Take Me There

by Carolee Dean

  While Gomez was yelling at him for forgetting to tighten the lug nuts on a Taurus, I took the opportunity to slip out of my sweat-drenched work shirt and hang it next to the Allen wrenches to dry. I was wearing a white tank top underneath, but I knew Gomez would tell me to put the shirt back on if he saw me. He is a proud and meticulous man. Not a tool out of place or a dirty rag left dangling. Gomez used to be a rich man. Years ago he owned a ranch down in Guatemala, before the government took it and he came to the United States as a political exile.

  “You want the tires to fall off out on Rosecrans Avenue? You want someone to get hurt? You want me to get sued?” Gomez asked Wade, pointing at the Taurus.

  “No, sir,” Wade said, hanging his head, the posture he assumed even when he wasn’t in trouble.

  “What am I going to do with you? And pull up those pants. You think our customers want to know the color of your underwear?”

  “No, sir,” Wade said, tightening his belt.

  I could tell Gomez was nearing the end of his rope with Wade. I couldn’t blame him. Wade was a constant screwup. But he needed the job. It was a condition of our probation. Besides, he tended to get into trouble when he had too much free time.

  Lucky for my friend, a man came into the shop looking for Gomez. Baby Face, who I kept chained in a corner, instantly sprang to her feet and started growling. She’s really a pushover, but she’s half Rottweiler and looks fierce. Gomez doesn’t mind having her around. He even posted a sign, WARNING: GUARD DOG , on the window out front. His shop is in south Downey, but it borders on Compton and break-ins are pretty regular.

  “Is that an attack dog?” the man asked Gomez.

  “Yep,” he replied.

  “Down,” I told Baby Face. She sat, but kept her eyes locked on the well-tanned stranger, who took a step in the opposite direction.

  “My Mercedes is making a strange noise,” the man said.

  Gomez forgot about Wade and turned to Kip, the head mechanic. They shared a smile. One of a mechanic’s greatest joys is listening to people describe the “funny noises” their cars make. Gomez usually knew within five seconds what was wrong with an automobile, but he liked to have a little fun with people.

  “Describe the noise,” Gomez said.

  The poor man was sputtering and coughing like a backfiring engine when all of a sudden Max from M & M Towing came walking in, followed by Jess, wearing a bathing suit covered by some kind of wrap knotted around her waist.

  I nearly dropped the battery I was changing.

  “Got a dead Beemer,” said Max, pointing out the bay at the car on the tow truck.

  “I’ll take care of this one,” I told Kip.

  He looked at Jess and smiled. “I bet you will.”

  Jess pushed her bangs out of her blazing green eyes. They looked like they were on fire. “There was a wreck on Rosecrans Avenue, and traffic got detoured onto a side street. All of a sudden my car just stopped. Right in the middle of Compton! My cell phone went dead and I didn’t know what to do. Thank goodness a cop stopped and helped me call for a tow.”

  I tried to picture Jess, dressed the way she was, waving down low riders in the middle of Gangstaville, California.

  Max went outside and started backing the Beemer into an empty bay while I set down the battery. It could wait till later. “I’m supposed to meet some friends at Soak City over in Buena Park in half an hour,” Jess said frantically. “What do you think is wrong with my car? It just died. Do you think this will take long? Can you fix it? Will it be expensive? Wait, are you laughing at me?”

  A huge grin had spread across my face. I couldn’t believe it. Here she was, Jessica Jameson, standing right in front of me. Eyes on fire. Hands waving. Beads of perspiration forming on her neck. “I’m not laughing,” I said, trying to flatten my grin.

  Recognition turned her eyes from flaming emerald to deep sea green. “Dylan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to swim in those eyes.

  “Dylan, what happened to you? I saw you that night outside the theater and then you just disappeared.”

  “Something came up. I had to quit Downey High.”

  “Me too. My family moved to Hermosa Beach last November.”

  Hermosa Beach was even farther away from my world than north Downey.

  Jess narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, studying me. I could feel my heart pumping as she checked out my chest, and I wished I hadn’t taken off the blue work shirt. Did she think I was a slob, or was she impressed with my build? I’m pretty muscular. You have to have a strong upper body to work on cars all day, though I didn’t think that was the sort of thing that would impress a girl like Jess. I hoped she couldn’t see how hard it was for me to breathe.

  I put my arms behind my back, not wanting her to notice the crude tattoo on my right hand. Caught my reflection in the side mirror of a Lexus. God, I looked like one of those muscle dudes puffing out his chest on the cover of Iron Man . I quickly folded my arms in front of myself and tried to remember to breathe.

  “Wow,” she said. “Do you work out?”

  “Just here in the garage,” I said. “I like to bench-press the batteries.” Stupid thing to say. How could I be so lame? Why didn’t I ever know what to say to girls?

  When she realized she was staring, Jess blushed and turned away. I don’t know why, but I found her even more beautiful just then. I wasn’t used to girls who blushed.

  “You cut your hair,” she said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. I like it. You have nice eyes.”

  Baby Face barked at Mercedes man, who was making a grinding noise even though nobody was listening to him anymore. Jess turned around. “A Rottweiler,” she said, walking over and scratching Baby Face behind the ears. My ferocious attack hound instantly starting wagging her tail and licking Jess. “He’s beautiful,” she said.

  “She. Her name is Baby Face.”

  “Like the gangster?” Jess asked, and I felt like an idiot again. Why did I ever name my dog after a bank robber?

  “Sort of.” I shrugged.

  Baby Face plopped herself down at Jess’s feet and stuck her belly in the air, and Jess scratched her.

  “Some guard dog,” Mercedes Man remarked.

  “Hey, quit that,” I said to Jess. “We got reputations to uphold.”

  Jess stood up and smiled at me with the same crooked, one-sided grin I’d seen her use a hundred times, but this time it made me feel weak and helpless, because this time she was smiling at me. “What kind of reputations?”

  “You don’t wanna know.” All of a sudden I was wishing I’d stuck with changing the battery and given Kip the Beemer. My palms were sweating something awful, and I was afraid that if Jess hung around while I worked on her car, I’d pull a Wade. That’s what Kip called it when the mechanics screwed up. “You should probably wait up front while I take a look at your car. There’s air conditioning and a soda machine.”

  “Okay,” she said, and headed for the front of the shop.

  “You have nice eyes,” Wade said in a high-pitched girly voice, as soon as she was gone.

  “Shut up!”

  “Now that is a girl with class,” said Gomez.

  “How can you tell?” I asked. He’d seen her all of five minutes.

  “Look how clean she keeps her car.” Gomez smiled and pointed to the interior of the Beemer.

  “What about my funny noise?” asked Mercedes Man.

  “Quit using cheap gas. Things of value require special care.” Gomez gave me a sideways glance. “And put on your shirt,” he told me, “before I have a whole crowd of girls lined up in here buying tickets to look at your muscles.”

  “Yes, sir.” I slipped on the blue shirt and got to work on the car.

  Thirty minutes later I walked up front to find Jess reading a magazine. “All done,” I said.

  “That was fast.”

  “It was just a broken serpentine belt.”

  “How much will that cost?” She sounded worried, which
surprised me.

  “A hundred and thirty,” I said, wishing I could just tear up her bill.

  “That’s all?”

  “It was a quick job, and belts are cheap,” I replied, relieved that she seemed happy.

  “My car is due for its thirty-thousand-mile service. Do you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “What would that cost?”

  “I don’t know. Foreign car. Probably three hundred.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Could go a little higher if we ran into any problems.”

  “The dealership in Hermosa Beach said it would cost me at least seven hundred.”

  I shrugged, trying to stay cool, even though the desire to see her again was suddenly overwhelming.

  “How long would it take?”

  “Better part of a day. We’re closed tomorrow, but if you bring your car back Monday morning, I could get on it first thing.”

  “I have a class in Hermosa Beach that starts at eight, but …”

  I wanted to offer to pick up her car, drive her back to Hermosa Beach, take her to the moon.

  “If I could save four hundred dollars, I could probably get a ride… . Okay, yeah. I’ll bring it back Monday.”

  “It’s a date then,” I told her, before I realized what I was saying.

  She smiled at me again, eyes shining. I thought about death by drowning and decided that when my time came, that’s how I wanted to go.

  4

  WE STOP IN NEEDLES FOR GAS. IT’S THE LAST TOWN before we hit Arizona.

  Wade takes Baby Face out for a walk so she can stretch her legs and do her business. Then he puts her back into the car and goes into the 7-Eleven to buy more corn nuts.

  I put water in the radiator while the gas is pumping.

  A cop car pulls in and slowly snakes its way around the station.

  Hold my breath as I replace the radiator cap.

  Lots of people must travel the desert at night. Too hot during the day. But where are they? The Mustang is the only car at the pumps.

  Cop looks in my direction.

  The numbers on the gas gauge move in slow motion.

  The air is so hot and dry and still, it feels like time has stopped.

  What’s taking Wade so long?

  I see him through the window flirting with the chubby girl working the counter.

  Why won’t the pump go faster?

  The cruiser moves toward me in slow motion.

  The girl at the counter laughs and tosses back her hair. Come on, Wade. Hurry up. Let’s get out of here!

  It takes all my self-control not to yank the nozzle out of the tank and jump in the Mustang.

  Baby Face sticks her head out the window and growls.

  “Easy, girl.”

  The cop rolls past us so slowly I can’t tell if he’s still moving.

  I am hyperaware of the chuk , chuk , chuk of numbers rolling, time not passing fast enough.

  Cop looks at me. Looks at the car. Looks at Baby Face.

  I force myself to glance up and smile. Give a little wave.

  Wonder if he’s calling in the license plate number.

  The cop moves on and pulls out of the station.

  Snap! I jump at the sound. Realize it’s just the pump clicking off.

  Try to breathe. Finish with the gas. Get back in the car.

  Collapse behind the wheel. Arms and legs shaking. Covered in sweat.

  “I got her phone number,” Wade says, slipping into the passenger seat and waving a piece of paper at me, smiling like he just won the California lottery.

  “Whose phone number?” My voice is trembling, but Wade doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Amy,” he says, reading the name scrawled on the paper in purple ink.

  “Who?”

  “The girl at the counter.”

  I look back through the window at the girl, who is waving at Wade. She blows him a kiss through teeth covered in metal braces.

  “Wade, we’re never coming back here. Not in a hundred years.”

  “So?” he says, tracing the numbers with his fingertips.

  I am tempted to bash in his head, but then I think of Jess and remember a time I would have been content just to hold her number in my hand.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I tell him.

  But Wade doesn’t hear me. He’s sniffing the paper.

  “She smelled like cherries,” he says as I drive off into the night.

  5

  AFTER JESS LEFT THE GARAGE, I SPENT THE REST OF THAT Saturday smiling and humming tunes from West Side Story.

  When work was over, Wade told me he was going to get some brews with Nathan, another guy from the shop. “Come with us,” he offered. “It’s been a long week.”

  “Drinking is a violation of our probation,” I reminded him. Truth was, when we were forced to give up liquor and pot in lockup, it scared me how hard it was. Once my head cleared, I swore to never go back to the stuff, and I didn’t, even when Wade found some guys who were fermenting liquor out of fruit they took from the commissary.

  “We ain’t gonna get caught,” he said.

  “That’s what we said about working for Jake.”

  Wade rolled his eyes. “Do what you want. I’m goin’ with Nathan.”

  “Suit yourself.” For someone who lived in constant fear of returning to jail, he sure wasn’t doing much to avoid it.

  I put Baby Face in the backseat of the Mustang and was relieved we were alone. On Saturdays I liked to relax by cranking up the stereo and cruising the coastline. When Wade came along, he always turned down the volume so he could talk.

  I thought about going to Hermosa Beach, but decided against it. Instead I headed north on the 405 and took Santa Monica Boulevard. Finally ended up on the Pacific Coast Highway, playing the music so loud the speakers started rattling. Baby Face sat in the backseat with her head on my shoulder while I sang along to the music.

  Mom let it slip once that my father’s favorite song was “Dream On.” Sometimes I played just that one song, over and over, singing along until my throat went dry, trying to imagine I was in my father’s skin. Trying to figure out what kind of man he was.

  But not on that night. I took out Aerosmith and exchanged it for West Side Story and “There’s a Place for Us.” I remembered Jess, standing up on stage singing that song, and how the whole auditorium went crazy with applause. And now she was back in my life. Okay, maybe I was just the guy who fixed her car, but that was enough.

  By the time I turned around and headed home, the sun was setting over the ocean, a huge ball of fire sinking into the sea, leaving streaks of red and gold like a melting candle. I thought of Jess, how being near her made me feel like liquid wax, and from somewhere inside of me came words: I know a girl with sea green eyes… . She melts the sun, swallows the sky… . Then breathes out stars to kiss the night.

  I didn’t know where lines like that came from, but sometimes when I was alone, they just popped into my brain. Luckily, I wasn’t alone much. It could be embarrassing, not to mention dangerous, if guys found out I had stuff like that in my head.

  I turned up the music, trying to turn off whatever channel those words were coming from, and looked back out the window at the sun. I know they say you shouldn’t do that. It will make you blind. But I’ve never been good at following rules. Besides, I was wondering if that was what the eye of God looked like and if he slept when the sun went down, ’cause it sure didn’t seem like he was on the job a lot of the time.

  When I finally got home, it was dark. I parked out front and went inside to find my mother in the living room, singing along to the CD player and dancing with a bottle in her hand.

  She must have gotten the check from Uncle Mitch. It came once a month, and once a month she would splurge on a bottle of Crown Royal, play “Fly Me to the Moon,” and wallow in self-pity.

  He sent us a thousand bucks a month and then charged Mom six hundred to rent the house. I knew that was a steal i
n Southern California, even if the place was a cracker box, but I never understood why he didn’t just send four hundred and call it a day. He said it was the principle of the thing. He’d bought the house hoping my mother would stay put for a while.

  I walked into the kitchen with Baby Face and poured three cans of chili into a pot. Filled a dog bowl with Purina. Baby Face sat at my feet whimpering and wouldn’t touch her bowl until I poured chili on her food.

  “You’re gonna spoil that dog.”

  Mom was standing in the doorway, holding the half-empty bottle of bourbon, wearing a summer dress, hair falling softly on her shoulders.

  “Did you eat?” I set two bowls on the table. I knew she hadn’t.

  Mom put the bottle on the table, sat down, and covered her face with her hands. Started to cry. I grated cheese to go on top of her chili. “You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

  “I was going to be an opera singer. Did I ever tell you that? I studied Mozart and Stravinsky at the University of Texas. I’m not just barroom trash, you know.”

  “Want some crackers?”

  She didn’t answer, so I sat down next to her and crumbled saltines into her bowl.

  “Then I met your father.”

  I held my breath for a minute. I was well aware that Dylan Sr. was the source of her unhappiness, but she rarely talked about him.

  “He promised me the moon. I believed he could deliver it. God, you should have seen him in college.”

  “He went to college?” I never pictured my father as being university material.

  “He had this way of talking about dreams as if they really could come true. He said he was going to take me to New York City. Instead I ended up on his parents’ pig farm in Quincy, Texas.” Mom took another long drink from the bottle. “I was in the chorus of Carmen with the Houston opera when I was eighteen, and by the time I turned twenty I was three months pregnant, living in a single-wide trailer.”

  I knew it was just the liquor talking, but I couldn’t help but think about how I’d helped ruin her life just by being born.

  Mom set the bottle back on the table and I coaxed the spoon to her lips. She took a bite and then cried some more and blew her nose into her napkin.