I Want That Car.
Week after week, I worked night shift. Two out of three nights a week, I called Larry at three or four o’clock in the morning.
“Can you pick me up?”
“Sure Baby, be right there.” He never complained. Larry went to work at seven.
I’d stand on the street chain-smoking 120-millimeter cigarettes down to the filter, waiting.
Larry would light a cigarette and pull on his jeans, boots, chaps and jacket. He’d walk half a block to the end of the street in the pitch black, then lumber to the alley, reaching the garage. He’d brush off the snow from the lock, insert the key, and lift the manual garage door. Then he’d put on his helmet, back the bike onto the street, re-close and lock the garage door, put on his gloves, then drive 45 minutes in the freezing cold to get me.
I did not thank him for this. When he arrived, I hopped on, teeth chattering, hands and feet frozen, pulled on my helmet – and off we went toward home.
About two-thirds of the way home, we’d cross under an overpass, the Harley engine echoing briefly as we rode. And there, under the overpass, sat a decrepit black Camaro with a rolled, molding sign that said “FOR SALE.”
We passed that car for months.
On one particularly cold night, when I was exhausted and frozen to the bone, I leaned up toward the front of the bike. Over the echo of the Harley engine I said to Larry, as loudly as I could muster, “I want that car.”
“You want that fuckin’ Camaro?”
“Yes, I love it. And I’m fucking cold.”
Larry laughed his gravelly laugh. “What’s to love about it?”
“It’s black,” I said. “I want a black Camaro.”
“That car’s a piece of shit,” he said. “But maybe I’ll fuckin’ look at it.”
Less than a week later, Larry paid $250 cash and drove that Camaro home.
When I saw the car in the daylight, all I saw was rust. There were rust holes in the floor on the driver’s side and the passenger’s side – huge, gaping holes that allowed us to see the road passing by underneath. There were rust holes in the ceiling allowing us to similarly watch the sky. There was rust around the headlights, the taillights, both doors, and the bumpers on both ends.
The Camaro had the amazingly delightful smell of old leather, oil, mold and stale cigarettes. I inhaled deeply as I stuck my head through the window.
“It has an 8-track player!” I yelled, bumping my head and knocking a bit of rust from the door.
Our new Camaro was broken and misaligned and rusted out in every conceivable way. The fact that Larry was able to drive it home was a miracle; the fact that he could fix it himself was another one.
Our garage was too small to store the car inside with the bike, but Larry pulled it in halfway whenever he had time to work on it. Sometimes he pulled in the front part of the car and worked under the hood. Sometimes he jacked up the car to get underneath and laid on the cold garage floor. Sometimes he backed it in, jacked it up, and messed with tires and wires and bolts.
Six weeks later, we had a functional car.
“You painted it gray!” I screeched. “I wanted a black car!”
“That’s primer,” Larry said. “It’ll be black when I get the money to get it painted.”
A month later, we had a black car.
I loved it.