The Gap of Time (12 page)

“A Chevy Chariot?”

“No, just a chariot. So the old guy, Laius, is a King and he won't give way to some kid, and Oedipus is a moody type, proto-democrat, not impressed with age or chariots, and he won't give way either. The two of 'em fight—and Eddy ends up killing the old guy.”

“Did he have a concealed-weapons licence?”

“He just hit him over the head.”

“That's not respectful.”

“Just listen! The whole mess happened at a crossroads, right? Three roads running into one. If we had invented the roundabout in time, the calamity could never've happened. First it's you, then it's me, y'know?”

“Yeah, OK, so what?”

“So what? Freud so what? Biggest theory in psychoanalysis and the western world and you say so what?”

“Well, I never heard of it.”

“Oedipus complex! Men are always killing their fathers and marrying their mothers.”

“No, that ain't so! I don't know not a soul who's done that even once.”

“You can't do it more'n once. How many sets of parents you got?”

“I mean I never even heard of it—yeah, somebody sleeps with their sister maybe…yeah, that can happen, but…”

“Listen! It's a metaphor—rivalry and forbidden desire and the failure to leave behind the family romance.”

“You didn't say the King guy was his dad, and where was the mom—right up there in the Chevy?”

“It wasn't a Chevy! The mom was at home being Queen. Oedipus didn't know the old guy was his father. He was adopted. He had this curse on him that he would kill his parents, and as he liked his parents—they played with him when he was little and bought him a dog, y'know?”

“Sure, sure—my dad's like that.”

“So Eddy ran away from home. He didn't know he was adopted.”

“They never told him? My sister's adopted. You gotta tell kids the truth.”

“That's right! So poor Eddy ran away to escape the curse and walked right into it—killing his own father.”

“That is some shit.”

“Yeah—so after he had murdered Laius he carried on to the city, fancy place called Thebes—bars, clubs, no two-bit shit—and he found that Thebes was being terrorISed, TErrorised, terrORised—like having the Mafia come to stay—by this creature called the Sphinx.”

“Sphinx? Isn't that underwear?”

“Spanx is underwear. The Sphinx was a woman—you know the type: part monster, part Marilyn Monroe. The Sphinx had her own kind of female logic—made plenty of sense to her but sounds pretty crazy to the rest of us. This was her deal: sit down, have a drink, do a quiz, and if you get the right answer she'll hand over control of Thebes—she had other business interests elsewhere. But because she was a tricky badass, if you got her question wrong she bit your head off.”

“I know that type! Do I know that type!”

“But Oedipus got the question right and part of his reward was to marry the Queen—which he could do as her husband was now dead. But the Queen was his own mother!”

“I feel sorry for the guy. Then what happened?”

“Oedipus and Jocasta, the mom, had four kids together, two boys and two girls. Nice family. Some mental instability but that's incest for you. On the whole they were OK. Then a plague plagued the city and some meddling oracle announced that the plague would never, ever end unless the killer of the dead old King was found. They had no idea about viruses in those days. Plagues were sent from the gods.”

“They said that about AIDS. Even I knew it was a stupid thing to say and I'm no doctor.”

“One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesn't happen to everyone.”

“You are right there, brother—look at that piece of junk driving in front of us.”

“Probably made in Thebes, boy. So Oedipus starts the hunt for the killer and the hunt led to…himself! Imagine how he felt.”

“Like shit.”

“Like shit. His wife, or his mother, or his wife/mother, Jocasta, she went into the bedroom—the bedroom! A lot of resonance there. She hangs herself. Oedipus cuts her down, unpins her brooch and stabs out his own eyes.”

“For real?”

“For real. And this entire event—crucial to western thought, a billion neurotics, a million shrinks and motherfuckers, literary theory, all that anxiety of influence…”

“You can get a jab for that now.”

“Influence is not the same as influenza.”

“I said I wasn't medical.”

“And specialist porn.”

“You mean MILF?”

“Spell it out, boy—Mothers I'd Like to Fuck.”

“Uh-huh…” (and they both laughed) “UH-HUH!”

“This entire event could not have happened if the world had invented the roundabout.”

“That is some shit.”

“But there's nothing deep or poetic about a roundabout, is there? I mean, nobody ever looks solemn and says,
I've reached a roundabout in my life.
No, it's crossroads all the way.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Next exit, kid, next exit. This is home.”

And Clo saw the sign “AUTOS LIKE US.”

“Hey! Holy Ghost! I heard about you! You're Autolycus! You're famous! You got the Motormobile Museum. We were moving out of the city soon after you showed up—from Detroit, right?”

“Right! You want to see the museum?”

“I don't have time.”

“What's the point of time if you don't have any?”

Clo parked the Silverado. A slip of a boy, prettier than he was handsome, came back-firing out of the garage in an open-topped Jeep.

“She's running too high!” yelled Autolycus.

“That's because the engine is shit!” shouted the boy. He was wearing oil-stained overalls. A pair of heavy goggles hung round his neck. He killed the engine and got out.

“I need you to take the tow-truck for the DeLorean.”

“Again?”

“Clo…this is Zel. My assistant,” said Autolycus. “Kids these days are either built like bulldozers with brains like Tarmac or they got a college degree and want to polish fenders. He's one of those. Reads all the time.”

“My sister reads all the time too,” said Clo. “Hey, haven't I seen you out at the Fleece?”

Zel was looking down at the floor as though it had something to tell him.

“Well, I like reading in a youth,” said Autolycus, “makes the stories easier to tell. This Jeep here belonged to Ernest Hemingway.”

“The fuel can strapped on the side did,” said Zel.

Autolycus ignored him. “A 1940 khaki beauty. Ernest Hemingway. Writer. Hemingway served as a major in the American Army, Second World War. He was in the Liberation of Paris. Drove right down the rue de l'Odéon looking for that bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.”

“I've heard of Shakespeare but I never knew he ran a bookstore.”

“I guess you don't read much, huh? Here—a keepsake.”

Autolycus pulled a battered paperback out of his hunter's jacket that seemed to be a series of pockets held together by his own body. “
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway.”

“Thanks. I'll give it to my little sister.”

“No. I have the gift of second sight—one day you'll thank me for this book. Now go ahead, take a look around—that's Marilyn Monroe's Pontiac over there; put your nose down real close and you can still smell Chanel N
^o
5.”

As Clo ambled away, Autolycus grabbed Zel by his greasy overalls.

“You want to ruin me? He's buying the DeLorean.”

“Him?”

“I can sell anything to anybody—so long as they got the money. We need to ditch the DeLorean.”

“You are a crook.”

“I always wanted to be a crook. It's my vocation.”

“I can't pick up the DeLorean. I have to leave early today—I told you.”

“Because your dad's coming in? To pick up the Mercury?”

“It's a kit car with phony paperwork.”

“When you can tell me what's real, in a world of avatars and clones, mass production, reproduction, and 3D printing, then tell me what's a fake, smart-ass.”

“I don't care anyway. He deserves to waste his money. That's not why I'm leaving early.”

Zel was twenty-something, not much of the something. Slight frame, strong shoulders, mass of hair on his head tied back like a girl's. Hands he turned over to the palms when he was upset, frowning as if he could read the lines there and find a way out. He had been living at the garage for over a year. Turned up one day riding a British Royal Enfield saddle-seat motorcycle he had rebuilt himself.

Autolycus, who was no saint, had given the kid a job, and later, when he found him sleeping on the discarded foam of the repair cars, he'd given him a home of a kind too. Zel worked hard, read books, didn't go out much.

“You should make it up with him. He asks about you.”

“He's the parent. He can make it up with me.”

“I got five kids. I never see 'em.”

“You never told me you had kids.”

“What, we're in a relationship all of a sudden? I have to tell you about my kids? I'll tell you something else, more important: regrets come soon enough in life. Don't go hunting for them.”

“Enough about my dad, OK? You said I could use the MGB Roadster today.”

“I did? What for?”

Zel blushed. “I have a date.”

“Who is she?”

“No one you will ever know.”

“Haven't I been a friend to you and this is how you treat me?”

Zel was silent. Then he said, “I'm sorry. I…I think I'm nervous.”

Autolycus grinned and punched his shoulder. “Nothing to be nervous about! She'll love ya. But there's no rear seats in the roadster. How ya gonna make out?”

Zel dropped his head. “She's not that kind of girl.”

“Let's have no lying. That's only fit for politicians.”

“I need something easy on the gas. She's an environmentalist.”

“Then take her for a walk.”

“I worked all night to get it ready.”

Clo came out of the museum.

“All these cars here for rental?”

“Yes sir-ee. And the music comes with them. Zel! Turn on the radio in that whitewall, two-tone, flared-fin on its way to Thunder Alley!”

Zel leaned in and turned the Bakelite knob. “Rock Around the Clock” blasted onto the forecourt. Autolycus spun Zel under his arm before the boy could back off.

“Clo, Clo—take your pick. Every rental costs just one dollar.”

“One dollar?”

“The other five hundred or a thousand or two thousand bucks, whatever we charge, we write down as a donation to the Motormobile Museum. Cash is good if you got it. I like to stay on the wrong side of the law.”

Clo held out his hand. “You know, it's been great meeting you an' all—I'll bring my dad—but I gotta go; I just had my little sister texting me, and…”

Autolycus stretched up and slapped both their foreheads like they were a pair of faulty lightbulbs.

“I got an idea! For the gift! For your father!”

“What?”

“I'll sell you the DeLorean.”

“You said you was screwed!”

“I did, I did, I was, I was! I'll sell it to you half price. I paid a hundred thousand dollars. I shudda paid fifty. You can have it for twenty-five.”

“It's broken down on the highway!”

“I'll have it running in time for your party. Your dad is seventy, right?”

“Yeah, that's right.”

“Wouldn't he like to wind back the clock? Your little sister said use your imagination. Bet she wasn't thinking of a DeLorean. No sir-ee! That'll show her who of the two of you is boss. That car is more than a car—it's a Time Machine. You're buying Time, and who wouldn't want the gift of time for their seventieth birthday?”

“You reckon?”

“I know it, I know it, I know it! Bingo! High-five! Let's dance…”

Autolycus grabbed Clo by the hand and started jiving to “Rock Around the Clock.” It was like dancing with a lighter flame in the wind.

“Hey! I don't dance with guys! You gay or something?”

“Do I look gay?”

“You gotta lotta hand movements.”

“I was trained in puppet theatre. CONGRATULATIONS, CLO!”

“One! Two! Three! Four!”

“If you wanna know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss, that's where it is.”

The Separations were great. They had a sound they called Hillybilly Soul Banjo and snare-drum, girl-group harmonies, steel guitar played hard on pedal and plec. Tall bass, thumb- and finger-plucked, and a Pentecostal piano; every chord a call to Judgement Day. That was Shep.

They called themselves The Separations because Holly, Polly and Molly were BabyHatch kids. The group had started out as the Orphans but that was too sad.

Anyway, Perdita was literal-minded and HollyPolly Molly couldn't be orphans because orphans are children whose parents are dead. The girls were foundlings—but who wants a girl group called the Foundlings?

Then Holly read something at school about six degrees of separation and, as they were all fans of vinyl retro soul, like The Three Degrees…and as they had been separated from their parents, it was obvious.

The three girls, HollyMollyPolly, were Chinese triplets. No one ever found out who had left them in the BabyHatch in Guangzhou. They'd been adopted by English missionaries. Their father was a minister from High Wycombe who had ended up in a Baptist church in New Bohemia via a mission to China. He had his own ideas about the End of the World, and Shep didn't agree with them, but—Apocalypse or Armageddon—the two of them were friends.

HollyPollyMolly were a year older than Perdita. All the children had played together from the beginning, and in the beginning Shep took Perdita to church with him.

Holly had a stammer. It was Shep who noticed that when she sang she didn't stammer—and to help her feel less awkward he had started all the little girls singing those old soul songs while he played the piano.

He had more faith in those days—these last ten years he had lost faith in his faith. The world was getting darker, not brighter. The poor were poorer, the rich were richer. People were killing each other in the name of God. What kind of a God wanted his followers to act like they were gun-slung avatars jihading it through “World of Warcraft”?

If this was the end of time then fire it right back into eternity and get it over with.

He supposed that the point of time was that it would end—if it went on forever then it wouldn't be time, would it?

What to believe? What to believe in?

But Perdita was a kind of faith in her own right. He believed in her.

HollyPollyMolly were zipping each other into their sleeveless V-neck girl-group stage-wear. Perdita was brushing her pink suede shoes with a toothbrush.

“So do you think I should date your brother?” said Holly. “He's asked me out.”

“Clo? He's twice your age!”

“I like older men.”

“I don't think you should date a guy who's still living at home in his thirties,” said Polly.

“He's not living at home—he's managing a business.”

“He said that?” Perdita pulled a face in the mirror at Holly, who was fixing her lipstick.

“Well, I think he's cute.”

“He's not cute.”

“He's your brother. How would you know?”

“He votes Republican and he can't pass his accountancy exams.”

“I can add up for both of us. You're just being mean.”

“She's nervous. Her boyfriend's coming.”

“He's NOT my boyfriend!”

The girls put their heads together in a row and sang, “
And if you wanna know if she loves him so—it's in her kiss
.”

Perdita blushed and bent over to examine her shoes.

“Don't tease him, OK? He's shy.”

“Is it him who's shy or you?”

Perdita sat up. “It's crazy. He's just a boy. I'm just a girl. It's so normal it's weird. It's like eating a boiled egg—do you ever eat a boiled egg and look down at your plate and think, eggcup, egg, spoon, toast, salt, and somewhere in the background, out of sight, some kind of a hen who laid this thing, and you think, this is weird?”

HollyPollyMolly were staring at her. Perdita guessed the egg thing had never happened to them.

She tried again. “I'm not explaining it right—it's just that—wherever you look—all the movies, books, TV shows, songs. You know? You know how it goes. Boy meets Girl—
Romeo and Juliet
. Girl meets Boy—
The Great Gatsby
. Girl meets Gorilla—
King Kong.
Girl meets Wolf—
Little Red Riding Hood.
Girl meets Paedophile—
Lolita
—not so good. Boy meets Mother—
Oedipus Rex
—not so good. Boy meets Girl with problems—
Sleeping Beauty
,
Rapunzel
. Girl meets Boy with body issues—
The Frog Prince
.”

She stopped. HollyMollyPolly were still staring at her. Egg or no egg, she wasn't making sense.

“Let's stick with the singing,” she said.

Zel backed the tartan-red MGB Roadster out of the lot. He loved the wire wheels and chrome centre spinners and the big wooden steering wheel. The seats were deep scuffed leather.

It was a nice feature of the classic cars that the radios had a retro button. Pre-selected songs from any decade you wanted: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Press it and what you heard from the square honeycomb grille in the dashboard was the past.

“I'm not in love so don't forget it
…”

Zel drove; wide roads, narrow roads, dirt roads, back roads, out-of-town roads. Roads that he imagined. Roads he hoped were real. He'd ridden this way before, leaving his motorcycle outside the bar and standing just inside the door. She sang on Fridays at the bar.

Everyone crowded in. He didn't. He could only look at her through the kaleidoscope cutouts of the crowd.

Last week she had asked him to dance with her and he had shaken his head right down through his body like a dog caught in the rain.

She didn't know where he lived. She didn't have his phone or his Facebook. Sometimes he didn't come to the bar for a few weeks. Then he'd be there, standing at the back again, so clean, so upright, so still, like he was made of polished metal.

And he never knew what to say. She wanted to kiss the hesitation of his throat.

But she had asked him to the party and he had said “Yes.”

And now he was standing at the gate, slicked-back and sweet-smelling, in clean Levi's and a white shirt so obsessively unwrinkled it looked like it had been ironed with Botox.

Perdita heard his car. Perdita saw him across the fence.

She moved back. Her heart was overbeating. Why do I feel this way? And what is this way that I am feeling? How can something so personal and so private, like a secret between myself and my soul, be the same personal, private secret of the soul for everyone?

There's nothing new or strange or wonderful about how I feel.

I feel new and strange and wonderful.

And now they were standing either side of the welcome sign, looking at each other.

And she wished that everything that had to happen had happened. That time would intervene and free them. That they could begin.

And he wished he could touch her and everything would pass through him and she would know him and they would begin.

She said, “Hi.”

He said, “I brought you these flowers.”

Clo had finished the bunting and the flags. He was sitting with his sleeves rolled up, having a Diet Coke with Holly MollyPolly. They were so pretty. And only half his age. What was that old saying? Why have one at thirty-six when you can have two at eighteen? And here were three of them. I'm loving it.

Perdita and Zel came over with a plate of crabs and sardines.

“Hey! It's you, I knew it was you!” said Clo.

“You know him?” said Perdita to Zel.

Zel was wishing this wasn't happening but it was. “He knows my boss.”

Holly had her iPad out. “Can you shut up with the work talk? I found this quiz. Invented by some old, maybe dead white psychologist called Arthur Aron. It's called The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness.”

“Huh?”

“It means how to fall in love without really trying. You ask each other a set of questions and then you get married.”

“We're sisters—we can't get married.”

“ROFL.”

“And who are we supposed to be falling in love with anyway?”

“You can fall in love with me,” said Clo. “I can take it.”

“Yeah, but can we?”

Polly in pink. Molly in jade. Leaning forward, bright and beautiful. All things. Holly in purple, the leader, her thick black hair down to her waist. She bongo'd the table.

“Come on, people! Thirty-six questions. Let's just start—if anybody feels like they are falling in lurve with Clo, put up your hand and we can stop. Perdita—are you in?”

Zel looked sideways at Perdita. She didn't look at him at all.

“All right, question one—‘Who would be your favourite dinner guest of all time any time?' ”

Clo grabbed the iPad. “ ‘Complete this sentence—I wish I had someone I could share a…' ”