by Carolee Dean
Jess noticed me walking in behind Gomez. A huge grin spread across her face, and she waved. I smiled and waved back, feeling like a little kid, but then I remembered my grease-covered hands and shoved them into my pockets, staining my pants in the process.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring it in earlier,” she said. “I had to wait for a ride.” She looked in the direction of a massive guy in a muscle shirt who was walking toward her with sodas from the drink machine. He had the build of someone who spent all his free time pumping iron. When he saw Jess smiling at me, he set the sodas on the counter and pulled her close, kissing her on the cheek.
My heart twisted in my chest. From the way he was smirking at me, I could tell he was full of himself. The sort who likes to check out his own butt in the mirrors at the gym. All the same, I figured he was probably better for Jess than I was.
“Dylan, this is my boyfriend Jason. Jason, this is Dylan. I told you about him. He and I were in school together at Downey High.”
Jason looked at my grease-covered pants and frowned at Jess. “Together?”
“No, not together ,” Jess said, blushing and looking away.
“Jess told me you quit school to become a grease monkey,” Jason smirked.
“That’s not what I said!”
I felt the blood rush to my face. “I’d better get back to work,” I told her.
“I really didn’t say that.”
“I think he’s kinda cute,” said one of the girls standing next to Jess.
“Reminds me of James Dean in that Rebel movie,” said the other. “Better watch out, Jason. You might have a little competition.”
“Yeah, well, nobody asked your opinion, Katie,” Jason said with a coldness that warned he could be dangerous.
I walked back into the garage and started a radiator flush on an Escalade. I couldn’t help but wonder what Jess had really said to her boyfriend about me. Had she told him about the loser she’d found to work on her car for cheap?
I didn’t care. The idea of her talking about me at all meant she’d been thinking about me. That was enough.
More than I expected. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself.
We were slammed with work that Tuesday, so it was four o’clock before I even started on the Beemer. By six o’clock all the other guys were cleaning up. I’d finished everything but the oil change and had just put Jess’s car up on the lift when I heard Baby Face whimper and saw her wag her tail. I looked out front to see Jess getting out of the backseat of a Camry driven by Katie. Jess slammed the car door and ran into the lobby.
“Watch out or you’re gonna pull a Wade,” Kip said as he pointed to the Beemer. In my distraction I’d forgotten to put the oil drain container under her car, and a slick pool of motor oil was forming on the floor. I was cleaning up the mess just as Gomez walked into the back of the garage, followed by Jess.
“She asked if she could wait back here,” Gomez informed me with a smile. “I told her that was okay.”
“Are you crazy?” I whispered to him. Gomez never let customers hang out in the back. He said it was a liability. “I can’t work with her watching me.”
“Talk to her. Can’t you see she’s upset?”
Jess was pacing back and forth in front of the Beemer. Her entire body was trembling, and the dark circles under her eyes seemed to have grown darker.
Wade came out of the restroom, saw Jess, and smiled. “Looks like you’re gonna be awhile. I’ll catch a ride home with Nathan.”
“Whatever,” I told him, wanting to slap the grin off his face before Jess saw it.
“I’ll be up front if you need anything,” said Gomez.
Jess and I were suddenly alone. The sort of moment a guy like me would try to take advantage of if he didn’t smell like a men’s locker room. “Want a soda?” I asked, looking for an excuse to send her back to the lobby.
“What jerks!” she said, continuing to pace.
I dusted off a folding chair and set it down beside her car, but she didn’t seem to notice it. “Fight with your boyfriend?” I asked.
“No, my alleged friends Katie and Alice. They’ve been riding me ever since they found out my father gave me a credit card. I’m only supposed to use it for emergencies, which I define as my car breaking down and they define as a shoe sale at Dillard’s. When I refused to take them shopping on my father’s plastic, Katie told me I was selfish. I can’t believe my parents made me go to a new school halfway through my junior year. You know how hard it is when your parents are moving all the time?”
“I got a pretty good idea.”
“I tried to stay in touch with the old crowd from Downey High, but they started acting weird when we bought our new house. They say money changes you. It isn’t true. It changes everybody around you.” She got quiet. “I don’t have any real friends,” she said.
I wanted to ask, What about your boyfriend? But I didn’t.
The oil had finished draining and I figured I should get back to work, but Jess sat down in the chair and started crying.
I had no idea what to do, so I got a clean cloth out of the rag bin and handed it to her. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose in the rag. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
Because I’m a nobody, I thought. I crouched down in front of her, so my eyes were level with hers. Then I took her beautiful silk hand in my rough-stained crude one and said, “I could be your friend.” Probably the five lamest words that had ever come out of my mouth. Jess looked at me in surprise. “If you’re really desperate, that is,” I added, trying to pass it off as a joke. Then I let go of her hand and went back to work on her car, before I could embarrass myself any further.
I felt her warm breath and turned to see that Jess had come to stand right next to me. “I know this sounds crazy, because we haven’t really seen each other much in the last four years and we’ve both gone in different directions, but I have a feeling I could tell you anything.”
“That’s because what I think doesn’t matter.” I wasn’t trying to feel sorry for myself. Just stating what seemed obvious.
“Oh, yes it does. It matters a lot. What everyone thinks matters. That’s the problem,” she said. “And mostly what they think is that you should stay in your place. Be small and insignificant so you don’t outshine them. But you’re not like that, are you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” She smiled for the first time that afternoon. Then she walked back out to the lobby, leaving me standing there, pouring oil on my boots, wondering what made her sound so lost and desperate, wishing I could wrap my arms around her and let her cry on my shoulder forever.
11
WADE AND I HIT RUSH HOUR IN ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO.
Besides a couple hours’ sleep in Kingman and our lunch stop in Flagstaff, I’ve been driving twelve straight hours.
“We ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Wade says, looking at the trail of cars standing still on I-40. “We should stop and eat.”
“It’s only five thirty.”
“Ain’t nothin’ but little cow towns between here and Amarillo.” He points at the map.
I merge into the right lane and creep at a snail’s pace toward the exit for Rio Grande Boulevard, hoping this will make him happy so he’ll stop sulking.
“Order a burrito for me and a hamburger for Baby Face while I take her out to stretch her legs,” I say as I park in front of a Mexican restaurant called Little Anita’s. At least I have a wallet full of money. I cashed my paycheck at the end of the month and still have most of the cash on me.
I take Baby Face out of the car, and she pees by some bushes in the parking lot. I put her back in the Mustang and go to a pay phone outside, pulling my map of Texas out of my back pocket. My hand shakes as I punch in the numbers under the name, Levida Dawson, written on the map, not sure what I will say when and if she answers. Don’t even know if the number is still good.
“Hello,” says a gravelly voice on the other en
d of the line.
“Hello.”
“Who is this?” the voice demands. I’m pretty sure it’s my grandmother, but she sounds like a man. A very angry one.
“I’m looking for Levida Dawson.”
“What do you want?” The voice becomes shrill, and I’m sure it’s a woman now.
What do I say, that I’m her long-lost grandson? “I’m trying to find D.J. Dawson.”
“Are you a reporter? I told you people a hundred times, I got nothin’ to say. Why can’t you leave me alone?” She slams the receiver down so hard, the sound cracks through my ear all the way to my brain.
In the restaurant I find Wade sitting at a table with two plates covered in red chile sauce next to a hamburger in a Styrofoam box. “Did you talk to your grandma?” he asks.
“Yeah. She was so excited to hear we’re coming, she was nearly speechless.” I slip into the booth and take a bite out of a chile-smothered burrito that instantly sets my mouth on fire. I drain my glass of water and then grab the honey container and start squirting the stuff into my mouth. “Damn, what do they put in this stuff—battery acid?”
Wade smiles in amusement as I start drinking his water. “It’s red chile. I asked for the hot stuff.”
“Great.”
Once I get past the first bite, the rest isn’t so bad, though I worry what it will do to my insides later. As the food settles, an overwhelming exhaustion comes over me.
“Want to drive?” I ask Wade when we get out to the car.
“Sure,” he says in surprise, and I toss him the keys.
“Stick to the speed limit and no detours.”
“No detours.”
Traffic on I-40 has thinned out a little, but not much. Wade weaves in and out of cars like a madman, and I know there is no hope of me sleeping until we get out on the open road. A nervous energy rises up in me, the kind that comes when you really need to sleep but you’re so strung out on adrenaline you can’t even close your eyes. The need to do something, anything, is overwhelming. Plus, the chile is starting to work its way through my gut.
I want to tell Wade to pull over and let me drive, but we’re in the far left lane by this time and traffic has come to a halt again. That’s when I think of the leather journal, sitting on the backseat next to Baby Face. I reach back and get it, open it up, and look at the first word scrawled there in my own hand: Jess.
I wrote it above the last poem Miss Lane put in my notebook. I think about what she said about keeping things inside. Think about the day I have just endured. Not even twenty-four hours have passed since our encounter with Eight Ball, and already we’re two states away, our lives changed forever. I need to put the words on paper. I don’t know why. I’m not sure how. Don’t even know where to start. With Eight Ball, with Jess, with the road?
I think about how scared I was last night in the desert. The most frightened I’ve ever been. I figure I’ve got nothing to lose, and so I turn to a clean page and write:
I know my words are an embarrassing jumble, but I feel better putting them on paper. Besides, what does it matter? No one will ever read them anyway.
12
BY FRIDAY MORNING I WAS WOUND UP LIKE A SPRING IN the backseat of a new car. Everybody at the garage was in a crappy mood, or maybe it just seemed that way. After Jess brought her Beemer in for that tune-up, I didn’t expect to see her again. No reason our paths should ever cross. Even so, every time a car pulled up to the shop, I stopped what I was doing to see if it might be her.
“Expecting somebody?” Kip said after I’d looked outside for the fiftieth time that day.
“Your mama …” I started to say more, but then thought better of it.
After lunch I finished replacing the muffler on a Hummer, and Gomez asked Wade to move it out to the parking lot until the owner came for it. Wade hopped inside the massive SUV and proceeded to back over a Jag waiting for a brake job.
“You know what that’s gonna cost me?” Gomez screamed as Wade stared in horror at the mangled front end of the Jaguar.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“You’re supposed to be making me money, not costing me a fortune in body work!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Give me one good reason I don’t fire you right now!”
“I’m real sorry.” Wade’s face turned bright red, and his entire body started to shake.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“I dunno.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, just sit over there out of the way and try not to destroy anything else until I decide what to do.”
I followed Gomez to his office behind the front lobby. “I’ll fix the Jag on my own time,” I offered.
“It needs a whole new front end. We don’t do body work,” Gomez said, sitting behind his desk and rubbing his hands through his thick peppered hair.
“You can take it out of my paycheck. Whatever it costs. Please, just give Wade another chance.”
“Why are you doing this? You’re not the one who ran over the car. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t run him off.”
“Wade got beat up real bad in juvie. He was in a coma for three days.”
“Holy Mother.”
“He’s never been the same since. His coordination is messed up, and he gets double vision.”
“Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
“Wade doesn’t like people to know. He doesn’t remember how it happened, and it makes him nervous to talk about it.”
I pictured the way Wade had looked when I’d run back to the shower room with the guard, sprawled out on the tile in a pool of his own blood, and I prayed Gomez didn’t ask me more, because then I would have to explain how it was me they had been after and how I had run.
The old man picked up a photograph sitting on his desk, a picture of his youngest son, who had been killed in a drive-by.
“Maybe I could try Wade at the front desk.”
“Thank you!” I said, jumping to my feet and pumping Gomez’s hand in gratitude. “You won’t regret this.”
When I walked out of the office, I was surprised to see Wade standing outside at the corner in front of the shop, smoking a cigarette. The traffic light turned green, and he started walking. I ran outside after him and caught up with him on the other side of the street.
“Hey, where you goin’?”
“Nowhere.” He kept walking without looking up.
“You can’t just leave work.”
“Why not? Gomez is gonna can me anyway.”
“No, he’s not. I just talked to him. He’s gonna put you at the front desk.”
Wade stopped suddenly, a cold and hard look in his eyes that I’d never seen there before. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” I lied, but Wade wasn’t buying it.
“Stay out of my business,” he screamed, and then he took off down the street.
I had to run to keep up with him. “Wade, don’t do this. You need this job.”
“No, you need this job,” he said. “Now that you’re trying to play Mr. Johnny-Be-Good.” He spun around to face me. “Don’t go out drinkin’, Wade. You know it’s a violation of our probation, Wade. Can’t keep any weed around the house no more, Wade. What happens if we get caught? Can’t be seen with the gang. Gotta keep our noses clean. Well, I’ll tell you somethin’, I’m sick and tired of tryin’ to keep my nose clean. If you’re what guys turn into when they go straight, I’d rather stay crooked.”
His words hit me like a punch in the face. I knew I’d been holding my act together pretty tight, but I didn’t think it showed. “Wade, come on, don’t say shit like that.”
A Honda Civic drifted around the corner and then skidded to a stop next to us. The window slid down to reveal Two Tone sitting in the passenger seat. The driver was an associate of the BSB.
“Got the stuff?” asked Wade.
Two Tone smiled and held up a baggie filled with pot.
“Wade, don’t do this,” I said, bu
t even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I felt the desperate need for a joint. Felt the edge that had been growing sharper inside of me. Knew a toke would smooth down my jagged borders. Took a deep breath and imagined calmness filling my lungs.
“Eight Ball’s got a party goin’ on down at the Krazy Eights Klub. Want in?” Two Tone asked.
“Wade, don’t be an idiot,” I said, coming back to myself.
“But I am an idiot,” he said, pointing to the scar on his forehead where the guys in juvie had bashed his head against the bathroom mirror and knocked him unconscious. “That’s what you told Gomez, ain’t it? Let Wade the idiot sit at the front desk and answer phones. Maybe he won’t drop ’em.” Wade turned to Two Tone. “I’m in,” he said. As he got into the backseat of the Honda Civic, Two Tone flashed me a smile that said he had won this round.
Wade rolled down the back window, looked at me, and said, “I’m not like you.”
Then he closed the window and the Civic sped away.
13
I WAKE UP COVERED IN SWEAT AND SHAKING FROM THE same old dream.
A room with blue curtains and a cuckoo clock that keeps ticking louder and louder like a bomb, until a screaming bird explodes through the door and I wake up.
Why is it that a stupid clock scares the shit out of me?
I look around and try to get my bearings.
It’s dark. I’m in the passenger seat of the Mustang. Baby Face is asleep in the back. I remember we’re on the run.
Look around for Wade, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
Highway is nowhere in sight.
I wonder if Eight Ball has found us, killed Wade, and is somewhere outside, waiting for me.
My eyes adjust to the darkness of the place, and I see moonlight reflecting on water; a shadowy figure sits on the edge of a rock fence, reading a sign by the flame of a Bic lighter. I get out of the car and approach cautiously.
“Wade?”
“Pretty, ain’t it?” he says, flicking off the flame.
