My Mistress

It is fifteen past five on a Sunday afternoon and I am thirty minutes into my ten minute drive, stuck at the same red light for three cycles now. The student body of the University of Florida, having binged itself on knowledge for the last three months, has decided that it's time for a good purge. Everyone is heading to the interstate, which is good - I like this town better when it's empty - but also bad - they are all on the same road I use to get to work and I am late. My fellow drivers look forward to getting home, spending time with childhood friends, and eating with family. I look forward to eleven hours of delivering pizza, being stiffed by deadbeat customers, and listening to talk radio.

My car has taken to rumbling at me when idling - she's for running, not sitting, and isn't bashful when it comes to expressing her lustiness. The car, a ten-year-old four-door Honda Accord, is high in mileage and unexcitable in temperament but persistent in character and charming in appearance. When I say charming I mean that she is not unlike the blighted woman in Shakespeare's sonnet. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, they shine with a jaundiced yellow light that helps me little in the rain. I see no roses in her cheeks, just dents, stains, and pockmarks on her paneling. And her lips are nothing like coral. Her owner removed her front bumper in a fit of frustration masquerading as practicality. The seats are cigarette-burned, as are the seat covers I installed a year ago to hide the scars. The floor boards, when visible through the soda cans, slips of paper, and cellophane wrappers, are permeated with ash.

A few years ago, during a trip to Miami on the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, the passenger-side wheel well liner was ripped off by 90 mph wind-resistance. The sudden violence damaged some unsuspecting wires that were apparently involved in the regulation of the air conditioning system. The wires never recovered from the shock of the ordeal and I have gone without conditioned air ever since. Since then, whenever it rains (which it does often in Gainesville) I have to drive with the windows open to keep the windshield from fogging up. Now the car usually smells like a locker room and the floor is often muddy with wet ash.

***

I feel that this story - of the bumper, the liner, the wires, and the a/c, of the circumstances that precipitated the event and the consequences which flowed from it - must be told. The narrative that follows illustrates several forms of stupidity unique to the male mind and particularly manifest in my own. I want to write this confession because it is the only fair thing to do, the car's deformity being no fault of her own, and because I am in a confessional mood. Without confession there can be no redemption, and without redemption no sense of peace in this topsy-turvy, helter-skelter world. This is how it went:

For some time we had been having trouble with the bumper. Our car, like all living things, has its foibles, quirks acquired through breeding and bruises developed during life. It is barely noticeable, with or without the bumper, but close inspection reveals that our car has an overbite. In humans, an overbite is defined by The American Heritage as "a malocclusion of the teeth in which the front upper incisor and canine teeth project over the lower." In cars, Hondas in particular, an overbite is defined as "a malocclusion of the bumper in which the front end of the car is situated too low to the ground, causing the nose of the machine to get caught on parking bumps no matter how carefully the driver pulls into parking spaces." This deficiency is due in part to genetics (all Hondas carry their faces low) and in part to medical malpractice: in attending to the results of our last collision, the body shop technician fixed the skin of the car but did not set its bones, leaving her beautiful on the surface but suffering underneath.

For about a year, every parking bump we took pains to avoid found itself trapped under our bumper. The terrible noise of these couplings was second only to that of the separations. Our car became a dedicated sex addict and in its time mounted half the parking bumps in Gainesville - like an unfixed mutt it wasn't bashful about jumping up in public and barking excitedly about its current conquest to all passerby. (The attentive reader will note that the subject of my narrative has undergone a sex change: all cars are hermaphroditic, taking on femininity when pleasant and masculinity when not). This was embarrassing for Christine and I, having to pry our car off unsuspecting victims every time we took her out, but we resigned ourselves to this inevitable aspect of our motorized lives - human beings are destined to lose any battle fought against machines committed to causing embarrassment, frustration, or lawsuit.

Life went on peacefully for a while, Christine and I the perpetually forgiving parents, our Honda the innocent mongrel whose clumsy perversities became endearing with time. The car, at least, was happy. But like all happy times, it ended due to lack of moderation. Which parking lot it happened in I can't remember, but I do remember that it was a week before our trip to Miami. Our bumper had once again locked itself in carnal embrace with a concrete slab, but this time the coupling was so passionate that when we finally managed to separate the bumper from the bump, pressing first gently then harder on reverse, the force of the pull bent the plastic bumper back over itself so that its underside faced forward into the wind - a green and monstrous bug-shield. In three gut-wrenching (and bumper-wrenching) seconds, our overbite became a cleft lip.

Despite my recent submission to Zen-living and Dr. Spock-parenting, this last transgression and the disfigurement which resulted from it were too much for my masculinity to bear, continually called to question as it was by backfiring machines and back-talking electronics. Arriving home I immediately undertook the removal of the offending and now misshapen member. Christine, being as reasonable a woman as I am unreasonable a man, questioned my chosen course with that tone of innocent naivete that every particularly intelligent woman takes when her partner sets himself to doing something particularly stupid. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Yes" I assured her. "The bumpers on these cars are completely ornamental, just plastic. No possible harm can come from removing the damn thing." So off the damn thing came, to be deposited in the back of my Jeep Cherokee, which, thanks to my efforts, had been immobile for six months.

Often (if not always), when a man embarks on a doomed quest, his guardian angels send him omens signaling that his pursuit is ill advised. Throwing the bumper into the back of the Jeep, which was already full of booty from previous misadventures - new but ruined ceiling fans, bent tools, ragged clothes stained with blood, beer, and oil, a quarter ton of the Jeep's own innards - I did not detect the warnings my watchers were sending me. Instead, I turned to that golden calf of male idolatry, Duct Tape, to affix the few stray wires that I found dangling from the Honda now that the bumper wasn't there to hold them in place. I relished in that glowing figment that illumes all men who believe they have overcome the environment or some pesky element therein by the sweat of their brow and the resoluteness of their character. "There," I thought. "Problem fixed."

A week of driving by both Christine and myself went by without a hitch. We found ourselves attached to no parking bumps and the car did not fall apart, so when the time came for the five hour burn at 90 mph down the Florida Turnpike, not a word of the missing bumper was spoken. In fact, the missing denture never even crossed my mind, though in retrospect, I am sure it crossed Christine's. I am beginning to realize that a lot more crossed Christine's mind than I ever suspected, that her acceptance of my self-confident bullheadedness was a sign, not of any great trust in my abilities, but of her grace and sense. She knew better than to think my amputation of the bumper was a good idea, but decided that provoking my fragile ego would cause more permanent damage than my automotive surgery did.

After packing up the car we pulled into our favorite gas station, two blocks from the house. Christine went in to purchase the necessary provisions - chips, bottled water, smokes - while I filled up the gas tank and made various preflight checks - oil level, radiator level, tire pressure. I was relatively confident of all the levels except for the tire pressure, as I had just given the car a full tune-up and thorough once-over a few days before, but one can never be too cautious when taking a ton of machinery onto a road filled with other heavy machinery, all running at high speeds. The tires were good. All provisions and passengers were accounted for. We left the gas station, drove two more blocks to the onramp without any serious interference from Gainesville traffic, and were off.

The journey had started clean. Once on the interstate, the recipe that Christine, the dog, and I had perfected over many similar long road trips was followed to perfection. For the first half hour we traveled in complete silence. I must begin all long drive in complete silence. I need this time to get in tune with my car - stop-and-go city traffic alienates man from machine, so it is essential that the first leg of any journey be spent getting in synch with each other, both driver and driven operating they way they were designed to operate: in a long, straight line, at high velocity, without braking, side trips, or bathroom stops. The steady progression of gears. The geometric life of highway traffic. The regular, reliable, reassuring flow of forward movement. Now the sounds of the wind and the road and the music combine, a unique soundtrack never to be heard again. Tunnel vision sets in. Contemplation develops at 70 mph. Bliss begins at 80. At 90, Nirvana is achieved.

The asphalt blurs - its pebbles and pockmarks becoming one gray swoosh. Familiar and unfamiliar road signs appear in the distance, grow with proximity, zoom by, reversing their previous growth as they recede in my rearview. We are welcomed to Disney by way of Yeehaw, where coupons are to be found, and to Café Risqué, where topless women bare all and bottomless lunches wait, and to an endless array of diners, motels, fast food joints, gas stations, rest stops, churches, retirement communities, golf clubs, flea markets, citrus stands, and antique malls. But we don't have time for these inviting distractions, my car and I - we have five hours of blacktop ahead of us, twenty dollars in tolls to pay, and enough Sunday drivers to provide all the break-wear, time-wear, and nerve-wear we could want.

After the period of silence comes the period of talking. If the first stage of the journey must be spent getting in tune with the car, the second stage must be spent getting in tune with the passengers. Getting in tune with the dog in the backseat is always easy, almost automatic. She is well aquatinted with the strange habits of her humans, including their inexplicable urge to quit the couch and engage a moving box for a while. As soon as the excitement of getting in the car evaporates, the fear of abandonment at the gas station put to rest, and the circling of the back seat completed, Cassie settles down in the back seat with a finality and conviction that Buddha, meditating under his tree, would envy. Getting in tune with your traveling partner, however, burns more calories and gasoline, especially when your traveling partner is also your bed partner, but is just as pleasant, predictable, and, once achieved, permanent. I don't remember exactly what Christine and I spoke about, but I'm sure the bumper wasn't mentioned.

Talking usually lasts about 45 minutes, and in this case there was no variation from the standard. Forward-movement quickly reinstated itself as the main going-on, and Christine reclined her seat and settled herself into that total sleep she settles into when we go on long drives.

I couldn't be happier. The car was running smooth. Christine was sleeping sound. Cassie took turns laying in the sunny and shady sides of the back seat, depending on her mood, our exact bearing, and the enthusiasm of the sunshine. Other than the slight difference in wind pull, the reality of our abandoned bumper was distant and irrelevant.

The succession of events that follows returns to me as a series of frozen impressions, staccato in slow-motion. I felt the liner loosen from the passenger-side wheel well, a sudden extra friction inflicting itself on my smooth ride. I felt and heard the two-foot by half-foot strip of rubber tear away, wrap itself in the tire, get run over by it, and get spit out underneath the car - a pull, a rip, a knock, and two bumps in one fluid, jarring moment. I knew it was the wheel well liner because I saw it ejected in my rearview after I felt it detach and cause a great commotion underneath the passenger side. The noise and jerking that resulted from this sudden abortion were impressive, and sent both dog and girlfriend into fits.

Before I could explain what the Big Noises were to either of the women, a thick white mist began seeping out of the a/c vents at what seemed an alarming rate - though any rate of thick, white mist seepage would have seemed alarming. The Big Noises were temporarily forgotten, replaced in immediacy (and in funny wet plastic smell) by whiteness. "What is that stuff?" Christine asked the dashboard. Not knowing what to say, but hating the thought of being one-upped by the dash, I blurted "I don't know, but it's probably nothing. Have you ever seen anything like this before?" "No" was her answer, but "you're full of it" was her tone. She put her hand into the mist and reported that it was freezing cold, which, aping her action, I confirmed. The mist was as impressively cold as its was impossibly opaque, and it was spreading - we had ourselves a real life cloud right here in the car, but all other atmospheric conditions in the vehicle were quickly degenerating. I found myself suddenly cast the floundering meteorologist who failed to predict the big storm, facing a very angry audience and grasping about desperately for explanations. "Technical difficulties" I thought, "that's what happened, we experienced technical difficulties."

At this point I did a quick outline of the details, of my technical difficulties, as I knew them: Man removes bumper, opening way for wind resistance. Wind resistance removes wheel-well liner, which gets caught in spinning tire. Spinning tire catapults flotsam forward against wheel-well, making Big Noise Number One. Flotsam falls to earth, where it is run over by both front and back passenger-side tires, causing Big Noises Two and Three. Some time during these encounters an innocent bystander, the a/c system, is mortally wounded. Said system breathes for the last time, its freed soul this thick, cold, smelly cloud of mist. Woman inquires of man what exactly in God's name just happened. Man faces his mortality as he realizes the severity of his situation.

I'm am not a lying man, but I dabble in politics when I have to. Though I was relatively sure that the series of events outlined above was exactly What In God's Name Just Happened, I decided that it is well enough to dig your own grave in one morning but all together too much to lay yourself in it that same afternoon. I resorted proven political strategy: half truth. "We ran over something on the road. I don't know how I missed it but I saw it in the rearview, it looked like a black piece of rubber."

"But what about the a/c?"

There is a certain tone that chills the heart of man, a note that only sounds from the mouth of woman when she isn't buying what her man is trying to sell her. Some men can sell ice to Eskimos, but not if the Eskimos' wives are around - in those conditions the smart salesman won't even try. When woman takes this tone (and it is always on the word "what," following the word "but"), man knows he's in for it.

Edging towards total honesty: "I don't know." I honestly didn't. Imagining myself laying in a grave covered in cold mist, I assured myself that proximity does not necessarily imply causality - another case of man using sophisticated verbiage to deny the inevitability of his circumstances. Instead of telling Christine what I thought happened, why not wait until I had the opportunity to figure it out for sure? For all I knew this white mist was just a freak occurrence and didn't forecast any long-term effects.

It did, and they manifested quickly. After a moment the cool cloud stopped seeping, and with it disappeared the chill normally put out by the a/c. Air still came out of the vents, but it was tepid Florida air, not conditioned in any respect. Christine may not have made the connection between lack-of-bumper and abundance-of-mist yet, but she had no reason to think Big Noises One through Three were unrelated to cold-opaque-cloud. And it was obvious even to the dog, who was now panting in the back of our rolling oven, that the a/c was no longer with us.

The homicide investigation began immediately, and in earnest, Detective Christine questioning the man who was both sole witness and only suspect, while her partner, Sergeant Dog, took detailed notes from the backseat. I was not unfamiliar with the interrogation process, having been questioned before, at great length and on many occasions, as primary suspect in a variety of crimes against people, property, and polite society. I knew I had to tread carefully, all the while wishing for a good lawyer but realizing that asking for one this early in the game would amount to a full confession.

The safest role for a murder suspect to play during an interrogation is that of the helpful citizen, anxious over being accused but eager to help find the true perpetrator. Thus I assumed the guise of fellow investigator, proposing various crime theories and postulating other possible suspects. "It's possible that the a/c system was just running low on coolant," I suggested, "and that once the pressure reaches a certain level it purges itself, kind of a reverse-suction thing." I felt that "reverse-suction" was rhetorical genius, a concept with enough scientific sound and nagging paradox to it to give the whole statement wings. I was hopeful with this excuse, and Christine did seem to think it a reasonable possibility, but the other evidence submitted to the court, Big Noises One, Two, and Three, wouldn't get from her mind. The dog was likewise suspicious, and I was left struggling to find another explanation.

With my heart sinking in the rising temperature I decided to walk the fine line, to propose another theory that nuzzled right up to the truth. "Maybe whatever it was we ran over had something to do with it. I don't know much about a/c's or why one would mist up like that, but maybe a line got busted somewhere and all the coolant leaked out." It was a story my interrogators liked to hear, satisfying their need for a full accounting of the known details. I hoped that the role of wheel well liner may never reveal itself, eliminating the accomplice wind-resistance and thus removing me as a suspect in the murder - it would become a case of accidental manslaughter, lamentable but guiltless. Again I impressed myself with my choice of words, sneaking "we" into the statement "whatever we ran over," implying that it could have easily had happened the same way if one of them had been driving the car. Would my accusers implicate themselves?

The ploy worked. The investigation concluded, the case went cold as the car got hotter, and we settled into the next three and a half hours, if somewhat bothered by the need to drive with the windows open, at least somewhat amused by the incident (there was a lot of white mist - a ridiculous, humorous quantity of the stuff - and the high of receding adrenaline took pleasant hold of us in the echo of the Big Noises). At the very least, it gave us something topical and exciting to talk about, and we had a good laugh over the shock we felt at the sudden cacophony and the mysterious smoke. We agreed that there was nothing we could about the a/c until we returned to Gainesville, and contented ourselves to applying our newly developed Zen-skills to enduring the heat and my family for the next four days.

***

By the time Christine learned the truth, the immediacy of the crime and my role in it had faded away enough that she responded with the amused affection that a mother shows her mud-covered child when he walks in the house wearing a fresh look of guilt over his ruined clothes. We had pulled into the auto parts store to buy new windshield wipers and a bottle of glass cleaner - four days in bug-infested Miami engrave themselves on a windshield. While I was inside Christine brought the dog out for a stretch in the parking lot. It was then that she noticed the bundle of wires hanging from the top of the wheel well, stripped, grease covered, and obviously not in an acceptable state. She also noticed that this wheel well, unlike the others, was missing something - a long, black piece of rubber, suspiciously similar to the mysterious thing that "we" (there was that tone again, but without the same bite) had run over on the turnpike.

"Could this have something to do with the a/c not working?" I felt the grip of guilt tighten about me again, but hid this sickening sinking by doing what all men do when their woman-partner points at a big, broken machine with an accusing finger. Taking on a look of concern, I fiddled with the bits and pieces for a while, muttered something about a "possible electrical short," and set about tinkering with the thing under the presumption that I knew how to fix it.

There was no fixing it. Fifteen wires in a bundle, once bound at the top of the wheel well and protected from road-junk upchuck by the now missing liner, had been hanging since the incident and rubbed raw by three and a half hours of interstate travel and four days of city driving. Whatever systems these wires tied into were fried. But since appearances are everything nowadays, and restitution everything in modern criminal cases, I spent a half an hour carefully detaching the wires from each other, removing as much of the grease as possible, reconnecting the ones that were spliced, grafting on a new skin of electrical tape, and reattaching them safely out of reach of the spinning wheel. It was a neat job, even for an inexperienced battlefield medic, and it satisfied the generals who watched my every move. Within the hour we were back on the turnpike, heading north and homeward in sweaty silence.

***

I'm still sitting at the red light, listening to the motor rumble. The Honda is running fine without the bumper, and I'm running well enough without air conditioning.

Much has changed in the past three years, but not the Honda - she is as reliable as migraines, and works twice as hard. Until a year ago I worked in the office of the apartment complex we lived in, so I only drove her to the university and back on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now that I deliver pizza four nights a week I spend much more time with her, eleven hours on a working day. We have grown closer, and though she ages much more rapidly than I, I have no plans to leave her for a younger woman.

It is an intimate yet comfortable marriage, at times more relaxed - and more passionate - than any other relationship I've ever been in. "I love to hear her speak." In fact, my livelihood depends on it. Every relationship has its private language, its unique ciphers and informing movements, and the code I share with my mistress is a complex one. Like a coy woman she never tells me what she wants or needs; she hints and whispers, bats the eyelash of her temperature gauge or clears the throat of her exhaust in a telling way, goading me, her loyal servant, to action. At times I must stroke her gently, a lover in the morning, to rouse her. Other times I throw up her blouse in a fit of mutual calenture, feverish for a quick fix on the side of the road. For the most part, however, we have the well-oiled routine of an old couple on a familiar course, comfortable in our movements and paired until death do us part.

04/29/2006

Author's Note: (c) Richard Paez 2006

Posted on 04/29/2006
Copyright © 2024 Richard Paez