18% Gray

by Zachary Karabashliev

  I’m already in the car when I feel the call from behind. I know what will follow . . . I step on the gas pedal. Faster, I need to find shelter. Pamona is six, seven minutes away but given the critical condition I’m in, I’m not sure whether this is close enough. O-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-c-h! It’s far. To the left and right are only newly harvested fields, earth burned by the sun, barbed-wire fences, no shelter. There are no ditches along the road, nothing resembling a hill; as far as my eyes can see, there’s not a tree or a bush, nowhere to hide my ass. You, harvested, rural California, do you have the slightest idea of the storm in my stomach? Down there everything is moving, pulsating, and writhing in pain. Am I giving birth?

  There’s the sign for Pamona—five miles. It’s impossible to hold on, just impossible. I start twisting in my seat like a ganglion. It’s unbearable. I speed up. Slow down, Zack. You don’t need to get pulled over. Not now. A little more, just a couple of miles. Ouch . . . Pamona. Aw-w-w-w-w-w-wful. I’m so close. Here—Pamona. Is there any salvation? Here’s the empty main street, if only I hold it one, two, thre-e-e-e-e more seconds, h-o-o-o-o-o-nestly, I’ll be saved. No, I won’t, no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, it’s u-u-u-u-u-u-u-nbearable. I can’t stand it any longer. For a split second, I loosen the aperture back there to let go of at least part of the pressure but I realize that along with the released gas, a thin streak of liquid has leaked out. No! No. Stop. Thank god, I manage to tighten up before I’m up to my eyeballs in my own shit. I see a TEXACO sign. With screeching tires I make a sharp turn into the gas station and hit the brakes next to the pumps. I jump out of the car and run inside. Behind the counter is a tall young man in overalls.

  “Key to the bathroom.” I manage to say.

  He silently points toward a sign: RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY.

  “I am a customer.” I raise my voice.

  “How can I help you?”

  “The bathroom key, and fast, please, before I make a mess here.”

  “I can’t sir. It’s for customers only.”

  “Here . . .” I reach in my pocket for money, paining my stomach even more. “Here . . . twenty dollars . . . for gas.”

  “Would you like anything else, sir?”

  “No.”

  “On which pump?”

  “One.”

  “Number one is out of order.”

  “I don’t care, you . . .” I snatch the greasy ring with the restroom key to paradise from his fingers.

  I think the first geyser seriously soils my half-pulled-down jeans. The second one unloads everywhere on and around the toilet bowl, which I’m still trying to get to. The third wave splashes where the previous two were supposed to break.

  My eyes closed, I experience the most intense moments of cleansing I’ve had in years. This palette of pain, relief, pleasure, and sudden healing makes me believe in rebirth.

  Then I lose all sense of time. I sit there for a long time, listening to the sounds gurgling beneath me. At some point, I realize that it’s all over. After delaying as much as I can, I open my eyes and look around. When I finally do, I understand there was a reason why. Everything around me, except the ceiling, is sprayed. Floor, walls—in smaller or bigger splashes and drops in nuances of greenish brown, with reddish dots of peelings and even cherry pits. I close my eyes again. Under my lids—fire circles and golden stains. I open my eyes—shit all over.

  *

  In my job I conducted myself as a trustworthy and hardworking employee. One-third of our time I spent in the grey cubicles of ICONIQ, monitoring in-house, and the other two-thirds of the time I had to visit the sites. My workdays were the same as the workdays of every other person. If you had to watch them on TV, you would choose to kill yourself. I simply put up with them and then went home. Stella, for a long time, tried to make me tell her what I did for a living. I managed to avoid her questions with half-lies, promising her that all of this was just temporary. Once we get on our feet in California, I would return to my photography. She was used to accepting my entrepreneurial spirit when we were hard up. She was familiar with my adaptive gene. I think she believed me.

  Then, the first hefty paycheck came. Then, beginner’s luck—to investigate irregularities in a small clinic that was working with clinically depressed patients. Several of the volunteers enrolled in the study did not match the criteria—it was clear they were doing it just for the money. One of them was a drug addict going from research study to research study, faking syndromes, getting treatments; there was also a case of a pregnant young woman who hid her condition and enrolled in the study without even properly signing her consent. Scott was very pleased with my watchfulness and praised me in front of my colleagues—this is what it means to work with an experienced professional.

  ICONIQ, however, started pressuring us with the deadlines. We had to speed up before our rival company flooded the market with their version of the drug.

  *

  I wipe myself off somehow, leave the restroom, and slowly walk among the shelves of merchandise, pretending I’m looking for something. The tall kid in overalls is watching me carefully. Why is he doing that? He’s acting as if he knows something I don’t. What could you possibly know, dumb ass, that I don’t, huh? Huh? Every now and then he quickly looks at a small monitor in front of him. Is there a surveillance camera in the bathroom? Shit. Impossible. But, then again, who knows? Some of the scenes from a few minutes ago run through my head. I bet I would have heard him laughing had there been a camera. I keep pretending to be studying the junk on the shelves as I approach him. I am careful to walk in such a way that the insides of my pants touch my thighs as little as possible. There’s a reason for that.

  “The water in the restroom doesn’t work.” I yell from a distance. I can hardly contain my anger.

  “I was gonna tell you,” he says, without taking his eyes off the monitor. I’ve noticed that sometimes other people’s wickedness has a calming effect on me. Just a minute ago I was wiping shit-smeared bathroom linoleum with my own underwear because I’m a nice guy, and now—such a lack of appreciation. None. I’m already standing in front of the kid. I hand the bathroom key back and suddenly lean forward to see what’s on the monitor he keeps looking at. Split into four, the black and white screen shows different angles of the building. No camera in the bathroom. In the upper right corner I see a car exactly like the one I drive, only . . . all of a sudden, tires screeching, it shoots out of the gas station, turns right on Main Street and . . . Is this my car? Stella’s car? It can’t be. My car?

  “I think that’s your car.” Overalls points an index finger. I run out the door. The white beauty gets smaller and smaller. I can’t believe my eyes. It gets smaller and smaller until it disappears into the middle of the afternoon on Main Street, Pamona, California. I look left and I look right. Dead air. I run back inside. I kick the door open and jump over the register with my fist in the air. The gangly kid pulls away as far as he can: “Don’t you touch me!” Falsetto. I reach out, trying to smack the loser in the muzzle. He quickly squats down with arms over his head. My hand whizzes above him and grabs the phone receiver. I won’t dirty my hands with this jerk off.

  “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.

  “Open the door, idiot!” I scream. He just sits and stares. The maiden from the T-shirt glowers, axe in her bonny hand. “Ran out of gas, huh, fuckhead?” Now I feel my anger engulfing me completely. This isn’t good. Not good at all. “Open the door, you stupid fuck! Open the door and get out.” I register the damage on the rear of the car. The bumper is a little messed up, the left tail-light is broken and the trunk might be hard to shut. I walk around in circles cursing, Melody walks around me, apologizing. She begs me not to get angry, she’ll help me fix my car, and she knows a guy who fixed her husband’s pickup, but . . . “Get out!” I start boiling over, it’s more than I can hold in. Melody doesn’t stop clucking around
me for a second. “Open the . . .”

  “I’ll clean the trunk a little bit,” I hear Melody saying behind me and see her head disappear in the trunk where clothes, plastic bottles of water, tools, miscellaneous Walmart stuff, and the lemons from Orchard lie scattered. There is also the bag.

  “Don’t touch anything!” I shout, terrified. This startles her. She jerks back, hits her head on the hood of the open trunk, then gives me a guilty look. I pull her aside and slam the trunk. It doesn’t shut. I slam it a couple more times, harder. It won’t shut. I see that Iron Maiden has twisted his skinny neck back and is watching me. I gather all my strength and try one more time and manage to shut the trunk. Melody looks scared. So does the thief inside my car. A-ha, I’ll pull some emotion out of you, huh! He gawks with his little rat eyes. “OK. Here is how it’s gonna go down. First, I’ll break the windshield, then I’ll break your stupid head, because I’ll be very pissed off that I had to break the windshield.” This seems to make him think a little faster.

  “I ain’t gettin’ out!” He can actually talk?

  “Get out!”

  “I ain’t gettin’ out!”

  “It will hurt!”

  “I ain’t . . .”

  “I’m getting exceptionally angry with you, boy!”

  No reply.

  “OK, listen,” I pause. “Let’s make a deal. I won’t hurt you!” He doesn’t believe me. If I were in his place, I wouldn’t either. I take a deep breath. I start slowing my breathing down. I have to get out of here as soon as possible before a police car or some friend of his passes by—I remember a certain idiot with a swastika helmet and knives in his boots. Something makes me believe that this Iron Maiden is not in it alone. Most likely, at this very moment, somebody is filling up a container with gas for the car and will show up any moment now. I’ve got to split. I have to be reasonable from now on. Not eat unwashed cherries, not leave my keys in the car, not think about Stella, not get drunk in Mexico, not pretend to be a good Samaritan, a playboy . . . I’ve got to be reasonable if I want to survive in this chaotic world. I’ve got to . . .”Listen, prick,” I say calmly. “Here is the deal.” He is all ears. Big ones, too. “Put the stereo back where it belongs. Then get out of my car and out of my sight. OK? Put the CD player back. And I won’t hurt you. Got it?” I see him wrinkle his forehead. Thinking, maybe. “Come on. Put it back. Just like it was. Exactly as you found it. OK? And I won’t touch you. I promise.” I have to get out of here. This little shit is buying time until the motorcycle Nazi shows up any second. Melody babbles on around me, this guy is from Ramona, not Pamona, she knows his sister, the older one, the one who married the dentist, they gave birth together, not Melody and the dentist, Melody and the dentist’s wife gave birth, but her baby was . . . “Did you hear what I said, Iron Maiden?! I’ll count to three and if I don’t see you putting this stereo back, I’ll start looking for a big rock.” This obviously convinces him to get to work. I’ve noticed that with some people you’ve got to be more descriptive about your intentions, otherwise they don’t get it. Iron Maiden bends over and starts putting the stereo back surprisingly quickly. Pretty soon, while I circle around the car listening to Melody’s nonsense, he knocks on the window. I get closer to examine his job. Everything looks right. “Now, turn it on so I can hear it.” He slides a CD in and turns up the volume. “Good. Now—the radio?” I hear the radio, too. “Press button number one.” He does. Country music. “Now—press button number four.” Smooth Jazz 103.5. “Now—get out!” Still hesitant, he unlocks the door and slithers out. I meet him with a punch between the eyes that knocks him on his ass.