Back in the Cabriolet I started the engine, threw the gear shift into first, and burned some serious rubber on my way out the parking lot.
Time to refocus.
Concentrate on the present. Not the past. Not the future. Not on ghosts.
Turning onto Central Avenue in the west end of the city, I decided that I needed to do something to get my mind off myself. Something totally ordinary. Something calming. Do it before I was expected at the School of Art.
No more churches! No more ghosts! No more God!
When the neon sign for the Hollywood Carwash caught my attention, a voice spoke to me inside my head, told me to turn left inside the lot. I’m not sure how, but I knew immediately that it would do the trick. I hung a quick left, pulled into the open bay, set the tires on the tracks, threw the gear shift into neutral and let the machines take control.
Back when I was a kid, the last place on earth I might find calm and peace was a car wash. I had a real fear of them. The inside of a carwash was like being inside the belly of some mechanical beast. The carpet strips that hung down from the ceiling draped the car like live tentacles. Giant rotating bristle brushes tried to rip through metal, invade the interior along with an onslaught of white, foamy, alien goop.
That was back when I still believed in God.
Naturally Molly had no trouble going through the car wash when we were kids, the ear to ear smile she’d plant on her face made it seem like she actually enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I’d stand alone inside the waiting area, closed off to the soapy Buick and the industrial machine noise by a translucent Plexiglas barrier. I remember following the car and Molly’s distorted face all the way along the length of the car wash. From rinse to air-dry to Turtle Wax. I’d still be standing off to the side when the cigarette smoking, T-shirted men made a quick clean of the interior with their white rags, vacuum cleaners and bottles of sea-blue spray-on cleaner.
Not much had changed since those days, except that Molly was gone and now I occupied the car’s interior alone, feeling the bucking of the machines and the relentless spray of the water against the fabric ceiling. I almost hated for it to end. After all, I no longer believed in monsters and I understood the mechanical utility of machines.
Coming away from the air-dry, I threw the transmission into first and pulled up to the two men who would give the interior a swift cleaning. One teenage boy and a short, white-haired, white-bearded, slow moving man who looked like he might be pushing one-hundred. The old man smiled through all that white hair, asked me to step out of the car ever so briefly while they vacuumed the interior, washed the seats and windshield. In the bay beside me, a well-dressed middle-aged woman who drove a black Mercedes Benz was all worked up. She couldn’t locate her cell phone. She was sure she’d had it on her when she entered the car wash.
A big man in khakis and blue shirt that had the words ‘Hollywood Carwash’ stitched on the breast pocket assured her he’d do everything in his power to scour the car for it. Because after all it probably just slid behind the seats. He’d seen it happen “a thousand and one times before. Make that a thousand and two.” But she just made a face and with a dismissive wave of her hand, got back in the car and peeled out, no doubt on her way to purchase a brand new cell phone. When you’re rich, the cost of a new cell phone is pocket change.
As the two men completed cleaning the interior of the Cabriolet, I felt my jacket pocket for my own cell phone.
Yup, still there. I guess you could never be too careful about such things.
The old man smiled at me once more. He looked into my face for more than a few fleeting seconds, as if he sensed a familiarity. Getting back in the car I pulled down the window, reached out to hand him a five dollar tip.
Overgenerous?
Maybe.
But he seemed like such a nice old guy. It made me sad that he had to work at a car wash at his advanced age. He thanked me, asked me to have a nice day in a voice that was both soft and raspy.
I pulled out of the carwash feeling much better about myself. Hanging a quick left, I made my way for the downtown and the start of the rest of my life.
Chapter 10
But rush hour traffic was a bear.
By the time I stopped off at the Stagecoach Coffee Shop on State Street for a double latte-to-go, the clock had already reached the back side of nine o’clock. This meant that Robyn would be operating the art center all by her lonesome. Something neither one of us appreciated since the not-for-profit, art patron-funded organization employed only two people to do all the studio tutoring, gallery event planning, bill paying, public relations, and just about everything required of running an art center.
I got back in the Cabriolet with my coffee, headed for the Broadway parking garage and parked in my designated by-the-month rental space. On my way out of the garage, my cell vibrated. Approaching the congested city sidewalk, I dug out the phone and flipped it open.
The screen indicated another new text. I swallowed something and thumbed the OK button that opened the message.
Remember
That one word, like the last time I’d received it, made no sense to me.
Remember what?
What in God’s name was going on?
Per usual I thumbed the OK button that was supposed to reveal the caller’s name and number only to get Unknown Caller.
“Molly,” I whispered, purely out of instinct.
I was becoming more and more convinced Molly was trying to communicate with me from the dead. Maybe it helped me to imagine her living in heaven. But then, what if heaven did not exist?
Distracted by the sudden emptiness I felt, not to mention anxiety, I nearly ran into a tall suited man carrying a black briefcase.
“Watch where you’re going, young lady,” he snapped.
I evil-eyed him as he passed.
“If I knew were I was going,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here.”
Chapter 11
I finally arrived at the studio at a little past nine-thirty.
My stomach sank when I saw Franny.
Franny in attendance, the second day in a row. Even though he was the studio’s Painter-In-Residence, his visits usually averaged once or twice a month, depending upon his production as an artist. Usually he brought in a completed or near completed piece, just as he had done yesterday, and in turn we offered him advice on how to improve upon it. This of course was all a big joke since Franny’s talent far surpassed our own.
While two gray-haired, ‘retired’ women worked studiously at their easels on the far side of the brightly lit studio, Franny occupied his favorite corner of honor, round body partially hidden by what looked to be a brand new canvas.
My beating heart would not let up. Like yesterday’s ‘Listen’ canvas, I knew instinctively that this painting had my name written all over it.
Robyn caught sight of me just as I hung up my knapsack inside a wood cubby that once-upon-a-time housed the little jackets and mittens of long grown kindergartners.
“Becca honey,” she said in her animated sing-song voice. “You are not going to believe this.”
