by Nick Arvin
He turned into her parents’ driveway and parked behind their old pickup truck. Her father had used the truck to haul a stock car around to the racetracks for several years, until the hobby nearly bankrupted him and he had to give it up. He used to let Eileen drive practice laps in the race car, taught her some maneuvers, but she always preferred the truck. It had been old then and looked like a battered antique now. The tailgate was missing; the body panels were mottled with faded paint, patchy rust, and naked-pink Bondo. Martin gazed at it, hesitating. He wondered why the confidence he felt dealing with metal never extended further into his life—to women, to his future, to his grasp of his own desires.
Finally he got out and rang the doorbell. Faintly, he heard Eileen call, “Come in!”
The living room was empty. Eileen’s voice came from behind the closed door of her old bedroom. “My parents are gone, Martin. I’ll be out in a second.”
“OK,” Martin said, to the door. He sat on the sofa. From here he could see nearly all of the house—the shower curtain slumping into the tub, the dishes stacked beside the kitchen sink, a cluster of racing trophies on the dresser in her parents’ bedroom. It was a small house.
Martin briefly entertained a fantasy in which Eileen came out nude and seduced him.
She called, “Ready?”
“Sure.”
She was smiling and fully clothed. Her nose seemed different. “Hi,” she said.
Martin squinted slightly. Something had happened to her nose. This was definitely not the nose he recalled; this nose was smaller. Martin wondered for a moment if he was looking at the wrong woman, if this could even be completely the wrong house. But it was Eileen—same gray eyes, same long brown hair, same thin lips. Then he remembered that this was possible, people nowadays could have their noses changed, although he had never personally seen such a case before. But here it was, a new nose.
Martin realized he was staring. “Hi,” he said. He looked away. “Um,” he said. He glanced at her and she was looking at him. He said, “The nose?”
She raised her hands toward her face but stopped the gesture halfway and instead put her hands in her pockets. “That’s the surprise,” she said. “You think it looks better?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Oh,” he said, “oh, yeah.” He nodded slowly. He couldn’t think what to say. Then he thought of something. “It looks like a movie star’s.”
“Like Sigourney Weaver. That’s what I told them I wanted.”
He peered. “Oh,” he said. “Yup. That’s exactly it.” Eileen had Sigourney Weaver’s nose.
“Her nose is distinctive yet graceful. At least that’s what the doctor said.”
“I see what you’re saying. I mean, I see it right there.”
“I’m still a little self-conscious about it, especially here. I haven’t really been into town. I know how people will talk.”
“Well,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll get over it.”
“Yes,” she said. “I guess so.” She smiled a little. “I’m glad you like it.”
Martin smiled—he hoped it looked like a real smile. He looked around.
She said, “It feels awfully small now. The house, I mean. After having been away and come back.”
Martin said, “It’s not really that small.”
“The trees seem bigger, though,” she said. “I guess that’s because they are.”
They talked for a while about the people they had known in school, what they were doing. Martin watched her nose, how it moved up and down, just slightly, as she spoke, her nose that wasn’t her nose. Most of their classmates were still in town. Most, like Martin, now did the same things their parents did. Martin asked, “Are you planning to leave again soon?”
“In about a week,” she said. “You know, you should get out of this town too, Martin.”
Martin looked at her. Did she mean he should come with her? No, surely not. But that he should visit her? He said, “I like it pretty well here.”
“I know, but I think it would be good for you to get out. You might be surprised. You might like it.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. As a girl, Martin knew, Eileen had traveled often and far with her father, pursuing small-purse races at all the little tracks within a five- or six-hundred-mile radius of town. She had stayed in cheap motels, had eaten in greasy diners, truck stops, and race-themed saloons, had watched thousands and thousands of miles of countryside blur by. Ever since she had left for college she had continued to travel and move on; her address changed almost every year. Martin, on the other hand, had never been more than a hundred miles from the town limits, on short excursions to the city to visit the junkyards or to buy the things his mother couldn’t get in town. Otherwise he didn’t leave the mountains. His parents were not travelers. His father worked nearly every day of the year, taking on small engine repair jobs, or even vacuum cleaners, VCRs, and washing machines, if he couldn’t find a car around that needed fixing. The additional income wasn’t necessary; he just liked to take a thing that was useless and make it useful again. Now, as Martin picked up the work at the garage, his father was doing even more of these small jobs, often for no pay.
Eileen gestured with a long sweep of her hand. “There’s a whole world out there, Martin, a very big world.”
“Maybe. But I usually feel like there’s enough of a world right here.”
But once he’d said this, Martin was uncertain how much he believed it. On a number of occasions over the years Martin’s father had assured him that, really, there was no need to go anywhere when everything he needed was right here. It made sense to Martin when his father said it. There were good people here. He had steady work that he mostly enjoyed and the opportunity to one day take a business and make it his own. But when he thought of Eileen he wasn’t so sure, wasn’t at all sure that everything he needed was right here.
Eileen looked at the floor. “You’re probably right,” she said. “There’s stuff here I don’t appreciate as much as I should.”
Martin felt embarrassed. He watched a silent pair of headlamps slide by in the night-black window.
Suddenly Eileen stood. “So, what’s your surprise?”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I had something unusual come into the shop at the end of the day. A truck.”
She smiled. “I like trucks.”
“This one is a prototype, from the labs or whatever in Detroit. These engineers had it wrapped in black plastic to disguise it. They broke a rear suspension link.”
“A rear suspension link? So, it’s got an independent rear suspension? Not a solid axle?”
Martin nodded.
“That’s interesting. They must have done that to improve handling.”
“That’s what they were out here testing. Handling.”
“Does it look good?”
“I couldn’t tell with the disguise on.”
“And now they’re gone.”
“No. Actually, I lied. I told them I would have to keep it overnight. Want to see it?”
“Martin, you lied?”
Martin felt his cheeks heating a little in embarrassment. It was pretty unusual—Martin tended toward honesty and caution in most things. He felt again the surging, fluttering feeling he had when he picked up the phone to call Eileen, an exhilarated feeling, the feeling perhaps of taking hold of the wheel of something significant and turning it to an unfamiliar direction. He said, “I was curious what it looks like under the disguise. But I haven’t taken it off yet.”
“You were waiting for me?”
Martin’s throat closed up. He nodded.
“Thanks,” she said and smiled. “Let’s go see it.”
Outside, Martin held the car door open for her. While they drove back through town, she said, “Really, what do you think of the nose?”
He glanced at her. Nose, he thought. He steered through a turn, rubbed his cheek. “I think it’s pretty amazing what they can do these days
.”
She was staring at him. She said, “I guess you don’t like it then.”
“I like it. It’s very nice. But I liked it before. It’s just different.”
She was silent.
He said, “The nose doesn’t matter much, one way or the other. It’s you I like.”
“Well, that’s sweet,” she said.
He ground into the gravel of the parking lot and stopped. Actually, he couldn’t decide what to make of the nose. It was too strange. That first impression, that he’d gone to the wrong house and picked up the wrong woman, hadn’t completely gone away. She talked more and with more confidence now than she had when they were in high school. He had seen this change before, had seen it arrive gradually in her previous, occasional visits home. But his memory of her always reverted to when he had known her best, and the surprise of who she had become felt new every time he saw her. It made him wonder, had he changed too? He had, of course, though he rarely thought of it. He essentially ran his father’s shop now, and that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. And—this deception of the engineers. He never would have done this when he was younger, and it struck him as a little worrisome that with age he was perhaps growing not wiser but more foolish.
He led her through the side door and into the service bay. The darkness was nearly complete; only a bluish glint of light here and there suggested objects. He flipped a switch. The fluorescent lights flickered, then held and brightened.
They stood looking at the prototype truck. The lights buzzed.
Eileen said, “It’s not really a truck. It’s an SUV.”
“An SUV is a kind of a truck.”
“I suppose.”
Martin frowned. While Eileen circled around the truck, scrutinizing, he picked a washer off the floor and set it on the table beside him. After a minute he tapped the plastic panel covering the hood and said, “Guess we might as well take these off and see how it looks.”
The panels attached with Velcro peeled away easily. Others were strapped on, or attached directly to the sheet metal with screws or cotter pins. Tacky patches of adhesive, small holes, and furry strips of Velcro marred the paint beneath. Bundles of wires ran from the gap around the hood down into the front grille and back to the passenger-side door. But once the disguise was off the intended appearance was obvious—the sheet metal swooped into sharp creases at the corners and narrowed toward a snarling chrome grille bracketed by wide headlamps with mirrored reflectors shaped with dozens of intersecting flat surfaces, like intricately cut gemstones.
“It’s very modern,” said Martin.
“I like it,” Eileen said. “And, think, the only people who have seen this are some engineers and designers, and you and me.”
“True.”
“Plus, I like the color,” she said. It was a bright red.
The black plastic panels lay on the floor. Martin kicked one to the side. “Well,” he said, “go for a spin?”
“You said it’s broken.”
“I already fixed it.” Martin pulled the keys from his pocket and pressed a button on the key fob. The truck bleeped. The locks whirred. He held out the keys, and Eileen snatched them. She grinned and he grinned and she ran, literally ran, around to the driver’s door, as if afraid he might try to get there first. And Martin felt good then, great even, like maybe this wasn’t the dumbest thing he’d ever done. Maybe—he allowed the hope to surface and float happily in the back of his mind—maybe this would turn out to be worth it.
A mess of wires erupted from the dash. Many of them fed into a portable computer on the floor that Martin kicked up into the footwell. Eileen flipped open the armrest between the front seats. “Six-CD changer,” she reported. “It also says ‘DVD.’” Martin reached up and pushed a button to roll open the sunroof. Another button dropped a small screen from the ceiling; it displayed a detailed map of Southern California with a large you-are-here arrow. Martin pressed another button and static swarmed the screen. He pressed it again and got more static. He said, “I guess we don’t get cable.” But he hit the button once more and an Internet website popped up. Eileen turned the key and the speedometer and the tach appeared in glowing digits on the foot of the windshield. “This is so cool,” she said. “I wish we had some CDs.”
Martin pushed the video screen closed and looked at the steering wheel, the center of which was open, black, and empty. He said, “Looks like they took out the airbags.”
“Well, I’ll drive carefully,” Eileen said. She then revved the engine and sprayed gravel as she backed out of the service bay, spun in the parking lot, and swerved onto the road.
She drove fast. They were out of town in a minute, and the twists in the road rushed on them from the dark. Eileen hit the brakes, lurching them into their seat belts, and squealing around the turns. Martin was pressed into the door, then pulled away. She hit the accelerator as a curve began to straighten, and they were set back into their seats while the engine grew noisy. The truck generated speed quickly, even when pointed uphill. Martin said, “Must be some engine they’ve dropped in here.”
Air rippled through the sunroof with a noise like a flapping flag and the stars there swayed and twisted. Martin’s stomach clutched a little when Eileen crossed lanes to hit the inside of a curve, but he actually didn’t feel too nervous. There didn’t seem to be anyone else out; they tore through an unremitting darkness like the only moving vehicle on earth. And he knew that she knew what she was doing with a truck. She had always been a better driver than he was.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“The steering’s on-center feel is a bit sloppy,” she said, “and I’m surprised by the tendency to oversteer in the corners.” She grinned. “Other than that, it’s great. It handles almost like a car. This engine could tow the Titanic up a mountain.”
“It’s a nice truck,” he said. “It’ll be even nicer when they get all this junk out of here.” He toed the computer on the floor. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I’m glad you invited me out. This is fun. I haven’t been getting out.”
Martin nodded.
She slowed the truck. “God, Martin, I don’t feel like I know anyone here anymore. I mean, you, yes. But the people in town, the people we spent all those years with in school seem practically foreign to me now. The difference in experiences is too much, I guess. I feel like a stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger to me.”
“I know,” she said, and she scuffed the top of his head.
He wasn’t sure how the gesture was intended, but it made him feel like an amusing pet, rubbed between the ears for loyalty. He slapped the door. “My turn to drive.”
She pulled to the side of the road, miles from anywhere now. They crossed in front of the truck, through the glare of the headlamps. Her nose again.
Martin sat in the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirrors, gripped the steering wheel. It was wrapped in soft leather.
“You’re not going to baby it, are you?” she asked. “My dad used to tell me that a good race driver always has either the gas or the brake pedal floored.”
Martin looked at her. “Is that true?”
She smirked. “No. But it’s a good place to start.”
Martin drove hard, making the body roll back and forth and the tires scream and scrub sideways around the turns. The yellow markers in the center of the road shot by like bullets. After a few miles he began cutting off the corners, as Eileen had done. Occasionally the backend caught a bit of gravel on one side of the road or the other. He was squarely in the opposite lane during a long leftward curve around a brush-covered slope when he saw the glow of lights spreading across the pavement ahead. He tweaked the steering wheel to the right as twin white headlights appeared suddenly before them, very near. Eileen yelped as they swerved. If the window had been open, Martin could have reached out and tapped the roof of the other car as it passed. The shadowy figures of the driver and a passenger looked at him. Martin didn’t fee
l the adrenaline rush—nerves burning like fuses—until the sound of the other car’s horn had faded around the hill.
“Very nice!” said Eileen.
Martin kept his foot hard against the gas pedal. His breathing had slowed and his nerves were steady again about a mile later when he saw a dirt road branching off to the right. He took it. The wheels slapped into ruts, the trees on either side blurred. “Hey, four-by-four,” said Eileen, pressing a glowing button on the center console. There was a clunking sound and Martin felt the front wheels begin grabbing and it seemed he could take on anything with this truck. They emerged into a meadow where the road opened out and vanished into dry grasses and low rocks. The truck jumped among the stones and undergrowth, and Martin struggled—gripping hard to keep his hands on the wheel and flailing a bit with his foot—to keep the truck under some control.
He knew this meadow and the steep downhill ahead, but he had forgotten about the single tree, in all this open space, until it came into the lights. He spun the wheel, already imagining the head-on collision. The truck, however, lurched suddenly rightward, rebounding off a luckily positioned rock, or something. The truck hit only a few low leaves that slapped the windshield and slid along the side of the truck as it scuffed to a halt.
A moth flashed whitely in the headlights. “Wow,” said Eileen. Dark space opened where the hill dropped away before them, to a dry riverbed far below, invisible and silent.