I had bought this beautiful old piece of crap—made in the thirties, it had served as an ambulance, then a bookmobile, then a hearse for a funeral home and finally as a cab before being picked up by me at a roadside—knowing it would eventually break down. And that’s exactly what happened the night I was driving home for my winter vacation.
Because the car was my friend, I did not use rude language.
“Okay, baby,” I cooed, trying to coax the car to magically regenerate, “it’s December and I’m very, very cold right now. So please………try your hardest.” But maybe the burnt-out cigarettes from the parking garage in Dublin had mixed with the rust on her tires and caused her to gradually slow to an end, peacefully and happily dying after a long and variegated life. Lovely. You know, God, I don’t freaking deserve this, you know? I go to Church every Sunday. I’ve never laughed in a beggar-woman’s face or ripped off a crippled kid’s dad or sold a blind kid a dead parrot. So why me? Grrrr. This is almost as bad as that time in the eighth grade you made my teacher have a nervous breakdown.
There was nothing there beside the narrow roadside where I’d wandered, nothing but a dark blotchy forest. Wood in other forests was robust and black, but here it was brittle and brown, feeble with the winter, the snow as white and immaculate as a church’s alabaster steeple. Forests scared all the old villagers out, and no one had ever come back because of the monsters and men that whispered what everyone was afraid of unawares.
Abandoning my aging beauty at the roadside where she faltered, the snowflakes one by one silently sizzling as they fell upon her faded green hood, I wrapped myself up, teeth chattering as I started down the lonely stretch of road that trailed into the forest.
The trees had long lost their leaves, their branches poking the dark violet sky forever like the veins running through a human body. The sky wasn’t the warm, sapphire blue of the summertime, but the cold, lonely blue of the winter, the same blue that a friendless young girl must be trapped in every day. It scared me now, feeling this alone. I had never been lonely, and I had never thought I was going to be lonely terribly imminently.
Then I saw the house. It was about two stories tall, painted a very soft, comfortable yellow, like the fuzz of a newborn duckling, with a small extension made of a few tiny apartments in the back and an old balcony jutting awkwardly out from an upstairs side room. Firelight flickered from within an old-fashioned gas fireplace, by which and by the dim lighting inside I could make out a hand-painted sign to a hundred-year-old bookstore on the ground floor. I gotta get inside. I don’t frigging care what mass murderer or senior citizen or sex offender lives here. Because I frigging need to get inside. I frigging need to get inside. I frigging need to get inside. I frigging-growling as I pounded the door like I wish I could my treacherous car, the sound of footsteps greeted my ears as euphoniously as a mute radio during a Justin Beiber song.
A small, dark-haired, dark-eyed pale-skinned man answered, and it was evident by the deep, creasing frown he wore that he hated me unconditionally before even seeing my face.
“WHAT?” he demanded, opening the door to give me a piece of his mind. He had a strong American accent.
“Sorry, sir,” I murmured through chattering teeth, “ my name is Angel Logan.”
“I don’t care what your name is.”
“I don’t care that you’re trying to be nihilistic .Anyway, my car broke down. Do you have any room for me?’
He shook his head rapidly, double chin billowing like a sea of lard and beard stubble. “Not my fault you’re unprepared. Hope you like sleeping outside.”
Americans suck at jokes, so I pretended to laugh. “Are you kidding?”
Solemnly and with anger he vowed he did not and would not give retarded young women temporary shelter.
“And,” he continued, pure unadulterated evil sparkling in his enormous round brown eyes, which were far from the only thing bovine about him, “do not mess with me. You have not seen the worst of me yet.”
“I know. I’ve seen Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. That taught me to fear angry virginal nerds.”
Turning amusingly beet red, he snarled like a guard dog. Actually, he sounded pretty retarded, so instead I’ll say that he snarled like a fat American man. “I am one hundred percent Italian.”
“I can imagine. Just like the other 99% of Americans.”
“WHAT’S THAT?”
A very plain young woman, with an irritated, bony forehead, thin lips and a slightly psychotic glare in her big green eyeballs, came rushing down the stairs until I was face-to-face with those ever-so-dreamy beauties.
“HOW DARE YOU WAKE ME UP AT TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT! “She screeched, and dare I say her similarly American accent was the worst kind ever. It was the irritating reality show kind, the kind where unfortunate speakers pronounce their r’s like a’s and their th’s like d’s.
“Um…sorry, ma’am,” I murmured, meeting her bipolar gaze as my cheeks burned, as if they were sizzled by her rage. “It’s just that, you know, my car broke down, and I was wondering if maybe you could help me.”
“HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HELP YOU WHEN YOU’RE BEING SO SELFISH? YOU ARE IN FOR A RU-UU-DE AWAKENING!” And then, she was silenced.
“Honey,” she cooed, “I’m sorry, but you can’t sleep here tonight.”
She then turned to the short angry virgin. “MAKE HER SLEEP ON THE BALCONY!”
“Ma’am,” I articulated, the muscles in my cheekbones bravely twitching, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I should suffer because you happen to be wacked on your mood stabilizer.”
The balcony was, like the dank dreary ponds that abounded around this wretched abode, frozen with the winter, once white but now streaked with yellow and grey flecks of paint. The railing, curvy and ornate like a magnificent swan, peeked out on a dead marsh like a terrace where two lovers, young and beautiful, gazed out on a cobalt sea in a land and time before land and time existed.
From the window, where a more comfortable individual was now spending the night, a gas lamp slowly lumbered contently alive like a grandfather’s murmured phone conversation. The hail frozen into the wretchedly cracked old wood settling uncomfortably into my bum, I pounded on the thin windowpane, awaking the barking of a hazel-eyed mutt and the curiosity of a young man, who immediately recoiled back, horrified.
God. I’m not that ugly. Nonetheless, any attention is better than freezing to death, so therefore I continued to pound against the window in the vain hope that I did not look like a burglar or a total imbecile and just a half-dead Scottish chick sprawled out on his balcony awaiting certain death.
Flailing for the window, the young man--his enormous eyes were bright blue, a blue that reaches its acme when immersed in deep, soul-resurrecting joy—looked me over frantically.
“HELP ME!”I rapped at the screen, my numb violet knuckles leaving little white berries upon its ice-covered surface.
He raised a finger to his lips, and from there proceeded his urgent tiptoeing down the creaking staircase. Please, I begged with his ghost, please don’t forsake or abandon me. I’ve waited for you to come show me something, so I can save you and you, too, can save me.
He emerged with a key, silently and with a clench of anticipation upon his face and within the callouses of his pale palms waiting for me to say something to him. As I waited draped like a princess in his faded fuzz-encrusted blanket on his couch, he brewed me some Ramen noodles.
He grinned, lopsidedly.
"Hollis MacHurley, by the way."
It was known to me then that this was how all great love stories began.
Because the car was my friend, I did not use rude language.
“Okay, baby,” I cooed, trying to coax the car to magically regenerate, “it’s December and I’m very, very cold right now. So please………try your hardest.” But maybe the burnt-out cigarettes from the parking garage in Dublin had mixed with the rust on her tires and caused her to gradually slow to an end, peacefully and happily dying after a long and variegated life. Lovely. You know, God, I don’t freaking deserve this, you know? I go to Church every Sunday. I’ve never laughed in a beggar-woman’s face or ripped off a crippled kid’s dad or sold a blind kid a dead parrot. So why me? Grrrr. This is almost as bad as that time in the eighth grade you made my teacher have a nervous breakdown.
There was nothing there beside the narrow roadside where I’d wandered, nothing but a dark blotchy forest. Wood in other forests was robust and black, but here it was brittle and brown, feeble with the winter, the snow as white and immaculate as a church’s alabaster steeple. Forests scared all the old villagers out, and no one had ever come back because of the monsters and men that whispered what everyone was afraid of unawares.
Abandoning my aging beauty at the roadside where she faltered, the snowflakes one by one silently sizzling as they fell upon her faded green hood, I wrapped myself up, teeth chattering as I started down the lonely stretch of road that trailed into the forest.
The trees had long lost their leaves, their branches poking the dark violet sky forever like the veins running through a human body. The sky wasn’t the warm, sapphire blue of the summertime, but the cold, lonely blue of the winter, the same blue that a friendless young girl must be trapped in every day. It scared me now, feeling this alone. I had never been lonely, and I had never thought I was going to be lonely terribly imminently.
Then I saw the house. It was about two stories tall, painted a very soft, comfortable yellow, like the fuzz of a newborn duckling, with a small extension made of a few tiny apartments in the back and an old balcony jutting awkwardly out from an upstairs side room. Firelight flickered from within an old-fashioned gas fireplace, by which and by the dim lighting inside I could make out a hand-painted sign to a hundred-year-old bookstore on the ground floor. I gotta get inside. I don’t frigging care what mass murderer or senior citizen or sex offender lives here. Because I frigging need to get inside. I frigging need to get inside. I frigging need to get inside. I frigging-growling as I pounded the door like I wish I could my treacherous car, the sound of footsteps greeted my ears as euphoniously as a mute radio during a Justin Beiber song.
A small, dark-haired, dark-eyed pale-skinned man answered, and it was evident by the deep, creasing frown he wore that he hated me unconditionally before even seeing my face.
“WHAT?” he demanded, opening the door to give me a piece of his mind. He had a strong American accent.
“Sorry, sir,” I murmured through chattering teeth, “ my name is Angel Logan.”
“I don’t care what your name is.”
“I don’t care that you’re trying to be nihilistic .Anyway, my car broke down. Do you have any room for me?’
He shook his head rapidly, double chin billowing like a sea of lard and beard stubble. “Not my fault you’re unprepared. Hope you like sleeping outside.”
Americans suck at jokes, so I pretended to laugh. “Are you kidding?”
Solemnly and with anger he vowed he did not and would not give retarded young women temporary shelter.
“And,” he continued, pure unadulterated evil sparkling in his enormous round brown eyes, which were far from the only thing bovine about him, “do not mess with me. You have not seen the worst of me yet.”
“I know. I’ve seen Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. That taught me to fear angry virginal nerds.”
Turning amusingly beet red, he snarled like a guard dog. Actually, he sounded pretty retarded, so instead I’ll say that he snarled like a fat American man. “I am one hundred percent Italian.”
“I can imagine. Just like the other 99% of Americans.”
“WHAT’S THAT?”
A very plain young woman, with an irritated, bony forehead, thin lips and a slightly psychotic glare in her big green eyeballs, came rushing down the stairs until I was face-to-face with those ever-so-dreamy beauties.
“HOW DARE YOU WAKE ME UP AT TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT! “She screeched, and dare I say her similarly American accent was the worst kind ever. It was the irritating reality show kind, the kind where unfortunate speakers pronounce their r’s like a’s and their th’s like d’s.
“Um…sorry, ma’am,” I murmured, meeting her bipolar gaze as my cheeks burned, as if they were sizzled by her rage. “It’s just that, you know, my car broke down, and I was wondering if maybe you could help me.”
“HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HELP YOU WHEN YOU’RE BEING SO SELFISH? YOU ARE IN FOR A RU-UU-DE AWAKENING!” And then, she was silenced.
“Honey,” she cooed, “I’m sorry, but you can’t sleep here tonight.”
She then turned to the short angry virgin. “MAKE HER SLEEP ON THE BALCONY!”
“Ma’am,” I articulated, the muscles in my cheekbones bravely twitching, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I should suffer because you happen to be wacked on your mood stabilizer.”
The balcony was, like the dank dreary ponds that abounded around this wretched abode, frozen with the winter, once white but now streaked with yellow and grey flecks of paint. The railing, curvy and ornate like a magnificent swan, peeked out on a dead marsh like a terrace where two lovers, young and beautiful, gazed out on a cobalt sea in a land and time before land and time existed.
From the window, where a more comfortable individual was now spending the night, a gas lamp slowly lumbered contently alive like a grandfather’s murmured phone conversation. The hail frozen into the wretchedly cracked old wood settling uncomfortably into my bum, I pounded on the thin windowpane, awaking the barking of a hazel-eyed mutt and the curiosity of a young man, who immediately recoiled back, horrified.
God. I’m not that ugly. Nonetheless, any attention is better than freezing to death, so therefore I continued to pound against the window in the vain hope that I did not look like a burglar or a total imbecile and just a half-dead Scottish chick sprawled out on his balcony awaiting certain death.
Flailing for the window, the young man--his enormous eyes were bright blue, a blue that reaches its acme when immersed in deep, soul-resurrecting joy—looked me over frantically.
“HELP ME!”I rapped at the screen, my numb violet knuckles leaving little white berries upon its ice-covered surface.
He raised a finger to his lips, and from there proceeded his urgent tiptoeing down the creaking staircase. Please, I begged with his ghost, please don’t forsake or abandon me. I’ve waited for you to come show me something, so I can save you and you, too, can save me.
He emerged with a key, silently and with a clench of anticipation upon his face and within the callouses of his pale palms waiting for me to say something to him. As I waited draped like a princess in his faded fuzz-encrusted blanket on his couch, he brewed me some Ramen noodles.
He grinned, lopsidedly.
"Hollis MacHurley, by the way."
It was known to me then that this was how all great love stories began.
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