Mr. Jim And The Three Jeeps
In New Orleans the Sculptor's husband is running one kidney light and if anyone is casting a PSA to encourage major organ transplant donation he would be a good candidate for lead actor. While he always looked perfectly fine, somehow the kidney he gave up to his niece back in October is causing him to exude a glow rivaled only by the pregnant mother.
I have the headphones on listening, I think, to Morphine. I'm prepping the sunny side of Rocheblave for painting, about two years too late. I have just returned from across the street where I have stolen a piece of copper wire attached to the Chauffeurs fence and a wire coat hanger from his construction dumpster for use in tying back the bougainvillea growing up the side of the house. Chauffeur bought the house next to him and the lot next to that since the last time I saw him, to bring the total of his real estate holdings to a quarter acre. He is gutting the new acquisition, hence the dumpster, even though he is not really completely finished with his first, original project.
Trying to coat hanger lasso the bougainvillea but avoid the wicked thorns and out of my periphery I see a car parked at the curb in front of Chauffeurs. I fail on the first lasso and a get small puncture to my wrist, but my cat, Virginia, left behind and living it up five floors high in New York, has done much worse with tooth and claw.
Between songs I can hear the turning over of an engine without petrol or with a bad spark plug wire.
A man calls out from the parked broke down vehicle, a late model Jeep by the way, in much fresher condition than the one I left behind in NY. I pulled the plugs from my ears and walked across the street while the young man leaned his head out the window. He has short cropped hair and kind sad eyes and is advertising a hint of past life by way of the teardrop tattoo. He introduces himself as Darrien and I say Jim and he immediately repeats Mr. Jim. Once you get old there is no turning back. He has run out of gas and is wondering do I have a gas can and where might be the nearest gas station. The gas station is close but the best I can do for a gas can is an empty bleach container, which I encourage him to clean out first at the water hose on the side of my house. There is also a water bottle we can cut the bottom off of to use as a funnel. I offer to drive him over to the Chevron and he then admits to not having any money. But he could call an aunt to bring him some. I'm glad to cover him for a gallon and we get in Bernadette's Toyota parked in the driveway. I have put my razor knife on the ground before getting in the car to seem less like a serial killer, but I forgot my wallet and have to go back in the house to get it. Bernadette is at the desk illustrating for a major children's syndicate. I find my wallet and go back out and Darrien has gotten out of the car and is waiting beside it. I don't immediately see the razor knife on the ground where I left it but I'm not feeling the worry of it. Darrien, I'm certain, had gotten out of the car to remove any doubt that he was standup, and could be trusted not to rifle through the glovebox.
We head off to the Chevron and once he learns I have come from New York he says you should have stayed there, you won't like it here. How he wishes he could go to New York. I try to comfort his grass is greener mentality with a short good and bad of NY description. I explain my past briefly but tell him I know what he means, there is something different and hard to define about this New Orleans that has risen from the muck. It has been two years now since my last visit and in that time there has been progress. Brad Pitt, the movie star, whom many wish would get less credit because movie stars are vacuous, has helped to start the rebuilding of an entire neighborhood, with homes whose aggressive architectural statement seem more interested in the future than the past. The Musicians Village is another large block of impressive rebuilding effort and elsewhere throughout the city new homes with innovative design are being built and if not at exactly a rate to effectively compete with the pre-existing blight, still at a rate to promote some hope that a new and better city might be developing here so many years now after the flood. But since my last visit what was then only talk is now reality and that is the removal of the Lafitte projects, all eight blocks long and two wide of it. The live oak trees are still there and as is customary they left a building or two but it is hard to drive down Orleans between Rocheblave and Claiborne without feeling a pang of loss, even if is the type of pang you might feel when your father dies in prison where he was serving a life sentence for killing your mother.
I slide my card through the reader and punch in my billing zip code and Darrien starts pumping the gas. He slows down shy of a gallon and asks me how much he should pump. I put on my reading glasses and squint at the plastic jug and see that it holds almost a gallon and a half. I tell him to stop at about a gallon and a quarter so we don't slosh gas over the seats of Bernadette and her sister the Restauranteur's shiny late model Toyota. We ended up trading temporarily my somewhat suspect Jeep for the the Toyota so we could travel with more peace of mind. Well, actually, the brother brought his Jeep in from Long Island for the Restauranteur to drive in our absence, and he took my Jeep to sit at his curb over the Christmas holidays and brushed off my apologies for junking up his street rep for two weeks by saying—don't worry about it.
Darrien and me we get back to his Jeep and I'm going to hold the water bottle funnel for him but he says he doesn't think he'll need it and so I just walk away and go back to work. I put my earphones in and lasso the bougainvillea successfully, and while doing so see the razor knife on the ground where I left it, just slightly obscured by a blown leaf. I glance over but am trying not to be nosy while he attempts to start the car and it just keeps turning over and over. But then I hear the engine catch and he is running on gas now so I look over and he is looking over at me and I just nod and continue twisting the wire around the piece of scrap wood I have driven into the soft ground as a stake to hold back the bougainvillea. Darrien pulls away from the curb but stops in the middle of the street and leans his head out the window, and waits, silently. I walk over and he sticks his arm out the window and I shake his hand and he thanks me, Mr. Jim, again, and I say no problem you are welcome. Then he confides to me that he could hook me up with some green and I say if he had any on him I would have just a taste but if he doesn't have it on him I would not want enough to make it worth his while. He offers to go get me some and I say no but thank him sincerely for offering and that seems to make him happy, like we square now, and Darrien drives off easterly on Rocheblave.
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The Fluid
His girlfriend was straightening up the apartment for the cleaning lady. He did the breakfast dishes thinking he was helping out but his girlfriend said the cleaning lady liked to do that. Oh, he said, feeling partly contrite and partly satisfied with his accomplishment. On another day he might have left the dishes but he was glad he had done them on this day. There would be plenty for the cleaning lady to do. No matter what else happened today he could at least say he had done the dishes, even with that pesky asterisk hanging about reminding him that he had taken something away from the cleaning lady.
He would have to find someplace else to be for the day because the cleaning lady could take up to five or six hours to clean the small apartment. She would in fact not stop cleaning until you told her she had done enough for one day. She was very thorough and hard working.
As it was Monday, to avoid the wrath of the street sweepers he would need to move the car anyway and he thought he might just go for a drive somewhere, leave the city for a day and enjoy a fresh perspective from outside the walls. The city was not actually walled around but it did occasionally feel as though it were. He couldn't really go any distance though without first procuring power steering fluid.
He did not know if his thoughts could be backed up with fact but he was pretty damn certain there was an auto parts conspiracy against him. Oh New York with its vast array of everything you needed if only you could get to the product before the nearest place selling it shut down and turned into a place that could not be expected to sell it. When is a door not a door? When it is a jar. There must be laws governing what can and cannot be sold at certain places and power steering fluid is likely on one of the more strict lists.
The array of noises that could come from his car were at times, in number, staggering to consider. On a road to Queens one cold night in search of remarkable Thai food he lost some of the plastic detail attached to his fender with clips and a very specific grooved alignment and finally a self applied silicone adhesive which proved temporarily satisfactory but certainly not strong enough in the final analysis to withstand the shock absorber rattling pot holes of New York City area roads.
He had gotten out to see if the car would fit into the space his girlfriend was attempting to back into and it was then that he noticed the curved piece of plastic from formerly above his tire well laying on the ground, but still attached to the tire well by one grommet. This dragging of the plastic car ornament over pavement was a noise he was just minutes before hearing and wondering about, although a thorough inquisition of its origin was made impossible because of an Englishman's diatribe in the back seat. Outside in the weather it required that he grab the hard plastic ornamental detail in both hands while stomping on it with one foot and after he did this, under a slightly frozen heavy rain which dripped down the back of his neck, he returned to the business at hand which was telling his girlfriend that while she could potentially fit in the space it would require liberal use of bumper mechanics. She opted for a space across the street and while attempting the U-turn they both noticed the power steering noise, which could just be heard above the sound of the teeth gritting squeak emanating from the windshield wiper motor.
They were going to take this vehicle on a 2000 mile road trip soon and she had some concern about the noises and the overall wisdom of traveling that far in a piece of well used machinery (junk.) For his part he was happy no one had stolen his tires yet, which were in good shape, with not a bit of steel belt showing through the rubber.
There were rat droppings on his engine block which he noticed this morning when checking the power steering fluid.
His girlfriend was getting him an electric rat zapper for Christmas and he was excited about it but had not really anticipated using it to electrocute rats lodging in his engine. There was a newly dug rat tunnel in the back postage stamp sized yard and that is where he had imagined using the rat zapper, powered by its not included 4 D sized batteries.
He spent a lot of his time walking around the Lower East Side and into Chinatown and SoHo in search of establishments that do not currently exist or possibly never did and how they ended up in phone books or any of the electronic versions of phone books he frequently used he did not know. Calling ahead would probably improve his success rate or at least save him some walking but as walking could sometimes be its own reward he never called ahead. Still, he felt some frustration over the difficulty of finding power steering fluid in NYC.
It was too late in the day to leave town now. It was already noon and would be dark in four hours. It did not seem like a good idea to start out on a trip with only fours hours of daylight to look forward to, in a car whose growing list of noises might in some distant future ruled by robots be considered melodic but to him and his girlfriend were simply mundane annoyances.
He went back to the building even though the cleaning lady was still upstairs. Going up and down the narrow stair well made him think of himself as a gerbil in one of those colored plastic tunnel arrangements that kids with permissive parents have in their bedrooms.
His cat, formerly from the country, was going through her own adjustments to life in a city she may but only ever see through window glass. She had taken recently to skittishly descending every morning five and a half flights to the basement to spend her daylight hours in its darker recesses. At least partly because the dog on four was in love with her and would sometimes sneak up to see if she wanted to play. But she never did want to play, except for the occasional round of One Clawed Swat Upside the Nose. Some of the building's occupants were reporting that she seemed somewhat feral and was hissing and spitting and nipping at their ankles as they made their ways up and down the stairs. But as the cat is almost as big as a NYC rat, another group of residents optimistically hoped for her basement presence to become a blessing against the occasionally spotted behemoth rodent and took her sometimes surly attitudes in the stairwell as just another necessary due or a tariff or a tax or a surcharge or a fee, in exchange for which might be derived some vague benefit.
There was no straight line marking the shortest distance between two obvious points when going out looking for power steering fluid in New York. He had always heard about the power of unions in the northeast and he figured it must be some sort of union influence causing this lack of power steering fluid at the usual places like the corner convenience store or the big chain drug store, both of which were within easy walking distance.
So he had come back to the building and used the basement bathroom (to his caffeine naďve system the substandard coffee he had ingested at a diner on Delancey was acting swiftly in its diuretic function) and told his girlfriend about the rat droppings under his hood, because he found such things interesting and hoped that she would too, and about his lack of success finding power steering fluid. She recommended that he go to the nearest gas station at Ridge and Houston streets and that is what he did. He bundled up and went back out there and got his small bottle of no name power steering fluid for 5 dollars and some change, while mumbling under his breath—holy shit that must be some kind of good power steering fluid. He took it back to the car and looked for something to puncture the protective foil top but found after unscrewing the cap that the protective foil was already punctured and as he had no more room for the ire inspired by minor annoyances he poured in most of the bottle while running the engine and then he got inside and turned the front wheels back and forth until the noise lessened. Now he could go somewhere if he wanted but it was too late and getting too dark for that, so he just went back home, situated himself comfortably in the basement, and waited for the cleaning lady to finish.
His girlfriend was straightening up the apartment for the cleaning lady. He did the breakfast dishes thinking he was helping out but his girlfriend said the cleaning lady liked to do that. Oh, he said, feeling partly contrite and partly satisfied with his accomplishment. On another day he might have left the dishes but he was glad he had done them on this day. There would be plenty for the cleaning lady to do. No matter what else happened today he could at least say he had done the dishes, even with that pesky asterisk hanging about reminding him that he had taken something away from the cleaning lady.
He would have to find someplace else to be for the day because the cleaning lady could take up to five or six hours to clean the small apartment. She would in fact not stop cleaning until you told her she had done enough for one day. She was very thorough and hard working.
As it was Monday, to avoid the wrath of the street sweepers he would need to move the car anyway and he thought he might just go for a drive somewhere, leave the city for a day and enjoy a fresh perspective from outside the walls. The city was not actually walled around but it did occasionally feel as though it were. He couldn't really go any distance though without first procuring power steering fluid.
He did not know if his thoughts could be backed up with fact but he was pretty damn certain there was an auto parts conspiracy against him. Oh New York with its vast array of everything you needed if only you could get to the product before the nearest place selling it shut down and turned into a place that could not be expected to sell it. When is a door not a door? When it is a jar. There must be laws governing what can and cannot be sold at certain places and power steering fluid is likely on one of the more strict lists.
The array of noises that could come from his car were at times, in number, staggering to consider. On a road to Queens one cold night in search of remarkable Thai food he lost some of the plastic detail attached to his fender with clips and a very specific grooved alignment and finally a self applied silicone adhesive which proved temporarily satisfactory but certainly not strong enough in the final analysis to withstand the shock absorber rattling pot holes of New York City area roads.
He had gotten out to see if the car would fit into the space his girlfriend was attempting to back into and it was then that he noticed the curved piece of plastic from formerly above his tire well laying on the ground, but still attached to the tire well by one grommet. This dragging of the plastic car ornament over pavement was a noise he was just minutes before hearing and wondering about, although a thorough inquisition of its origin was made impossible because of an Englishman's diatribe in the back seat. Outside in the weather it required that he grab the hard plastic ornamental detail in both hands while stomping on it with one foot and after he did this, under a slightly frozen heavy rain which dripped down the back of his neck, he returned to the business at hand which was telling his girlfriend that while she could potentially fit in the space it would require liberal use of bumper mechanics. She opted for a space across the street and while attempting the U-turn they both noticed the power steering noise, which could just be heard above the sound of the teeth gritting squeak emanating from the windshield wiper motor.
They were going to take this vehicle on a 2000 mile road trip soon and she had some concern about the noises and the overall wisdom of traveling that far in a piece of well used machinery (junk.) For his part he was happy no one had stolen his tires yet, which were in good shape, with not a bit of steel belt showing through the rubber.
There were rat droppings on his engine block which he noticed this morning when checking the power steering fluid.
His girlfriend was getting him an electric rat zapper for Christmas and he was excited about it but had not really anticipated using it to electrocute rats lodging in his engine. There was a newly dug rat tunnel in the back postage stamp sized yard and that is where he had imagined using the rat zapper, powered by its not included 4 D sized batteries.
He spent a lot of his time walking around the Lower East Side and into Chinatown and SoHo in search of establishments that do not currently exist or possibly never did and how they ended up in phone books or any of the electronic versions of phone books he frequently used he did not know. Calling ahead would probably improve his success rate or at least save him some walking but as walking could sometimes be its own reward he never called ahead. Still, he felt some frustration over the difficulty of finding power steering fluid in NYC.
It was too late in the day to leave town now. It was already noon and would be dark in four hours. It did not seem like a good idea to start out on a trip with only fours hours of daylight to look forward to, in a car whose growing list of noises might in some distant future ruled by robots be considered melodic but to him and his girlfriend were simply mundane annoyances.
He went back to the building even though the cleaning lady was still upstairs. Going up and down the narrow stair well made him think of himself as a gerbil in one of those colored plastic tunnel arrangements that kids with permissive parents have in their bedrooms.
His cat, formerly from the country, was going through her own adjustments to life in a city she may but only ever see through window glass. She had taken recently to skittishly descending every morning five and a half flights to the basement to spend her daylight hours in its darker recesses. At least partly because the dog on four was in love with her and would sometimes sneak up to see if she wanted to play. But she never did want to play, except for the occasional round of One Clawed Swat Upside the Nose. Some of the building's occupants were reporting that she seemed somewhat feral and was hissing and spitting and nipping at their ankles as they made their ways up and down the stairs. But as the cat is almost as big as a NYC rat, another group of residents optimistically hoped for her basement presence to become a blessing against the occasionally spotted behemoth rodent and took her sometimes surly attitudes in the stairwell as just another necessary due or a tariff or a tax or a surcharge or a fee, in exchange for which might be derived some vague benefit.
There was no straight line marking the shortest distance between two obvious points when going out looking for power steering fluid in New York. He had always heard about the power of unions in the northeast and he figured it must be some sort of union influence causing this lack of power steering fluid at the usual places like the corner convenience store or the big chain drug store, both of which were within easy walking distance.
So he had come back to the building and used the basement bathroom (to his caffeine naďve system the substandard coffee he had ingested at a diner on Delancey was acting swiftly in its diuretic function) and told his girlfriend about the rat droppings under his hood, because he found such things interesting and hoped that she would too, and about his lack of success finding power steering fluid. She recommended that he go to the nearest gas station at Ridge and Houston streets and that is what he did. He bundled up and went back out there and got his small bottle of no name power steering fluid for 5 dollars and some change, while mumbling under his breath—holy shit that must be some kind of good power steering fluid. He took it back to the car and looked for something to puncture the protective foil top but found after unscrewing the cap that the protective foil was already punctured and as he had no more room for the ire inspired by minor annoyances he poured in most of the bottle while running the engine and then he got inside and turned the front wheels back and forth until the noise lessened. Now he could go somewhere if he wanted but it was too late and getting too dark for that, so he just went back home, situated himself comfortably in the basement, and waited for the cleaning lady to finish.