Homeland Elegies(36)
Larceny
The repair shop called with an estimate. Replacing the gasket would cost $900. I didn’t have the money, but I had a card with just enough left on the credit line to cover it. For at least a half decade, I’d been transferring balances, applying for new lines of credit, cashing low-interest-loan checks I got in the mail to pay off higher-interest balances. I had a calendar on which all the payment due dates were listed, as some of the cards I carried didn’t offer an auto-pay function. Missing a single payment could mean an interest rate of 25 percent, which, on a balance of $10,000, meant another $200 a month of accumulating debt. In total, the debt I was carrying at that point was close to $50,000.
I showed up at Marek Auto Repair in the late afternoon. A tall, skinny man in a tie with thin eyes and thinning hair—in his midfifties, I would have guessed—stood in the driveway, a cigar between his lips. He was staring at the trio of young white women in pajamas across the street, languidly pushing strollers along before them. “Fucking drug addicts,” he murmured as I approached. “Neighborhood’s crawling with them, like cockroaches.” He pulled the cigar out. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to pick up the Saab 900?”
“Head gasket. Right. You’re the one my nephew called about. They’re finishing up.”
“Your nephew?”
“The state trooper who found you on the side of the road?”
“Right, of course. Sorry, I didn’t know that.”
That he’d had to explain this to me—I could tell—irked him. So had my apology. His reaction, in turn, irritated me. With a last angry look at the young women across the street, he shoved the cigar back into the corner of his mouth. “I’m John, the owner,” he said through his teeth. “I hear you’re from Egypt,” he said as he walked me up the driveway now toward the offices. I was perplexed. If anything had been made clear in my conversation with his nephew, it was that I wasn’t Egyptian.
“No, I’m not. I’m from Milwaukee. Though my parents are from India.”
“That right?”
“The name’s Egyptian. But I’ve actually never been there in my life. And neither have my folks.”
“So you’re a mutt,” he said with snigger, “like the rest of us.” Inside, the woman behind the reception desk—she looked Latina—was busy on the phone; John pointed at an open folder under her elbow. She moved, leaning to make room for him to reach in. “Got it,” he said, catching me notice his stolen glance at her cleavage.
He led me back to his desk in a small office whose walls were almost entirely covered: ribbons from high school competitions; team pennants; newspaper clippings; a Biden ’08 poster; a centerfold of a woman’s sex, glistening labia parted, vagina exposed; and finally, a large reproduction of the World Trade Center as it had appeared from the ferry coming into the port before its destruction. At the heart of the still-standing towers, another image had been affixed, a portrait of a man with a narrow face and slim, slanted eyes. Floating above this picture was a crucifix, and, in the spot where Pilate’s nailed notice INRI usually figured, the words NEVER FORGET floated in a yellow banner.
“So the gasket blew. We’re lucky—we’ve got a great parts store around the corner. They had the part for the 900 engine, which isn’t always the case. Sometimes a model like that can take a while. But anyway, good news is the engine didn’t need rebuilding. Bad news is the coolant got into the catalytic converter. We had to replace that, too.” He placed the bill before me. The price at the bottom read $2,500.
My heart was suddenly racing.
“The estimate was for nine hundred dollors. Nobody called me about a catalytic converter.”
“No, we called. We must have called you.”
“I’m sorry—uh, John. I got a call this morning about a blown gasket and that it would cost me nine hundred dollars.”
“Do you remember who called you?”
“It was a man. I don’t remember his name.”
“I spoke to Jasmine about this. About following up to let you know.”
“Well, she didn’t. And if she had, I would have told her: Don’t do the repair. I don’t have twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said as he turned to the door and shouted: “Jasmine! Jasmine!”
“Well, the bottom of this is that I don’t have the money to pay you for this repair. So maybe just put the old converter back in, and—”
“Oh, we’re not doing that. You’re not driving that baby out of here without a new converter. It’s not even legal with the emissions that’ll be putting out.”
“It’s not due for inspection, so I don’t think that’s an issue—”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s not how we do things around here,” he said smugly.
“Yes, Mr. Marek?” The woman from the front desk was standing in the doorway now, one arm akimbo, the other leaned on the jamb. She was wearing a yellow miniskirt and white high-heeled clogs.
“Jasmine, did we call this gentleman about his catalytic converter? You remember we talked about it just before lunchtime. We were supposed to call him back with the new estimate.” Hearing this, she let out a squeal, her hand finding her open mouth, her eyes suddenly wide with what looked to me like phony shame.