NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
The Light House Gas Station looks deserted when I pull up. A tall lean figure over by the service center has his hands up around his eyes to look through the tiny windows in the closed doors of the lube bays. He turns away and waves to me.
Augie Carmichael kicks some ice off the tire of a dented lime-green Kia sedan parked in front of the doors. A sign saying “SnazE Gas!” glows red about twenty feet up at the top of the new light house sign post. Its LED beacon highlights the random flutter of snowflakes falling past it into the thin mist.
I finish inflating the tires on my old gold Saturn wagon and we walk towards each other, meeting outside the station office. Augie points at the new sign.
“When did that happen Fred?”
“This place changed hands when Mr. Ramsay died.”
“That thing looks like a stack of blue and white life savers.”
“Yes, it went up last month.”
“Is it a new franchise?”
“Well, SnazE now belongs to the Ensor conglomerate, so we’ll probably see these all over the place soon.”
“Last time I was here there was an old wooden oil derrick there. Kind of funky, but distinctive.”
Lark comes around from the back in her black down jacket dotted with flakes of snow.
“The restrooms are locked, Augie.”
“Yeah, so is the office door.”
She walks by a tow truck parked near the lube bays. The doors are marked “LUCY” in Gothic script. The door is alive with graffiti style color. A female figure with huge breasts bulging from a minimal black bustier, bursts from the center of a splash, in the shape of a scallop shell. Her face is flushed, her exaggerated deep red lips part revealing a dazzle of white teeth. The semicircles of her brilliant blue eyes are painted like rising suns with black mascara sunrays radiating above the horizon of her pale cheeks. Her wavy blond hair spreads to the right in a parody of The Birth of Venus with a spray of diamonds glistening in the sky around her head.
“No one back there! This place has gone to hell!”
“Here’s Fred, Lark!”
“Hey there! What are you two staring at?”
“You just walked past it.”
Lark turns around to see the truck she just ignored from looking down to keep the snow out of her face.
“Yeah, right, pretty skillful paint job! Or wait a minute.”
She walks back over to look more closely at the truck door.
“This may be a transfer.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, a printed image on thin film, just pasted on.”
“You think so?”
Lark stands close, takes a glove off and runs her forefinger over the surface.
“Well, no.”
“Any way, you know who bought this place don’t you?”
“Jake Trip, is what I heard Fred, and this is about his speed. Plastic signs, no service and higher prices.”
“Yes, that’s what I heard too and he is going to build a convenience store over there where they used to park cars and store tires.”
“What about the Seven Eleven further down the block?”
A door bangs, somewhere at the back of the building.
“Maybe they are opening up!…lights are on in the office.”
“Why aren’t they open Fred, its gone 3 o’clock?”
“Who knows Augie.”
The office door opens a few inches and then closes on the narrow column of light it revealed. A row of Christmas lights blink, green, yellow, orange, and blue, on and off along the windowsill, blurred behind the condensation on the office window. We keep looking. It opens again bringing us children’s voices singing Jingle Bells. Somebody with a big gut stretching his black tea shirt over his belt, steps out and shouts, keeping one hand on the door handle.
“Can I help you?”
His shirt is printed with the phrase,
‘I Club Baby Seals’. The club symbol from a deck of cards is printed bright red in place of the word ‘club’, while the lettering is white.
Lark gets to him first.
“Hi, is Farouk around?”
“Who?”
“Farouk, you know, the manager.”
“No Farouk here lady. The manager is on the phone. What do you need?”
“Do you know where he went?”
He shakes his greying black goatee and gold earring.
“I drive the truck. Don’t know nobody.”
“That’s too bad. Farouk really made this place what it is…or what it was.”
Augie regards the pumps, which are also in the shape of lighthouses with the hoses hanging inside a niche in front of each.
“How much you want for that Kia?”
“It’s going for about six grand. You want to check it out?”
We walk over to the green car.
The new man doesn’t seem cold in his tee shirt even though his boots crack ice in a puddle outside the lube bays. He has a complicated indistinct design tattooed down his right arm. The ink has smudged under his skin.
“The price is on the dash.”
Lark has bent down to look inside.
“It’s not locked take a look.”
“I don’t see anything on the dash.”
She tries the door, but it resists.
“It’s locked.”
The club man steps over and pulls on the door handle, and it opens part way with a metallic crack. He takes a white plastic rectangle off the driver’s seat and puts it face up on the dash, revealing:
“BARGAIN, $6999.95, only 90 K miles”
Lark steps back, pulling her hood forward with both hands.
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s the matter Lark? Don’t you want to road test it first?”
“No, I don’t like it.”
She looks closely at the outside mirror.
“Look at that! It’s cracked too. Forget it!”
“She locks her arm in his and turns away.”
Augie follows turning to the driver.
“Thanks buddy!”
He doesn’t answer and walks stiffly back in the office. His massive shoulders rocking from side to side with each step.
Lark turns to me with a shiver.
“He totaled my old Toyota Fred! Now he wants to fob me off on that crate.”
“That’s no crate kiddo. It even has a dent in the same place on the driver’s side door.”
“It’s a piece of junk. Besides mine was not on the driver’s side and it wasn’t as bad. The paint was intact.”
“Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.”
“I don’t see any poetic qualities in it, okay?”
“No, it’s not the car.”
“You going to whisper later?”
“The poet has said it all for me.”
“Well, at least you didn’t hurt your precious bod in ‘what once befell’!”
The snow is turning into sleet. A pair oncoming headlights push their cones through the deepening gloom, sweep into our eyes as they turn the left from Maxwell Avenue on to Huygens Street. They fill the pumping station with a cold blueish tint and then shut off. Herman Intaglio opens the driver’s side door and stands looking at the new pump.
“What the hell?”
He stands before the new light house pump, one hand in the pocket of his black raincoat and the other pulling down the peak of his red baseball cap.
“That’s Herman, Augie. Have you met him?”
“Oh right, he’s a printmaker isn’t he?”
“He’s an artist alright…got to say hi to Donatella.”
Lark pats Herman on the shoulder and looks for her through the open driver’s side door.
“Lark, what are you guys doing here?”
“Oh, getting cold and wet and disappointed.”
Herman still hasn’t moved to start pumping gas, so I step over to him.
“Do you get it Herman?”
He doesn’t look up.
“Do you have the SnazE phone app Fred?”
“No, I wouldn’t know how to use it.”
“Well, join the club.”
“Why? Isn’t it supposed to make life easier?”
“Yeah, easier to get hacked Fred!”
“Always a risk.”
“Don’t we face enough risk on the road already?”
“Herman, I am told these pumps know all about you. They know the make, model and year of your car, when its due for service and how long you’ve owned it. It will even remind you to go for inspection. Also, you can buy anything in the SanzE inventory. Do on line banking, all while you wait for the tank to fill.”
“How can it know all that?”
“If you give the necessary permissions through the app.”
“Oh! I am not giving any permissions! Give this thing the keys to my life?”
An electronic voice speaks from the pump.
“Hi, I am your pump attendant. How can I help you?”
Herman looks at the small screen in the pump.
“Is that a woman’s voice?”
“Sorry sir, I don’t understand your question. Do you want to pump gas?”
“Yes, where do I put my money?”
“Just follow me on your phone sir.”
“My phone?”
“Sorry sir we have no record for this transaction.”
Herman walks over to the office only to find out that they do not take cash.
The blue and white lighthouse pump addresses him again as he walks in front of it.
“Hi, I am your pump attendant. Welcome to ‘My Gas’ help.”
“You just said we can’t do business.”
“Sir, you can find me on your phone.”
“What?”
“Just tell me your address and plate number and we can get started.”
“I don’t speak to machines.”
“Sir, don’t you want to fill your tank?”
Herman turns to get back into his car and finds Lark sitting behind the wheel talking to Donna.
“Are you driving or what?”
Lark gets out of the car with a hand from Herman.
“Did you fill up?”
“No Lark, I got into an argument with the big guy in the office and then had a senseless confrontation with that machine.”
Donna shouts goodbye to Lark, but Herman keeps talking.
“We can coast down the hill on fumes and gas in VanRijn.”
“Enjoy the holiday Herman!”
“Merry Christmas!”
“You can no longer say that you know, Herman.”
He was closing the door, but that remark stops him, and he gets back out.
“What do you mean Lark?”
“I mean the president has politicized it.”
“He has?”
“Yes, he has just ended the “war on Christmas!”
“There never was a war. I’ve been greeting people with that happy phrase since I was a kid.”
Donna leans over across the driver’s seat with one hand on the wheel.
“Herman get back in the car honey, before the seat is soaked.”
“Okay, okay…you know Lark, I have stopped reading twitter or listening to the so-called news.”
“Herman, Augie’s settled in with Lark. You’re supposed to be congratulating them.”
“I wish you both every happiness!”
He closes the door, opens the window and sings.
“Fa la la la LA, La La LA!”
The clubman walks out from the back, over to his tow truck and backs it up to the green sedan. Two ace of clubs decals decorate the left and right sides of the back window. He Fixes the hitch to the front.
“Well, look at that! I told him that crate was no bargain.”
“In fact, I recommended a test drive.”
“Looks like it would have been in the truck with that seal murderer.”
“Could be.”
“Come on sweetie! He’s about to tow it away!”
