The Gap of Time (13 page)

HollyPollyMolly ggiggggled with six gs and turned away—as discreetly as triplets wearing pinkpurplejade can do—to give Perdita some space.

“
Walden
? You're reading
Walden
?”

“Yes! You know it?”

“My dad was always trying to get me to read it—which was pretty stupid as I wasn't even talking to him.”

“It's about only doing enough work to make enough money to live simply so that you can live in a more meaningful way.”

“Yeah. My dad tried that—a long time ago, when he was, like, our age. He lived in a van, drove round to festivals, had no possessions.”

“Does he still do that?”

“No. He's rich.”

They laughed, a little bit awkwardly, and Zel said, “I'm not rich. I work in a garage. But I can fix your car.”

“What book would you give me—if you wanted to give me a book?” said Perdita.

Zel opened the palms of his hands and studied them. “I read obscure things—I mean,
Walden
is pretty obscure—I never read it because of my dad, sorry—so right now I'm reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. The guy on the hundred-dollar bill? I mean, we spend the money and we don't know anything about the people on the bills. Benjamin Franklin said that if you have to choose between liberty and security, choose liberty.”

“I guess they didn't have world terrorism back then.”

“That's just a way of scaring us.”

“I don't agree. People get killed.”

“Yes, they do, but some guy with a bomb in a backpack—how often does that happen, and to how many people? But no work, no home, no health care, no hope—that's the everyday life of millions, billions of people. To me, that's the threat. And climate change is the threat. And war, and drought and famine…”

“OK—so we need security. A secure future.”

“No! We need to be free from corporate control that runs the world for the few and ruins it for the rest of us.”

Perdita watched his mouth as he talked. She liked what he was saying. But he could have been saying Yogi Bear Eats Peanut-Butter Sandwiches. She lifted her hand, because her hand, all on its own, was going to touch his lips. Halfway there her brain noticed and she brushed back her hair from her eyes instead.

She said, trying to sound provocative and cool, “So if you don't care about security—what are you afraid of?”

“Me?” (Zel sighed and looked at his palms.) “I guess I'm afraid of not being like other people. No, that's not true. I'm not afraid of not being like other people. I'm afraid I won't find anybody who doesn't mind me not being like other people. I'm not ambitious for money or power. I want to find some real way to live.”

She looked at his eyelashes, long and dark. He looked at her skin, pale and freckled. He had grey eyes like a cat. Her eyes were brown with her brown hair falling into them. She was like a close-up too far away to touch, her eyes so serious and beautiful, watching him. They were both leaning forward now in a mirror of the other.

Burst of laughter from the table.

With you. With you. With you.

The band were tuning up. People had started arriving, getting drinks; there was laughter, happiness, old friends.

Shep had showered and changed into his Sunday suit and he was walking through the bar.
This is my life
, he thought.
Here, all around me, and it is good
.

The banjo started a tune.

Shep came over to the table. HollyPollyMolly said, “What did you get for your birthday, Shep?”

Shep leaned forward, pressing his hands on the table. “I got a fine son and a fine daughter. That's all I want—well, and maybe a song…Perdita—you gonna go up there and sing that favourite of mine? The boys are ready for some music.”

Perdita got up and stood on tiptoe and kissed her father. Then she zigzagged through the people towards the stage. The boys nodded and smiled at her. Tom on banjo. Bill on tall bass. Steve on horn. Ron on guitar. Joey on the snares and harmonica.

They were doing a cover of an old Bette Midler cover of an old Tom Waits song. The banjo came in with Perdita's voice like a far-off story.

“I'm leaving my family, I'm leaving all my friends/My body's at home, but my heart's in the wind…”

Shep was sitting at the table beside Clo, drinking a slim bourbon, listening to her, watching her.

Suppose he had made a different choice that night? Would he have walked away and forgotten about her?

What would his life have been back then, now? And her life?

That night, storm and rain and the moon like a mandala when the clouds parted, it was the moon that made him know. The baby had lain like the visible corner of a folded map. Traced inside her, faded now, were parents she would never know and a life that had vanished. Alternative routes she wouldn't take. People she would never meet. The would-be-that-wouldn't-be.

Because her mother or her father, or both, had left the map of her folded on the table and left the room.

It was a map of discovery. There were no more North Poles or Atlantic Oceans or Americas. The moon had been visited. And the bottom of the sea.

But she was setting out with the blank sheet and compass of herself.

Unpathed waters. Undreamed shores.

The song ended. Then Perdita took the microphone and asked for quiet.

“My father, Shep—you all know him” (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE). “We're here to celebrate his birthday” (MORE CHEERS) “and in a minute we'll sing ‘Happy Birthday' to him. But first I want to say thank you to him myself—for being the best dad in the world.”

Shep stood up. The band started playing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

Then they heard it.

Was it thunder?

Was it a roar?

Was it an invasion?

Was it the Apocalypse?

Everyone stood watching as the big delivery doors onto the garden were pulled open by something or someone on or from the other side.

Full-flood headbeams. Low-slung growl. Clutch-controlled presidential slow speed of light.

It was the DeLorean.

The up-stroke gull-wings of the DeLorean lifted. Autolycus appeared by the side of the car as if he had always been there. He was wearing tapered black trousers, a black fine-knit polo neck and a red vest.

He looks like the Devil come for his money, thought Zel.

Did I say I'd pay him? thought Clo.

Autolycus jumped up on a chair and held up his hands. “I am just the delivery boy. Clo! Clo! Where are you?”

Clo got up from the table. Where was the cartoon blade sawing round his cartoon chair to drop his cartoon self into oblivion?

“Here's the son!” said Autolycus. “Where is the father?”

Shep came through the crowd. Autolycus shook his hand over and over like a wind-up toy.

“What is this?” said Shep. “You some kind of cabaret act?”

“I am some kind of angel. Bringing good news. Clo! Clo!”

Clo pulled Autolycus to one side. “Did I sign—you sayin' I signed?”

Autolycus unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket—Clo thought the piece of paper was really and truly and actually smoking.

“Yeah, yeah, you signed—see these flames and hoofprints here? Just kidding. I take the Silverado and you take the DeLorean—great deal, kid!”

Clo straightened up, turned to his father and cleared his throat. “Dad, yeah, Dad—happy birthday; this is your car.”

“My car?”

Autolycus jumped like a circus dog onto his chair. “Ladies and gentlemen! Attention, please! Introducing…THE DELOREAN!”

Already some of the men were nodding and cheering. Autolycus smiled modestly as if he had just won Miss America. There were tears in his eyes.

“Thank you. Thank you
. I can hear some of you remembering it now.
Back to the Future
—the movie. 1985. That's right!

“The DeLorean is NOT just a car—it's a Time Machine.

“What did the great writer William Faulkner say?

“ 
‘
The past is not dead. It's not even past.'
 
”

(APPLAUSE)

Autolycus jumped down. “Shep! Shep—get in the car! Guy who designed these—John DeLorean—he was six foot four. It's a big-guy car—that's why I had to sell it—trouble reaching the pedals—your son is truly a good son.”

Shep eased himself into the car and fired the engine.

Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Autolycus looked a bit less easy—he pulled Clo aside. “You got that hammer?”

Zel stopped running all of his hands through all of his hair and instead ran to the back of the DeLorean and opened it up.

“Zel! What are you doing here?”

“I TOLD you, I had a date—not that I will have a date now that you have fleeced the son and hijacked the dad's birthday.”

“Don't get mad at me.”

“Get out of the way!”

“You need a hammer?”

Zel took out his pocket Leatherman.

“That boy can fix anything—anything! Let me tell you how it is—cars like these are like racehorses.

“You want a car that GOES? Anybody can buy a car that GOES—it's almost vulgar. The DeLorean is not always a car that GOES but it is always a CAR. You know, let me tell you, when a car like this doesn't GO—it's really offering you a moment of Zen in a world obsessed with forward motion. Did you get your cortisol tested recently? America is running on cortisol. It's bad for your heart, bad for your cholesterol, bad for your marriage—snappy and yappy all the time. Now, when you jump into your car—this car—and you find you can't GO anywhere, that is a moment to ask yourself—where am I GOING?

“It's philosophy at your fingertips.

“This is a substantial car. Once you've driven—and also not driven—this car—a little bit Schrödinger's Cat, isn't it? Alive and dead at the same time—once you have had the DeLorean experience, the rest is just unconsidered trifles.”

Shep had his arms folded and was looking down at Autolycus—he was about a foot and a half taller than the persuasive trafficker of trifles.

“How much did my son pay for this philosophical car?”

“I pretty much gave it away. In honour of the occasion.”

“How much? Clo? Clo!”

At that second the DeLorean fired. Zel stood back from the engine, his white shirt oil-stained. His hands greased-up. The crowd cheered. Autolycus bowed.

“That's why we call cars ‘she.' You never know. Remember that Billy Joel song? ‘
She is frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel. She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool.' 
”

“Does the mechanic come with the car?” said Shep.

Autolycus's pointy face brightened up. “He's dating your daughter. So…”

“He's what?”

“ ‘
She's always a woman to me.' 
”

Shep looked from Zel to Autolycus and from Autolycus to Zel. “Can you stop singing and can somebody tell me what any of this is about?”

“I am not dating your daughter.”

“Let's get a drink!” said Autolycus. “A bourbon is halfway towards the truth any night of the week. Nice place you got here, Shep. You play poker?”

It was Perdita who found Zel, standing by the fence, angry and alone. She touched his back. He twitched like she'd poured water down his neck. He didn't turn round.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“It's funny,” said Perdita.

Zel turned round. She was laughing. She was so pretty. Beyond her, the party was going on. People were playing with the DeLorean. The hum was easy, happy.

Zel so often put himself outside of where he wanted to be and then looked in dumbly through the window of his longing, hurt and beaten and knowing that he had hurt and beaten himself but still he did it, over and over.

Why was she comforting him? He should be the one comforting her. She had rowed out to reach him on his lonely island. She wanted to row him back with her to the lights and the warmth.

“Would you like to dance?”

He wanted to say “I can't dance,” but already she had taken his hand and was leading him towards the warm lights.

HollyPollyMolly, singing their close harmonies into the microphone, saw Perdita leading Zel through the crowded room towards the raised stage, where there was some space. Right then they were doing a Buddy Holly number that Shep liked, but Zel was never going to manage a jive—and besides, the triplets knew that Perdita needed to manage something else.

Holly pulled out of the sound for a second and said something to Bill on tall bass. He passed it on to the guys.

The music stopped, and before anyone could clap or pause the girls had started again with their own version of James Taylor's “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).”

Perdita took hold of Zel and guided him into something like dancing with her. He realised he was enjoying it.

“Do you ever walk in the rain just for the pleasure of getting wet?”

Zel smiled his slow, awkward, full-face smile like the sun coming through the clouds. He didn't reply. Instead he asked her a question.

“Do you get up sometimes or not go to bed sometimes, so that you can go for a walk without meeting anyone else at all?”