The car

She wanted his 1963, red Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Silky, and smooth, freshly polished; her hand gently caressed the white top as she peered in the passenger window. It was parked right next to her beat up Impala, a brute of a car, a hand me down from her grandmother. It was a puke green, and she never took the time to polish it. There was a large rust spot under the driver’s door, and the interior was vinyl, with several long tears across the back seat. But it was drivable, got her to where she needed go, for now.
The Cadillac seats were white leather and covered with sheepskin. The interior was red with white leather piping along the dashboard. The fins were low to the ground, covering the top half of both rear tires; the massive rear end with the elongated vertical tail back gave it a comic book look, as if it was surreal. The car came from another time, where men courted their women, bought them flowers, took them to movies, and didn’t expect them to put out on the first date. It was a time when men dressed up in suits and ties, and polished dress shoes, while women did up their hair, and wore a black cocktail dress with nylons and high heel shoes. This was a time before cell phones, and crude text messages, a time when men still brought flowers on the first date, met the parents, came over for dinner, and always held the door open for their date.
“Can I buy you a drink,” he asked.
“No, she said flatly, and then laughed, a snip of a laugh, letting him wonder if she was laughing at him or just laughing to fill up space as she stepped onto the walkway. She knew he was watching her ass move as she walked to the back door of the bar. She was wearing a pair of tight fitting jeans that showed off her round ass. Most men liked her ass. She knew this. She had a pretty face, but what won them over in the end was her ass. It puckered out, had a good shape to it, and it was firm, something to hold on to, some had said.
She has a small tattoo of a heart above her left breast. It was crudely made, somewhat lopsided, a little jagged around the edges. Her cousin had done it for her, right before he got arrested for sleeping with a minor. He swears to this day that the girl looked and acted like she was eighteen, even though it was her best friend. He was thirty-two, and the minor that cost him ten years of his life was fourteen. The day he was arrested, and his picture was on the front page of the local newspaper; that’s when she knew never to trust a drunk. It had made her a good bartender. It had made her know that pretty faces are not always to be trusted.
He was a looker with those sparkling green eyes, and tattoos up and down his arms, the bad boy type, straight out of a Vin Diesel movie. But he wasn’t that pretty, sipping his beer, and teasing her about how he could see her red bra peeking through her black tank top. She flirted with him, knowing in the back of her mind that she wanted a ride in his car. She wanted to feel the sheepskin against the back of her thighs. She wanted to feel the power of that car when it let loose on I-25, the windows rolled down, and the pull of the powerful engine, taking her over. She knew it could go 0 to60 mph within seconds. She also knew that at night, going 125mph, it would be silent, like a cat.
The romance was short lived. Three nights of hedonistic passions, and then no phone call or text message from him, but she saw his car around town. Occasionally, he stopped by the bar because he had business with the cook. He always came in an hour before closing, had a beer, and nursed it while flirting with the young, pretty waitresses who couldn’t find any other job after college, except waiting tables, until something better came along. He ignored her, with eyes adverted when she asked if he wanted another beer. He’d slap his money down, and disappear, and he never left her a tip. Yet that’s not what really bothered her about him.
She never did get to ride in his car, but that didn’t stop her from caressing the passenger side door every time she saw it parked outside the bar. She knew where he lived, right across the street from the Laundromat where she did her laundry every Monday afternoon. She knew he would be home during the day, he didn’t have a job. Well, he did have a job; it just didn’t require him to leave his apartment. People came to him, and for the last couple of Mondays, she had watched as random cars pulled up, various sorts jumped out, rang the bell, and quickly went inside, and then within seconds retrace their steps to their cars, driving away quickly. She watched all of this from the front window of the Laundromat that overlooked the industrial street where he lived, and where the red Cadillac resided, right outside the front door, like a getaway car. Ready for action, ready to take off with the sirens in hot pursuit, like Batman, but he was no Batman, and she knew she was not his Cat Woman, or even his Robin.
She purposely took her time on Mondays, her only day off to do her laundry. She sometimes washed her jeans twice. She chatted with the young Hispanic mothers with plump babies on their hips, and a toddler or two around their feet. Women, who now were stuck in the town they had been born in, never to leave, until maybe one day when all their kids were grown, and moved away, one invited their now aged parents, to come visit them in their new home, two states away. She watches these young, overweight women wipe snot from the noses of their babies with the corner of their shirts, or the back of their hand, scolding the others around their feet to be quiet and to stop running. She felt sorry for them, watching them chat on their cell phones, while they folded their laundry and scolded their children as if they were playful puppies. To her they had no future; it was a world that appeared to be a trap, a rat cage, never to feel anything but the ordinary.
Yet, she chatted with them, about the weather, the lack of working dryers, and sometimes, they would complain about their boyfriends to her, and how most didn’t have jobs, and liked to drink all day, and expected them to work all day, then come home and make dinner for them. To her, it was a pathetic existence, soiled, like their children, but sadly very much like her own childhood, except, her mother had died under mysterious circumstances. At least that’s how it was explained to her by her grandmother, the Hispanic woman who wiped snot from her nose, as she ran around the same Laundromat as a six year old, where she now, twenty years later, sits folding her t-shirts, overlooking the street where he lives.
She watches as random strangers rang his bell, and wait anxiously to be buzzed in. Various sorts, high school punks, college preps, dead-heads, businessmen in suits, Chola’s all fixed–up with baby strollers, and of course the nondescripts. The types that were just there, taking up space, and waiting for their next fix; like the neighborhood with its cement sidewalks and chain link fences, and trash blowing though the alleyways. Cold, and easily forgotten, but the Red Cadillac stood out among the tired, yellowing buildings, and crumbling pavements. It stood out, like a prince, ready to sweep her off her feet, and take her away.
Months of Mondays, and she never once saw him until one day she was piling all of her clean laundry into the back of her car. He scared her by coming up from behind, and slapping her ass as she was leaning inside her car arranging her laundry bags that were in black heavy duty trash bags along the back seat of her car.
‘Always liked your ass,’ he laughs.
Surprised she jerks forward, hits her head on the rooftop, then reflexively kicks out at him, getting him right in the thigh.
“You know I always liked it rough with you, he says, grabbing at her ankle. She falls out of the car in a heap, landing on her side, and rolls over onto her butt to find him looking down at her, a mean smirk on his face, and a gun in his hand.
‘What the fuck?’ she says, scooting back across the cracked pavement away from him.
‘Yeah, that’s what I said when I saw you watching me all day, and the last couple of Mondays from the Laundromat window,” he says, stepping forward, and wheeling the gun in front of her. He says this all clippie, like he’s some badass, like he is someone in this town because he has a gun, and he sells weed, and sits at home stroking his cock on his couch all day, waiting for the doorbell to ring while watching reruns of “Weeds.” She was mad. How dare he put his gun in her face! She jumps up, slaps him across the face. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, you piece of shit!”
Surprised by her reaction, he steps back from her. He wants to slap her, kick her, and teach her a lesson, but instead he just looks at her, cold faced with no expression.
There was no one else on the street. She was the last to leave the Laundromat, right after the woman who worked there. She had helped the older lady pile her bags of laundry into an old, four door Chevy. The woman, reminded her of her grandmother with short cropped gray hair, who wore a men’s work shirt tied at the waist with blue jeans, and flip flops. She had noticed the woman’s toes were painted red, and thought, this woman still takes the time to paint her toe nails at her age. And she, had become embarrassed by her own frumpy look with her dyed platinum blonde hair, with long black roots showing, unwashed for several days, pulled back in a rubber band. Her face breaking out in zits because any day now she was going to get her period, and because she felt bloated she had thrown on a pair of gray sweats with a torn up blue, faded t-shirt. Now as she eyes him ready for a fight, he quickly steps back from her, and slides the gun inside his waist band.
‘What ya gonna do? Shoot me, mother fucker, shoot me?” she asks, pointing her finger at him, and poking him in the chest. She’s an inch taller than him, with her reach she closes the gap between them, and now inches from his face, she can feel the intense desire to slap his face again. He is wearing loose fitting jeans, and no shirt, showing off his tattoos of pinup girls down his arms and the head of Jesus on his hairless chest. She blushes because suddenly she is hit with the memory of him on top of her, and her licking the face of Jesus on his chest.
‘Are you a fucking cop?" he asks, getting in her face again.
This time, she gets a whiff of his musky scent, a combination of perspiration, cigarettes and weed, and an image of them entwined together, heavy breathing, and grunting, flashes across her mind.
‘No, I am not a fucking cop, do I look like a cop,” she yells.
‘Don’t yell,’ he whispers, looking around to make sure no one else is around.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says lowering her voice.
“Why ya stalking me then?” he asks leaning back against her car, and lighting a cigarette. He stretches out to his full length, slender, nicely built, lean and defined.
“I am not stalking you,” she lies. She doesn’t believe she is stalking him. She will admit to herself that she is stalking his car, not him, just the car. But she would never admit that she is a stalker, she’s more of an admirer of something of beautiful and powerful. He unfortunately is the owner of such a classy car.
“This is the only Laundromat in town.”
‘Liar,” he says, blowing smoke out from the side of his mouth. I never saw you before doing your laundry here, until I fucked you. And why didn’t you ever call me? “
‘What are you talking about? She says.
‘I sent you a text.’
‘Don’t lie,’ she says, grabbing a pair of freshly washed jeans that she had lying on the back of the passenger seat. She does that with her jeans only, she doesn’t like folding her jeans. She looks him straight in the eye as she takes off her sweat pants, and pulls on her freshly washed jeans. She throws her sweat pants in back of her car.
‘Nice,” he says, flipping his cigarette on the pavement, which he doesn’t bother to stub it out, and grabbing her by her waist. She doesn’t push him away, in fact, she leans into him, she likes the feel of him, on her body, likes the smell of him despite his bad manners. She lets him kiss her, a light kiss, but still, it makes her feel something for him again. It makes her feel the possibility of riding in his car. And yet, if she was a different type of girl, the girl that rode in the car when it was first made, in 1963; the type of girl that had her hair done at a beauty parlor, and wore nylons, and heels, she would never have let him kiss her, not after the way he treated her. She would have snubbed him, told him to find another sort of girl from the other side of the tracks. She would have walked away.
“Let’s go back to my place,” he says, with a sly smile, cupping her breast under her t-shirt, and giving it a harsh squeeze. She leans in to him more, not sure if she is feeling the bulge from his cock or his gun, but it doesn’t matter, as she lets him led her by the tip of her soiled t-shirt, leaving her car where it is with the doors wide open and her clean jeans slung over her passenger seat, and the mounds of trash bags which hold all of her clean clothes lined neatly in the back. She doesn’t worry that someone will steal her clothes, doesn’t really matter if they do; she thinks as she passes his car. She can’t help but caresses it, letting her fingertips slide over the rear fender. Her left arm is outstretched as he eagerly pulls her into his apartment. She pictures herself behind the wheel of his car, all made up. Her hair styled in a beehive. She is wearing a single strand of white pearls, a short black dress and big black sun glasses, like, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She can feel the sheepskin on the back of her thighs. The windows are rolled down, and all she sees are wide open spaces, as she hears the click of the door, and him standing in front of her with a glint in his eyes as he pulls his gun from his waist band, and lays it on the coffee table. His expression is blank, but she knows what he wants, as he flexes his muscles showing off his pinup girls.