Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan

Author:Chris Leslie-Hynan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

PART

THREE

7

On my twenty-eighth to last day, just as my bruises were at their most vivid, I drove out to Dunthorpe and Ras answered the door. There was a tin of polish in his hand, and he frowned a little when he saw me. He twisted the lid, ensuring its tightness, and I got the sense that with that gesture his trove of professional advice was closed to me forever. “From now on, de car stays heah.”

“How do I get here?” I asked.

He pointed past me to an old Mazda parked at the edge of the driveway. The white crescent of nail at the tip of his finger looked cut to exactly one thirty-second of an inch all around. “For de rest of de month, dat is yours. Keep it clean or you will hear about it. Dent it and it comes out your wage.”

From his pocket he produced a key on a long, yellow lanyard. The length of cord was a humiliation in itself, and I wondered if he would order it around my neck.

“What kind of driver don’t have his own car!”

Getting into the thing, I slammed the seat back as far as it would go. The engine started with an ugly sound. I took it to the garage, and the car felt too light, too near the ground—it was as if I was piloting some child’s kart. I took the spot farthest from the door, where Antonia used to park her scooter. Even the door handles felt flimsy.

Ras met me again at the door. “Now I’ll show you your room,” he said.

“My what?”

“I hope you brought a day’s change.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Den you should just nod and smile,” he said, leaning forward a little. “I cannot believe you do not know dese basic tings.”

He walked past me to a door in the back wall I’d never seen open. The recycling carts that’d stood in front of it had been moved away, and I could see the faint lines of broom tines on the concrete. He opened the door and I saw a handrail slanting upward.

I looked at the ceiling. I couldn’t understand there being anything above the garage. The roof slanted up on one side, but I thought that was just, you know, architecture. The garage ceiling was lined with planks, spaced inches apart, through which you could see the emptiness above, but atop my new car the space above the planks was covered over in particleboard. Ras had gone away up the stairs; his shoes sounded harshly on the cheap steps.

At the top of the stairs was a cramped room with a low, slanted ceiling. A single tiny window gave a grimy view of the Japanese garden. The room held a card table, folded up and leaning against the wall, a folding chair leaning in front of it, and, in the middle of the room, a rolling metal bed frame, also folded up, with a meager mattress sandwiched inside. There was a large pitcher in the corner.

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