Giovanni's Car

Half the road reminds me of that car. Whenever I sit with my cheek pressed on my window of the hulking commuter-express bus, my eyes cannot resist staring into every scruffy navy Corolla zooming past. I look for something, though I can never ascertain what. Each license plate I see takes me to that one snapshot of the plate I would thereafter remember forever. 

Late evenings in Giovanni’s car seemed to be a muted monochrome float in a space capsule, with the world outside the tinted windows spiraling around our bodies in a dizzy orbit of five miles per second. Leaning shoulder to shoulder, feet on the dashboard, windows full open, and the crackling stereo taking us to church, I remember our maiden voyage. It was the first time I saw the night sky Cassiopeia embroidering the cracked side mirror, meekly advising me that OBJEC S IN MIRROR AR  CLOSER THAN THEY AP EAR. In his defense, spelling was never his strong suit. But that was just enough to persuade me that our time together indeed took us there, a weightless swim in between the cradle of the constellation.

The mud-caked wheels on his Corolla seemed to be forever revving yet sitting there sullen, in the dim left corner of the basketball court parking lot. The car, filled to the brim with junk, had barely enough room for two scrawny teenagers, despite Giovanni’s constant objection that he was the proud owner of a spacious five seater family sedan. Perhaps he did not see the amalgam of his sheddings which developed into three shadow passengers in the back seat. After all, everything was plain old himself–the cola-stained thrift store faux leather jacket, an uncountable number of drive-thru paper bags crumpled into the shape of a slouched over boxing dummy, crushed Bud cans, each of which, according to Giovanni, was conveniently crumpled to an avant-garde kitsch post-postmodern humanistic perfection. Stuffed in the glovebox were half-full bottles of murky blue windex and a foolishly diligent yellow-brown rag (which was probably better off never touching the windshield). 

Commandeering shotgun–even though I was the first and last person to ever share his car–I had a visceral understanding that I was to scrub the sophomore mold, back into what was once an organic freshman sweet. But from whatever little of the car seat I managed to uncover, the dark gray upholstery seemed to transform into a black hole, which sucked away all our astral ethereal. With that, the sound of the chittering track team pierced through the cracks on the tinted windows. And the car seemed to screech and tighten its nylon seat belts, choking what was left of me blue and black to suffocation.

Giovanni knew his car had a black hole, that I could not go to war with it, and that I would flee. Not that it would have made a difference, but I don’t know if he saw my blanched sick haven, with the loom of the sister bussing tables at the midnight diner and the father stationed somewhere in–I don’t know–Africa I think. 

The gravity of the familiar Sunday Church list-o-sins lifted and pulled me away, away, and out of Giovanni’s car day after day. One evening I saw Giovanni’s car, as beaten as always–but it seemed as if my body had forgotten all that dictatorial gravity.

And it was five minutes past seven. The commuter express is a little late. The sunlight shattering off my shabby acrylic name tag, I scurry in with the crowd.

* In Giovanni’s Room, David describes life in the room as “occurring underwater,” implying a sense of contained otherworldliness. He can temporarily be true to his romantic and sexual desires, free from societal judgment. However, David ultimately refuses to take responsibility for Giovanni’s chaotic life, embodied by the room’s perpetual disorder and prison-like qualities. In this short story, I picture Giovanni and David as high-school-aged teenagers in a 2023 lower-middle-class neighborhood. The tiny rented room in 1950s Paris is analogous to Giovanni’s beat-up Corolla, the only sanctuary for candid emotion where the school, the mall, and the townhouse promises little privacy.