When I walked into the office of the gas station — it was an old-style gas station with fan belts and air filters hanging on the wall — the first thing I saw were two chairs stacked in the middle of the room with a red coffee can sitting on the seat of one chair catching drops of water falling from a leak in the ceiling. There was a young man, a kid really, behind the counter and I said to the kid, “Excuse me, do you have any power-steering fluid?” But the kid didn’t hear me. Or if he did, he didn’t respond. He was wearing a pair of headphones. “Power-steering fluid,” I said, waving my hands so the kid would notice me, but I seemed to be in a different world. The kid could see me and hear me, but I seemed to exist as if in a television set. I kept saying, “I need some power-steering fluid,” telling the kid and waving at him, but the kid didn’t respond. Then, at a certain point, he took off the headphones, came around from behind the counter, took the coffee can which was just about full, and put in its place an empty Styrofoam cup. And then he went through a door into some sort of back-room area.
Well, the first drop of water that hit the Styrofoam cup knocked it off the chair, and of course the water began dripping onto the chair and ultimately onto the floor, and I could see what was happening. The drops were beginning to form a pool beneath the chair. So I reached down, picked up the white cup, and held it, catching the drops of water as they fell. I was standing there, holding this cup, waiting for the kid to come back, and I saw the headphones sitting on the counter. I reached over, picked them up one-handed, and slipped them over my ears.
There was an interview going on with Itzhak Perlman, a noted violinist, punctuated with examples of him playing the violin. He was saying that he’d been playing since he was a baby and that the music was a vehicle for him, and I thought, This man is lucky. He didn’t have to ask, What am I going to do? or, How should I do it? And even if he did, he had his music, which was his key, opening the door, not just to the world we know, but to parts of that world which are unknown. Once Itzhak Perlman became one with the music, once he and the world became the same thing, he could then change the world. And the only thing is, once he became the world, there was nothing to change.
And then the kid came back. He put the empty coffee can on the chair and took the cup from my hand. I put the headphones back on the counter, and the kid went around to the other side, put the headphones onto his ears, pulled out a bottle of power-steering fluid, and set it on the worn linoleum. “That’s great,” I said. “How did you know?” but the kid didn’t respond. “How did you know?” I was asking, but the kid was just looking back, his eyes open but that’s about it.
So I took the bottle out to the car.
Somehow the kid had understood what needed to happen, and it happened. And I thought that partially I’d made it happen. Somehow by my actions, by the way I held the Styrofoam cup, or the fact that I held the Styrofoam cup, I’d changed the world. I was feeling slightly euphoric, and this euphoria gave me a feeling of confidence or control — even superiority — over events in the world. It’s possible that I was interpreting the world to suit my needs, and if I was, I didn’t care. The world doesn’t care how we see what happens, or if we see what happens. But it’s all happening, and I was happening just as much.
I was standing at the gas pump, happy to be pumping gas, and it was all very normal, very mundane, and as I stood there, next to this fading red coupe, one hand on the gas nozzle, one hand on my hip, I looked around.
I remembered Anne.
I remembered that she was driving when we pulled off the highway. Gas is cheaper in New Jersey, so we’d made it a custom to stop at that particular gas station on the Palisades Parkway. Although the memory was more like a dream, I remembered pulling into the line for gas, volunteering to get us something to eat while she waited in the car. When we drove we always liked to have a bite to eat, so I opened the door, I remembered that, put my feet on the hard cement, and as I’m getting out, another car, a gray car or silver car, moving rapidly, drives up alongside, about an arm’s length from my open door, and only at the last moment does it veer away. I turn and I see the car (a luxury car) cutting to an open gas pump in the front of the line. As I walk past the car to the store I look in and I see a man driving and a woman in the front seat. I walk to the convenience store, buy the protein bar and the peanuts and the drink, so I have my hands full when I walk out, and she’s gone. Anne and the car. Both gone. And the first thing I think, not think, but the first thing I do is curse. First curse, then pray. I hate waiting, and as I wait I’m thinking of what I’m going to say to her. Something about how could she leave me in a stinking, noxious, unbearable gas station. Not that I hated the gas station. I hated being left alone.
I poured in the power-steering fluid and finished pumping gas. From the vantage of the pump I could see, in the distance, the clouds, illuminated by the lights of the city, and the rain that was still falling. If I relaxed my concentration I could see the individual drops reflecting the light as they fell, and although the world had gone quiet, it was quiet in a way that was not completely peaceful. I should say that what was not completely peaceful was inside me. What was inside me was the fear of invisibility. I was trying to keep that fear, and the turbulence of my reaction to it, at bay. I knew, whatever it was, I could battle and beat it, and so I closed my mind. I wanted to preserve an illusion of who I was and so, although I didn’t completely fill the tank, I started driving, out of New York City, and hopefully out of the past.
II. (Ira)
1
I thought I was going to drive all night but instead I drove to that particular gas station in New Jersey. I pulled into the parking area behind the convenience store, adjusted my seat into the maximum recline position, and then I fell asleep. Or tried to. But it’s almost impossible to sleep while at the same time trying to sleep, so instead of sleeping I just lay there, listening to the passing cars and reliving, and hating, and at the same time not quite knowing, what was happening to me.
When the morning light finally began to light the sky, the first thing I did, after a quick stop at the men’s room, was walk to where I’d been standing when everything changed, the spot where Anne had disappeared. Standing on that area of asphalt, I let my senses take in as much as they could, hoping my intuition would find, in one of the myriad sense perceptions I was taking in, a clue to where she was.
The trees surrounding the parkway were beginning to display the first green shades of spring. Men were busy pumping gas beneath the shiny metal structure of the gas station. People were walking together holding hands. A thousand different events were circling around me, but like any of us, I could only make sense of a limited number of them. And none of them were telling me what I wanted to know. Which is why I got down on my hands and knees and began sniffing the asphalt. To utilize the underutilized sense of smell. And it wasn’t the asphalt or the oil, or the gas or the doughnuts or anything present; it was a whiff of something that had been present, and now wasn’t. By the time I stood up I knew what I was doing. I bought a medium coffee and a chocolate doughnut and I got on the road.