Car Wash

The sun broke through at the car wash as I waited for them to finish up the part at the end, after the conveyor belt's wash 'n wind finale, when it's just mano a auto with rags on the dry tarmac.

Under cover of the cavernous, dimly lit garage, I stood keeping watch over all the detritus that I had removed from the car so as to get the Maximum Clean. A huge flat-screen television hung suspended, bolted to the ceiling, displaying our nation's very own Brittany Spears singin' as if nothin' had ever happened, as if most of the globe doesn't know what has. I watched for signs of emotional evolution in her every hip grind, arse bump and world weary head flick, but couldn't find any. I wasn't surprised.

A tall, very dark black man had been standing there also watching Brittany. It was his party that I was intruding on, so I kept to myself near the open garage door and tried not to interrupt his viewing pleasure. He wore big, baggy jeans and a loose hooded sweatshirt with orange squiggly designs on the front pouch pockets. He stood very straight and still as he watched and I started to wonder what was going through his head but then stopped my mind from going there as I would stop a child from storming the door to a private room that was occupied. Instead, I warmed my face in the sun.

As the three of us did our respective things, I anticipated my newly cleaned car. I'd been thinking a lot about money lately and how to cut back. Manicures were out as was the occasional back rub. Pedicures were further and farther between, as I let the polish growing out to the tips of my toes like gaily colored crescent moons. This seemed like an extravagance, paying to have the car cleaned by other people, and it was. But time was what it always is and I managed to rationalize it just this once, groping for a normalcy that was clearly floating away.

This morning had been the lowest ebb of the bleakest month of a notorious winter. A winter that had pitched a fury on the inside of my car, and I asked the maitre'd of the car wash if they really cleaned, I mean with a spritzer and everything, the inside of the car. Because that's what meant the most to me. (You know what they say-- it's what's on the inside that counts.) He assured me they they would do a good job so I went about unloading the contents of a small intercontinental container ship onto the floor of the garage.

The tall, quiet man finally spoke. "You take trip?" he asked. How could I tell him that the many bags of crap he saw splayed before him contained items that I consider impossible to live without-- not just for trips, but for always. There were two umbrellas and a child's car seat, a bag of assorted balls (soccer, tennis and foot), and the now ubiquitous bag of bags for grocery shopping. There's the glass break tool and the reflective roadside helper, our water bottles, my yoga mat and a sharpie. There was the bag of blankets for just in case I get trapped under an avalanche in remotest Piscataway, and the small duffel full of granola bars and space blankets, disposable rain ponchos and crayons, extra boy's pants, blank pads, a viewmaster and chalk for when we get trapped in a Delaware mud slide and have to spend a week in our car waiting for rescue crews to dig us out. There were three Dr. Seuss books, two car bingo boards and my travel make-up pouch so that I can look my best for the local news cameras and firemen who ultimately save us. And that, ladies and gentleman, is literally how I roll. A circus car of contingency with luggage for my baggage.

"Nope," I said, "no trip." There was a moment's pause as he surveyed the ground then looked at me. "You live near?" he said.
"Yup," I answered.
He continued, "The car wash is no so busy today. Some days, the cars are for long time, but today I go home early."
"It's a nice day for it," I said, because it was a nice day now as the sun warmed the ground and thawed my disposition. I smiled a wide, close-mouthed smile at whom I now knew to be a car wash employee then returned my attention to the TV where some humorless dude was singing his heart out in the same wide-legged stance as a generation of earnest rock guitarists before him. Mister Car Wash was obviously not from around here. Haiti, maybe or the Ivory Coast. I considered telling him that there was more to our fair country than music videos then chose not to take that one on.

Beyond the far open end of the garage, someone waved a rag and I gestured, that's my car. I began to make the first of what would be many trips to return the many bags of crap to their rightful place in my car and psyche. Half way through the second trip, Mister Car Wash asked if he could help me. I said, yes, thank you, because I couldn't think of a valid reason why I shouldn't accept, and as he stooped to gather three heavy bags in each hand, I got me to wonderin' about this tall, strapping man.

Sometimes I indulge myself in a sort of cosmic double dare fantasy, where I get myself knocked up with my second son, the one I should have conceived with my ex, the one we were supposed to adopt together. In my delusion I ignore the scientific and financial given that it's nearly impossible, this feat-- I've a snowball's chance in hell. But that doesn't stop me from my sitcom-y thoughts of luring some Harvard grad back to my sister's place in Cambridge for a night of carnal triumph and canned laughter that only happens in apartments with three walls. I've been thinking these contrived thoughts with nary a sidebar glance as to whether or not I would ever tell the donor or what I would tell my child should I raise him to cranky fruition. This is all assuming that the guy I have sex with has sex without protection, which would make him president of the kind of club I wouldn't want to be a member of. But Groucho Marx aside, none of that stops me from calling forth the fantasy and asking the cosmos to deliver him to me without delay.

As the last bag was loaded into the car I thanked Mister Car Wash and smiled this time with my eyes and teeth. He lingered there in the sun, taking out a cigarette, and putting it to his mouth I notice a largish cold sore on his lower lip. Huh, I thought. Bummer of a cold sore. And then he said, "You want to have date with me?"

Holy shit. He's standing right here. The man for my plan. My stud.

I looked at him with casual appraisal then flashed to the weekend ahead:

This 6' 4" answer to my dreams was no doubt a PHD in Haiti, I tell myself. And that cold sore is just the result of all the stress he's under from taking ESL night classes on top of his part time job at the car wash and full coarse load at Columbia Law School. Which he'll tell me all about as he cooks for me The Food of His Country, the beat of his favorite homeland music filling the air with novelty. I'll ask him not to make the food too spicy as I set a small table for two and he'll tell me how he plans to go back home once he graduates in order to help his own people. I'll make a mental note that I'll probably never see this noble guy ever again after tonight, which is OK by me, as I fold paper towels into triangle napkins and thank my body for ovulating. Then I'll scribble down his full name on the back of the car wash receipt tucked into my wallet, just in case my beautiful, brilliant, bi-racial child wants to Google his birth father one day.

Back at the car wash, he struck a match to his cigarette and I realized then what I would say.
"No thank you, I'm married."

And before it began it was over.

I guess all that baggage had been good for something after all. Maybe that's why I carry it around.

I wondered if I had some Ambesol in the glove compartment to give him as a parting gift but was pretty sure I didn't. Then I got into my car and drove away. The interior was pristine. It gleamed shiny black. It was cleaner than it had been in years. This car wash had done a way better job than the one I used to go to and I felt reborn, like coming back from a long vacation to a professionally cleaned house. My buoyancy was evident and there was a bounce in my manual shift. I felt like a million and seventeen bucks.

Then I sighed the sigh of a thousand regrets. The cosmos had double dared me and I had demurred. No thanks, I'd said to the heavens. But I've got me a spankin' clean car and you know, that'll have to do for today.