A Supposedly Staggering Infinite Work of Heartbreaking Illumination I'll Never Read

Strawberry letter 22

For You, The Stars
Chapter Fourteen: Installment 2

I’d been driving my new car to work almost every day, except when I carpooled with Bettie or Paul, for nearly two months when I decided I needed to give her a name. Chad always named his cars. He called his first two Hondas Norm and then Max, in each case naming the car after a setting on the air conditioner. We agreed that “Bi-Lev” would make a lousy name for a car, so when he bought this third new Honda, he called that one Bart, just so he could confuse people by saying he was taking Bart to his job at the university.

I definitely thought my car deserved a female name, although in some ways it was kind of butch with its blue (as opposed to pink) paintjob and square lines. I figured it was like ships. I finally settled on Lucille, naming it after B.B. King’s guitar.

I wasn’t sure I was doing that great a job of maintaining it, though. When Giselle’s other other boyfriend sold it to me, he didn’t really give me any tips, and I’d never owned car before. Mostly I just filled the tank and checked the air in the tires. After a couple of months had gone by I figured it might be time to change the oil or at least get that checked. I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to do it myself. I wasn’t at all mechanical and hadn’t grown up around cars. So I decided to take it to an Oil changers in Emeryville one day after work before driving home to San Francisco.

I pulled into the place and one of the guys who worked there came over to the driver’s side window, which I cranked down to talk to him. “Nice ride,” he said. I felt cool. I said, “thanks.”

“You want the works?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I probably need to change the oil, at least.”

“Probably need a new filter,” he said. “Hey, we don’t have the right one for this kind of car, but I can order it now for you and we will probably get one in by tomorrow.”

I thought about having him at least check the oil or give the engine a once-over, but I figured what’s one day?

I thanked him, said “Yeah, please order me that filter and I’ll drop by again around this time tomorrow.”

He said, “Cool,” and I backed the car out of the shop.

That night I gave Cecilia a call. We hadn’t been seeing much of each other but we were still talking on the phone at least every few nights. In some way it felt like it did when we first started going out, when we were on the phone all the time. I had taken a sort of benevolent attitude toward her emerging social life. After the wild night with the roadie she kind of admitted that I was right about what most guys really want and she seemed to be treating me like an adviser or confidant, almost as an avuncular figure. She knew I wasn’t that impressed by this new guy, Evan, who was hanging around her all the time, even helping out with babysitting her niece, and she knew I thought Sheena was sort of ditzy. She wasn’t looking for my approval or anything, but she obviously trusted me and liked me to know what was going on.

We still talked as if we were seeing each other too, and we had vague plans to get together the coming weekend or maybe the next.

I had told her about my one night with Maura, or really one day and one night, and how I hadn’t seen her since. She took a sort of perverse pleasure in that, and she acted reassured when I told her that she definitely had a better body than Maura did. Even though I tried to make it clear that that didn’t matter to me much, I had to admit that it was literally true. Cecilia was more shapely and feminine. On the other hand Maura was way more accomplished as a lover and I didn’t hesitate to tell Cecilia that. I wanted her to feel a little insecure about that, to not take me for granted. Maybe even to be a little jealous.

More recently I’d also kept her informed about my affair with Giselle. For once the word affair really seemed to fit. She agreed with me that the whole “other man” situation was lame and that our arrangement was the grown-up mature approach. Weren’t we telling each other everything.

I also let her know, in so many words, how sexy and seductive Giselle could be with me. Her sophisticated way of dressing and talking, her total lack of inhibitions in bed. Without trying to be cruel, or maybe a little, I let it slip that Giselle came easily and often. Cecilia didn’t take the bait. She acted sincerely happy for me. We were almost like high school friend sharing our adventures and experiences, but I still felt pangs of jealousy and I wanted to see some evidence of the same from her.

For some reason I forgot to bring Lucille in to the shop after work the next day and as I was driving over the bridge on the way home that evening I noticed a loud throbbing noise building up from the front of the car, coming from behind the dash. Something about the way the Lucille was handling didn’t feel right to me. It seemed to be laboring in some way. I wasn’t sure if I should trust my instincts about this because I only had the vaguest idea of how a car works. It didn’t feel right to me, but what did I know.

I was already on the bridge, though, having just passed the toll plaza, so I figured I ought to at least get over to San Francisco and then maybe I could pull into a gas station or a mechanic and have someone take a look. I gunned the engine, wanting to get over the bridge as fast as possible. There was a Brothers Johnson hit from the ’70s playing on the radio.

The laboring sound got louder and the car felt unwieldy under my hands. There started to be a high-pitched whining sound and I wasn’t really sure what to do. Suddenly there was a loud metallic thwack and I lost acceleration. The gas pedal went flaccid and the car started slowing down.

I tried pumping the accelerator but there was nothing. I was flying along at fifty, sixty miles an hour but slowing down rapidly with heavy traffic all around me and coming up my ass from behind. I put on my turn signal and started looking for an opening so I could drift to the rightmost lane. I also reached behind the steering wheel and put my hazards on, I managed to get all the way over in time to coast onto the exit for Treasure Island, in the middle of the bridge. I rolled down the off-ramp and ended up coming to rest a little ways from the guard booth for the Naval base there.

I sat in the car trying to figure out what to do. I knew that CalTrans would tow cars off the bridge if they were blocking traffic but I wasn’t stalled out in a lane so that probably wouldn’t kick in for me. Then I noticed a uniformed MP-looking guy approaching me. I rolled down the window and he said, “Please stay in your vehicle,” which was fine with me.

He asked me what the trouble was and I told him what had happened and that I didn’t know what it meant. I could smell a metallic burning smell, but there wasn’t any visible smoke coming from under my hood. He offered to call me a tow truck and I thanked him.

Later on I figured he was antsy because this was during the build up to the first gulf war and maybe they were on high alert at the bases for people rolling old junkers down to the gates. The battery still worked so I ended up listening to the radio for about forty-five minutes before a Ken Betts truck appeared.

They guy offered to look under the hood and when I told him what I had experienced he said, “It sounds like you threw a rod.”

“Is that bad?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Real bad?”

“Yeah, real bad.”

“Can I fix it?”

“You’d have to get the engine rebuilt, and it might be easier just to replace the engine entirely.”

That bad. Shit. “Why do you think it happened?” I asked him. Before he answered he went over and grabbed the dipstick. He stuck it in the well, wiped it with his rag, then stuck it in again, took it out and looked at it closely.

“It’s bone dry,” he said.

“The oil?” I asked him, feeling stupid.

“What oil,” he said. “There is none. You definitely threw a rod. There was no lubrication. That’s why it got so hot. That’s what you’re smelling now.”

I really felt like an idiot. I didn’t need to change the oil. I just had to add a couple of quarts. Why wasn’t I checking the oil? Nobody told me, but that’s because everybody assumed I knew probably the most basic thing about taking care of a car. The thing must have been leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez. I guess I hadn’t noticed the spots on the street on Sixth Avenue or in the parking lot in Emeryville.

I felt dumb but I also felt guilt. I had killed Lucille. I knew I wasn’t going to rebuild her engine. Suddenly she really did seem like a female to me, a helpless girl I was supposed to protect and I had let the worst possible thing happen to her instead. I could feel a tears trying to squeeze out of the corners of my eyes but I held them back because I didn’t want the tow truck guy to think I was a pussy.

He offered to tow me home and asked if I had Triple A. I did not. Fortunately, although it takes forever to drive from the east bay to San Francisco during the commute, the distance is really only about fifteen or twenty miles, and I was already halfway there, so the tow wasn’t that expensive.

He left Lucille on the street outside of my house. I didn’t know what to do with her. She sat there for weeks, getting tickets. Someone stole her beautiful matching hubcaps. Finally, I sold her for $50 for scrap metal, ending my first experiment in owning a car.

I hoped I would do better next time.

Giselle’s other outside boyfriend told her he felt terrible about the car he sold me not lasting that long. I told her to tell him it wasn’t his fault. He was actaully a really nice guy. I tall thin soft-spoken guy with glasses and a stoop. Giselle told me she had decided to stop seeing him, which actually made me sort of nervous. Also, he was going back east to Yale or somewhere to study the history of the efect of technology on society. I wished him luck.

Giselle also updated me on Jack, or Peter as she preferred to call him, her long-distance boyfriend, after he headed out again. They were breaking up. When they were fighting about me, he admitted that he had been having a series of flings and hookups throughout their whole relationship. This made Giselle really mad, I think because she had been feeling guilty about me and the other affairs she’d had and she had been imagining him pining away for her and he had allowed her to believe that fantasy.

I thought about pointing out to her that he had only been following the rules they had agreed upon, but I remembered that they were really his rules - she had never felt all that good about them - and also I didn’t really see the percentage in taking his side.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about being the sole survivor in Giselle’s romantic life, though. As much as I hadn’t liked being part of her cheating on her man, I realized that there had been some security for me in knowing I wasn’t expected to make any kind of commitment. I still had my ongoing thing with Cecilia to hide behind, but that was feeling like a flimsier screen every day.