Made in China Chapter 10

               But I did see Rusty again. I went and cleaned the bird shit off of him a week later, a few days before I left for New York. I took a bucket of warm-soapy water and scrubbed him down good. He wouldn’t talk to me. The old men going into the VFW that afternoon looked at me as though I was out of my mind. Some stopped and stared, chuckling a bit as I reached around Rusty with a soapy sponge precariously hanging off my stepladder. He was enormous. I couldn’t believe they were going in so early to drink beer and smoke those goddamn cigarettes, or to fool around with the glory hole. Glory holes were very popular these days. Everyone wanted to be blown but no one wanted to see who was doing the blowing. It is a very ambiguous exchange which usually costs around five dollars. They are everywhere, in gas stations, libraries, department stores, any public place marked with the sign which is a simple black hole. People think so long as they didn’t know who or what was on the other side, what did it matter? It could be a woman. It could be a barn animal. The VFW “glory holer,” as they called the ambitious one on the other side, I happened to know was a fish-faced old fellow named Lenny Lemmon who was gay at birth and who really made out with the decimation of the female species. I used to deliver his mail on Schaeffer Street and he had a hole in his front door about waist high for walk-ups. It was a nice hole, perfectly round it seemed. He bragged about being the infamous VFW holer to me one day with his eyeball peering out of it right at me. There was a slit above it for the mail. He explained that he was waiting for a check from Veteran’s Affairs for providing the service. Everyone knew it was him but no one admitted to knowing it. I wondered if he ever drank at the bar or if he parked around back and entered that way. They all sometimes whispered about the identity of the “glory holer” at the VFW as though it could possibly be Marilyn Monroe. A framed black-and-white photograph of Marilyn in Korea with the USO hung by the bar.

One old fellow who I had never seen before walked over to me and sat on a bench in the shade of the maple tree where the guilty birds flocked. He looked up at me with a puzzled look. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and short gray trousers. He didn’t say anything at first he just watched. “You know, I looked at that statue all summer long with bird shit all over it. Never once did I consider climbing up there as you are to clean old Clyde off.” Apparently his name was Clyde. But he’d always be Rusty to me. “But now that I see you doing it seems like a right good idea.”

I looked down at the old man and smiled. “Well, thanks.”

“No, son. Thank you. Not enough decency left in this old world no more. So it’s a bit shocking when you see someone do something decent. My great grandfather is the man who paid for that statue. WWI vet he was. Died two years after it was put here. Sat here on this bench and stared at it back when I was a little boy. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. Meant the world to him. Yet, I am the one sitting down here and you are the one up there.” He shook his head. “You know, they laugh inside of there saying what a damn fool thing to do. Birds will just shit on it again. That isn’t how this country used to be. That isn’t how people used to be.”

“No, sir.” I continued to wash Rusty not giving his words much thought. Rusty didn’t say a word. Maybe because the old man was there the entire time or because it was the middle of the day and Rusty only talks at night like some werewolf or vampire. I don’t know. But bird shit doesn’t seem like it smells bad until you get a bucket full of it. The old man continued to talk and smoked about seven cigarettes while he sat there.

“Goddamned things are supposed to kill ya,” he said holding a burning one away from his face. “Haven’t worked for me yet.” I smiled at him. I’d never know his name or anything more of him. I shook his hand before I dumped the bird-shit water. Handshaking was unheard of but I knew the fellow would appreciate the old tradition as much as I do. He looked at our hands joined and smiled. He had a wiry gray mustache and I could tell he was once a handsome man. He is still a handsome man. No one shakes hands, just as no one wears ties or dresses, and sadly, no one plays piano. He waved from the bench contentedly as I drove away. He was admiring the statue, lost in time, smoking another cigarette. Perhaps, that little interaction doesn’t mean a hill of beans to anyone but it meant something to me.

....

There is no sugar coating anything, get to the point, say what you mean, pull no punches, out with it, to hell with feelings. Feelings? Never heard of them. That is how it is these days. So much death and dying does that to a man. Following my brief career as a solider, I became a mailman, as I said, took over the route of Billy Brightside who essentially killed my wife with his infectious cock. When I delivered mail to people’s houses, I could sometimes see women peering out from the thick curtains in their windows like cats once used to when I was younger. Once in a while, they would answer the door in dark sunglasses and fake mustaches or beards, desperately trying to fake a deep voice saying as little as possible. I don’t know why they answered the door at all, why they risked being detected; they seemed so desperate to speak to someone even if it were under false pretenses. Maybe it was the fresh air or the audacity of it. Some of them were nothing to write home about but others you could tell were beautiful creatures underneath their gruff costume exterior. I quit delivering mail due to the depressing nature of it and then I did nothing for a few months. The government gave everyone vouchers for groceries and being a veteran I received double; rent was free due to the rapid loss of a population and squatter’s rights were honored. I stayed in the house Betty Brown and I had on Brewery Street.

In my spare time between that moment at the VFW, when a shaky Heathcliff Bernard pronounced that he had my darling Zula Zane and Death Race 666 was my ticket to her, I worked on Ruby diligently in the secrecy of my garage with the help of the aforementioned, Charlie Lust, friend and mechanic extraordinaire. Funny as it turns out, after we buffed and waxed the car the night before I had to leave for the race, Charlie confessed to me that he was actually Chloe, a 22 year-old virgin, whose only wish was to stay alive in this meat-and-bones world. I asked her many things, among them: “Did you mean what you said about smelling my finger?”

“Of course not,” she said in shame. “I seldom say anything that I actually mean. I say curse words and talk like an idiot most of the time, as you know. You’ve heard me. Please don’t tell anyone.” Her voice cracked and turned from that of a grease monkey to the sweet tune of a beautiful woman, without an ounce of confidence. That sweet wonderful song leaked out of that oil stained façade, the small gritty hands, the black-framed Buddy Holly glasses that she threw off, the short chopped hair, and the backwards trucker’s cap. I stared at the glasses on the floor.

“Your glasses! I think they’re broken.” Glasses were a tough commodity in the modern world.

“They weren’t even prescription. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

Promises are so silly, especially when the secret has already been told. But she knew she could trust me. “I will not tell anyone, Charlie.”

“Chloe. Please.”

“I best keep calling you Charlie.”

“Oh, no, please no! At least you, you call me Chloe, please! Not when people are around, not when anyone can hear, but tonight, at least tonight. Please!”

“Okay, Chloe. I will,” I said quietly. I was so confused. I thought it best for me to imagine her as I had always imagined her, as Charlie with a cock hanging between her legs like the sweaty pendulum of a grandfather clock. But she made that extremely difficult and it was soon completely impossible. We were safe in the garage but you can never tell when there would be a Casanova lurking about. It was common knowledge that they used all sorts of audio and video surveillance devices when and where they were suspicious of someone.  Chloe took off her hat and wiped the grease from her hands and face with a clean cloth and it was obvious that she was a beautiful woman. She took off her stained gray pinstriped work shirt, with Charlie in cursive in a blue oval above her left breast pocket. She unlaced her oversized black boots as her back arched perfectly. Then for a finale she slowly took off her thick blue cotton-twill work pants exposing two long lean shaved legs and, suddenly, she stood naked in front of me in the garage. She was so beautiful beneath those fluorescent lights and I could hardly imagine that I hadn’t noticed before. My blindness was a testament to how hard I worked on Ruby. She sat up on Ruby’s hood and leaned over to spit out a chew that turned out to be nothing more than sesame seeds, picked up a cup of water, rinsed her mouth, and smiled fabulously. She had washed herself of the bird shit.

“You shave your legs?”

“Yes,” she smiled rubbing them. “I need to for me.”

“I don’t believe my eyes,” I admitted. “Why though, why tell me now? I never would have known and you would never have to worry about being found out or me blowing the whistle.” It was a common known fact that the Casanovas paid $1500 for every woman turned over to them. They would polish her up and rape her, pimp her to members, keep her caged up for their entertainment, or kill her in one gangbang. Chloe didn’t need polishing and her little toes were worth more than $1500. Whatever they felt like doing, the Casanovas did. So long as they used condoms they could keep her alive. But I wouldn’t turn her over and she knew that, not for $1500 or 15 million. Somewhere, sometime, while working on that car together we learned a lot about each other and a bond was formed, an indelible trust. I think what Chloe and I had over a month of working on Ruby for the Death Race 666 was more than Betty and I ever could have had in 50 years, had we had 50 years instead of only 5. Amazing how it works.

 She threw herself in my arms. It felt right. “I knew you wouldn’t tell and I had to tell someone, Blatz. I couldn’t be Charlie to everyone I know. Not to everyone! All that I want to do is to be a woman,” she cried, “not a blow up doll, or a piece of meat, a real live woman! Being a man has afforded me the opportunity to walk around, to be outside, to smell the air and to be free but I am tired of not being me, Blatz! Tonight is the night, please, tomorrow you will go and it is very likely that you will not come back. It is very likely that we will never see each other again and you will never make it there and if you do you probably won’t make it back.”

“Try not to be so confident...”

“I'm sorry. I'm a realist. I begged you not to go but I know you love her. I know you do. What are the chances?” He voice was so much different. She was so much different. I was still in shock that I didn’t know. “Tonight should be special, please. I have a bottle of wine, real wine, Blatz, from 1995. Take me into your house, to your bed, and let me be me for once, please.”

“You don’t have to say please,” I replied. I never could have imagined being in such a predicament with a mechanic. Sure, I noticed her looking at me here and there, but I thought with the lack of women Charlie was a homosexual. Maybe a glory holer even. As much as I wanted to say no and make some last few preparations to Ruby, I couldn’t. I’d have to leave at dawn to make it to New York where the race would kick off that evening near the George Washington Bridge, but I could spare an evening. Sure, I could. I needed it as much as her. It was the least I could do; Chloe never asked for money in all that she did. “Where did you learn so much about cars?” I asked.

“My father. He saw the whole thing coming, KITTY, before it actually happened. So when I was five I was working on cars and keeping my hair short and wearing pants. He prepared me for it. He said if I knew how to change a carburetor no one would suspect I got a pussy under my hood. He used to tell me dirty jokes and chew tobacco and drink Miller High Life, which he made me do. Made me look at dirty magazines but it never changed me. Not on the inside. Never had any brothers or sisters. It was just me and dad.” We wandered into the house through the connecting door. She was perfectly naked besides for the duffle bag strung across her back with the bottle of wine. She set it out on the counter and popped it with a few cranks of a corkscrew. “What it would be like to go back to 1995…” she said wistfully. “Women were women.” I wanted to say they were whores but it wasn’t a time for cynicism.

She filled up my glass and I raised it to toast. “To 1995: when women were women and men were men.”

We toasted and drank. She smiled. So remarkably beautiful. “Why are you different than them, Blatz? What makes you who you so decent?” She was naked drinking her glass in big gulps, refilling herself, obviously anxious to get loose, to lose all of her father’s teachings, to let go of her fears as quickly as possible.

“I don’t know that I am decent, Chloe. I’m just stuck with the mind that I don’t want to be like them. I have a conscience in a world without one. They’ve all gone to shit. I don’t think I belong in this world so if I die, well, so be it. I get to find out what’s next. I think maybe that’s why I live through everything, because I don’t care if I live or die. I just don’t care. I wasn’t born with that fear, Chloe.”

We finished off the bottle of wine. I played a Frank Sinatra album on my stereo and “It was a Very Good Year” of all songs played just then. 1995 was a very good year. I remember from history class that it was pre-terrorism, maybe the year of the Oklahoma City bombing, or around then, a few years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, but before the wars, before it got truly terrible. It was before the ordure hit the fan. Maybe God said “look you bunch of assholes, if you want someone to destroy the world I will fucking do it for you.” I've done it before!" She was divine, her pussy clean and pure. It ran like a high-performance carburetor and her body was sleek and tender and her skin smooth and gleamed in the light and her eyes were full of anticipation like two high-beams. She accelerated magnificently, handled well, and it was like the poor but remarkable thing drove herself, taking all the turns rebelliously and never letting off the throttle. She told me not to wear a condom because this was her only race and as she rocked back in forth in my lap, I just lied there like the road beneath her, pistons shooting in and out of that magnificent motor of hers. She floored it and I blew everything that I had and her fluids gushed from her undercarriage and she swayed, idling and overheated. Then the delicate perfect machine came to a rest, thanked me, and collapsed in my arms.

“Good luck tomorrow,” she said as we went to sleep.

....

When I woke up dad and his javelin were at the front door. It was early and it was only him, mom and the birds. Chloe was gone. “Something wrong son?” Dad asked. He noticed I looked confused. “We better ready to go if we are going to make it to New York in time.” Dad was going with me to see me off and he had an interview scheduled on The Today Show.

“Have you seen...” I nearly slipped, “um, Charlie? Have you seen Charlie around here anywhere?” I looked in the garage. No one. I looked around and her clothes and her Buddy Holly glasses were gone. I went back inside and all that was left was an empty bottle of Riesling, 95. When dad and I got in Ruby a CD started playing automatically, one I never played before. One I didn't own. “Crying, Waiting Hoping” by Buddy Holly. I couldn’t understand my feelings at that moment. I put the car in gear and pulled away never knowing if I would ever return.

“That’s a good old song,” dad smiled. “Did you have a good night?”

“One of the best,” I said still confused.