah, course it works.” Skeeter turned the ignition key and the conveyer belt began to move. “But you want to check out my new project, man.” Skeeter led him to the back of the garage, to a 1972 Ford Town and Country complete with fake wood paneling and most of its underside cut away. “I’m going to make it a pro street station wagon,” said Skeeter proudly. “See the sketch?” He held up a rough thumbnail of the car suspended on enormous tires. It was like looking at a picture of the Brady Bunch dad wearing a massive gold chain and droopy-ass trousers. “The bitch of it is getting all the curved bits right.”

  Mack whistled. “That’s a lot of cutting and welding.” To be honest, he didn’t see the point. The only thing you could do with a car like that was haul it off to some drag race where you slammed on the gas and then hit the brakes, or take it to a car show, where you’d sit your ass in a lawn chair and talk for a weekend. Back in the day, Mack had liked the adrenaline rush of dirt-track racing, where you might lose your car or you might lose your teeth, but at least it was always exciting.

  Still, he didn’t want to be rude, and if Skeet was still into beefing up muscle cars, the least he could do was act interested. Mack bent over and inspected the stripped door frame. “Nice work,” he said. “Very smooth.”

  “Except for that bit.” Skeeter put on a welder’s helmet and picked up a blowtorch, shearing away a slight metal protrusion. “How’s that?”

  “Better than I could’ve done.”

  Skeeter lifted the face mask. “Hey, you want to help me? I could use an extra pair of
hands to get the new hinges in place, and the high school kid who comes here just up and joined the damn army.” Skeeter’s pale eyes glinted with mischief. “What an asshole, right?”

  And it struck Mack that Skeeter was right, he had been an asshole, because that was all his old friend was ever going to say on the subject of Iraq, unless Mack himself brought it up.

  “Sure,” he said, “if you don’t mind my being out of practice.”

  “Shit, man, you were never that good to start with,” said Skeeter, still examining the old Ford’s underbelly.

  “No, I guess not,” said Mack, surprised at how easy it was to fit back into their old, easy banter. “Hey, think you can get me a deal on something like a Honda Accord?”

  “An Accord?” Skeeter straightened up as if he’d just been insulted. “No way, man. That’s for pussies who think they’re car guys because they can slap a spoiler on the trunk and change the rims. Plus, you don’t want to drive around with some wet fart muffler making that damn blurp blurp Honda sound.”

  “I don’t want to turn a hatchback into a hot rod,” said Mack. “I just need a basic car. Well, actually, I need a shit car I can turn into something basic.” He stuck his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, a little embarrassed now to say what he was planning out loud. “I’m, uh, going to start my own driving school. But I don’t have much cash right now.”

  Skeeter looked appalled. “What’s the point?”

  “I know, it sounds kind of lame,” said Mack, rocking back on his heels. He looked out the open doors of the garage and saw a young boy furiously pedaling his tricycle down a long driveway. Another future NASCAR fan. “It’s just I was working for Jim Moroney, and I was kind of half decent at it, but I got sick of answering to that son of a bitch.” Mack checked to make sure the kid was staying well away from the street. Yeah, he was being careful.

  “I didn’t mean what’s the point of teaching folks to drive,” said Skeeter, sounding amused. “I meant, what’s the point of teaching them to drive slow? Everyone’s safe at thirty miles an hour. You want to slip in something torquey, make sure they’re really roadworthy.”

  Mack grinned. “So you’re not against the idea?”

  But Skeeter was already thumbing through the back of the Hudson River Gazette. “Seems to me I saw something back here…there it is: 1968 Mustang, motivated seller.”

  “Notice how it doesn’t say the thing actually runs. I need something practical, Skeet.”

  “Nineteen seventy-six Corvette, original paint job.”

  “Because nothing says Responsible Driving School like an ancient muscle car.”

  Skeeter looked up. “Listen, Mack. I don’t know if you recall, but this here is the Big Dog Garage. Remember what it was we specialized in?”

  “Fucking up perfectly good station wagons in a doomed attempt to turn them into speed demons?”

  “Exactly. You want a rice burner? Go on down to Church Street and Sal and his crew will be more than happy to oblige.”

  Mack laughed out loud, then realized Skeeter was serious. “Well, shit,” he said. “I don’t have the damn money for Church Street. And you’re my friend.” Even though we haven’t spoken in more than a dozen years, he concluded silently.

  “Yeah, well, friends don’t let friends drive Hondas.”

  “And most of my friends don’t quote bumper stickers.”

  Skeeter raised his chin, eyes glittering like ice. “You read the news lately? General Motors and Ford are going up in flames.”

  “So what are we saying here? That you’ll only help me if it’s American and if it turns you on?”

  Skeeter didn’t respond, and they stared at each other for a moment. Mack was the first to fold. “Okay,” he said, “but it can’t be some stick-shift lowrider. My students need to be able to see over the front windshield.”

  “So no to the Corvette. Any other sissy girl requirements?”

  Mack thought about it. “Dual side air bags?”

  Skeeter shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d fall for that shit, man. I mean, driver’s side, yeah, so you don’t get the steering wheel implanted in your ribs. But what’s the passenger-side air bag for?”

  “Not going through the windshield?”

  Skeeter nodded, but he didn’t look happy. “Okay, it limits us, but we can put in dual air bags. But it has to be an American make.”

  “Fine. But don’t go crazy on me. This can’t be some wild project where we restore a sixty-six Mustang from a steering wheel and half the front seat. We need to meet federal safety regulations, so nothing older than the mid-nineties.”

  Skeeter rubbed his chin. “I guess I can live with that.” He indicated the vintage station wagon with his thumb. “And you come by and help me get the tubing in.”

  Mack stuck out his hand. “You got a deal, man.”

  And just like that, they were in business.

  The New York City woman was standing on the porch of her house, looking as if someone had rammed a pole up her butt. And it was quite some butt, Mack had to admit, particularly in those blue jeans. It might wind up crushing a man, but he’d sure as hell die happy.

  “I thought we agreed on noon,” she began, hoisting an enormous leather sack onto her shoulder and marching down the steps like she meant to hurt him some.

  “Around noon,” he corrected her, jamming his hands into his back pockets. Don’t get smart with her, don’t get into an argument. Can’t afford to lose two jobs in as many days.

  “No, we said noon,” she insisted, pushing her dark glasses up farther on her nose. She was wearing her thick, black, curly hair down today, and he noticed a few strands of white at the temple. Premature, he decided. She didn’t look that old to him. She was actually quite attractive, in an exotic way. He particularly liked her generous mouth. “I have to tell you, this isn’t going to work if you’re not able to arrive here on time. Do you realize that it’s already twelve-thirty,” she added, showing him her watch.

  On the other hand, there was such a thing as too much mouth. “So, how bad is that? We about to miss some important conference? There a sale that ends at one?”

  “No,” said Zoë, walking past him and opening the passenger-side door to his truck. “But I was hoping to see my daughter during her lunch period, which is almost over.”

  Okay, so that shut him up. “You should have said so,” he said, jumping into his seat and turning on the ignition. “Maybe we can still make it.”

  And maybe they could have, except that Zoë didn’t have the faintest idea where the McKinley School was, except to say that it was on Chestnut Drive, near a lake, and surrounded by two old weeping willows. He had to explain that no, just the address wasn’t enough, there were all kinds of unnamed roads around here.

  “So how does anybody find anything? Do you want me to call the school and get directions?”

  Why did women never understand that asking directions was tantamount to saying I am an idiot, incapable of finding my way out of a paper bag?

  Mack swallowed. Ignoring the urge to tell Zoë that he’d once navigated himself out of a sandstorm and back to his platoon using nothing more than the stars and a compass, he forced himself to say yes, by all means, let’s get those directions.

  “Shit,” she said, as her cell phone dropped the call twice in a row. “Damn it, it’s not working.”

  “You want to try from inside the house?”

  She paused, and Mack saw that underneath her irritation, she looked almost ready to burst into tears. Holy Jesus, he thought, I really don’t want that to happen.

  “I am sorry about getting the time wrong,” he said abruptly, and she seemed to shake off whatever was riding her.

  “That’s all right. Okay. You know what? Since we’re already probably too late to visit Maya today, how about you take me on a little tour of the area, help me get my bearings? And then maybe we could stop by a drugstore, a hardware store, and a liquor store on the way back.”

  Mac
k decided to take her on a scenic route, so he drove her up Skunk’s Misery Road, past the goat farm and the crazy publishing lady with the pet donkeys, and over Mountain View to the new horse farm with the helicopter pad. “That belongs to some rich Wall Street fellow,” he said. “Been there about six months. I give it another six before he sells up—these rich finance guys don’t seem to hold on to it for long.”

  “Has it always been horse farms around here?”

  Mack glanced over at Zoë. “Not until about ten, no, fifteen years ago. Folks started buying up the old dairy farms around here right around the time I left for the army.” The minute the word “army” was out of his mouth, Mack felt his whole body go rigid. Great work, asshole, he thought. Now she’s going to say, What did you do in the army, and where did you go, and for how long. She’s going to feel entitled to the whole fucking story of my life, and because she’s a paying customer, I can’t just tell her, Sorry, not going to go there.

  Mack stared out at the road ahead, waiting for it.

  “Has it changed much?”

  He turned to see that Zoë was looking out the window, taking in the landscape of open fields and white fences, the countryside formed by dairy farms and preserved by wealthy horse folk. “Not so much,” he admitted. “In some ways, it’s prettier now. Cows trample up the ground more.”

  “You don’t resent city folk coming in?”

  He snuck a glance at her, saw she wasn’t teasing. “I guess I might if I wanted to farm. On the other hand, my sister actually runs a Thoroughbred training stable, so she makes her living off horsy weekenders.” There was a young deer standing at the edge of a field and Mack slowed down in case it decided to jump out in front of him. “But she might be selling out. She’s had a good offer.”