As part of our summer effort to keep writing, a discipline that I'm disappointed to say did not simply absorb into my being during all that classroom time this past year, a few friends and I have decided to exchange short short pieces on a weekly basis. The magic of the deadline.
We're requiring ourselves to turn in 3+ pages of anything. Political musings. What I did when I wasn't writing last week. My latest dog tricks. And if a miracle occurs, a real live short story. My short short of the week.
NEW CAR SMELL
At twenty-six, Dan Rabinowitz traded his wife for a new car, a fast one, silver, leased. He didn’t get the car right away. He waited for the divorce to settle, for his parents to stop cooking him special meals and asking him when he’d be home from work every day, for all the papers to be signed. So many papers even though there was no money to be had. The furniture had been Cammy’s, the apartment had been rented and their bank account had never been more than a kiddy pool, shallow with very slight ripples. Did he ever love Cammy? He didn’t know, but what did it matter? Whether he had loved her when he married her or married her without ever loving her, he was a fool either way.
He kept the car brochure on his desk. After a few weeks, you could see dents of fingerprints all over the glossy pages. He wanted the silver one. There were two pictures of it in the brochure, one he liked better and showed more often. He liked talking to car salesmen. He made a point of phoning one almost every day. He didn’t know where he got some of the things he said, but he liked how they sounded. He said, “Whether it’s the schmo up in Denville or you, someone’s going to make commission off of me. You want it to be you? Give me something to work with.” He was a negotiator now.
There was no one he trusted more than his lawyer. His lawyer had a Mercedes, kids from two different marriages and an office that used to be a dentist’s. It still smelled slightly antiseptic and there was a sliding glass window in the entryway. After a few visits, Dan got into the habit of sliding the window back, sticking his head into it and yoo-hooing into the reception area to make the secretaries laugh. After a few meetings with Cammy and her lawyer, Dan’s lawyer confirmed that Cammy was a primo, A-one bitch. Dan showed his lawyer the car brochure, both pictures of the silver model and the close-up of the black leather interior and wood-paneled dashboard. “Go ahead,” his lawyer said. “You can afford it now.”
Once he got the car, Dan didn’t mind going to work. And so what if he was late sometimes? He did a good job and nobody could argue with that. He marveled at all the hang-ups he used to have. And if he got his work done, what was wrong with leaving a little early?
On Thursday, he felt like driving into work rather than taking the train so he did, just like that. And so what? Parking and tolls weren’t much more than taking the train and he didn’t have to sit next to those poor suits falling asleep behind their newspapers.
On his way home he kept the windows down and sunroof open, even in the Holland Tunnel. It was June, warm and dry. The weather was better than any he had remembered. Was the beginning of summer always this good? He decided it was too nice to drive home. He thought about the summers when he was single, the bars he used to go to at the beach. He called his mother and told her not to wait up. He left messages for his two single friends, Steve and Stevie B., told them to get their asses down to the beach if they knew what was good for them If they didn’t show up, he’d have one drink and go home.
Before he finished his first drink, he met Michele with one L. She hopped up to the bar to clean sand out of a blister on her foot. There was sand all over the floor of the bar, put there for ambiance or spillage from the mini-volleyball court set up next to the bar. Her hair was reddish-brown. If he took a fistful of it, Dan was convinced it would make a crunching sound. “You wear a lot of hair gel,” he told her. She looked shocked then smiled with her chin into her neck. Her skin was reddish-brown, almost as dark as her hair. “Want to see my blister?” She threatened by wiggling her toe close to his knee.
They went her for a ride in his car later, after they had danced and people had started playing volleyball on the mini-court kicking more sand all over the floor. Maybe they were supposed to be taking a walk on the beach? He seemed to remember they had talked about that before they left the bar. She had gotten into the habit of grabbing his hand and pulling him in one direction or another. Had he been talking about his car? She pulled him to it and then they were in it.
She was driving it.She made a little gurgle noise every time she stepped harder on the accelerator and the engine roared. He understood she was imitating the sound of the engine. He didn’t think it was cute but he laughed anyway. He put his hand on her thigh and told her to take it easy. He was sober enough to realize Michele with one L was liable to wreck his car, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.
Her house was dark. There were striped beach towels hanging on a wooden railing that used to be painted green. His shoes were off and the wooden planks on the porch were coated in a dust he imagined was turning the bottoms of his feet black. The screen in the door was torn, taped then torn again. She opened the door without a key. “Isn’t it dangerous to leave your door unlocked?” he asked. This sent her into quiet snorts of laughter. Michele with one L.
She led him through giant lumps of things on the floor, tugging him along with her hand. One of the lumps moved to expose a hairy shoulder and what could have been the brim of a baseball cap. It smelled like beer breath, beer sweat, which Dan assumed was his own odor. She opened two beers and they left them on the kitchen table nearly full. He didn’t remember leaving them, but they were there in the morning along with several others opened and half full. Perhaps he was not the only one led into the house last night, pulled behind a closed bedroom door.
Michele’s room was as wide as a closet. The mattress filled all of the floor space. It may not have been a mattress. It was a soft lump of bedding, maybe a pile of blankets and it was making him sweat more than he would have liked. Michele tried opening the window but it was already open all the way. He put his hand on a pack of cigarettes and tossed it aside.
Her hair still looked crunchy in the morning. Even crunchier lit up in the morning light. She had taken off her make-up and Dan was relieved to see she wasn’t all that bad looking. Maybe even pretty. She was wearing a tank top and sweat shorts. The shorts had a number ten screened onto the corner in maroon and gold, a team’s colors he used to know. The Iowa Buckeyes? That didn’t seem right.
He used the bathroom. It was clean with pink sparkly lotions of various sizes spread across the top of the toilet tank and some cheap silver rings on the sink ledge. They were metal ones someone had won at the boardwalk, mostly. He thought it would be funny to plunk them into the toilet, so he did.
When he got outside, there were a group of guys milling around his car. One was crouched under the rear tire inspecting the chassis. The rest were taking slow steps around it, admiring it. They had on baseball caps of various colors, basketball shorts. The biggest guy had his shirt off. He came as far as the curb facing Dan. They were all younger that Dan by a few years.
“You like it?” Dan asked.
“Not bad, man.”
“Fast as shit. Sweetest thing I ever bought.” The kid behind the axel popped up and brushed dirt from his hands.
Dan opened the door, took a dip whiff. “Nothing like that new car smell.” They all nodded in appreciation, took slow steps away from the car as Dan got in. The one without a shirt came over to the window to check out the interior.
“All leather, wood dash too.”
“You don’t mess around.”
“Shit, no.”
Dan eased her out of the spot, careful not to step on the gas too hard. He let the engine rumble quietly, the sweetest sound the car made, a whisper that told you how fast she was wanted to go if you’d let her. On the highway, he programmed Michele’s number into his phone, threw the little white piece of paper she had written her number on into his glove compartment. Those kids were all right, he thought. And Michele, she was pretty all right too.
He brushed sand from the passenger seat onto the floor mat where there was even more sand. He’d have to stop on his way to work and get the car cleaned, do the vacuuming himself. And then get some different clothes to wear, too. Or maybe he’d just go in like this. He played with the sunroof controls, found a song he liked on the radio. What did it matter.
