“It sounds like you have a bad ball joint.”
The initial shock of being on Car Talk had worn off two minutes ago and had been replaced with the shock of what Ray Magliozzi had just said. I was hoping the problem was something I could live with, preferably something I could drive with. This was not what I was hoping for.
“How bad is this bad ball joint, exactly?” I ventured.
“Are you on the road right now?”
“No.”
“Good!” Ray burst out laughing. Tom continued as Ray struggled to regain his composure. “Seriously, though, you should really get it looked at. This thing sounds like it’s going to fall off and any time—”
“And if it does that while you’re on the highway,” Ray cut in, “You’ll be dead!” The two burst out laughing, which translated to a mess of garbled noise on my cell phone. I had to laugh at the sheer lunacy of the situation, even though I was groaning inside. It wasn’t as if I had Triple-A. My car appeared to have found its final resting place.
“So, get it looked at and call us back when you’re stranded on I-90!”
“Well, thanks,” I said over the laughter.”
“Thanks for calling, Mick! Good luck!”
“Thanks.”
I switched off the radio and swore quietly. It was useless to think of what could have happened, and yet I did so. If I hadn’t gotten this car, I knew that I wouldn’t be in this situation. It wasn’t as if I knew this would happen, of course. At that time, I thought I was taking advantage of a great opportunity.
I was a college student, and I needed something to get around with. She was one of the few friends I had made at college, and she had just received a brand-new sports car as a birthday present from her rich parents. It was a 1995 Chevy Aveo, and it would have been headed for the junkyard if I hadn’t picked it up. Given the circumstances, I don’t think I could have intelligently made any other decision. At this moment, I regretted making it.
So what was I to do? To where would I hitchhike? I had no place of residence at this time. After graduating from Boston U with my degree in English, I planned to rent out an apartment and look for a job in scriptwriting. It’s a nice fantasy, but it didn’t turn out quite that way. I hadn’t planned on having to pay off a big college loan during college. Apparently, I had received an unsubsidized loan, which meant I had to begin paying interest immediately. Wonderful, I know.
The upside of not living in an apartment is not having to pay rent. The downside is having to sleep in your car. It had only been four days, but let me tell you, four days is plenty long enough to have to sleep in a car that smells like body odor and live off of a bag of groceries.
It was about that time that I began to feel hungry. That happens when you don’t eat. I opened the door and walked around to the trunk of the Aveo. I opened the trunk and reached into the aforementioned bag of groceries. Spending my last twenty-dollar bill on a bag of food and a jug of distilled water may possibly have been the most intelligent decision I had ever made in my life. I took a swig from the jug and fished out a bag of Doritos.
I walked back to the front of the Aveo and slid into the driver’s seat. Sitting in that seat made me feel stupid, quite honestly. The Aveo was facing a brick wall and was obviously not going anywhere. I almost felt like getting out of the vehicle and sitting on the pavement while I munched my Doritos. This is what it had been like for the past four days. At some point I planned on walking down the street and trying to get a job pumping gas, but first I had waited to see if I could get on Car Talk. I called the day the Aveo had broken down, and left a message describing what kind of junk heap I owned and what was wrong with it.
I received a call back the next day from the show’s producer letting me know that I had been selected to appear on the show, and that the show would be taped on Wednesday, which was in two days. Today, I had received another call an hour before the taping was scheduled. He didn’t tell me much beyond, “Have fun!”
In retrospect, they were four days wasted. Nothing had changed, except that now I was one hundred percent sure that the Aveo was done for. I switched off the car battery and took out the keys, dropping the bag of Doritos on the seat. It would have been pretty entertaining to hide behind the dumpster and watch someone attempt to drive the Aveo away, but everything I owned was in that car.
For the first time since driving into Cambridge, I took a good look around. About a dozen feet above the Aveo was the billboard that had first prompted me to call Car Talk. For four days now I had fallen asleep underneath the disembodied heads of Tom and Ray Magliozzi and the words, “Hear Click and Clack on Car Talk.”
I turned around with my hands still shoved in my pockets and looked out upon Harvard Square. The place was a calm sort of busy, unlike the bustle of Boston. People were always there, but they weren’t in as much of a hurry. A man in a business suit was sitting on a bench with a briefcase by his feet while a Goth kid with chains hanging down to his ankles walked by, head down. Just outside the square, next to an outdoor café, sat Murray Turnbull with his famous “Play the Chessmaster” sign. He was one of the many Harvard dropouts that made a living in Harvard Square.
I walked up to the chess tables to watch him play. He had a tourist in a Mets hat in check, and even to my amateur eyes it was obvious that the game was over. The guy exhaled sharply, smiled sheepishly and tipped over his king. He shook Murray’s hand and got up from the table, grabbing his backpack and camera from off the ground as he went. Murray asked me if I wanted to play, but I looked at the sign, noted that there was a small fee for playing the Chessmaster, and shook my head. “I’ll come back in a few days when I get a job,” I said as explanation.
I have never been a firm believer in luck, but if I was, then I certainly would have attributed it to the next few minutes. A voice behind me said, “I’ll take that game.” I turned around to see a pile of black hair that I recognized.
“Newland!” I exclaimed simply.
“Mick!” Newland simply exclaimed.
We stood in front of the chess tables for a few minutes. Finally, Newland said, “What are you still doing here? I thought you were headed out to Kenner.”
“Kenner’s on hold, my friend. I thought I’d stick around for a while. I kind of like Cambridge.”
“That’s pretty sweet. Where are you staying?”
“Uh…” I grasped for a lie, and came up with nothing. Newland’s brow furrowed.
“Wait, man, you’re not homeless now, are you?”
“Well, kind of.” I pointed across the Square to the Aveo. “I do have a place, right over there. It’s not much, but hey, it’s somewhere.”
Newland followed my finger and searched in vain for the building I was supposedly indicating. His gaze crash-landed on the Aveo. “Yeah. Right.”
“YeahIt’s all there.”
“We can’t have that! Man, seriously, that’s not right. Whatever happened to the writing?”
“That’s on hold too.”
“Listen, man, come over to my place. I’ve got an apartment over in Boston. I won’t even charge you rent. Ex-college roommate’s special. The deal’s this week only, but you can stay as long as you want.”
I shook my head. “No, really, I couldn’t—”
He cut me off. He always did have that habit, especially when I was telling him something he didn’t want to hear. “No, really, you could. I’m up there all by myself. It gets lonely. I’ve been almost missing the college scene. So, you want to be roommates again?”
“I don’t know what to say. Thanks.”
“No problem. I still owe you for a lot of things that went down during that little stint we had at Boston U. Boy, was that a moment.” He pointed to the Aveo. “That car run?” I shook my head in response. “Get all your stuff out of there and I’ll pick you up in an hour.” Newland started walking down the street. He still wore those Nikes. I’d always liked those Nikes. “See you then,” he called, almost as an afterthought, when he was about a block away.
Murray watched him leave. “Nice guy.”
I blinked. “You have no idea.”
It took me all of three minutes to get my stuff out of the Aveo. I set it all outside the Aveo and slid back into the driver’s seat. I turned the key and George Harrison starting singing to me. According to them, it had been a long cold lonely winter. I had to agree, but I didn’t appreciate him calling me “darling.”
