Driver's Education (8 page)

Randal eyes her, suspiciously. He's always hated cats—psychotically, almost. As in, I completely understand the age-old delineation between cat and dog people, but he's expanded the dichotomy to a point that's either frightening or impressive or both. With cutting accuracy, he'll detail certain cats' physical similarities to serial killers, to genocidal murderers. A Russian blue as Slobodan Milosevic. A Maine coon as Charles Manson. And now this one—this one who just won't die.

Mrs. Dalloway's tail twitches and Randal holds his breath.

I hack again from the unfiltered smoke. I say, “Yeah, I mean. That's nuts.” And then, because I have nothing else to add, about immortal cats or otherwise: “Yip, my granddad mentioned you know him?”

He stubs his cigarette out on the desk, next to a row of burned circles. “Alistair McPhee,” he says. “I can't tell you how long I've known that man.” Then, more somberly: “I'm sorry to hear he's sick.”

“Oh, I don't think he's sick. I just think—”

But he continues: “He called me about a week ago, you know. Had to repeat his name three times for me to understand him through the coughing. Finally, when I figured out it was Alistair, that old sonofabitch, I said, ‘Whoa, bub, keep both your lungs, eh?' But listening to him—I got sad. Ended up crying, as a matter of fact.” He lights another cigarette. “You wouldn't believe that, would you? A guy like me, crying?” Smoke sits as a swamp between his lip and nose. “Don't be fooled. I may look tough, but I'm a sentimentalist when it comes down to it. Anyway,
I stopped crying about as soon as I started. When I cry it tastes like blood—they don't tell you that about working at a butcher. You're around this much blood, everything starts tasting like it—even your tears.”

I take a deeper drag on the cigarette, and then Randal asks him to explain how he knows my grandfather.

He ashes his smoke into a jade ashtray.

“Before working at the George Meat Market International I was working at Franky's Automotive Repair Shop on Delancey Street. I was putting cars together and now I'm taking animals apart. Franky, he was an asshole. I'm talking grade-A, award-winning, sphincter-clenching asshole. He'd charge a guy two hundred dollars for a tune-up and all he'd do is loosen a few screws so the poor bastard would have to come back a week later. Sonofabitch eventually fired me because he found out I was tightening too many screws.” He drags slowly on his cigarette again.

“Anyway. Before I got canned your
ye ye
—your granddad—he comes in with his car. God, I can still remember it. It was Saturday, in winter, and before I left for the shop my wife starts screeching,
Aiiiiii-ya, Yip, don't forget fish for Chu Xi!
Every year it's the same thing—don't forget the fish for Chu Xi.

“So there I am, and all I can think is:
For the love of all that is holy do
not
forget the fish for Chu Xi.
My wife, you've got to understand—she's terrifying. Huge hands and a back stronger than an ox's. One year, I forgot the fish for Chu Xi, and she went and broke my nose. Look.” He points to his nose. “So, right, I know my place. I go and promise her that I won't forget the fish and I leave before she can throw anything at me, and I figure, fuck, it's just going to be that kind of day.” He extinguishes the cigarette, lights another one, number three. Mrs. Dalloway yawns.

“But then—
then
. I see your
ye ye
and his car. All beautiful and golden. He's driving it into the shop and I say to Franky,
Franky, how can something that looks so beautiful sound so rotten.
And Franky—I told you what a scheming asshole he is—Franky says,
Yip make the car quiet and charge him triple.
And then he leaves.

“So—it's just me and your
ye ye
in the shop. He tells me that his car
is making too much noise and I'm thinking,
Bub, there's not a person south of Thirty-Fourth who doesn't agree with you
.

“But the car—I know I keep going back to this—but the car really was something spectacular. It needed some work, okay. But what spectacular thing doesn't need some work? I remember I told him this—just how beautiful I thought it was—and for whatever reason, that did it. Your
ye ye
—he just starts crying.

“I was going to put a hand on his shoulder but my hands were covered in grease. Grease, blood—Christ, it's been thirty years since I've actually seen the skin on my palms. So what I did was I said,
Bub, talk to me.
Then he looks at my ring and he says,
Tell me about your wife
. I tell him,
Bub, you don't want to know.
I tell him,
Just this morning she nearly whupped my ass into remembering to buy fish for Chu Xi!
I tell him,
Bub, she's got the biggest hands and the strongest back you've ever seen
. And then I showed him my nose.

“I'll always remember this: your
ye ye,
he says to me,
You must love her. You must always love her.”

“And what'd you say?”

Yip shrugs. He says, “I told him the truth, which is I've never loved anyone so much, and I'm terrified of ever loving anyone else. Then I say,
All right, bub, let's fix that car.
”

He pauses for a moment while he ignites cigarette number four.

“So what was wrong with it?” Randal asks. “Why was it rattling?”

“The check valve was loose.”

“That's all?” I say.

He nods. “And then when I fix it—this is great—when I fix it he says to me,
Let's take her out for a spin!
I look at him and say,
Bub, you're crazy. You don't know Franky
—
he'll whup me harder than my wife whups me for forgetting the fish for Chu Xi.

“And you know what he told me? He told me,
Franky's not here
.”

“So what happened?” I ask.

“I went, damn it!” He shouts and slams an open palm against the desk and laughs hugely, raucously. “I went, goddamn it! And Franky—the sonofabitch he never knew it! Your
ye ye
helped me find fish for Chu
Xi. He drove me to the best place to get fish in the Bronx and the whole time I'm saying,
Bub, you're crazy!
”

Outside, beyond the door of the meat locker, there is haggling and yelling and a sort of general pandemonium that leaves Yip unfazed.

“We drove every weekend after that. We drove to Brooklyn, and Queens. We drove to Long Island, all the way to Montauk. We saw things that were so beautiful you couldn't help but cry. We drove south—to Philadelphia. Farther.”

“To Baltimore?” Randal asks.

“Yes.”

“To Washington, D.C.?”

“Yes!”

“To Richmond?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes! To all of those places!” He pauses then, reaching for his fifth cigarette, but he stops himself. “And that's why I cried all that blood when I found out he was sick.

“He called me a year ago, you know,” he says, “before he took off for San Francisco. Your
ye ye
called me two days before he left and said,
Yip, you need to come and pick her up
. I told him,
Bub, you're crazy. We're driving her to Boston.
But he just said,
Come pick her up, Yip
.

“And—I'm sure he told you this—but that was when we made our bet.”

I think back to the conversation I had with my granddad a few nights ago, the way his voice sounded pushed and desperate. There was the map, the one he'd sent me. And also, he'd mentioned his endings. But, “No. No bet.”

Yip pulls at the half beard that hangs from his chin. He says, “Your
ye ye,
he told me he'd never be back for the car, and I disagreed. So, he said,
Yip, if I'm ever back for this car I'll take that goddamned cat off your hands.
”

There's still that soundtrack of haggling and customers wrestling with their discontent and the occasional thud of a cleaver blade coming down on flesh.

Wedged in the corner of Randal's eye: a hint of soul-folding terror as the cat on the desk stretches its three legs and yawns, showing us a collection of broken teeth.

“And then on Tuesday he calls to tell me you're coming! Right out of the blue. He says,
Yip, give him the keys and have him bring her to me
. I tell him he's crazy. I tell him if he wants her out there, I'll drive her myself. But—no. He said again,
Yip, give him the keys
. So I told him,
You got it, bub: one car, and one cat.
”

“But technically, he's not the one who's picking up the car.”

Yip ignites his cigarette, lifts an eyebrow. He whirls it again in that same dismissive way:
Anyway.

I start: “Yip—”

Randal finishes: “—we're not taking that fucking cat.”

He looks at both of us, making a tepee with his hands and setting his chin atop the point formed by his thick fingers. Mrs. Dalloway licks her front paw, gets bored with it, sticks the whole thing in her decaying mouth and chews.

He states simply, “No cat, no car.”

“But my granddad—”

“Is a man who'd honor the terms of a bet.”

“But don't you want to see her die?” Randal says. “Alive for fifty years! Don't you think it'd be something amazing when she dies?”

Yip's fingers press into the creases of his chin until there are two, then four, then eight. No—no, Yip does not want to see Mrs. Dalloway die. For reasons that are practical and unsentimental, Yip has no interest in seeing Mrs. Dalloway die. Mrs. Dalloway missed her chance for a performative death about thirty-eight years ago. Now the whole idea of it is just taking up space.

“Those are the terms.”

In a voice that's above a whisper but below a squawk, Randal says to me, “This is some motherfucking
hardball
.”

I tell him, “Open your backpack.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Then: “
You
open
your
goddamned backpack.”

“No really, yours is bigger.”

This is true: Randal's pack is massive, the sort of multistrapped, countless-buckled contraption reserved typically for mountaineers and
mothers of triplets. Reluctantly and theatrically, he unzips its largest pouch.

Yip pets Mrs. Dalloway once on her orange skull as I reach across the table for her. When my hand is inches away, she flops on her back. She reaches her front paw out to me, as if to say,
Oh, God, just get this over with, it's not as if it matters, really.
Before I nestle her into Randal's backpack, she regards both of us. Bored.

“All right,” I tell him. “We're ready.”

•  •  •

He leads us out of George Meat Market International, through the maze of hanging meat, past the brute with the cleaver, out onto Mott Street, where the light has dulled and a breeze—practically unnoticeable—has picked up. He moves quickly again, slowing only to light cigarettes, to yell,
You following Yip!
and as he walks the throngs of pedestrians part for him, or at least that's how it seems to us. We reach the south end of Mott, where it dead-ends into Chatham Square, and then we bear east, making our way onto East Broadway. We honestly try our best to keep up with Yip—or, at the very least, to follow his smoke. He says hi to people; he randomly shouts out their names and gives a single frantic wave. He looks back over his shoulder to make sure we haven't fallen too far behind.

We stop on East Broadway, maybe fifty or seventy-five yards after it crosses Catherine. There, just across from the Q Q Bakery, is a white garage that looks as if it's constructed from cinder blocks of different sizes.

“Here,” Yip says.

With a single muscular heave, he lifts the door. And as it flings up and slams against the garage's roof it rings loudly, too loudly, and he shouts and shakes his head. He motions into the darkness, to the down ramp that leads into the structure. He looks at us, waiting for us to make our first moves down the slope, and when we don't he says, “It's not far, it's just dark.”

His steps echo like stones dropping in water as he descends into the garage, and as we feel our way after him, Randal whispers,
Jesus Christ, I can't see a thing
. Yip is right, though—it's not far to the car: after maybe
twenty-five yards or so the claustrophobia of the skinny ramp seems to fade. Or it seems to open up in the dark so that we can at least breathe. He tells us to hold tight, and then we hear him mumbling to himself, his heavy footsteps becoming quick shuffles—not stones plunging, but more like pebbles skipping along the surface—and after he lets out a happy yelp there is a loud buzzing and the room fills with bright white light.

He stands near Lucy, resting his head on her hood. He's smiling. “I told you she's beautiful.”

But she's not beautiful—I know this already. Or maybe she is, but not in the conventional sense. Not in the way a person who hasn't driven her would really understand. Here, in the light of the garage for instance, her gold coat registers more as wet hay that's browned along its edges. Her headlights are dusted: they are covered in this thick grey film, sediment that looks like it's been gathering for centuries. I don't know if my granddad ever saw her when her front grille was perfect, when it had its original sheen—I know that I never have. I run my hand over the silver piping. I feel every scratch, every nick, every groove.

Randal opens the driver's side door and the rusted hinges creak as they swing. He pokes two fingers into a deep tear in the seat's white leather, pushing them into the stuffing until his knuckles disappear. He sits and grips the steering wheel at ten and two o'clock.