by Barry Rachin
"But you grasped the underlying message?"
"Yes, of course."
“Sometimes,” Jillian confided, “when I’m reading Russian literature or the Victorian writers, I feel like I might have been happier living in the 19th century horse and buggy days.”
“Wouldn’t work so good for me,” Ernie quipped, “without cars to repair.”
“But you could have been a wheelwright, blacksmith or a carpenter.”
“Hadn’t considered the possibilities.” Jillian Crowley was the wholesome, earthy, slightly reclusive girl next door, and her effervescent chitter-chatter set him at ease.
“So how was your day?” Jillian asked shifting gears.
“A funny incident,” Ernie lowered an egg roll back to the plate. “A tow truck hauls a rat trap Chevy from the high school. A seventeen-year-old kid sat in the parking lot with the air-conditioning cranking full blast, the radio tuned to heavy metal. Problem was, he never bothered to leave the engine running so the battery drained away to nothing.” Ernie sipped at a miniature tea mug. “He just got his driver’s license a month ago and said his father would kill him when he found out what happened.”
“So what did you do?”
“I hooked up the charger. When the battery was restored to full life, I read the kid the riot act and told him to ‘pay it forward.
“You didn’t charge him?” Ernie shook his head. “It was the right thing to do.”
Maybe yes, maybe no. The other day one of their regular customers bounced a check for eight hundred and thirty-five dollars. The deadbeat swore it was a mistake. He wrote out a duplicate. The second, rubber check came back marked ‘insufficient funds’, and the garage ended up eating the cost of a catalytic converter and replacement exhaust system.
“I have to use the lady’s room.” Jillian rose from the table. Her hips swayed side to side as, with a lilting gait, she picked her way toward the rear of the restaurant.
Later in the car before he turned the engine over, Ernie kissed her on the mouth. "I want to see you again."
She placed her lips next to his ear. "Yes, I'd like that."
Reaching the apartment complex, he accompanied her to the door. Slipping his arms around her waist, pulled her close. "If you don't mind my asking, what was the big deal with the Turgenev story?"
"Was there something you didn't understand?"
"No, not really. When the religious fanatic started spouting all that gibberish about personal atonement..."
“You lost me.” Jillian's eyes suddenly narrowed and her sing-song voice assumed a caustic edge. "What are you talking about?"
Just then, the apartment door opened and Abigail stood gawking at them. "The crackpot who ran off with the landowner's daughter… he ruined the girl's life. And at the very end of the story, when they reached the inn during the rainstorm -"
"You read the wrong story." Jillian's smile faded. "I told you to read the third story, and you read the one before it."
"I did what you told me!" Over the woman's shoulder he could see the braless younger sister smirking vicariously. Kachunk! Kachunk! Kachunk! Ernie felt the turgid blood thudding in his ears, the precursor to a full-blown anxiety attack.
"Apparently not very well, because you read the wrong story." There were no more kisses, hugs or terms of endearment. Jillian Crowley disappeared into the apartment as her future porn-star-of-a-younger-sister slammed the door shut.
Ernie went home and had a good cry. Then he got drunk, threw up all over himself and fell asleep on the couch still dressed in his clothes. In the morning, hung over and overwhelmed with self-loathing, he took a closer look at the tattered Turgenev book. Yes, he read the wrong story. Punin and Baburin - that was the name of the tale he should have read. But Ernie, incorrigible dope that he was, began counting from Edward Garnett's scholarly introduction, leaving himself one short. One short - he might as well have been a thousand pages off the mark!
Punin and Baburin - it was another, equally stupid story! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Baburin travels about the country with his friend Punin, who is bald with a head shaped like an egg. A thoroughly stupid story! Ernie stopped reading around lunchtime. He was only halfway finished but needed protein in his stomach before soldiering on. The kitchen phone began ringing with shrill insistence until the answering machine finally picked up. The caller left no message. Brinnng! Brinnng! Brinnng! The phone erupted again, demanding, begging, pleading to be answered. Fleeing the apartment, Ernie wandered down to the lobby and gathered his mail.
When he returned the red LCD light was flashing on the answering machine. A thoroughly remorseful Jillian Crowley would be calling to leave the first of many unanswered apologies for his public humiliation. Ernie pressed the message tab.
"Hi, it's Maureen. Just got back from an education seminar in Palo Alto. Still upset about that silliness with the bathroom graffiti? Give me a call. We'll patch things up over a bottle of wine and a porn flick." Ernie slumped down in a kitchen chair. He hit the playback tab a second time and listened to Dr. Kwong's officious nasal twang. A third and a fourth time he listened to the message, and then Ernie tried to imagine the despotic oriental, married with family, structuring domestic bliss with the same autocratic efficiency she favored at Brandenburg High School.
Around seven Ernie called Jillian's apartment. "She doesn't want to talk to you." Abigail was sounding particularly self-righteous.
"If nothing else, would you at tell her I read the story… the right one."
"I'll do no such thing." She slammed the phone shut.
An hour later, Ernie showed up at the apartment. "Punin and Baburin… I finished the story earlier this afternoon."
"And what did you learn?"
"Baburin was a republican."
"Which tells me nothing."
Ernie began to whimper, making crude snuffling sounds and blotting the wetness away with the back of a hand. Abigail was sitting on the sofa, looked back and forth between her sister and the uninvited guest. Only when the mechanic began blubbering did she rise to her feet, yawn languidly and disappear down the hallway into the bedroom.
"For Baburin being 'republican' meant respecting the freedom of other people… he took care of Punin even though het did no work, spouted sappy poetry and acted like a halfwit."
"Turgenev's nothing like Tolstoy." Jillian wet her lips with her tongue. "He doesn't bludgeon you half to death with mystical malarkey."
"I don't give a crap about Tolstoy," Ernie protested. "I don't even like to read. I only did it to get to know you."
"And the young girl?" Jillian pressed.
Ernie paused to catch his breath. "Baburin takes Musa Pavlovna under his wing. She elopes with the college student, but Baburin doesn't rush after her. He simply lets her go."
"He doesn't force his will her."
Only now did he cover his moist eyes with a calloused hand. "This is all new to me. It's all getting mixed up in my brain."
"It's a package deal," Jillian replied dryly.
"Yes, I figured as much.” Ernie understood intuitively that they were no longer talking about the Turgenev tale.
His tormentor moved closer and, wrapping her arms around his waist, rested her head up against his chest. "It's package deal," she whispered what she said a moment earlier but so softly her words were barely audible.
"I need to speak with your sister before I go."
"Okay."
The door to Abigail's bedroom was open. Ernie entered, closed the door behind him and flopped down on a straight-back chair in the far corner. Abigail was resting in a full lotus position on the top of the covers thumbing through a copy of The National inquirer. "What are you doing?" she bristled. Ernie continued to sit staring morosely at his penny loafers. Five minutes passed in total silence. "I want to go to sleep. How much longer are you going to sit there like a retard?"
"Bawdybodies.com… I don't think it's such a great idea, but everybody'
s got to make their way in life. God knows I've done some dumb-ass things that I regret even to this day."
"You're freaking me out!" Abigail muttered, throwing the magazine on the floor.
"If your entrepreneurial venture doesn't pan out, my brother-in-law works in human services over at Walmart. I could get you an interview. Pay isn't the greatest and you would have to work your way up."
She shut the light and the room went totally dark. "Anything else?"
"No, that's about it." Ernie rose to his feet. "Goodbye, Abigail."
"Yeah, whatever."
"Loyalty… that was a big thing.” Back out in the foyer, Ernie picked up where he had left off. “Turgenev kept yammering on and on about how, even after Baburin went into political exile, the man stood by his friends… his friends and his principles." He fished about in his pocket for the car keys.
"Baburin was loyal in ways that most people couldn't even begin to imagine," Jillian confirmed. "I thought you said you didn't like books."
"The ending worked out rather nicely, don't you think?" The mechanic and the reference librarian seemed to be communicating at cross purposes.
“Yes, it did.” Jillian kissed him on the side of the mouth. "Come over for supper tomorrow night. I'll cook a small pot roast with baked potatoes, glazed carrots and string beans. What would you like for dessert?"
