32 -- Baby can you fix my car?
I got up early the next day to keep my promise, feeding and
medicating my uncle before driving over to Peggy’s mother’s house where again I
found Peggy longing on a beach chair, drink in one hand, cigarette smoldering
between the fingers of her other hand.
“You look exhausted,” she said, glancing at me over the top
of her sunglasses.
“That’s because I am.”
“Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.”
“What about your car?”
“It’ll have to wait.”
“I thought you had to dance tonight.”
“I do.”
“How will you get there?”
“I can arrange a ride.”
“With Tom?”
“Maybe,” she said, hiding her eyes again behind the glasses
again. “What does it matter with who?”
“I suppose it doesn’t,” I mumbled, then made my way back
home in a daze of weariness and worry, unable to sort through the web of
emotions I was feeling, strands attached to different things inside me. Was I
jealous? Or scared? Was I in a panic to get out from under this?
I already felt as if I was drowning and feared things might
get worse – as it turned out, it would.
I fed my uncle again, and then managed to get a few hours
sleep before work.
Peggy’s call came at 10:15 the next morning.
“You need to come fix my car – now!” she said, her panic was
unmistakable even with the poor phone connection.
Her condition was even worse when I got to her mother’s
house, Peggy frantically pacing in her mother’s kitchen.
“You have to get it fixed,” she said. “I can’t be without a
car.”
“Did something happen last night?” I asked.
“None of your business,” Peggy snarled, then backtracked and
responded in a less hostile tone. “No, Alfred, nothing happened. I just don’t
like depending on other people. So, you have to get my car fixed.”
I tried, but I just couldn’t get the car to start.
“Don’t you know any mechanics that can help you?” I asked.
“Yes, but I can’t afford the price.”
“I can lend you some money.”
“That’s not the price I meant.”
I tried again, using jumping cables hooked up to my car with
the hope I could get hers started before my car died, too.
I knew just enough about cars to recognize the problem as
electrical, but with all the possibilities of why her battery kept dying, made
it impossible to know exactly how to solve the situation.
Eventually, Peggy told me to leave it and drive her home.
“I need a drink,” she said.
“Your mother has booze.”
“I need a drink in my own place.”
So, I drove her home and accompanied her up stairs where she
pressed against me.
“Fuck me, Alfred.”
“Now?”
“No, next month – of course, now. I need to get fucked so I
don’t have to think about any of this. I just want you to keep doing it to me
until I feel better.”
We managed to get half our clothing off before we fell onto
the bed, but weariness or anguish kept me limp, so I had to use my fingers and
my tongue, a slow almost torturous tease that started her and kept her moaning
until she shuddered and sagged.
“I hate when you do that,” she said, and I fell next to her
on to the pillows.
“It sounded like you hated it,” I said.
“I hate the fact that you can turn me on and off like a
switch.”
“So, you’ve said before.”
“I mean it. I don’t like being out of control like that.”
“I don’t think you’re out of control at all.”
“Then you don’t know what’s going on with me,” she said.
“Let’s go back and try the car again.”
This time when we tried the car, it started.
I was startled by the result; Peggy was delighted.
I always saw something mystical in motors, even growing up
around them as I did, a magical quality that defied the logic of engineering
that went into their design. Somewhere in the assembly of parts that made up
such mechanical beings, they acquired a soul – and often an attitude.
“I’ll need to get the car home,” Peggy told me. “Follow me
to my house just in case the car conks out again.”
I agreed, but refrained from divulging my doubts about my
getting the car started again if it did.
She slid behind the steering wheel, wiggled her fingers at
me, and then took off at a speed so fast she was already out of sight by the
time I got into my car and started to follow.
God only knew what route she took to get back. It certainly
wasn’t the way I took.
What startled me most was the fact that I arrived at her
apartment first, pulling around the corner onto Clark Street where I could see
every parking spot in the lot next to her building on Harrison. Peggy’s car was
not in any of them, nor were the windows of her apartment lighted, suggesting
possibly she had parked elsewhere.
The place seemed almost haunted in her absence.
She must have broken down somewhere in route. But I had no
way of knowing which way she had gone.
I waited a while before seeking out a public phone. The deli
guy eyed me oddly when I bought some gun for the change, then eyed me when I
died the number to Peggy’s mother’s place.
El answered.
“It’s me – Alfred. Have you seen Peggy?”
“Isn’t she with you?”
“No,” I said. “She took off as soon as I got her car
started. But I’m at her apartment and she’s not here.”
“You think her car broke down again?”
“That’s my best guess,” I said. “If you hear from here, tell
here I’m looking for her. But that I’ll meet her back at her apartment.”
I waved at the deli guy as I left then hopped back into my
car and retraced the route back to El’s house just on the off chance, I’d
missed her on the side of the road.
But if I had, she was no longer there and so I took another
way back to her apartment, trying to think like Peggy and take some route that
made sense to her.
I saw nothing.
I fully expected to find Peggy
back at her apartment when I got there, furious about my not being there when
she arrived.
But she wasn’t there when I got
there for the second time, and I sat in my car with the engine running in front
of her building, wondering what I should do next.
Should I call her mother again?
At that point, a police car passed
me and pulled into Peggy’s parking lot, whereas Peggy got out.
I was so shocked I didn’t move or
speak out even as she passed where I was parked and plunged into the dark
doorway.
The police car waited only a
moment then pulled away.
After it vanished, I got out,
entered the building, climbed the stairs and found her door open at the top of
the third floor, and Peggy in the kitchen, her hands shaking as she made
herself a drink.
She looked ruffled; her hair
slightly messed. Her lipstick smudged, and her clothing oddly askew as if she
had wrestled in them.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What do you think happened,” she
snapped, then gook a long draught of her drink. “The police stopped me.”
“And they didn’t arrest you?”
“Of course, they arrested me,” she
snarled, finishing her drink with another gulp, then started to make herself
another. “I don’t have a license or insurance, and God only knows how much I
own in unpaid tickets. The fucks wanted $15,000 in fines to let me go.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“I didn’t get the money. I didn’t
have the 10 percent to cover the bail.”
“But you’re here,” I said.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“How?”
“I convinced the cop to let me go.”
“Convinced?”
“Will you stop asking so many
fucking questions,” she howled. “They have my car.”
“Who has it?”
“The fucking police. They impounded
it. I have to go down to pick it up tomorrow morning and give the guy $50 as a
bribe, and I don’t have $50 right now. Do you?”
As it happened, I did. I had just
gotten paid. But the money was spoken for, to cover one more bill that I had
let slide over the previous few months.
I handed it to her, then went home
to check on my uncle, only to find the phone ringing when I cam through the
door and some hospital administrator on the other end, calling after hours to
tell me that a dreadful mistake had been made and that my uncle should not have
been released except for weekend visits and that they (the hospital) needed me
to bring him back, which I promised to on Monday.
I did not tell my uncle.
I knew even in his heavily drugged
state he would not receive the news well, and the last thing I needed for him
to wander off and worse, make another attempt on his life.
I went to work, looking over my
shoulder, wondering what evil spirit would strike me next.
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