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's stories have appeared most recently in Prairie Schooner, Antioch Review, Ploughshares and The Best American Short Stories 2000. He is the author of a novel, Bluestown,  © St. Martin's and a collection, Dangerous Men. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University. Valet Parking
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| * |
For the first few minutes, we drove in silence. The guy rode in the back seat, and in the rear-view mirror I could see him there, sitting in the center, staring straight ahead. In front next to me, the woman leaned her head against the window. She had on a slinky black dress that ended high up her thighs. The top part was off her shoulders, stretched tight across her chest.
"Pepper," the guy said, leaning forward.
"Sorry?"
"I used to know this guy who thought we should do away with money and just use pepper instead. Carry around bags of it. Pepper."
We were on Peachtree, heading north, and I hit the brakes for a red light. "Black?"
"Black. Like what the waiter grinds onto your salad. This was in Brooklyn. Georgie Lopinsky. He had it all figured out—the wealthiest guy would be the one with most pepper."
I couldn't think of anything to say to this, so I just waited, watching the light not change.
"Jesus, Connie," said the woman.
"My wife was in the amateur contest tonight. Didn't win, though. A thousand bucks."
"Don't feel bad. It's almost impossible. They aren't amateurs, just dancers from other clubs on their night off."
"Not all of them. Anyway, I paid for that body." He sort of coughed and laughed at the same time. "Next left."
I signaled and made the turn, heading into a residential area. They were both quiet. I tried to imagine how far things would have to have gone before you'd want to see your wife naked on stage, a bunch of bozos waving dollar bills at her.
Connie was silent the rest of the drive, except to grunt directions. His face was red and a little puffy. The wife began to hiccup, but in a way I'd never heard anyone before, with very long intervals—as much as a minute.
We pulled into a place called Ashley Plantation, a new growth of condominiums hidden among tall pecan and magnolia trees. There was a remote on the visor that opened the huge iron gates with the gold crest in the middle, and I drove through and up a winding drive to their townhouse.
"Come on in," said Connie. "We'll call you a cab."
I hustled around to open the door for the wife. She swiveled and put one long leg out, toeing the blacktop as if checking a pool's temperature, then got unsteadily to her feet. I tried my hardest not to think about her any way but dressed.
"He's a mean bastard," she said to me, her voice cool and even as the surface of a martini. "But he's my mean bastard."
Inside, the place was all mirrors and glass and smelled like guest-bathroom soap. An enormous gold sofa occupied the center of the room, with a triangular glass coffee table in front of it that looked like it could easily have taken out your kneecap. There were fake flowers in a Chinese urn by the door, a floating staircase descending near the back of the living room where glass doors led out onto a deck. The wife took her shoes off by the door, hiccupped, and went upstairs.
"Phone's there," Connie said, pointing to the kitchen. He opened the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle.
First I called Rachel at the restaurant, but it was twelve-thirty and she'd already left. I tried her house, let it ring twelve times, then gave up. I'd been pushing her to get a machine, but she claimed she didn't believe in them. Believe in them? I said. The idea was to know if people called. I mean, at least sign up for voice mail. I had a hard time getting an answer at any of the cab companies, but finally someone picked up at Cherokee Taxi, the ad for which featured an Indian in full headdress. They told me half an hour to forty-five minutes.
In the middle of all the cab calls, Connie had brought me a scotch on the rocks. Now he was out in the living room sitting on the sofa. I still hadn't been paid and was wondering if I ought to ask.
"You know how old she is? I'm not going to tell you. Those other girls, they're like twenty-two." He had biceps you could crack walnuts with. He examined the palm of one hand, picked for a moment at a callous there. "It was a bad idea."
"Listen," I said, checking my watch. "There was that fifty."
"I don't want to lose her. But I figure that's next. Like fucking dominoes. You know what? Steal my car."
"Do what?"
"I got a court date in the morning—bankruptcy. They won't let me keep a Lexus. Steal it—it's yours. You liked driving it, I could tell."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"It'd be a shame to have it go at auction to some guy with a hairpiece. I'll file for insurance, they'll take that too."
"I don't steal cars."
"Not so far you don't. You know what I think about? A guy could go his whole life doing right, then make one mistake, and forever afterward, that's what he is. You murder somebody, say. You live seventy years, but this thing you did that took maybe thirty seconds, that's what you are. Maybe you coached little league, but when people talk about you, is that what they say? No. They say 'There's that murderer.' Anyway, here's our problem—I don't have any cash. You want a maxed-out credit card? I can give you a couple of those. That chandelier over the dining table? Thing cost five hundred bucks. I'll get you a screwdriver."
I looked at my watch once more. Now it was a matter of damage control. Rachel was going to be unhappy. Sex would be out of the question, and I just wondered if I'd have to sleep on the sofa again. I stood up.
"Sorry about all this, chief," said Connie. "You're welcome to watch TV or something 'til your cab comes."
"That's OK," I said. I tossed down the rest of my scotch, crunched the ice-cube. I noticed his keys sitting on the table by the door, and I grabbed them on the way out.
| * |
Rachel was sipping red wine and reading Time magazine, which her parents subscribed to for her. We didn't live together, but I had a key—I used her phone, too, since I owed Southern Bell $658. Her apartment was over a garage behind a house in Candler Park, a hilly, wooded, residential area. I rented a basement room in a house two miles away that we were both a little scared by, what with bugs the size of Brazil nuts skittering around. All Rachel's neighbors had dogs and kids. It was a tiny apartment, with a rickety flight of stairs outside and she'd decorated it with posters and India print fabrics. We called it the treehouse, because it felt more like that than a real place a person would live.
She'd been sitting around for a while, deciding how to make me feel as bad as possible. She'd taken her hair down. Rachel was skinny and big-breasted, with a freckled, round face and green eyes. Sometimes she reminded me of one of those doctor's office paintings of a kitten. I had met her when she was still at Emory, and I was making pizzas. It was pretty clear to me that I was a kind of statement for her—no college, shaved head, an actual Georgia boy. Rachel was from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and the following month she would be moving to New York City for a publishing internship. She talked about it like it was no big deal, and she still said "us" quite a bit. She'd be living with two other girls on the Upper West Side, over an Indian restaurant.
"I had to get that grabby assistant manager to give me a ride."
"Sorry," I said. "I was stealing a car."
"And Marcy's opening? You forgot entirely, right?"
Marcy was a girl she worked with who had bought a bunch of disassembled old department store mannequins and painted them and wired them together in unusual combinations. A head with an arm sticking out of it, two legs bound together and decorated with Peanuts band-aids. She had a show at Caffiends downtown, and there was a reception I'd said I might go to.
"Oops," I smacked my forehead. "Hey, put something on your feet and come see."
Rachel took her time putting on her sandals, then followed me down to the curb. Hands on hips, she examined the Lexus. I felt an odd pride of ownership about it. It was a nice ride. Not something I'd have bought, probably, but very sharp.
"What's this supposed to be?"
"I did a designated-driver gig for some drunk and his wife. He couldn't pay, so I took his wheels."
"What are you, a gangster? 'Took his wheels?'"
"It was a business transaction. You studied economics."
All I usually had to offer at the end of an evening—apart from the occasional celebrity sighting—was the stuff people left in their cars. Empty food and beverage containers, mostly, which hardly made for a good story. One time, I'd parked an old Cadillac that was decorated inside like some kind of shrine, with pictures of Jesus taped up everywhere, as well as quotes from the Bible and little crosses, but that kind of thing was the exception.
" Don't lie to me. Where'd you really get it? Have you lost your mind?"
"The guy owed me fifty bucks. I took his car." Hearing myself say it, it almost sounded reasonable.
"This is a twenty-thousand-dollar vehicle. I mean, at least."
"Get in and I'll give you a ride."
We drove to where the reception was, but the place was closed up tight. I apologized again, even though I was actually happy, since I'd just as soon have chewed gravel as look at Marcy's art. The streets were deserted except for one crazy-looking bum picking through a garbage can.
"This is a nice car," she said, powering her seat into La-Z-Boy position.
"See? That's what I'm talking about."
We cruised around for a while, enjoying the tight suspension, the smell of the leather seats. At the Krispy Kreme on Ponce, the "Hot Donuts Now" sign was on, so we parked and had one, then stood outside for a while watching the machinery. We did this a lot - it was our thing, because we'd done it on our first date, over a year ago. Hundreds of them, sugared and cooling, traveled slowly around the huge, bright room on conveyer belts. To their left, under the contraption that sprayed on the sugar, a huge pile of frosting had grown. It looked like candle wax. Rachel was convinced that they discarded the stuff, but I told her she was wrong. They shoveled it up, melted it down and poured it over the next batch.
"You want to tell me what the deal is, really?"
"There is no deal."
"I see." To our right, where the donuts began their trip, one was caught in the vat of hot oil, bobbing away there, turning blacker and blacker on the bottom. Our reflections in the plate glass didn't even look familiar. "Why aren't the police out looking for you?"
"They might very well be."
She knocked at the side of my head. "Is there anybody home in there?"
One of the workers inside came over and fished out the burnt donut. He also went along and pulled another six or seven off the belt that looked perfectly fine, tossing them into a big bin.
"Where's your car?"
"Back at the club."
"And whose is this one, really?"
"I keep trying to tell you." I could see there was something else. "What?"
She wiped her mouth with a napkin. "Marvin called. He said you left early, and it wasn't the first time. He said you shouldn't bother coming in tomorrow."
"Just look at all that grease," I said.
"OK, don't tell me about the car. Let's go to the shoe show."
"Yeah?" I couldn't tell if she was serious.
"This was your last night, and I've never even been."
"Right. I never thought you'd be interested."
"Why not? I can appreciate a woman's body—after all, I own one. Besides, I want to know more about you."
I drove us back to the club. 'Shoe show' was my term—I never could get it to catch on with Scotty ("No one looks at their shoes," he explained, searching my face for signs of mental deficiency). The truth was they might as well have had on suits of armor. Partly that was because five of the meanest hunks of meat in Atlanta were on constant patrol for that moment when some drunk businessman tried to reach across the demilitarized zone and actually touch a girl. But it was also mental, a mind-body separation they learned to achieve. Exist in the moment and outside it at the same time like Zen masters. Okay, maybe they just turned off their brains.
On the way, Rachel checked the glove compartment and found a manual, some receipts from Jiffy Lube, a couple of maps, a package of moist towelettes, and a cap gun styled like a miniature old-west six-shooter.
"Your drunk friends have a kid, I guess." She twirled it around her index finger. "What is it with boys and guns?"
"You're joking, right?"
It was two a.m., and the parking lot had emptied considerably, but there were still forty or fifty cars out there. I'd been hoping that Scotty would be on duty so I could make him park the Lexus, but he wasn't. There was no valet parking past midnight, except on weekends, and Scotty was home in bed by now, probably telling his wife about me, how I'd thrown away a perfectly good job this evening over the promise of a fifty-dollar tip. I parked away from the entrance where we wouldn't be seen getting out and left the keys in the ignition.
"Wipe down the steering wheel," Rachel said. "Get rid of the fingerprints."
I gave it a rub with my elbow. We got out of the car.
She was looking over at the entrance, with its green awning, the two-foot-high green neon emerald above it set against the concrete, staring out like an eye.
There was a chill in the air, even if it was still humid. Summer was over. Football had already started up again. That time of year always made me feel anxious, as if there were important things I ought to be doing. I thought about Connie and his wife, how what at first had seemed like a game turned into a real problem.
"I can't go in. I just got fired. It's embarrassing."
"Then I'll go myself."
"Really?" I tried to imagine this. "There's a cover."
"They won't charge me, will they?"
She marched over to the entrance where Bo, the one-armed bouncer, opened the door for her. She didn't look back, just passed on through into the black light and noise.
I got back into the car, turned on the radio and listened to a rebroadcast of a sports phone-in show from earlier in the day. There is a feeling of freedom that comes with losing a job. It was like letting out a really good burp.
She was gone about ten minutes. For a while, I studied one of the maps. When I saw her come out, I pulled up to the front of the building. Some guy on the radio was shouting about the Georgia defense, how you could drive a truck through the holes they left open.
"We're just leaving yours here?" she asked.
"Don't worry about it. Get in."
She didn't have much choice. How else was she going to get home? She settled in beside me. I put it in drive and eased out toward the exit.
"They're all so pretty," she said, after a minute. "I've never seen so many pretty girls in one place."
"Oh, Emerald City has the prettiest girls, ask anyone."
The streets were quiet and I drove too fast. Rachel held on tight to the armrest. I knew she thought that somewhere in me there was a flaw, like a faulty transistor in a stereo that occasionally made it spit and pop. Still, nothing I could say would convince her that I'd stolen a car, and I found this a little disappointing.
I pulled up in front of her place and kept the engine running.
"You're not coming up, then?" she asked.
"I'm going to take this thing to Mexico and sell it."
"Come in and I'll make cookies. I bought dough this afternoon."
"I'm serious."
"If it is borrowed, you need to bring it back. You could get in real trouble."
"Birmingham, New Orleans, Houston, Corpus Christi, Brownsville." The moon was tangled up like a lost balloon in the topmost branches of the big pecan tree across the street. "Want to come? It should be a pretty drive."
"You go back there and get your own car. Then call me in the morning, OK?"
When she was gone, I opened up the glove compartment and took out the toy pistol. It had a cracked, fake-pearl handle. I hadn't seen any evidence of a child at Connie's town house, so I figured it was his, and I wondered what he might have been thinking about doing with it. My taking the car could have been very good for him, considering. Kept him out of trouble. I listened to the cicadas discussing things amongst themselves. Look, look, look, they said, and then they said it again, in humming waves. I thought about Ashley Plantation with those ugly, gold gates to keep the riff-raff from wandering in. Like we'd want to.
© Geoffrey Becker
