You take the bus to the car wash because you have no car. Every two weeks the compulsion strikes, shaking you from your dolor and listlessness. You have no currency, but in your jeans
–faded by time not acid washed– in the little pocket for drugs or spare buttons, you always manage to find two tokens. The tokens are strange, etched with two winding snakes, and weigh more in the center than the edges, as if they were smelted from cores of lead.
The bus only ever comes to your stop after what seems like an interminable wait. There is no schedule posted on the metal pole next to the bench, no advertising either for some small divertissement. On the bus, which is blue, there is one long row of seats, so that, you’ve conjectured, no one may claim a window and no one may claim an aisle.
The patrons on the bus are not housemaids and junior college students, nor are they late night revelers or even old ladies with their Sunday groceries. They are technocrats and dilettantes, captains of industry and aestheticians. Each wears a sanitary mask, but you do not know if it is preventative or simply the new style.
You catch your reflection in a passing building, and the thinness of your combover surprises you. From the other side it would look so full, so virile, but you never remember to look from that direction.
Two blocks before Mort’s Hand Car Wash, you press the button to request a stop. You wish there was a cable to pull instead –the sensation would be so much different, like the yanking of reins to halt a carriage– but no matter, and as you step off the bus, you look at the shiny dull line of cars.
You enter the attached convenience store where customers purchase baubles and salted nuts and flip through romance novels while they wait. Chimes announce your entrance as you cross the threshold and the young lady at the register nods hello.
You turn and face the windows that line the hallway to the outdoor waiting area. You think to yourself that this is where fathers should be, holding their children up high to see the family station wagon rinsed, sudsed, then draped with long fingers of cloth.
But the windows are covered with newspaper, and it is translucent yet opaque, so no one can see how the cars are cleaned. Perhaps the old machinery has fallen into disrepair, and all the work is done by hand. There is only one break in the newsprint wallpaper: a doorway with a pentagonal knob. For the life of you, you cannot figure out which side of the glass the light is coming from, but that is not why you are here.
As you walk through the hallway you pass a girl wearing saddle shoes, a school jumper, a dark red cardigan. She stands, her back towards you, engrossed in the single picture on the wall: a little league team photo yellowed with age.
Outside, the sky is gray, but not laden with rain, and you know Malco will have something good for you. You find him, as usual, arm deep in a bucket of sealant or wax. Malco, the master of the custom detail. You two have an ongoing agreement. Malco hands you the keys to the most striking vehicle in his care, something that both repels and attracts, like both ends of a magnet. You get the car for one hour, but cannot drive it further than once around the block.
And so every two weeks, you attempt to seduce a customer at the car wash, the kind of woman who would be impressed by a man of your stature, so clearly not someone who rides the bus. It is always the same. Before your hour-long drive around the block, you roll down the passenger side window, and ask how you can see her again. So far, the women have all politely declined, but they let you down so gently that a fortnight later, you are ready to try again. You are unsure what Malco gets out of the deal.
Today, the schoolgirl is your quarry, that much you know. Malco tells you the car is a Shelby Mustang the color of burnt ochre. You walk back inside the hallway, where she is still staring at the little league photo. She looks like the type to roll up her skirt. If she’s at the car wash alone, you think to yourself, she must be at least sixteen, unless she also took the bus.
“You know, that’s me there, second row,” you say to her, though you can’t remember if you ever played baseball or had a childhood.
“Really, which one?” she asks, craning her neck over and up to you, so that you can see the crude line under her chin where her makeup stops.
“The only one with a clean uniform,” you answer, “I never played much.”
She looks at you.
“Why do they cover the windows with newspaper?”
You decide then to grab her hand in yours –it is so small– and pull her behind you, eagerly and not lecherously, you hope. With your other hand, you grasp the doorknob, one finger for each of the five sides. Never before have you thought to do this. The knob turns, counterclockwise, and you lead the schoolgirl into the belly of the carwash.
Inside you see a hundred kittens, mewing and purring and crawling atop a rusted old car of no clear make or model. They lick and lick and it never gets any cleaner, and the kittens’ tongues are raw and their eyes the color of iron.
You let go of her hand. You still have one token for the ride home.
