Featured in the online journal New World Writing, Fall 2014
Hi, Betsy,
Got here on Tuesday and had a job by sundown! They say the economy is in the ditch, but I’m just a lucky guy, I guess. I’m not pushy, but I can speak up for myself. I hit just the right balance.
The job is at a service station with a car wash. It’s kind of upscale where people leave their cars to be cleaned. And they mean clean. There is a fancy waiting room with trays of cookies and cold drinks free. Little cubicles with TVs, La-Z-Boys. These are rich people, who don’t need free snacks, and some of them are so rich they don’t even bring in their own cars. Their “people” bring them, I never knew this but if you are a movie star out here you don’t have to get your own gas or a lube job or anything. Someone does all that for them. I guess if you’re famous you don’t want to be seen pumping gas or doing anything ordinary. They must think they live in a sort of heaven where they eat things with ginger and seaweed and can take a dump in the shag carpet if they’ve a mind to and somebody else will clean it up. Their people won’t tell who they are working for either, so we do a lot of speculating. Wednesday there was a vintage Corvette that belonged to George Clooney—and it was true because there was a book on the seat with his name written in it.
Yesterday I had to clean out a car that smelled like puke. No real mystery there, the way these people binge, or so I’m told. I had to use four rounds of deodorizer on the carpets in that car. The leather upholstery wasn’t ruined, but it was borderline. Of course they can just have that replaced, or buy a new car.
Today I cleaned out a glob of something chewy that had to be cut out of the carpet. I felt like a surgeon, trying to cut the fibers of the carpet so it wouldn’t show. I’m sure this is a skill that will be useful in a better job. I got the damned chewy stuff under my fingernails and had to use industrial solvent to get it out.
But I like this job so far. Most of the other employees are Mexican and I wish I had paid attention in Miss Garrity’s Spanish class, but I can say amigo and that goes a long way.
I’m sorry I left in such a hurry, but I hope you change your mind and come out here. You know I didn’t mean to slap you that way. I just get carried away sometimes, I know we could have us a fine time out here. I don’t see any way but up.
Love,
Mark
P.S. I wrote this yesterday but haven’t mailed it yet. I don’t know where the post office is. This morning I had to clean up a car that had blood in it. The guy who brought it in said he had to deliver his sister’s baby himself on the side of a busy freeway, and he had to cut the umbilical cord with his hunting knife. He talked like he was a big hero. He said she would have died if he hadn’t been prepared. Like some pimply Boy Scout, I reckon. That was the guy’s story, but it sounded fishy. You never know what really happened when people are telling you things out here. So much out here is just stories.