Really, it was those brief moments of early daylight that I’d cherished the most. No expectations. No advantages. No disadvantages. No nothing. There is a peace in this nothingness. But it never lasts.
And the city itself seemed so peaceful in the mornings, too, especially in the fall and the leaves all getting ready to change and blow away: the birds still yet hanging about, the soft wet rub of tires over empty asphalt, or the way the sun would peek over the horizon all the way damn near past Canada, even on those cold gray days you think it has no business showing up.
Bending my knees a slouch while I leaned an elbow against the cushions, I’d slowly heave my thin, sleep-heavy frame upwards so my nose just hovered above the back headrest as I tossed clumps of hair from my eyes, squinting into the rays of new morning passed the doors of the garage, the tainted glass discolored a dusty clay crimson from decades of pollutants breathed into it.
There the station became framed from the rearview window in its entirety: eight pumps total solidified in the concrete and metal below a bright orange canopy, an ugly red fire repellent box propped overneath each one. I could even see over the top of it, the carbon steel square tiles aligned in rows tilted towards the gutter drains sprinkled white with bird shit and garbage people has throwed up there: rusty beer cans, discarded fast-food remnants. Can see past the trees and other storefronts that surrounds us leading out towards the vacant wide, the freeway traffic grumbling invisible in the distance, all the numbers on the signpost unchanged since the day before. Buildings growed taller looking out towards downtown; skyscraper behemoths all fancy and bright and always looking over your shoulders; the smoke puffs come from the incinerator towers: all our burned up trash curled up where the birds and storm clouds dance, all our burned up, filthy stinking trash.
Times when I couldn’t sleep I’d sometimes turn the key in the ignition and listen to the radio a little while, but I was always so worried about burning out the battery that I never listened to more than three or four songs at a time. Depending on the make of the model I mighta got a little reading done as well. My favorites were the ones with the sun visors in the front with the makeup mirrors that lights up when you flip em down. In a pinch I could usually make do with the light from the glovebox, too, although I really didn’t have much to choose from. All I’d brought with me from home was a handbook of modern cardiology filled with all these raggedy old black-and-white photographs of human hearts inside, every one of em looking so parched and spongey. They look more like cattle skulls to me. It’s amazing how many holes the heart looks like it’s got when it’s not connected to the rest of the body no more.
The only other book I had I’d found in one of the outside trash bins alongside the pumps and squeegees, a thick little paperback about the Manson Family, and God knows that was the last goddamned thing I needed to be thinking about passed closing time and trapped all by myself inside the garage all night.
You know, on the witness box, cute little Sadie Atkins said that Abigail Folger had looked up from the book that she was reading and smiled at her, initially thinking that her killers was just friends of the Polanskis!
Twenty-eight fucking stab wounds.
6.
Over time I’d fortunately learned to separate most of the decipherable sounds to be listened to from the sounds inside my mind, although I’d still entertain the idea all alone up there with nothing nicer to think about some nights, just the particulars of the click and grind of the old-time heating ducts winding up and easing down, the creak of the filthy ceiling fan slowly afloat, or maybe the ridged dumpster lid outside banging up against the brick.
Then there was the little things, all the inanimate objects scattered underneath me; the different rubber engine belts and shiny hubcaps hung against the wall; the miniature cupboards fulla even littler cardboard boxes with different nuts and bolts and little light bulbs inside of em, and all the different sized hammers and screwdrivers and electric gizmos locked up in Mack the mechanic’s big red metal toolbox on wheels: solitary things standing still in their existence for so long, eventually giving way, ever so subtle, to their own weight pressed up against them.