Yeah, that was my routine and my pleasure all right, and at the time I even thought it might last forever.
Until Spacedog and Stella Star Eyes showed up.
· · · · ·
That Saturday afternoon at Paradise Mesa the sun seemed to burn hotter than I'd ever known it to shine before, even in California. I had gone through about six cans of Nesbitt's Orange Drink between noon and three, a few gulps used to wash down the tortillas we had bought at our favorite stand on the Pacific Coast Highway on our way up here.
At that moment, Herminia and I were sitting on the edge of one of the empty trailers used to transport the more outrageous hot rods that couldn't pass for grocery getters, trying to get a little shade from a canvas tarp stretched above us on poles. We were the only ones facing the entrance to the dragstrip. Everyone else had their heads under hoods or their eyes on the race underway between Joaquin and some guy from Pomona. Joaquin was running his '29 Model A with the Mercury engine, and the driver from Pomona was behind the wheel of a chopped and channelled Willys.
That was when this car like nothing I had ever seen before pulled in.
This rod was newer than color TV. It looked like Raymond Loewy might've designed it fifty years from now for the 1999 World's Fair. Low and streamlined and frenched to the max, matte silver in color, its window glass all smoky somehow so that you couldn't see inside, this car skimmed along on skinny tires colored an improbable gold, making less noise than Esther Williams underwater, but managing to convey the impression of some kind of deep power barely within the driver's control.
I had gotten to my feet without consciously planning to stand, tossing my last cone-topped can of soda, still half-full, onto the ground. Herminia was less impressed, and just kept slurping her Nesbitt's up through a straw.
I think now that might have been the instant things started to go wrong between us— when Herminia didn't register the magnificence of that incredible car.
This Buck Rogers car pulled up a few yards away from me, and then doors opened, one on each side.
And those damn doors just seemed to disappear! All I could think was that they had slid into the body of the car faster than my eye could follow, like pocket doors in a house.
The driver stepped out first, followed on the other side by the passenger.
From the driver's side unfolded this lanky joker well over six feet tall. He wore a wild Hawaiian shirt with a pattern of flowers and ukuleles and surfboards and palm trees that seemed to form hazy secret images where they overlapped and intersected. The shirt hung loose over a pair of lime green poplin trousers. Huaraches revealed bare feet, but sunglasses concealed his eyes. He had Mitch Miller facial hair—Big Sur bohemian mustache and unconnected chin spinach—but his head was otherwise hairless. And then there was the matter of his skin.
I've always heard people say that someone had an "olive" complexion, and usually what they mean is that the person they're talking about is dago-dark. But in this case, it was really true. All the skin I could see on this guy was a muted dusky green, kinda like dusty eucalyptus leaves.
While I was still trying to get my mind around both the guy and his car, I caught sight of his passenger.
Back in the Army, I used to truly dig this girlie cartoon the thoughtful brass produced for us dogfaces. "Ack-Ack Amy" was the name of the character, and the artist—I made a point of remembering his name—was Bill Ward. Man, could he draw stacked babes! Even on paper Ack-Ack Amy seemed so physical—although I doubt there had had ever been any real gal built like her—that you could almost feel her in your arms. Especially if it was a lonely night in your foxhole.
Back home, I ran into Ward's stuff again. He was doing this funnybook where the gal was named Torchy, and he had only gotten better at drawing. Torchy was Ack-Ack Amy times ten, more woman than any six regular gals rolled together.
The woman who got out of the strange car could have been Torchy's va-va-voom fashion model sister.
Her hair was chin-length, colored platinum, with a flip. Milk-white skin contrasted with her boyfriend's jade tint. Her nose was pert, her lips lush and lively and her jawline was honed finer than the cylinders in a Ferrari. Thinking back, I certainly didn't notice anything funny about her eyes from that distance. Mostly because I was so knocked out by her body. That body—oh, man! She had firm, outthrusting boobs like the nosecones on a Nike missile, a rack that Jane Russell would've have killed for, and they were barely concealed under a blue angora sweater which molded itself to every braless curve. (The sweater was long-sleeved, but she wasn't sweating that I could see, even in that heat.) Pink toreador pants lacquered her sassy rump and killer legs, and a pair of strappy high heels in crocodile leather raised her almost as tall as her companion.
My heart was threatening to throw a rod. Herminia finally noticed my reaction, and immediately got huffy. She sneered at the newcomers, especially the woman, said, "Que puta!", then returned to her soda, slurping up the last of it with exaggerated rudeness.
I covered the distance between me and the strangers in about five long bounds.
Once I got up close to them, I noticed three odd things.
The shell of the car was cast all in one piece, and was too thin to hold any concealed doors. It didn't look like any metal I had ever seen either, more like plastic.
The man's bare head featured concentric circles of bumps on his skull, just under his scalp, like somebody had buried a form-fitting waffle-iron grid underneath his skin.
And the woman's eyes had no pupils. In place of the expected little human black circles stepped down against the hard sunlight, her irises were centered with sparkling irregular golden starbursts.
My first impulse was to inquire about his appearance, but I couldn't figure out how to do it tactfully. And then the moment when I could have passed, as he stuck out his hand for a shake. I took his paw, and although his grip was strong, his hand felt all wrong, like it had been broken and reassembled funny. Then he spoke.
"Zzzip, guten, chirp, bon, zzzt, hallo! Name Space, skrk, chien, zzz, perro, no, zeep, dog! Name Spacedog is. Here to, zzzt, race I am."
The guy's crazy speech was studded with pauses and wrong words. Weird noises—buzzes and clicks and grinding sounds, some of them almost mechanical in nature—alternated with the language. He reminded me of a bad splice job between a tape of an argument in the U.N. cafeteria and one of that new UNIVAC machine at work. But I can't continue to imitate him exactly for the rest of this story, although I can hear his voice today just as clearly as I did fifty years ago. Just remember that every time I report Spacedog's conversation—some of which I only puzzled out years after he had vanished—all those quirks were part of it.
"Well," I said, trying to maintain my cool, "you came to the right place." I was dying to get a look under the nonexistent hood of his car. And the furtive glimpses of his dashboard that I was snagging through the open door were driving me insane! There were more dials and knobs and buttons and toggles on that panel than any car had a right to feature. And some startling missing parts: no steering wheel or pedals!