Cheeseburger Subversive (18 page)

“Wow,” she says, “I hadn't considered
that
strategy before.”

Okay, okay. I know that lying is wrong, and I have a nagging feeling that Zoe is smart enough to know that I don't really know any more about being a political subversive than I know about being a subatomic particle physicist. But I can't help it. I'm eighteen-years-old. I'm a man now, and I am subject to the dictatorship that biology holds over the higher morals of men. I seem to have Zoe's attention, and to keep it, I'm willing to undergo a philosophical transformation. Even if it means buying a black T-shirt.

“Would you like to go with me to a demonstration in Ottawa this weekend?” she bubbles. “It's a protest against killing animals for fur coats — like, I read about it in this underground magazine my dad got for me while he was in Toronto on a business trip. If it was in this magazine, there'll probably be about a million people show up, don't you think? I mean, we could wipe out the fur industry forever!”

Well, I personally don't have any special affinity for fur coats, since my mother has a mink that stinks like a skunk whenever it gets wet. Also, I think fur coats are overkill on anyone who isn't Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. This is a cause I could really support!

On the other hand, though, I've seen news footage of protesters getting hit by billy clubs, knocked down with water jets, and thrown into police cars by hairy armed cops. I'm not sure that the smell of wet fur offends me that much.

Nevertheless, I am hungry to know her better, to get beyond the physical attraction, and learn what makes her the way she is, so I accept her invitation.

“Can you drive?” she asks. “I'd drive myself, but Mom's got an I.O.D.E. meeting this weekend and Dad's got a golf game.”

I agreed to drive, even though driving my octane-inhaling Ford tank all the way to Ottawa will cost me at least three weeks wages from J.D.'s Gas-O-Rama. It's worth it, though. I'm with Zoe, the most attractive woman in my political science class, perhaps in the entire world. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll even get sprayed by a high-pressure water cannon together! Won't that be something to talk about in political science class! After all, Mr. Hawthorn is always telling us to get involved in the political process.

So, here we are, on our way to Ottawa.

“What's that weird noise?” Zoe asks, as we thunder along in the passing lane of Highway 401.

Despite the acute ideological embarrassment it causes Zoe, she has to admit that her mother drives an air-conditioned, leather-upholstered Saab, and her father rides around in a silver Mercedes the size of an aircraft carrier. The only sound Zoe is normally accustomed to hearing while riding inside a vehicle is the catatonic drone of her parents' Perry Como tapes.

“The noise — it's getting louder,” she says. “Maybe we should pull over and look under the hood!”

I'm not sure which noise amid the cacophony is troubling her. There are so many from which to choose — the clattering of the valves, the hissing of the power steering pump, the buzzing of the alternator, the rumbling from the holes in the exhaust manifold, the clinking of the timing chain. The noises of proletarian conveyance.

“What does it sound like? Clatter? Hissing?”

“No,” she says, cocking her head, “it's more of a whining sound — high pitched. Do you hear it?”

I listen through the din of mechanical breakdown for the noise she describes. Yes, she's right. A shrill new voice has joined the chorus.

“Yeah, I hear it,” I say, “but I'm damned if I know what it is.”

The whine becomes a shriek as we speed along.

“Maybe it's crying because it was due for retirement about a hundred thousand miles ago,” I muse.

With that said, there is a loud thump, and the whining stops. Seconds later, the red TEMP light blinks on. With some situation-appropriate cursing, I slide the senile old truck onto the gravel at the side of the road.

As soon as I lift the hood, I see the problem. Hanging from an I-beam is the frayed remnant of what once served as a fan belt. I manage to limit my swearing to non-“F”-words, since Zoe is standing right beside me, peering into the under-hood cavern of doom.

“Fan belt,” I say, gritting my teeth so hard they might shatter.

I tend to take it personally when my truck fails me. After all, I did pay two hundred dollars of my own hard-earned money for it! And I even fork over the cash for an oil change once a year! And this is the thanks I get!

I kick the bumper in a very subversive way. Zoe is gazing into the oil-blackened engine compartment, which radiates heat and chemical stench like the mouth of a volcano.

“Oh no. Look.”

She points to the radiator that is peeing a steady green stream onto the ground.

Okay. Now I am going to lose my temper. I will scream, I will swear, I will jump around, and I will kick dents on top of the dents that already pock the surface of this stupid worthless truck! I am going to elevate the word tantrum to a whole new level of meaning!

Zoe, who is leaning on both palms against the front of the truck, looks up at me and does something completely out of place. Strands of her hair are hanging in her face, and she blows them away with a very gusty sigh. Then, oddly enough, she grins; a big, goofy grin.

It is as if she has reached inside me and snipped the right wire just nanoseconds before the explosion. Inexplicably, I find myself grinning, too.

She begins to laugh, shaking her head, her hair falling back into her face.

“What are the odds of these two problems happening at exactly the same moment?” she says, practically choking on laughter.

I find myself laughing along with her. It is like being towed out of quicksand.

I think I am in love with her. For Zoe, I would definitely commit an act of subversion against the military-industrial complex! Even if I'm not sure which city it's in! Even if it resulted in losing my driver's licence! I would do it for her!

No other woman has ever caused this many exclamation marks to appear in my thoughts! I'm so inspired by her presence that I think I'll start ranting!

“It's a damned conspiracy against the working man, I tell you! Who drives trucks? Corporate executives? No! The working man, that's who! It's a plot to keep the proletariat immobile!”

I kick the side of the truck just for effect. I kick it so hard that I throw myself off balance, twisting my ankle in the process. Is a pronounced limp considered subversive-looking? I hope so.

“Wait!” Zoe yelps, “I've got it!”

“Got what?”

“They taught us in home ec that you can use a pair of pantyhose as a temporary fan belt!”

“Really?”

“Really. I'm not kidding.”

A miracle! Her own legs are sheathed in fan-belt black, with exactly the material we need to make the repair! It is surely the first time I have stared lustily at a girl's legs with intentions of auto repair. We're saved! What a stroke of luck! We will not miss the revolution for lack of transportation!

“Well?” she says.

“Well what? Let's fix the stupid thing and get back on the road!”

“First you're going to have to turn around so I can take these off.”

I'm not sure if the expression on her face is one of genuine modesty or of calculated coyness. My female-expression-decoding-system is not very well calibrated. I haven't been a man for very long, after all.

“Oh yeah,” I grunt. “Sorry.”

I spin around on my heel, the one which isn't throbbing with pain. The sun is hovering just above the treeline, directly behind me. Zoe is behind me as well, just to my left. Her shadow stretches casually in front of me, sprawling out on the surface of the highway like a slender house cat. I am trying SO hard to ignore it, to remain true to my mission to ignore her physical attributes for a while and get to know Zoe better as a person, but dammit! It's difficult to stop the blood from migrating south as I watch Zoe's shadow-shorts descend the length of her shadow-legs, and as she peels the nylons from her long, two-dimensional leg-shadows. I see her shadow bend over into an elongated arc, and I watch the shorts shimmy back up her shadow-legs into position around her waist.

Is it immoral to watch the shadow of a girl removing her shorts? Is it wrong to picture in one's mind what the actual girl at the other end of the shadow might look like beneath the black drapery? In the space between my eyes I can see her, all milky-white, smooth and beautiful.

I'm sure my father would tell me that I am being immoral right now. My sister Charlotte would tell me I'm being a P.I.G. — a Pitiful, Ignorant Guy. Parts of my body are quite suddenly acting very subversive. A definite uprising is underway! My new black jeans are even less comfortable than they were moments earlier.

“Okay, I'm done,” she says. “You can turn around now.”

I hope my subversion isn't showing too much.

She tosses the pantyhose at me. I run the former leggings around the alternator, pump, and fan pulleys, and I tie a knot in the rigging. If only installing a real fan belt was this easy!

“There!” I grunt, slapping my hands together to shake loose the dirt (It's a hormonal law that a man must do this every time he touches anything under the hood of a vehicle).

“Now, what are we going to do about this damned radiator leak?” I had meant the question to be rhetorical, but Zoe supplies an answer.

“Well, in home ec they told us that if you put a teaspoon of pepper into a radiator, it will seal any small leaks. For a while, anyway.”

“Get outta here!”

“Seriously!” she explains, “the grains of pepper get pushed into the hole by the circulating radiator fluid, and then the hot water in the radiator makes the pepper expand to seal the leak.”

Why did I take auto shop instead of home ec? All we learned in shop was how to accurately throw S.A.E. sockets at each other, and how to install new tires on the shop teacher's Buick Skylark.

“There's a McDonald's at the next service station, I think,” says Zoe, who is forcing me to love her more and more by the minute. “I hope we have enough water left in the rad to get us there.”

“There's one way to find out!” I say.

I reach for the cap on the radiator and give it a hearty twist.

Angry, hissing green water explodes skyward. The radiator cap hurtles somewhere into the upper stratosphere. Hot water surges Old Faithful-style, blasting against my chest. The volcanic discharge knocks me onto my back.

I roll around frantically in the roadside gravel, screaming things like “Ooo-ooo-ooo! Eee-eee-eee!” and other manly utterances. I tear off my steaming black shirt and throw it on the ground. I jump to my feet and prance up and down on the shirt until it has become a shredded, mucky component of the roadway.

“Are . . . you . . . okay?” Zoe gasps, as I finally stop gyrating and slump against the driver's side door.

“Uhh . . . I think so.”

I feel as if a nuclear warhead has just passed through my torso, but I have only a red patch on my skin to show for my suffering.

“You
sure
you're okay?” Zoe asks again.

“Yeah. I'm okay.”

She lets out a shaky sigh, followed by a stifled giggle.

“Your burn is shaped like Whistler's Mother!”

Under normal circumstances, a man is hormonally required to get very pouty when a woman giggles at his injuries. But this is Zoe, the most attractive woman in the universe, so I let it slide.

I retrieve the rad cap from where it has landed, and return it to its benevolent position atop the radiator.

“If this old engine overheats and explodes, we'll just have to think of it as a mercy killing!” I say.

Against all odds, the pickup sputters all the way to McDonald's without further incident. I'm in as much danger of exploding as the old truck, since I have been holding my breath for the last few kilometers.

“I have to use the washroom,” Zoe says matter-of-factly. “I'll meet you out here by the picnic tables. You go and get some pepper and some water for the radiator. And some food, if you don't mind. I don't know about you, but I'm starving!”

Perhaps not coincidentally, I am also very hungry. We are becoming soulmates, I think! When Zoe is hungry, I am hungry, too!

My momentarily restored spirit plunges again into darkness, though, as I plod into McDonald's. Apparently, every human being within a hundred-mile radius has simultaneously felt a craving for a Big Mac. A chain of humanity twists like a heat-dazed snake all the way from the entrance to the serving counter. Six or seven recent graduates of puberty race back and forth behind the counter, haplessly attempting to appease the burger-starved masses.

A hand-lettered cardboard sign above the menu board offers an apologetic explanation for the droplets of sweat that congregate on my forehead:

OUR AIR CONDITIONER IS TEMPERARILY BROKE.
SORRY FOR THE
INCONVEEN
TROUBLE!

A fat guy stands directly in front of me, gushing rank sweat from every fold and orifice. He wears a faded tank top, has tattoos on his forearms and thick, curly hair on his enormous shoulders. He utters goddamn every few seconds. He is the kind of guy you often see mulling about in back road junkyards. I hope that if, God forbid, he decides to hurt someone, it isn't me.

“What's taking so goddamn long?” he hollers. “Goddamn this heat! Goddamn this lineup!” He enunciates each goddamn in a way that makes me wonder whether or not God actually has damned this restaurant to the flames of hell. It's certainly beginning to feel that way. Sweat is stinging my eyes.

I stand at the tail of this writhing human python as it slowly slithers towards the counter. More people have packed in behind me. Inescapably bright images of fun ol' Ronald McDonald and his happy McDonaldland buddies imbed themselves on my retinas. My stomach growls in agony, twisting as if it's hooked up to some medieval torturing device. Heat, hunger, and my newly acquired subversive attitude are beginning to overtake me. I am on the verge of irrational behaviour.