Davey said, ‘Everything’s gone, everything. Someone’s going to have to pay for this. Someone’s going to have to be punished. Someone may even have to die.’
‘You said it,’ said Ishmael.
♦
Steve finds the business with the toilet a large and complex joke. Jerry, the garage owner, is obsessed by it. He has had a vast lock fitted to the toilet door and the keys are kept behind the till in the office. Sooner or later the keys are bound to get lost or somebody will use the toilet and then accidentally drive away without giving the keys back. But Jerry is adamant — nobody gets to use the toilet unless they’ve bought petrol, not even if their bladders are rupturing and they’ve offered to write you into their will.
Steve finds it a little small-minded, but he doesn’t need an argument with Jerry and, after all, there is an occasional grim satisfaction to be had from denying people.
Most of Steve’s job satisfaction is at this kind of level. For instance, he becomes wonderfully satisfied after being obnoxious to Kyle. Kyle always uses his credit card. Steve writes out the chit as slowly as humanly possible, looks very closely at the signature, and often phones the credit card company for authorization.
It drives Kyle insane.
One day Steve tells him his Lotus needs new tyres.
‘You’re an expert on tyres as well as everything else, are you?’ Kyle says.
‘I don’t need to be an expert to know that.’
‘Look, your job is to serve the petrol…’
That does it. That always does it. Steve turns white with barely controlled anger.
‘Don’t tell me what my fucking job is,’ he shouts. ‘Don’t ever fucking do that.’
Kyle realizes he has hit a vital spot. He shrugs his shoulders and stops telling Steve what his job is.
Steve almost begins to look forward to Kyle’s arrival, to see if he can invent some new way of being difficult. He doesn’t understand why Kyle keeps coming back, unless of course Kyle has started to enjoy the game as well.
♦
‘Do you think your father did this?’ Ishmael asked Marilyn.
‘He’s capable of anything,’ she said.
‘Seems a bit extreme…’
‘These are extreme times,’ Marilyn replied. ‘The world is an ugly and savage place. The rules have changed, perhaps there aren’t any rules any longer. Husbands War with wives, parents are set against children. Politicians are set against all of us.’
‘You said it,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’m sorry about your father but he’s going to have to pay, he’s going to have to be punished. He may even have to die.’
‘It’s the times we live in,’ said Marilyn.
They stood in the smouldering ruins. Fat Les looked sadly at his burned possessions, but his eyes were bright with rage. He looked like a fallen hero. Davey fondled a tyre iron. He looked like a young warrior. Marilyn, at least to Ishmael, looked as much like a goddess as ever. They all looked at Ishmael.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
♦
At least the American girl keeps coming back. One day after Steve has put in the petrol and she has started the engine again, Steve says, ‘That engine’s running much too fast.’
He’s been rehearsing this.
‘How’s that?’
‘The idle’s too fast. You’re wasting petrol, not doing your engine much good.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I can fix it.’
This is true. Adjusting the idle on a Volkswagen is one of the few mechanical jobs Steve can tackle with confidence.
‘Is it a big job?’ she asks.
‘Ten-second job.’
‘In that case…’
He fiddles with the idle adjustment and the engine settles down.
‘Do I owe you anything?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Well that’s kind of you.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cindy.’
‘Amazing. Really all-American. What do you do?’
She gives him a look as though he has asked her to explain relativity.
‘I mean, what does anybody do?’ she says. ‘I run around in circles mostly, don’t get anywhere, try to make sense of it all, try not to get too burned out. I drink too much, do too many drugs. You know — the usual.’
‘Sure. The usual,’ Steve says.
She drives off.
♦
Ishmael never had many friends when he was at school. He never made friends at work. But it never seemed to matter all that much. He was comfortable. He lived at home. He read books and watched television. He went out with Debby. Friends never seemed important.
Now life was uncomfortable. He didn’t have his parents to hand, didn’t have a job, didn’t have books or television or Debby. Yet here, when he might have been at his lowest ebb, when he was most lost and alone, he had found himself among friends.
A lesson there, he thought.
♦
Steve, what does he do? He works. He watches television, plays his records, drinks and generally wastes his life. It seems the obvious thing to do.
They know him in the local pubs, that is they know him as the one who arrives early, drinks too much and leaves late. One lunchtime he arrives at the pub and sees a Lotus parked outside. It belongs to Kyle. It is unlocked, the windows are wound down and the key is in the ignition. Steve reaches into the car, removes the key, puts it in his pocket and goes into the pub. Kyle is drinking gin and tonic at the bar. They ignore each other. Steve has a few drinks down his end of the bar. Kyle has a few down his. Kyle says goodbye to Tom the landlord and goes out to his car. Then he comes back.
‘Tom, give me that phone. Get me the police. Some bastard’s made off with my key.’
Steve looks up and makes a sympathetic face. While Kyle is phoning Steve leaves the pub, puts the key back in the car’s ignition and goes home. It might have been interesting to see what happened if and when the police arrived but it is safer to leave.
Another time he sees Cindy’s Beetle in the car-park of a steak restaurant. It is late. He has, naturally, been drinking. He is feeling quite self-confident. He finds a piece of paper in his jacket and writes on it, ‘I AM ONLY A POOR PETROL-PUMP ATTENDANT BUT I LOVE YOU’ and sticks it under her windscreen wiper.
Another day Jerry wants to see him. Steve is not hard to see.
Jerry says, ‘I’ve been hearing that you were a bit out of order with Tim.’
‘Who’s bloody Tim?’
‘Tim Kyle — he owns the video shop.’
‘Does he? I always wondered what he did besides giving me a pain in the arse.’
‘He tells me he had a bit of bother with his car keys. I think you know what I’m talking about.’
‘I might know what you’re talking about, but I don’t know why. If Kyle’s got something to say to me, he doesn’t need you as a messenger boy, does he?’
‘Don’t push your luck, sunshine.’
‘Tell Kyle not to push his.’
Male aggression — what a joke, thinks Steve.
‘I thought we might be able to avoid any unpleasantness,’ Jerry says.
‘You thought wrong.’
Somebody needs serving. Steve goes and serves them. That’s his job.
♦
They walked the few miles to Fox’s Farm. The ironies of this weren’t lost on anyone. It just seemed appropriate.
‘When you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose,’ Ishmael said as they walked.
‘Sometimes I feel as though I’m living through a modern-day myth,’ said Marilyn.
And all the time they walked Ishmael was thinking. All the time he was working out a plan — The Plan. He would need to be very persuasive, but he knew he had it in him.
The first member of the commune who saw him arrive was a tiny blonde woman whom he had hardly spoken to on his previous visit. She was thrilled to see him. She kissed him. She bounced up and down. He seemed to have made her day.