The Last Open Road Page 7

  In fact, that's where we kissed for the very first time. At the drive-in. I remember we were in Big Ed's black Sixty Special sedan (the one with the extra-thick window glass) watching some dim-bulb Bible movie with Victor Mature in it. I had my arm around Julie and she was sort of nuzzling into my neck, and that of course made the action in the front seat of Big Ed's Cadillac a lot more interesting than watching Victor Mature parade his biceps around in a used beach towel. During one real boring scene, I leaned over into Julie's hair and my lips sort of grazed her left eyebrow—hell, I wasn't aiming or anything, you know?—and just like that her face rolled up into mine and we were kissing! Boy, she was one hell of a good kisser (in fact, I kind of wondered where she'd picked it up) and that's about all we did for the next two hours. Of course, she wouldn't open up her mouth to French on account of she was a good Immaculate Conception girl, but to tell the truth, I wasn't sure I knew how to do that anyway. When we came up for air this one time, there were headlights flashing and horns honking all around us. The damn picture had been over for ten minutes! It was kind of embarrassing, really.

  After that, making out in a parked car became sort of a regular part of our dates (and, not surprisingly, it was the part I looked forward to the most). In fact, it got to where I was daydreaming about making out with Julie all the time. And I mean all the time. It never failed to get me all hot and bothered—just thinking about her, you know?—but I'd also get this dry-mouth, queasy feeling whenever I'd dream up something really vivid and sexy about Julie. Then I'd feel all ashamed and guilty about it afterward. I believe it's a sure sign your brain is suffering from some sort of serious pulp disorder when you start feeling guilty about your blessed daydreams.

  Most of our dates usually wound up with Julie and me parked out back behind the Sinclair, kissing and groping and wrestling around in the two-by-four cab of the Old Man's tow truck. It wasn't the most accommodating place for that sort of thing—-not hardly!—what with the floor shift sticking up right in the middle and the steering wheel so close you couldn't really get two healthy human torsos wedged in behind it (and no way would Julie ever let us get more than 15 degrees off vertical plumb). But at least it was dark and quiet back there behind the Sinclair and nobody could see us from the highway. That was real important, on account of Julie didn't want any flack from her mom or uncle about being, you know, one of those easy girls. Plus I sure as hell didn't fancy the thought of one of Big Ed's Caddies falling on my skull. Or his Jaguar either, for that matter.

  A couple times I asked Julie if she maybe wanted to come over to the apartment over my Aunt Rosamarina's garage, but no way would she even consider it. Personally, I couldn't see the difference between making out in the Old Man's tow truck and making out in my apartment (except that my apartment would've been much more comfortable) but Julie had a kind of Major Distinction about it. Girls always have Major Distinctions when it comes to making out. For example, they have these Invisible Boundaries laid out across their bodies—like the Great Wall of China, you know?—so that touching one spot passes for Acceptable Behavior, while a half inch farther south amounts to Criminal Trespass. You figure it out. But I had to admit Julie's make-out boundaries were a lot closer to pay dirt than any of the other girls I'd known. Then again, the girls I'd known didn't exactly represent a cross section of national opinion. Either one of them.

  Anyhow, Julie and me would park out behind the Sinclair and start kissing and stuff—boy, could she ever kiss!—and pretty soon she'd have me worked up into a genuine, grade-A hormone frenzy. It took all of about thirty seconds on an average Saturday night. Then she'd just sort of hold me there—right on the brink of explosion!—for the next forty or fifty minutes like she was going for some kind of new world record. But whenever I'd get really, really desperate (like when I'd start peeling the chrome trim off the dashboard with my fingernails), she'd all of a sudden back off and make that whimpering little "please stop" noise all the girls knew how to make. And then she'd sit up, straighten her skirt, brush out her hair, and say something like, "Gee, Buddy, it's getting awfully late," as if nothing was going on at all! Can you believe it? Oh, I'd beg and plead and drool all over my shirt, but once Julie decided it was time to go, there was no changing her mind. So I'd drive her back to her mom's apartment, grinding my teeth into powder the whole seven blocks, and when we finally pulled up in front she'd always give me one last, long, wet, deep, lingering, Hollywood-style kiss, after which she'd lean up and whisper, "I had a wonderful time, Buddy," directly in my ear and maybe even run her tongue lightly down the lobe for punctuation. Just to drive me nuts. I don't know where the hell she learned that trick, but it was about equal to pouring a bucket of molten-hot lava in my lap! By the time I got back to the apartment over my aunt's garage, I damn near needed a cold chisel to get my shorts off.

  4: MANUAL LABOR

  FORTUNATELY, I found something besides Julie Finzio to keep my mind occupied during that spring of 1952. Which was a good thing, since otherwise I might've worn out some of my more precious body parts. Big Ed's copy of the official Jaguar Service Manual arrived—airmail, no less—all the way from Coventry, England, bound in dark maroon leather (or maybe leatherette, but so good you couldn't tell) with a snarling Jaguar's head and fancy gold lettering embossed on the front like a damn encyclopedia. It was thick as an encyclopedia, too (and not one of those skinny volumes like "I" or "V," either), and I started taking it home every night and reading it like a detective story or something. Then I'd bring it back and leave it in the john at work, so's I could thumb through it whenever I had a little time to myself.

  To tell the truth, that Jaguar Service Manual was harder to figure than any school textbook I'd ever come across, on account of the English speak a different brand of English than we use here in Jersey. F'instance, a "hood" in Passaic, New Jersey, is a "bonnet" over in England. And a "hood" over there is what we call a "convertible top" here in the States. And that's just the tip of the damn iceberg, as they say both places. I learned that an open-end wrench was really a "spanner" and that a Jaguar's "petrol gauge," "screenwiper switch," and "revolution counter" were mounted on a "centre facia" rather than an ordinary Jersey-style dashboard. A muffler was a "silencer" (at least that one made sense), while a piston was fastened to its connecting rod with a "gudgeon pin." What we call a "generator" in American English was a "dynamo" in English English, and British cars were generally "positive earthed" instead of negative ground like normal automobiles. It was as if Jaguars were some kind of mysterious private club with split-finger handshakes and secret insider passwords.

  But the biggest kick was the way that Jaguar manual described routine repair procedures. Such as:

  Fit a new felt washer into each recess in the striking rod holes at the rear of the cover. Thread the plate over one or other of the outside rods and slide the rod into the cover, not forgetting to fit the change-speed fork before the rod enters the front hole in the cover, until it occupies the neutral position.

  This can be checked by looking through the grub screw hole on top of the cover and aligning the neutral groove in the rod under the hole. Enter the other outside rod in a like manner through the plate in the change-speed fork, into the neutral position. Place an interlock ball in the groove in each rod using the centre hole to gain access to the rods which are already in position.

  Whaaa? Or try this one:

  The torsion bars, which are 52" (127cm.) long, are positioned along the inner vertical faces of the chassis frame side members. Both ends of the torsion bar have raised splines, a reaction lever with companion splines and clamp bolt being attached to the rear end while a splined muff is fitted to the front end. The reaction lever is forked and the forks are supported on a trunion positioned by an adjusting barrel nut and bolt, the bolt being attached to the chassis frame.

  Sure thing. But even if some of it read like Sanskrit, other passages in that Jaguar manual were downright elegant:

  Attention to the following points of
maintenance will be amply repaid by satisfactory operation of the engine and will materially add to the life of the unit.

  Pure poetry, right? Made you feel like putting on a jacket and tie before you ever touched a wrench to one. Or maybe a judge's robe and powdered wig might be more appropriate, since a Jaguar mechanic had to:

  Check the top face of the cylinder block for truth.

  But my overall personal favorite was:

  Offer up the camshaft sprocket to the flange.

  It sounded like some kind of pagan sacrifice, you know?

  Of course, Big Ed's Jag didn't really need any heavy-duty fixing since it was damn near brand-new, but I enjoyed reading that stuff anyway and figured it might come in handy some day. Anytime I got stuck on an unfamiliar word or weird-ass explanation, I'd dream up an excuse to go over to Westbridge and have a talk with Sylvester. I'd usually come by around noon, so I could treat him to lunch (which was a half-pint of sweet wine every day but Friday, when he generally switched to rock 'n' rye to kick off his weekend) and it never failed to amaze me how Sylvester could turn all those highbrow paragraphs into a few simple grunts, shrugs, and finger-circles in the air that an ordinary knuckle-buster from Passaic could understand.

  The Westbridge shop was always busy in springtime, since that's when all the Jaguars and MGs came out of hibernation and started running around with their tops down and gas pedals mashed to the floorboards. That inevitably resulted in an epidemic of burnt clutches, shredded gearboxes, broken engines, pretzelized suspension pieces, and assorted electrical malfunctions requiring immediate (and expensive!) service attention. In fact, Colin's shop got so swamped that Barry Spline even offered me a job. Honest. I was real flattered (especially seeing as how I didn't have much in the way of a foreign accent) but I had to turn him down. I mean, who wanted to take the damn bus in and out of Manhattan every day? Not to mention that there were some undeniable advantages to my situation at the Old Man's Sinclair. Like I was pretty much my own boss in Passaic (as long as I got the work done, anyway) but I could see how the deal at Westbridge was more like my old man's chemical plant job. You had to punch a damn time clock—even for lunch!—and take a lot of guff off Barry Spline and Colin himself whenever they felt like dishing it out (which looked to be a pretty regular occurrence, best as I could tell). Plus I was still working out of Butch's toolbox, and it didn't seem right to haul it off to another state, even if it was just across the bridge in Manhattan. But the most important thing was they didn't have a Miss Julie Finzio hanging around the shop at Westbridge, and that was a major consideration as far as I was concerned.

  So I begged off. But I did it in a proper, forthright, and gentlemanly fashion. In other words, I lied right through my teeth, telling some bullshit story about my poor old sickly maiden aunt and how it just wouldn't do for me to be way over in Manhattan in case she needed anything. It was a load of crap, since all I did around Aunt Rosamarina's house was haul the garbage cans out to the curb when the smell of used kitty litter got strong enough to make your eyes water and your ears ring. But I knew it was important to decline Barry's offer in such a way that he'd be sure and keep me in mind if things ever changed. After all, you never want to burn your Westbridges.

  Turns out I made the right move, because who should roll into the Sinclair a few days later but my old mechanical mentor Butch Bohunk. And I do mean roll. The poor bastard was laid up in a wheelchair with none other than Mean Marlene doing the pushing. She was wearing her usual "I'd rather be any place else" scowl and a pair of bright turquoise slacks about four sizes too small for her. Gee whiz, they made her ass look like two party balloons full of butterscotch pudding. Lord only knows how she got them on and off. But fat and nasty as she was, Marlene still looked a hell of a lot better than Butch. One of his legs was in plaster clear up to the hip—sticking out like a concrete post!—and he was wearing big, dark sunglasses to cover up the purplish scar tissue spiderwebbed all over his face. I guess that's what happens when your head goes through a windshield. "Hey, Butch," I hollered, "long time no see. How'ya doin?" Not that I really meant it, since any moron could tell that old Butch wasn't doing very good at all.

  "Aw, I'm doin' real fuckin' great," he grunted, extending a hand with most of the fingers missing. It was just a thumb and a bunch of crooked stumps, and felt like a lump of Easter ham when I shook it.

  "So," I said, still staring at his hand, "howz things?"

  "Couldn't be better, Buddy, couldn't be better," he allowed, working up half a smile. "But I don't guess I'll be playing no concert piano anymore."

  "I guess not."

  "Hey, what the hell. I can still pick my nose, wipe my ass, and beat my meat. What more could a guy ask?"

  "Not a thing, Butch. Not a thing."

  "You got that right."

  "And how're you doin'?" I asked Marlene, trying to be polite.

  "Somethin' wrong with yer eyes, honey?" she answered in her high, hillbilly twang. "Anybody kin see I'm havin' me the time of my en-tire life here, wheelin' this fat asshole around town like a blessed shopping cart." I guess Marlene wore out her welcome back home in Tennessee (not hard to imagine) and decided to come back once she found out Butch was laid up in a wheelchair and couldn't fight back if she took a notion to pop him one. Which I'm sure she did from time to time. Not to mention that Butch was getting some pretty decent disability benefits through the Veteran's Administration, and no question that made him a lot more desirable as far as Mean Marlene was concerned.

  Anyhow, we shot the shit for awhile—just small talk about car stuff and old times, you know—and behind the dark glasses I could see Butch's eyes sweeping around the shop, checking out his tools and the car projects in progress. Since he showed up right out of the blue, I didn't have a chance to clean or tidy up (which is probably exactly what he had in mind) but I'd been doing things the way he taught me and the service bays didn't look too bad at all. At least if you didn't count the new smudge on the ceiling from when Old Man Finzio tried to braze a filler neck on a Buick radiator without taking it out of the car first and set the carburetor on fire. Outside of that, the shop was pretty well squared away (if I do say so myself) except for the few specific sockets, extensions, and box-end wrenches I needed for the Pontiac head gasket I was working on. Butch allowed me a nice little halfnod of approval. "So," he wanted to know, "how're things goin' fer you, Buddy?"

  "Real good, Butch. Real good."

  "I hear you been workin' on a coupla those Jagwarz."

  "Just one, Butch. Big Ed Baumstein bought himself one of those XK120 roadsters. White with red leather. Wait'll you see it."

  "That fat hebe. You an' the Old Man'll rake in a pisspot fulla money offa him. Them fuckin' Jagwarz needs work alia time."

  "They sure do," I nodded, "But gee whiz, Butch, when they're runnin'. . . "

  "Yeah," he sighed, "I 'spect they're pretty slick, all right."

  "'Course, Old Man Finzio can't stand 'em."

  "Figures."

  "Yeah."

  "Hey, that reminds me. I heard you been dickin' his niece." Boy, I turned bright red. I mean, Marlene was standing right there , you know? But she didn't so much as bat an eye. In fact, she hardly even seemed to notice. "So," Butch repeated, "You been puttin' the old pork t'Julie or not?"

  "Jeez, Butch," I gulped, "It's not like that. . . ."

  "Oh, sure, honey," Marlene snorted, giving off a dirty little knifeblade of a laugh. I guess she was listening after all.

  We shot the breeze a little after that, but then we sort of ran out of things to say and it got real quiet—like it always does when you're around hurt or sick people who aren't likely to get much better—and the only sound was the cars and trucks rumbling past on the highway. I remember wishing one of them would pull in for gas or to ask directions or something.

  "Say," Butch said at last, "where's that old fart Finzio, anyway?"

  "Aw, he's out chasin' parts or something."

  "Good. I can't stand that sono
fabitch."

  "Aw, he ain't so bad."

  "Sure he is," Butch grinned. "He's gotta be the worst goddam tight-ass, mean-streaked, camel-faced sonofabitch you ever met!"

  "You know," I said, mulling it over like I was giving it careful consideration, "you're probably right!" We got a good laugh off that.

  "Well," Butch said, wiping his eye with the back of his bum hand, "you be sure and tell the old prick I stopped by."

  "Sure will, Butch."

  He turned his wheelchair to go, but Mean Marlene stopped him with a sharp cuff to the back of the head. "Ask him," she hissed in his ear, "like yew promised."

  "Aw, Marlene, he don't know—"