The Last Open Road

by Burt Levy

"That either."

  "Which reminds me," I said, unleashing a little of the old hairy eyeball myself, "what have you been up to lately?"

  "And what business is it of yours?" Julie asked, arching her eyebrows. "You think I should just wait by the stinking phone so I can be there whenever the great Buddy Palumbo gets the urge to call? Is that the way it's supposed to be?"

  No question she was yanking my chain—hell, she had every right to!—but you couldn't miss how the gleam in her eye was saying something completely different from the words coming out of her mouth. "Aw, Julie," I whimpered. "You know it's not like that. Not at all."

  "So you say."

  "Aw, c'mon, Julie. Let's make up."

  "Yeah? What for?"

  " What for? Why, so we can start hanging around together. That's what for."

  "Oh? Hanging around together? And just what exactly does that include?"

  "You know. Going out together and stuff. You haven't been going out with anybody, have you?"

  All of a sudden the temperature dropped about twenty degrees. "A lot you care," Julie sniffed. You could tell she was avoiding my eyes.

  "But I do care," I told her. "I care a lot. So c'mon, Julie, tell me. Have you been going out with anybody else or what?"

  "Why should I tell you? You don't tell me about the girls you've been running around with at those races. Not that I really want to know. . . ."

  "There's nobody, Julie. Honest. Nobody at all."

  "Really?"

  I looked her right in the eyes and nodded. "Hell, Julie, I don't have time to sit down and take a decent crap on a race weekend, let alone chase after girls."

  "Honest?"

  "Absolutely. And believe me, the girls they have at those races wouldn't be interested in some greaseball automobile mechanic from Passaic. Not hardly."

  "So you haven't been seeing anybody?"

  I shook my head. "How 'bout you?"

  "Oh," Julie sighed, looking down at where her legs poked out from underneath her skirt, "I went out a couple times with that David Sweeney guy who used to manage the kitchen at the Doggie Shake on nights and weekends."

  "You did?" I gasped, my insides going all hollow on me.

  "Yeah, sure I did," Julie growled, sticking out her jaw. "Why the hell shouldn't I? Huh? Why?"

  She had me there. "B-But, Julie," I protested, "if he's the one I'm thinking of, he's gotta be at least thirty years old. . . ."

  "He's twenty-eight," Julie said flatly.

  "And he's half bald, for Chrissakes."

  "No, he isn't."

  "Sure he is."

  "Well, maybe just a little bit. On top."

  "So," I asked, trying to act real suave and Continental about it, "did'ja have a good time with this David Sweeney guy or what?"

  "Oh, we had a swell time," Julie mumbled into the shoulder of her sweater. "Not only was the jerk half bald, he turned out to be half octopus, too. . . ."

  "Half octopus?" I pretended like I had no idea what she meant.

  "You know. The way he was trying to get his hands into everything all the time. Our last date he invited me to the damn wrestling matches, and we turned out to be the main event."

  The bastard, I thought, my guts flopping around like a carp on a fishing pier. I mean, what right did he have trying to get away with the same kind of stuff I was trying to do with Julie? I mean, she was my girl, wasn't she? Well, wasn't she? "So, uh, how many times did you go out with this David Sweeney guy, anyway?"

  "Jeez, Buddy, does it matter? I mean, the guy turned out to be a fourteen-carat jerk, ok?" She looked down at her knees again and added softly, "Besides, I'm not seeing him anymore."

  "But you see him at work, don't you?"

  "Nah, he's not there anymore. I guess he took a job as lunch hour manager at some sit-down dinner place on the New York side. Up near Scarsdale, I think. The jerk doesn't even live around here anymore."

  I could tell by her voice that this David Sweeney character hadn't exactly worked it out with Julie ahead of time that he was planning to pull up stakes and leave town, and it got me more than a little curious as to exactly what went on between them. On the other hand, here was Miss Julie Finzio, right where I'd always dreamed and wished and hoped and imagined her, right here in the apartment over my aunt's garage—right on the damn bed, for gosh sakes!—and it seemed better to concentrate on the here and now rather than hashing over the details of some phantom boyfriend who was (hopefully) past tense now anyway. "So," I said, sliding my arm around her, "you been seeing anybody else lately?"

  "Well, I'd like to see more of you, Buddy"—she looked down at my towel—"that is, I'd like to see you more often."

  "I'd like that, too," I agreed, and moved in for another kiss. It was a hot one this time (for both of us—I could tell!) and pretty soon we were all wrapped up in each other and even stretched out fully parallel-to-the-ground horizontal on my bed. Why, she even let me run my hand up underneath her sweater and unhook her bra! And she knew exactly what I was doing, too. I'm sure of it.

  But just as I was getting to Full Frothing Hormone Alert, Julie stopped me like she always did (what else?) and said that she really had to be getting along before her mother started missing her. But the truth is, I didn't feel too bad about it (at least once I got over the usual whimpering, pleading, teeth gnashing, and nervous-system aftershocks) seeing as how I'd been treating her like dogshit ever since the day I got fired from the Sinclair, and I couldn't believe how incredibly nice it felt to have her back again. And her front, too. . . .

  For the very first time, that sort of thing seemed like it might be in the cards for us, and it had my internal juices on full boil. After all, we'd gone further that Sunday than we'd ever gone before, and that meant I could probably go back again anytime I wanted. That's the way it worked. It was like your hands were commando squadrons trying to occupy hostile territory—fingers stealthily creeping a tentative quarter inch at a time, constantly on the lookout for enemy opposition—but once you'd managed to conquer a particular plain, peak, hilltop, or valley, you could always go back and occupy that spot again. Every time you made out. It was kind of an unwritten law, you know? Of course, you had to follow the same careful, tedious maneuvers and remember not to skip any of the preliminaries, but so long as you played by the rules and made sure to keep your girl happy and content the rest of the time, you could maybe even go for a little more. So there's no doubt I had quitting on my mind when I rolled into Westbridge just precisely past noon that Monday morning. All during the bus-and-train ride into Manhattan I'd been planning and rehearsing what I was going to say. By far the most satisfying would've been the time-honored "Screw you, I QUIT!" outburst, punctuated with a few choice Italian hand gestures and a quick, pithy recap of how much fun I had sleeping in the damn parts truck and how much I appreciated the opportunity to work full-time for part-time pay. But that really wouldn't have been fair. After all, I'd taken this lousy job with my eyes wide open (bugged out, in fact) and besides, I was still desperately sick with the racing disease, and no question Colin St. John and Barry Spline were right in the eye of the storm where that was concerned. Like I said once before, you never want to burn your Westbridges.

  I thought about trying the old "better deal somewheres else" gimmick, but the truth is you only pull that one out of the bag when you're trying to get a pay raise or increased benefits at the place you're already working. Not that you had to worry much about employee benefits at West-bridge, on account of there weren't any.

  The last and most diplomatic option was the old "personal reasons" routine, which is always the favored line of bullshit when you're trying to stay on good terms with the people you don't want to work for anymore. So I planned to trot out another bogus horror story about my poor, sick old Aunt Rosamarina back in Passaic. But the entire speech slipped my mind the instant I walked in and saw Tommy Edwards all huddled in a corner with Barry and Colin St. John. No question something big was brewing on the racing front, and r
ight away I felt this ratlike gnawing in my gut because I wanted desperately to be in on it. "Hey, sport," Tommy called out as soon as he saw me, "how's the young master mechanic these days?"

  "Oh, pretty good," I allowed. "Still a little tired from the weekend, though."

  "Grand Island?"

  I nodded.

  "Damn. Sure wished I could've made it. Had some, ahh, personal business to attend to. . . ."

  "I heard."

  "Oh really?" Tommy said through lightly clenched teeth. "And pray tell what exactly did you hear?"

  Barry and Colin glared at me like four Lucas P200s on high beam.

  "Well, er, aahh," I stammered, trying to figure out what to say next, "I just sorta heard, well, what I mean is, I heard . . ."

  "Oh, what the bloody hell," Tommy sighed, shaking his head. "It's probably all true enough, whatever it was."

  "It, uh, it wasn't really anything," I mumbled into my shirt while my face changed color like a traffic light.

  "Oh, that's all right, sport," Tommy told me, putting his arm around my shoulder and mustering up a hard-won smile. "Race paddocks are worse than the bloody military when it comes to rumors. Might as well put your personal business on a bloody full-page ad in the Sunday Times." He let out a long, weary sigh. "Women," he observed to no one in particular, "sometimes I wonder why the good Lord ever saw fit to make them with heads. . . ."

  "Amen to that, brother," Sylvester sang out from the back of the shop, and everybody broke out laughing.

  Then Tommy asked me how things went at Grand Island, and it was a pretty nice feeling that he thought enough of my opinion to ask. "It was OK, I guess," I told him. "Some guy flipped a Porsche coupe and got hurt pretty bad."

  "I heard."

  "And those other Allard guys chickened out and wouldn't run in the race on Saturday afternoon."

  "I heard that, too," Tommy said evenly, his nostrils flaring just a bit over his salt-and-pepper mustache.

  "Think you would've run?"

  Tommy leaned back against the parts counter and thought it over. "Well, I reckon it's not entirely fair to pass judgment, is it? After all, I wasn't there...."

  "True enough, true enough," Colin agreed diplomatically.

  "But on the other hand," Tommy continued, a nasty little edge coming into his voice, "why on earth would anyone take a sports car all across the length and breadth of New York State and then not race the silly thing. I mean, what for?"

  "Bloody 'ell right!" Barry growled, and spit in the waste can for emphasis.

  Then we just stood there for awhile, listening to the clicking of ratchet wrenches in the back of the shop. "So," I finally got up the nerve to ask, "what are you guys up to, anyway?"

  Tommy looked at Barry and Colin and then back at me. "Oh," he said with a mysterious little swirl in his voice, "I suppose you could say we're scheming up a little surprise. . . ."

  "Mind letting me in on it?"

  "Letting you in on it? Why, my young mechanical genius, you're part of it."

  "I am?"

  Tommy nodded. "Indeed you are, sport, indeed you are." He looked around at the other two. "You and I are going to take a little trip together."

  "We are?"

  "Righto," Colin grinned. "First thing tomorrow, in fact."

  "Jeez," I asked breathlessly, "where are we going?"

  "All in good time, mate," Barry advised. "All in good time. We'll be taking a run over ter the warehouse later this afternoon. Yew'll see for yerself."

  "Righto," Colin nodded. "Indeed you shall. Let's just say I need you to help transport a couple of rather, shall we say, special Jaguars to Wisconsin. Assuming you can afford the time, that is."

  And just that quick, I forgot all about giving Colin that speech I'd rehearsed and stumbled all over my tongue telling him how happy I'd be to oblige.

  "You'll need a jacket, a change of clothes or two, and a toothbrush," Tommy told me. "And I'd recommend a pair of sunglasses and a hat with a decent brim."

  "And be sure that bloody 'at fits tight," Barry added with a quicksilver grin, "or yer'll lose it for sure."

  I was under a much-abused MG TC a few hours later when Colin came over to tell me it was time to go, and the truth is, I was only too happy for the interruption, since the owner of this particular MG thought it was an XK120 and tried to make the poor thing perform accordingly. Especially from stoplights. You hate working on cars like that (even though they're a guaranteed gold mine) because the jerk who owns it is only going to beat the shit out of it all over again when you give it back to him. I mean, what's the point? And it's never long before the asshole comes rolling back in (for the umpty-umpth time) to complain about yet another weary mechanical component that has finally given up the ghost and burst, bent, broken, shattered, snapped, melted, cracked, kinked, crumbled, fractured, or some ugly combination thereof. Worse yet, these types always throw in a little off-the-cuff lecture about what a horribly designed, poorly engineered, and indifferently assembled pile of crap their car is, and moreover how the damn valve float is preventing them from revving it to the last digit on the dial so they can blow it properly sky-high the way God and Nature intended. People like that don't deserve neat cars.

  Anyhow, I was fighting to get the MG's corduroy-finish flywheel separated from its crankshaft flange, and the damn thing just didn't want to cooperate. Which made perfect sense, since as soon as I fixed it, the poor thing would be back in the pitiless hands of the jerk who owned it, and you couldn't hardly blame it for not wanting to go. So that flywheel was hanging on like Grim Death, and I was doing my level best to finesse it off rather than resorting to an outburst of violent, Old Man Finzio-style beating, heating, prying, and cursing. And that's when I caught sight of Colin St. John's neatly pressed pants cuffs making their way across the concrete like John Wayne's P.T. boat in the movie They Were Expendable. "I say," Colin's voice echoed down from the rafters, "it's time for that run to the warehouse we spoke about earlier. Let's be quick about it."

  "Sure," I grunted, trying to gently pop that flywheel loose with two long screwdrivers coming in from either side, "be right with you."

  Colin's lighter clicked open, followed by the usual wet, sucking sounds as he fired up his pipe. "I believe my intention was now, Mr. Palumbo," he puffed impatiently. So there was no choice but to lay my tools down and slide out from under, leaving that flywheel wedged all catty-wumpus on the crankshaft flange. Any decent mechanic hates to leave a job hanging like that. It's just not natural, you know?

  Barry had me clamber into the backseat of Colin's daily driver (which was a light blue Morris Minor that particular week) and believe me, the backseat of a Morris Minor was never designed to hold anything so large as a full-grown human being. Barry made me put three layers of newspaper and a fender blanket under me so's I wouldn't soil the upholstery. That was important, on account of Colin always disconnected the speedo cables on his daily drivers so he could sell them as brand-spanking-new automobiles when he was done with them.

  Once they had me packed in the back like a canned ham, we took off across town to the meat truck garage where Colin stashed his new Jaguars so that every one gracing his showroom floor could be "absolutely, positively the LAST ONE in the country." Along the way, the Morris developed a serious stumble and gas smell, and when it got so bad the engine would hardly run, Colin pulled over so Barry and me could take a look under the hood. I mean, we were two of the best damn British car mechanics in New York, weren't we? The raw fuel pouring out the overflow vent was a pretty good indication that the needle and seat were stuck, but we didn't have any tools—not even a damn adjustable crescent wrench!—to undo the lid and fix it. So Barry took the tire iron out of the trunk and gave that Morris a good, solid whap on the float bowl lid. And that cured it! Honest it did! And I'll always consider that one of the most endearing features of those cars. Sure, they had their share of mechanical gremlins. And Lord knows they wouldn't climb a 10 percent grade with more than two people on boa
rd. But, like other British cars, Morris Minors had so damn much character going for them. And they could be wondrously easy to fix. Sometimes all it took was a good, hard rap on the knuckles.

  With the carburetor problem sorted out, we continued on to the meat truck garage, and along the way I kept trying to figure out what was going on and precisely how I fit into the picture. "So," I said, "could'ja maybe give me a little hint or something about where exactly Tommy and me are going?"

  "As I said," Colin answered, looking at his nails, "you are transporting a pair of rather special XK120 Jaguars across country for me."

  "Oh? And what's so damn 'special' about them, huh? Are they like the one Skippy Welcher owns?"

  Colin looked at Barry and Barry looked back at Colin. "Oh, I should think they're a bit more special than that," Colin yawned, eye-balling me in the rearview mirror. "Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Spline?"