“I really don’t know,” I said.
Teah, I think you do, Ian. And you know, you get older, and I’m not saying you get any wiser, but if you’re lucky you get a bit less angry. You decide there are some fights you want to avoid. You decide your life might be better if you could get along with your old man. So I decided I’d try and get reconciled with my dad. Like in the movies. Old story, right?
“But it never happened. He died before we could ever really patch things up. And I can’t say that Volkswagens killed him. I can’t say that working fifteen-hour days, hundred-hour weeks, for poverty wages, in a metal shed in Echo Park, and having no health insurance was what killed him, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help.
“So we flash forward. And I signed on to make this movie. Didn’t just sign on. I developed this movie. I produced this fucking movie. Because I thought I had something to answer for. I thought it might be my tribute to my dad, a way of accepting my past. And you’re right, Ian, about the Beetle, the Bug, the Vocho, the Pulguita: it can symbolise any damn thing you want it to symbolise. And for me, I thought OK, it might symbolise father and son, filial love, trans-generational respect, accepting who you are and where you come from.
“And you know, it might. But not here, not now. Right here and now, what we got, this movie, it’s a piece of cheese, a piece of Twilight Zone crap. It’s about Volkswagens and velociraptors. It really is. And that’s no fucking good. Fact is, Ian, I hate Volkswagen Beetles now more than I ever did before. And of course I still hate myself, and I’d sure probably hate my dad if he was still alive, but you know what, I hate you a whole lot more than I hate anything or anyone else.”
He looked demented. He looked murderous. He looked like he was about to hit me. I could see he was in terrible pain, a wounded animal, not so much King Lear now as one of Dr Moreau’s beasts. Are we not Volks? I didn’t believe that I was personally responsible for all, or even very much, of that pain, and I thought he had no reason to hit me, but if hitting me would have made him feel better, if that would have made everything all right, I’d have been happy to let him do it. He didn’t. He slunk away more beast-like than ever, taking my bottle of vodka with him.
Twenty-Six
God knows what time it was when I heard the sound of Leezza’s Beetle. My perceptions were a little muddy, but there was no mistaking that glorious noise. I heard it getting nearer then it stopped, just outside the trailer park, by the front gate. The engine maintained its deep, guttural rumble, and I was inevitably drawn towards it. The security guard on duty was asleep, and he wasn’t disturbed by the engine sounds, which said a lot for his sleeping abilities, and there was Leezza behind the wheel of her Beetle, bright-eyed, alert and wearing a roughed-up black-leather jacket. She looked the business. I realised how much I’d missed her in such a short time. A few days without seeing her had left me wanting a whole lot more. I ran out through the trailer-park gate to talk to her.
“You haven’t been coming to see me,” she said.
“No, I…”
“Are you bored with me?”
“No, not bored. I just thought I’d wait till Sunday.”
“You disapprove of me, don’t you, Ian?”
“Not of what you are.”
“But of what I’m doing?”
“Of what you’re about to do, yes,” I said. I thought there was no point denying it.
“I’m just helping a guy out.”
“Which guy? Phil or Barry?”
“OK, I’m helping two guys out. I’m putting Barry out of his misery. I’m helping Motorhead Phil make a buck.”
Those didn’t seem good enough reasons to me, but I knew it didn’t matter.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I don’t expect my disapproval to make any difference to anything.”
“It makes a difference to me.”
“Really? So what if I asked you not to go through with it on Sunday?”
“Then I’d pretend not to hear you. I’d say let’s go for a late-night drive.”
We did. I got into the Beetle. There was a cushion on the floor where the front passenger’s seat should have been. It was for me: a nice gesture, a great concession to comfort. Leezza drove us into Fontinella. The town was in a deep sleep by now. We went up and down the empty main drag, and at last I saw the much lauded main street of classic Americana, complete with a couple of diners, a streamlined cinema, a white civic building with stuccoed Greek columns and portico, and then we drove to the outskirts of town, past the closed stores and the open petrol stations.
It might have been described as cruising, one version of one of the dreams, not an original one, regarded as stale and outdated by many people no doubt, and environmentally dubious too, and in the end I wouldn’t have argued much with the naysayers and spoilsports. Nevertheless this simple motion, this lived fantasy of being in control while burning up no-longer-cheap fossil fuels, oblivious to the real costs, convincing yourself that you’re free — well that still had its attractions.
We stopped at last in front of a barred and gated government-surplus store. It was painted red, white and blue, and there was a small, plump missile mounted on the roof. Leezza killed the engine of the car. The silence was golden.
“So you’re really a big fan of the Volkswagen Beetle?” Leezza asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I wrote the book, didn’t I?”
“Is that what you drive back in England?”
I thought of telling the truth, but the truth hadn’t gone down so well when I told Cadence I was a Ford Focus driver. Besides, there was some fun to be had in lying. It required me to make something up, to invent a Beetle for myself, but that was all right; inventing things was what I did.
“It’s a 1974,” I said. “It started out as a 1300. Then I messed with it. Put in a Big Boys’ Toys 1641, a hot street cam, twin carbs, polished Scat manifolds, sports exhaust.”
“What colour?”
“White. Just plain white.”
“Body mods?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “None to speak of. It looks absolutely standard, like a perfectly ordinary Beetle.”
“So, it’s like a street sleeper?”
“I believe that’s what they call them,” I said.
“Sounds so cool,” she said. “And it’s right-hand drive, yeah? Cause it’s English. That must be weird.”
“You’d soon get used to it.”
“I guess you can get used to anything.”
“Maybe you’ll see it some time. Maybe you’ll come to England.”
“Sounds unlikely,” she said; then, “You ever had sex in it?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously, “but I don’t want you to think I’m a slut.”
“Why would I think that?” she said.
“But you know, my car has doors and windows and a roof, not like this thing.”
“You’re saying my car doesn’t provide much privacy?”
“You might as well be doing it in the road,” I said.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Nevertheless she seemed to take my up-tight, inhibited, finer feelings into account. She leaned over a long way and kissed me on the mouth, then restarted the car, slipped it into gear and we were moving again, heading back where we’d come from, towards the trailer park and the speedway. She took some strange back way, along service roads that I didn’t even know existed, and she drove us in among fences and piles of scrap metal to a place where she stopped, killed the engine and where we then had a bout of very wild sex.