Street Sleeper

Three

Yes, Ishmael did sometimes think of Debby in those first few days, and not just when he had laundry to do. The last time he saw her she was giggling in an hysterical way and her last words to him were, ‘I knew it. I always knew you were mentally unbalanced, Barry Osgathorpe.’

He had taken her out to see the car. She let out a yelp.

‘What the fuck do you call that?’ she said.

‘Enlightenment.’

They talked about this and that, about where they were going, whether they were going by the same form of transport. Ishmael tried to communicate his thoughts about his new-found need to be himself, but it was water off a duck’s back to Debby.

Finally, Ishmael said, ‘You see, Debby, there’s a party in my head and I’m afraid you’re not on the guest list.’

He thought that was a good line.

They were too separate, like two cars heading towards traffic lights — one car gets a filter arrow, the other car gets stuck at a red light. Their paths diverge, they never meet again. Debby was stuck at the traffic lights.

And another reason why he left her was that she’d never give him a good blow job.

Oh, she’d have a bit of a lick, an affectionate nuzzle even, but Ishmael had heard, had read in magazines and in some of the more salacious volumes in the library, about taut purple members plunging relentlessly into scarlet-painted mouths and before you knew where you were there were torrents of hot semen coursing like molten lava down someone’s moist, eager, yielding throat. That was the sort of thing he’d had in mind. You try suggesting that to Debby.

♦

The M62 between Huddersfield and Manchester: it is a ribbon of fitful dreams that scores through the Pennines like the slash of a Stanley knife.

The M1 at the Tinsley Viaduct: it has always provided a view of Hell. It skirts and looks down on the industrial end of Sheffield. To drive along it in the early seventies was to be a spectator at a nightmare vision of steel furnaces, slow-moving white pollution, doorways that farted flame into the sodium-stained darkness.

Today that particular nightmare is over. There is no fire, no steel, no work. The furnaces are exorcized. They are merely sculpture. To an unemployed steel-worker this is a more potent form of nightmare.

The A13 where Ishmael found himself now: a southern road. If you want to travel from East Ham to Shoe-buryness it’s the road for you. Did Ishmael want to travel from East Ham to Shoeburyness? Well, yes and no. To the Zen motorist all roads are in many ways the same. Yet each road is unique and has its own spirit. Even the A13.

‘Somebody should write a song about it,’ thought Ishmael.

The A13 is neither town nor country. It is built for cars rather than people. As he drove past the gigantic Ford works at Dagenham Ishmael had a sense of ‘this is where it all began’. Henry Ford. History is bunk. The colonization of our fantasies. The production line as dream factory. Henry Ford as Walt Disney.

Ishmael drove past the Circus Tavern and saw that coming attractions included Lulu and Jim Davidson.

He saw people at the roadside selling cut flowers from red plastic buckets. How strange it all seemed.

And then he saw her again — Marilyn. Was it just coincidence? Is there any such thing?

He was getting petrol. He felt suddenly depressed at seeing the ‘Self-Service’ signs. They represented so much that was wrong with the world, people serving their self-interests rather than serving some higher order like ‘Reality’ or ‘Truth’. When will they ever learn?

♦

Karl has three great passions in life — the Volkswagen Beetle, although, being an American he calls it a ‘Bug’, the works of James Joyce, and his girlfriend Cindy.

He loves the Volkswagen in all its many forms — the Kubelwagen, the Schwimmwagen, the Hebmuller; from the Prototype 12 to the historic split-window; from the Reichspost truck to the Karmann-built convertible (one of which he owns). And he even has a soft spot for the Karmann Ghia coupe, sand rails, Volkswagen-based beach buggies, ‘Things’ and Baja Bugs.

James Joyce represents a more reasoned passion. He has studied A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in High School, read Ulysses with pleasure, and is writing a paper on Joyce for his BA. He often reads Giacomo Joyce just for fun, Finnegans Wake as a kind of intellectual mud-wrestling, and if he has to spend a night in a motel he makes sure he has the letters with him.

♦

Ishmael filled Enlightenment with three star and was just checking his tyre pressures when a Rolls-Royce pulled on to the forecourt. First an extremely well-to-do couple got out. They were middle aged but tanned and healthy and expensively dressed. Then Marilyn got out. Her clothes were the same as she had been wearing two days ago, but he was right, she had been wearing a wig. This was now gone. She was still blonde but less violently so. From Beetle to Rolls-Royce, some would say this was a step-up in the world. Ishmael hoped she wasn’t still tearing her clothes and demanding money.

The couple put petrol in their car and Marilyn went to the Ladies. Ishmael thought about going over and chatting but he didn’t want to intrude. The couple seemed to be watching Marilyn very closely.

Ishmael finished checking his tyres, got into his car and decided to leave Marilyn to her new associates, to let her live in her own space.

In his mirror he saw her returning from the Ladies. She went briskly over to the Rolls-Royce, leaned inside, snatched the car keys and started running. The man made a grab for her but she swerved away from him and flung his keys hard and high into the middle of the A13. The man wasn’t sure whether to pursue the keys or Marilyn. He went for the keys while his wife chased Marilyn. Ishmael wondered whether he should go over to smooth things out. However, Marilyn was now running straight for Enlightenment. She gave one of her screams.

‘Start your car. Get me out of here.’

Instinct took over. Another human being was reaching out to him. He started the engine, revved hard and threw open the passenger door. Marilyn had a ten-yard lead on the woman. She made it easily. They burned off along the A13 with a satisfying squeal of rubber.

The woman was standing on the forecourt yelling in a very cultured voice, ‘Marilyn, Marilyn, come back here. Come back here at once. Your father and I are very upset.’

Ishmael’s suspicions were aroused.

The man was trying to stop the traffic to retrieve his keys. On the A13 this was quite an amibitious project. When Ishmael eventually lost sight of him he was standing in the middle of the road attempting to stop the cars but only succeeding in getting a lot of abuse from drivers as they narrowly missed him.

♦

Karl likes Cindy too. They meet at the University of Santa Barbara at Isla Vista. Cindy is acting in the Jew of Malta. Karl is doing box office. He watches every performance (there are three), and on the last night he falls in love with her. This is convenient. They ‘get together’ at the cast party and never look back.

♦

Marilyn sat in the passenger seat. She was panting.

‘New seats,’ she said.

‘They recline.’

Without the wig she looked different, much younger. She wasn’t wearing much make-up; either. She had a clear complexion. She looked something of an English rose.

‘What was going on back there?’ Ishmael asked. ‘Only if you want to tell me, that is.’

She seemed very hesitant. At last she reached inside her jacket.

‘You ought to have this back,’ she said.

She pulled twenty-five pounds from a very fat roll of notes.

‘You didn’t rob those people, did you?’ Ishmael asked.

‘No, no, they gave it to me.’

Her voice too was different. It was gentler, more refined, posher.

‘Why did they do that?’

‘Just parental affection, I suppose.’

Things were getting tangled.

‘They’re my parents,’ she said. ‘The money, the Rolls-Royce, that’s what my background is really like. I was lying to you. I was just acting. I only told you that story to get money out of you.’

‘But you didn’t need it.’

‘A paradox, eh?’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Ishmael said. ‘It’s the old story — rich parents who give you everything except love. So you ran away. Understandable enough. And they chase after you trying to recapture you and put you back in the padded, opulent cage of their making. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Well, sort of.’

Ishmael nodded. He had a feeling for these things.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m doing research for my first novel.’

They passed a road sign that said Shoeburyness was twenty-four miles away.

‘My parents want me to go back to Oxford and finish my degree. I want to be free.’

This was what Ishmael had journeyed so far to hear.

♦

Karl and Cindy spend the summer making love, reading Joyce aloud and touring in Karl’s Beetle convertible. He has the car resprayed in red metalflake with some very tasteful black pinstriping. He has to take out another student loan to pay for it all but he considers it worthwhile. He has fitted a zoom tube, a set of moon discs, and a pair of baby turbo mirrors. They drive out to the edge of the desert, read Pomes Penyeach, and fuck naked amid the scrub and sand.

♦

Marilyn, it appeared, was working on a novel about a girl who is studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, but really the girl wants to write a novel. However, she feels she has no experience of life so she takes to the road, hitches, screws around, gets drunk, gets molested, gets tattooed, gets chased around the country by her parents, and meets lots of fascinating and colourful characters, including the man of her dreams. They buy some land, become self-sufficient, she writes a bestseller, and they have half a dozen gifted children.

Ishmael thought it sounded like a good read.

‘And am I one of the fascinating and colourful characters?’ he asked.

‘I’ll say.’

‘Where’s your tattoo?’

‘I’ll show you when we get to a motel.’

‘Motel?’

‘Yes, I thought we should go to a motel and have raunchy sex in the middle of the afternoon.’ Ishmael narrowly kept control of the wheel.

♦

But graduation is coming, job recruitment threatens, and student love often dies in a last minute dash for good grades. Karl and Cindy see less of each other in these crucial weeks though that is his decision not hers. Karl completes his paper on the ‘difficulty’ of Joyce’s parody in Ulysses and this absorbs him to such an extent that he can’t even find time to replace the dying starter motor in his car. And Cindy, loving Karl more than ever, feels lonely, resentful, and resigns herself to a so-so degree in Communications.

Then Karl gets the news that he has won the Xavier Clinton Harley scholarship in James Joyce studies and the chance to visit the University of Texas and spend six months with Joyce manuscripts.

‘It’s too good an offer to turn down,’ he tells Cindy. ‘And after all, six months is no time at all. We’ll write. I’ll call you. Nothing need have changed when I get back.’

Cindy wonders whether he is trying to deceive her or himself.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Everything will be fine when you get back. I’ll make sure of that.’

♦

The A13 is not a Mecca for cheap, sordid motels. In fact, the only one Ishmael knew was just outside Cambridge. It was a long drive but they were free spirits with all the time in the world. What’s a couple of hours and a few gallons of petrol when you have all eternity in front of you?

And of course they had so much to discuss. Ishmael had never met a student of philosophy before. Mostly she talked and he listened. There were more things in her philosophy than Ishmael had ever dreamed of. They chatted about Spinoza, Russell, Kant and Bergson. They chewed the fat over Existentialism, Egoism and Platonism. Marilyn tried him out with a few old chestnuts like the self and others, appearance and reality, free will and predestination. It was heady stuff.

‘Imagine an island,’ she said.

‘I might have heard this one before.’

‘The inhabitants are all female and are either virgins or nymphomaniacs. The virgins always lie. The nymphomaniacs always tell the truth. Now, if you met an inhabitant from the island, what question would you ask her in order to determine whether she was a virgin or a nymphomaniac?’

‘I give up,’ Ishmael said.

‘You wouldn’t need to ask any questions,’ Marilyn said. ‘You can always spot a nymphomaniac. It’s something about the eyes.’

She explained this was her little joke. Ishmael was finding this whole philosophy business a lot more tricky than he had imagined. He was more at home with a few simple concepts.

‘But philosophy is not about a few simple concepts,’ Marilyn said.

‘Oh come on,’ said Ishmael, ‘it is to me. I may not know much about metaphysics but I know what I like. A tank full of petrol, a head full of relevation, that’s my philosophy and I’m sticking to it.’

‘You know,’ Marilyn said, ‘this attitude you have towards cars is really profoundly working class, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

Ishmael did mind. That hurt. The Zen motorist likes to think of himself as classless. He would have to think that one through.

♦

Six months is plenty of time for some scars to heal, not enough for others. Cindy is determined to remain one of Karl’s passions.

The months pass. Joycean letters cross the States, and finally Cindy gets a letter that says Karl will be home ‘at the end of the month’. Cindy is hurt by the lack of precision, and Karl’s letter says that he will have one or two things to sort out before he sees her, things like getting the Bug out of storage, seeing what needs doing to it.

Karl does indeed come home at the end of the month but it is well into the next month before he makes contact with Cindy. He is warm on the phone and says he’ll be round at about six, they’ll go for a drive.

‘How’s the Bug?’ Cindy asks.

‘Bugs don’t change much,’ he says and chuckles.

♦

Ishmael discovered that it is a legal requirement to give your name and address when registering at a motel. He wrote ‘Ishmael, c⁄o The Road’, but that didn’t go down too well. In the end he wrote ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’. It was just like the movies.

Another requirement, at least in this case, was payment in advance. The receptionist looked at Ishmael and Marilyn, looked at the car, and then insisted.

Their only luggage was Marilyn’s shoulder-bag, and a large brown paper bag containing Ishmael’s leather suit. He never knew when it might come in handy. When they got to their room Marilyn took a bottle of champagne and a side of smoked salmon out of her bag. They sat on the edge of the bed and drank from the bottle.

‘This is good champagne,’ Ishmael said, though he wasn’t sure it was.

‘I only shoplift the best,’ Marilyn replied.

They took off their clothes and got into bed.

To cut a long story short, Marilyn’s tattoo was on her buttock and it was of a snake. They made love. Ishmael offered the opinion that it was transcendent though he didn’t have much to compare it with, only Debby and a girl called Eunice whom he’d met very briefly at a party.

‘What’s your favourite position?’ he asked.

‘Foetal,’ Marilyn replied.

She explained that was another joke. Ishmael suddenly thought he should have brought his vibrator and attachments in from the car.

♦

At five o’clock Karl rings the bell to Cindy’s apartment. She isn’t ready for him but his earliness seems like a good sign. She quickly puts on old jeans and a sweatshirt and runs down to the front door of the apartment building to greet him on the doorstep. They kiss. It is passionate enough.

‘Come in,’ she says.

‘Nah,’ says Karl. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’

‘Where’s the car?’ she asks, looking up and down the street.

‘There.’

♦

Marilyn got out of bed to have a shower. Ishmael was dozing and thinking higher thoughts when he heard the gentle crunch of metal from outside. He got up and looked out of the window. Someone had run their car into a bollard in the car-park. It was a Rolls-Royce. It was Marilyn’s parents’ car. Enlightenment was clearly visible in front of Reception. Mother and father got out. They looked at the damaged rear wing, shouted at each other accusingly and strode into the lobby of the motel.

There was nothing else for it. There are times when a man does not run. He was going to have to reason with them. He put on his blue leathers. He stuck his head into the bathroom and told Marilyn he was popping out for some fresh air.

♦

Karl points to a white 1968 Corvette parked at the corner of the block.

‘Why?’ Cindy asks.

‘Well,’ says Karl, he has obviously been rehearsing this. ‘When you’re out in Texas, in that big country, a Volkswagen Bug seems just kinda small, inadequate, like a toy, immature almost. There isn’t the power, the acceleration, the handling. I wanted something more. You’ll love the Corvette, I know you will. That’s what I’ve been doing these last few days since I got home. I had to trade-in the Bug, had to arrange another loan.’

♦

Ishmael ran to his car, got out the claw hammer, and waited. Marilyn’s parents caught sight of him through the glass doors of the motel lobby and came hurrying out. Father arrived first, winning by a couple of lengths.

‘Where is she?’ he bawled.

‘Who?’

‘My daughter, who do you bloody well think?’

Ishmael smiled in what he took to be a wry manner.

‘You mean the motel wouldn’t tell you?’

‘As a matter of fact they wouldn’t.’

‘Marilyn’s in one of the rooms,’ Ishmael said. ‘But there are a lot of rooms.’

‘He’s got a love bite on his neck.’

It was the mother who said this. She seemed outraged. Ishmael hadn’t been aware of the bite until now and was suddenly filled with pride.

‘Did Marilyn do that?’ the mother demanded.

‘Who else? How many women do you think I had in there?’

She nearly smiled at that.

‘Don’t talk filth in front of me,’ the father said.

‘I’ll talk filth in front of anybody I like,’ said Ishmael. ‘Piles, urethra, prepuce, labia minor!’

The father was sweating freely. So for that matter was Ishmael, but on hearing this ‘filth’ Marilyn’s father’s face turned startlingly red and he screamed, ‘If you’re looking for trouble young man, you’ve found trouble.’

He stripped off his jacket, tossed it to the ground with a flourish and started to roll up his sleeves. Ishmael took a step forward, lazily raised the claw hammer and swept it in an accelerating arc that made contact with one of the newly bared elbows. Marilyn’s father let out a cry that was part pain and part disbelief, and he paced exaggeratedly in a circle flapping the injured arm.

‘I’ll sue for that,’ he said.

Ishmael laughed.

‘To live outside the law you must be honest,’ he cajoled. ‘I’m not looking for trouble, that’s the very last thing I’m looking for. There are a million things I want to find, but trouble isn’t one of them. I want to find an army with the motto ‘Yield’. I want to find a timetable that obeys a body clock. I want to find a roundabout called stillness. I want to find a milkman who doesn’t know how to whistle. I want to find me and I wouldn’t mind finding you. I want to find a bypass on the ring road to oblivion. I never knew that I wanted to find Marilyn but now that I have found her I realize that I was looking for her all along. I want to find the still point in the turning circle. I want to find a Messiah who doesn’t believe his own press releases.’

He could have gone on. He was feeling quite inspired.

‘This boy is raving,’ the father said.

Ishmael said, ‘Your daughter isn’t running away. She’s running towards something — towards herself. The lay-by cannot stop the accelerating lane from joining the motorway. You cannot stop Marilyn. You can only bid her bon voyage, wish her a pleasant journey and hope that she arrives at her chosen destination.’

The mother moyed with grace and speed, pulled the hammer away from Ishmael and before he could react she had smashed both of Enlightenment’s headlights. A tyre blew out in his head. He was mad. He grabbed the woman by the throat and forced her to the ground, but as they hit the tarmac the father was on him. The three of them wrestled around for a while. Ishmael received a hammer blow in the groin. The woman was deadly with that thing. Meanwhile the father had Ishmael’s head gripped firmly in both hands and was banging it against the Beetle’s rear nearside wing. One or other would lose its shape.

Ishmael, never the street-fighter, was now dragged to his feet. He stood, or rather was held in front of Enlightenment. A stylish upper-cut threw him back on to the car’s bonnet. Tiny neon strips in gold and red burst behind his eyes. They looked pretty enough. He slowly slid down the slope of the car while being kicked regularly, accurately and with enormous passion.

He would certainly have taken a lot more punishment if Marilyn’s voice had not then said, ‘Leave him alone. It’s me you want.’

The father was fighting mad. He put an armlock on his daughter.

‘Run away, Marilyn,’ Ishmael shouted. ‘Save yourself.’

But it appeared Marilyn did not want to be saved. She didn’t struggle. She allowed herself to be bundled into the Rolls-Royce. All Ishmael could do was keep still. The pain was less that way. As a parting shot the mother threw the hammer at him. It missed but took a hefty chunk out of the Beetle’s paintwork. The Rolls drove away.

♦

Cindy sobs, slams the front door of the building and runs back to her own apartment. Karl leans on the bell for a long time but eventually stops. Cindy hears the loud engine and the Cherry Bomb exhaust as he drives away.

♦

Ishmael was down. His leathers were scratched. The Rolls was out of view. There was no longer any hurry to go anywhere.

But as he lay there he became aware of a jacket on the tarmac, not very far away. It was, of course, the jacket that Marilyn’s father had taken off and thrown down. Ishmael reached for it. There was a wallet in the inside pocket. It contained a photograph of Marilyn, perhaps a hundred pounds in cash, a gold American Express card, and a driving licence that gave Marilyn’s father’s name, age and home address.

Ishmael had smashed headlamps to replace. After that it was simple. He had to rescue a philosophy student in distress.

♦

Cindy stops crying in the end. She stands in the centre of her bedroom, in front of the wardrobe mirror, and takes off her clothes. She looks at the reflection of her naked body — not so very naked. Over the last six months she has had tattooed over her back and buttocks a solemn, livid, motorcade of the Volkswagen in all its many forms — the Kubelwagen, the Schwimmwagen, the Hebmuller, the Prototype 12, the historic split-window, the Reichspost truck, the convertible, the Karmann Ghia coupe, sand rails, beach buggies, and Baja Bugs.

Karl’s passion for James Joyce remains undiminished.