by Thomas King
“I thought you said women get sensual.”
“Are you horny?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe a little?”
“I just spent the afternoon throwing up.”
Mimi slides her leg over my groin and runs her hand under my shirt. “How about now?”
I WAITED UNTIL MONDAY to take the car. My mother worked from eight until six. I figured I’d go over to Dr. Philips’s house just after she left and grab the keys, drive around for three or four hours, and then put the car back in the garage, with no one the wiser.
The keys for the car were on a hook behind the front door. Next to the key hook was a notepad with a pen attached. There were three items on the pad. The first said “Insurance review.” The second simply said “Gauge.” The third said “Call Howard.”
I told myself that when I was rich, I was going to have hooks for my keys and a notepad to remind me of things that needed to be done.
So I had the key, but I couldn’t just take the car and drive it around town. I wasn’t sure how many 1960 red Plymouth Fury convertibles there were in Roseville, but lots of people knew my mother, which meant they knew me. And if they saw me in the car, they’d know that the two of us didn’t belong together.
Instead, I headed up Highway 80 towards Auburn and the mountains, a full tank of gas, the top down, the wind in my hair, the sun shining. I remember promising myself that this was the way my life was going to be.
Roseville to Truckee was about eighty-five miles. A little over two hours non-stop. I made it there in under that. Dr. Philips had great taste in cars. The Plymouth flew up the highway like a rocket bound for the moon.
SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, lying on the bed, and it turns out I’m a little interested after all. Mimi senses this and presses her advantage.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she tells me. “You lie back, and I’ll do all the work.”
This is not as easy as it sounds. I’m still not feeling great, and not sure I can hold up my end. But Mimi takes her time, and before I know it, we’re off to the races, a couple of sweaty horses hitting the finish line together.
More or less.
“Imagine that,” she says, as she rolls off me. “You should be sick more often.”
“You did all the work.”
“Still, you were impressive.”
Mimi sits up and holds out the cardboard badge she took from Nigel. “Fornication in Prague hotel room is against the law,” she says in a terrible accent that sounds like a Russian who has spent too much time in Newfoundland. “You will have to pay fine.”
“It wasn’t fornication. You assaulted me.”
“Fifty American dollars or more sex.”
I do my best impression of being dead. “The fifty dollars.”
Mimi bends down and kisses my stomach. “You don’t have fifty dollars.”
I WAS HUNGRY by the time I got to Truckee. I had about three dollars on me. Maybe some change. A burger joint next to a Standard gas station was advertising an “American Meal”—burger, fries, and a soft drink—for $1.50.
“Seems a little high,” I told the girl at the window.
“Olympics,” she said. “Now we’re a tourist trap.”
I ate the burger sitting at a picnic table and took in the forest and the mountains all around me. I could hear the Truckee River, but I couldn’t see it. At that moment, I thought about getting into the car and driving into the rising sun. Nevada, Utah, Colorado. At that moment, the last place I wanted to be was home.
The last person I wanted to be was me.
I took my time with the french fries. I knew I wouldn’t have another chance to enjoy life like this for a long time. Thomas Blackbird Mavrias and his Plymouth Fury on their way to the stars.
I hit the restroom at the back of the café, washed my hands so that I wouldn’t get any french-fry grease on the car, and slid back under the steering wheel. I wasn’t in any hurry. I thought I’d head down to Lake Tahoe, drive around the Nevada side, maybe stop at one of the casinos, see if I could get in.
There was plenty of time to tour the lake and still get home before my mother got off work. Plenty of time before Dr. Philips and his wife returned from Hawaii.
I turned the key in the ignition, punched the drive button, backed the car out of the parking space, and swung around just as the engine lurched several times and died.
MIMI WAS RIGHT. Sex was the better option. Fifty American dollars had just been a ploy.
“You know what,” says Mimi, who is more awake than she should be. “I’m hungry.”
“Sleep first,” I say. “Then we eat.”
“I’m hungry now.”
“I think I’m still sick.”
As Mimi sits up, the sheet falls away from her breasts. Even in my diminished condition, they are lovely to look at.
“Are you listening to me or looking at my boobs?”
“Both.”
“So, you’re not that sick.”
“I’m definitely weak.”
Mimi bounces out of bed. “Maybe I’ll go out and get you some white rice. Maybe I’ll be knocked down by some handsome stranger, and he’ll have to help me back to the hotel.”
“Maybe he’ll have a badge.”
“Like this one,” says Mimi, and she holds up Nigel’s little masterpiece.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“The bundle,” says Mimi. “Maybe this will be the contribution from Prague.”
I TRIED STARTING the car again. The battery was charged. The starter motor was turning over. But the engine wouldn’t catch. And that’s when I saw it. The gas gauge. It was still set on full.
And then I remembered. The note on the pad next to the keys. “Gauge.”
Shit.
The attendant at the gas station was a young kid about my age. I tried to be nonchalant.
“Sometimes the gauge doesn’t work,” I told him. “I think I’m out of gas.”
“Nice car.”
“It’s a beauty, all right.”
“You want me to help you push it?”
I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I said sure, and we started pushing the car the hundred feet or so from the café to the pumps. The Fury drove like a dream, but pushing it was like trying to shove a boulder up a down escalator.
“Fill it up?”
“How many gallons will a dollar buy me?”
“A dollar?” The kid gave me a cockeyed smile. “Gas is forty-one cents a gallon, so you’d get about two gallons.”
“It’s thirty-one cents in the valley.”
“We’re not in the valley.”
I started to do the math in my head. “You know how many miles to the gallon this car gets?”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s my father’s car. He lets me use it.”
“Cool,” said the kid. “Pop the hood, and we’ll take a look.”
Which was more easily said than done. I had never opened the hood of a 1960 Plymouth Fury. So I hung back and let the kid take the lead.
“Your dad’s got good taste.”
“That’s Dad.”
“This is the 361 Sonoramic. Two Carter four barrels, 310 horses, 435 cubic inches of torque.”
“Lot of power.”
“At the top end,” says the kid, “but it’s a little slow off the mark.”
“What do you think it gets to the gallon?”
The kid made a low whistling sound. “The four barrels will suck a tank dry pretty quick. At this altitude, you’d be lucky to get ten, maybe twelve.”
“Ten miles to the gallon?”
“Lucky.”
No matter how I did the math, the dollar plus change wasn’t going to get me home.
“You broke?”
“Naw,” I said, “but I left my wallet at home.”
“Guess you’ll have to call your dad.”
“Gone.” I shook my head. “He and Mom went to Hawaii.”
“Damn,
” said the kid. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.”
I stood there and tried to look pathetic.
“If this was Nevada,” said the kid, “you could put your dollar in one of those slots and take your chances. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Those places don’t make money by giving it away.”
Stuck in Truckee. It was almost biblical. Steal a car. Get stuck in Truckee. Divine retribution. Mom was going to find out I had taken the car. Dr. Philips was going to know that Katheryn Mavrias’s oldest boy was a thief.
Standing there at the service station in Truckee, I wondered if it was possible to push the car to the top of a hill, throw it in neutral, and coast all the way down to the valley and back to town.
“Course there might be a way I can help you out.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s pop the trunk and see what we got.”
MIMI TAKES A BATH. I lie in bed and watch the spiders on the ceiling. They’ve become part of the family now, along with the air conditioner that doesn’t work.
Eugene sits on the edge of the bed. Kitty has found her favourite corner. Chip is on the floor doing push-ups, while the twins count out each rep.
Busy day, says Eugene. Smart move, pretending to be sick.
An upset stomach, says Kitty, is one of the first signs of pancreatic cancer.
Twenty-eight, say Desi and Didi, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one . . .
I hear Mimi splashing in the tub. “For a sick guy,” she shouts out, “you were pretty good.”
Some lover, says Eugene. Lie on your back and think of mother England.
“Matter of fact,” says Mimi, “you were great.”
Or bowel cancer, says Kitty. It’s probably one of the two.
“And I was proud of you. The way you were prepared to protect me.”
“Maybe we should try to get robbed more often.”
Let’s not do that, says Desi. Confrontation makes Didi anxious.
Chip is up to fifty-three and is sweating pretty hard. Why does this shit always happen to me?
“When you get out of the tub,” I call out to Mimi, “you want to grab Chinese?”
THE KID’S NAME WAS Randy. His uncle owned the service station, and he was teaching his nephew how to be a mechanic.
“I finished high school, so it’s not like I can fool around. My dad’s a plumber, but I like cars.”
“You got a car?”
“Not yet,” said Randy. “But I got my eye on a ’56 Bel Air.”
I opened the trunk. The spare tire was off to the left. Dr. Philips had arranged the rest of the trunk in boxes. Tire chains. Jumper cables. Two cans of 30 weight motor oil.
“Your dad takes good care of his car.”
“I help,” I say.
Randy took a step back and leaned on one foot as though he was thinking. “Okay,” he said, “here’s what I can do.”
MIMI COMES OUT of the bathroom all warm and smelling of soap, and climbs into bed with me.
“We don’t have to go out,” she says.
I quickly roll on my stomach.
Mimi runs her fingers down my back. “We can just stay here and cuddle.”
I slide out of bed quickly and put my underpants on. “Thought you were hungry.”
Mimi thinks about this for a moment. “You’re right,” she says at last. “I am hungry. We can sleep when we get back to Guelph.”
I already have my pants and shirt on. But I can’t find my socks.
“We’re not going to be here much longer. Prague is the end of the line. No more postcards.”
I throw the covers back and check the sheets, and sure enough, there they are.
“We won’t have an excuse to travel.”
I put my socks on. “You’ll think of something.”
“Maybe, when we get home, we should try starting over.” Mimi has put on her green silk dress with the red flowers. This is the dress she brings for special occasions. “I could work some social relevance into my paintings.”
“And I could write a book?”
“You were a hell of a journalist.”
I sit back down on the edge of the bed. “My writing isn’t going to save the world. My articles aren’t going to prevent wars. They’re not going to stop climate change. They’re not going to end poverty or restrain greed.”
Mimi sits down beside me. “Maybe they don’t have to. Maybe that’s the mistake we make, why we’re so easily defeated.”
Outside, somewhere in Kampa Park, a band begins to play bigband tunes. First up is Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.”
“But in the meantime, how about we go dancing?”
“Dancing?”
“Why yes,” says Mimi, “I’d love to.”
I COULD HAVE GONE over to Tahoe and circled the lake. Now that I had a full tank of gas, I could go almost anywhere. Instead, I got back on the 80 and headed home.
Randy had been as helpful as he could have been.
Under the circumstances.
A full tank of gas came to just under $7.50. The spare was worth about $40. Randy figured he could sell it for around $20, which meant that with the trade, he’d come out about $12.50 ahead, especially as the spare tire was on a rim.
“Most people never even touch their spares,” Randy told me. “Lot of my customers trade their cars in every two years. Most of them don’t even know they have an extra tire. Your dad like that?”
“Sort of.”
“Probably won’t even miss it.”
“Right.”
“Just don’t get a flat.”
I drove the speed limit down through Emigrant Gap, past Gold Run and Colfax. I thought about stopping in Auburn, but I didn’t have any money to speak of, and I didn’t want to take the chance that the car might break down.
On the drive up to Truckee, I had been a high roller out to see the world. Coming down, I was a fugitive in a stolen vehicle with no licence, trying to make it home without being arrested.
And I did.
I was sure that everyone was watching me as I drove along Main Street and pulled into Dr. Philips’s driveway. I backed the car into the garage and left it as I had found it. I hung the key back on the hook and locked the door to the house.
Then I went home and waited for my mother to return from work. And for the sky to fall.
KAMPA PARK IS FULL. There are food vendors everywhere. I get a sausage plate with brown bread, sauerkraut, and hot mustard. Along with a glass of beer. Mimi gets a cheese sandwich. She drinks most of my beer.
“Let’s get one of those trdelnik thingies,” she says. “We can split it.”
Along with the food vendors, there are craftspeople selling all sorts of stuff. Mimi buys a small bottle of beer shampoo. I buy a box of something called “spa wafers.” The food and the wandering have settled me, and I’m feeling better.
At the far end of the park, we find the band. Several couples are dancing on the grass.
“‘Sentimental Journey,’” I tell Mimi. “1940s.”
“Can we dance to it?”
“If we knew how to dance.”
“We’re in Prague,” says Mimi. “Who’s going to care.”
“Sentimental Journey” ends, and the quintet slides into “Embraceable You.”
Mimi drags me onto the grass and puts her arms around me.
“I could stand on your feet, and you could lead.”
“Or we could just stand here and hum along with the music.”
Mimi snuggles in against my shoulder. The night is warm. You can’t see the stars, but there are lights in the trees and on the bridge. All around, the city glitters, as we sway back and forth.
THE PHILIPSES RETURNED two weeks later, tanned and happy, with photographs of blue water and white sand beaches. Mrs. Philips brought my mother a red patterned muumuu and a set of four drinking glasses that said “Blue Hawaii.”
Each morning, I would watch Dr. Philips drive his car out of the garage, expecting that any moment, he woul
d stop, open the trunk, and discover the theft. But he didn’t.
Then in late August, he left for work in the Plymouth and came home with a brand-new Ford Galaxie 500. Springtime Yellow.
And that was that.
IT’S LATE WHEN WE leave the park. The band is playing “At Last,” and Mimi and I slow dance our way past the food stands and under the bridge to the small square in front of the hotel. A soft, high fog has settled on the city, but tonight, we won’t get lost.
“The door’s open,” says Mimi. “That’s a good sign.”
“Unless we want to spend the night on the Charles Bridge.”
“But then we couldn’t have sex.”
“We’ve had sex. Twice.”
“Are you tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“But not too exhausted.”
“Completely exhausted.”
“Tell you what,” says Mimi. “You pretend to be a tourist, and I’ll show you my badge.”
We stand outside the hotel and listen to the music in the distance. Mimi leaves me, walks over to the small canal that runs along the side of the bridge, and looks down into the water.
“We never did find out what happened to Uncle Leroy or the Crow bundle.”
“Nope.”
“But that’s no reason why we should give up.” Mimi leans against me. “Maybe we should take one of those dinner cruises.”
“On the Vltava?” I shake my head. “Expensive, and the food will be horrible.”
“We might see the world from a different point of view,” says Mimi. “Sometimes that makes all the difference.”
I’m still a little weak from the episode in the park, but as I stand there with Mimi, I realize that for the first time in a while, Eugene and the Other Demons are nowhere in sight.
XIII
Oz is already in the breakfast room by the time I get there.
“Good morning,”he says. “I was hoping you would arrive.”
“Here I am.”
“Yes, here you are.” Oz folds his newspaper. “Today, I leave Prague, so there is much to discuss.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes, of course. Prague is beautiful, but one cannot walk back and forth on the Charles Bridge and call it life.”
Oz takes an envelope out of his jacket and places it on the table next to his coffee cup. “So, tell me what you did yesterday. The Infant Jesus of Prague? The Lennon Wall? The Farmers’ Market? Mala Strana?”