Gasoline and Perfume

by CHRIS TOLIAN

She climbs back into the car, bringing a burst of cold mid-November rain. Bitter scent of exhaust and gasoline from the city outside clings to her, standing out sharp in the frigid air. Cinnamon vanilla. Faint, exciting smell of her. More tasted or imagined. A light, almost sweet musk and the pale salt of sweat.

Her presence is so real, so immediate. “Ready?” She laughs at my nod. “My choice right?”

“Just no McDonald’s.” She laughs again.

Our poorly heated Toyota cocoon falls through the early evening city. Streets and signs and people and skyscrapers smear together into an impressionist collage. We catch Lake Shore Drive.

The car stops in front of a Thai restaurant with black slatted shades and gaudy gold letters pronouncing its name in no language I understand. My companion is out of the car and headed through the door before I can even find the handle. With her goes that curious scent.
Dance Blue Deux ©2004 Ingrid Swillens
“Come on slowpoke.” Her voice carries on a soft ripple of laughter. “I’m hungry.”

I finally find my way to the door. Inside she orders a bottle of white wine. The music, scents and the dim lights shoot the alcohol to my brain.

“Do you hear the words?” She leans forward on one hand, elbow resting on the black mat. Chin cradled in curled fingers.

I look at her, taking a moment to realize what she’s talking about. All around us, people are speaking in half a dozen different languages. From the light singsong tones of the asian dialects to the melodramatic rise and fall of romantic french and italian. The ordinary english and spanish. All mixing into one low murmur of a thousand voices whispering of a different, exotic world. A multicultural purr that defines the Chicago I know.

And the music. A strange mix of gypsy jazz and blues, looped under a keening muted trumpet solo. A solid backbeat in odd time. We order and sit in silence, breathing in the scents of so many different people and spices and roasting meats.

She sits there. Something about her eyes. Eyes are not the windows to the soul. They are separate, almost an entity of their own, held so far above the rest of the body. If anything they are a reflection. A perception of the spirit. The life a person has lived. Their experiences colored by their emotions and personal prejudices. Hers hold something I’ve never seen before. There is a passion there, uninhibited as a child's.

“How old are you?” She could be any age. Hair not yet gray. Face displays the imperfections of life.

She laughs, gazing at me over the rim of her glass. Grey eyes, blue eyes, green eyes all jumbled up in her own. “Older than you.” She looks away, putting a cigarette to her lips. ”Come on, I’m full.”

She grabs the brown paper bag full of white cardboard carryout.

We walk past the Salvation Army store. Men and women in tired old clothes pass in and out the door. Mingle uncomfortably with the hip kids pausing on their way to the clubs to pick up the cool corduroy bellbottoms and other things Seventies.

“Huh. The rich and poor both buy secondhand these days.”

“The poor have no choice, but the rich buy everything secondhand so they don’t have to bother putting any life into it. The trendy buy their readymade character, built in memories. It’s like buying a picture frame and leaving in the store filler to give the illusion of things worth remembering. A life worth living.” The words such a rush. I don’t feel my mouth forming them.

She throws me a look. “Kinda pompous, don’t you think?” I shake my head and she laughs, spitting tiny diamonds into the night air.

Back down the street, we search for the car, passing storefronts and cafes with names like Gypsy Cove, Voltaire’s, The Pink Frog, The Alley. Our breath fogs into the air among a hundred other frosted breaths. In the Toyota, the scent again pulls me under, making everything a dream. Vanilla, cinnamon, a musky sage. She turns to wink at me. Slamming the car into first gear, her hand brushes my thigh, sending my head to reel once more with a hallucinatory emotional flux.

Our tiny red rocket speeds down a narrow, crumbling expanse of blacktop. A late autumn storm tosses waves over the breakwall along the lake. North through the Loop with its towering concrete facades, through the rich neighborhoods cowering behind an invisible gateway, hiding from the rest of the world. Those barely hanging on in the crumbling kingdoms of the CHA housing complexes.

Just beyond the glittery hotels and the wrought iron fences we suddenly come upon a working class neighborhood. Tree lined streets front the brown brick bungalows and whitewashed cape cods. Ladders and paint and cars in various stages of abuse. A little neon sign proclaims our destination as we pull over behind a beat up Cadillac. “DANNY’S” in fiery cursive sputters in the misting rain.

* * * * *

The bartender stands behind his dark oak barricade. Black hair covering eyes that completely fail to register our entrance until my friend walks up to get a bottle of red wine. His dark silk shirt sticks to his body in a dozen lurid ways as the heat from the gas registers throw moisture into the air.

We wind up a staircase and pass room upon room, decorated in every imaginable style, filled with every type of person. On the third floor, in a back corner facing the roofs across an alley, we find an empty space for ourselves.

Stick figure shadow stains dance across a crimson lit stage on the wall. Music drips through fevered perception to mingle with tribal rhythms hidden among the softworn paisley couch and low table.

She stands in bittersweet grace as she peers though dirty glass. She doesn’t like the view. Lakefront skyline rises with the moon above black water and shades of dim brown and gray. Sips her drink, letting it play with the incense smoke of her addiction.

Pale eyes ask so many questions. Light brown hair caresses pale cheek framing classic features. Earth toned wool drifts above high, laced boots. Swirling tattoos trace the slender curve of her arm and hand, idly stroking the black cord around her neck. Her hands. Slender, delicate. Clear nails. Clean. I glance at mine, squeezing the cigarette. Dirty, calloused. Scarred and scraped from the factory, stained with oil from my machines. So different. I cringe at the self-deprecation. Prejudice. Imagined?

My forest colored eyes catch hers through the stained glass softening of early midnight and too many drinks. Distant bells chime as she crosses the hardwood floor to pour me yet another glass of wine. The red-amber fluid numbs my tongue, lighting a fire behind my eyes.

Ashes dust the table beneath the green glass ashtray next to a tin of unfiltered cigarettes from Indonesia. God, my mind is wondering. What were we talking about? My face must have given me away.

I look up at her. “Only a little sometimes?” Repeating the last phrase. Brilliant.

Wispy smoke wraps us in a shroud of ghostly ivy. I try a smile again. She giggles at my attempt. “Yes.”

I look at her. Those eyes ask so many questions, see so much. “What’s ‘only a little sometimes?’”

She gazes back, so intense. “That I get scared.”

I know she wants an answer to something. But what? “Me too.”

Cold air swirls in through an open door somewhere, bringing her scent to me again. What is it that smells so familiar, triggers so many mixed up emotions? She looks away, back towards the window and the slow fading moonshine. Silvergold highlights the shy beatitude of her tilted smile.

“Then why am I talking to you?” It comes out as a quiet murmur, but carries so much meaning, so much frustration. She turns to face me and looks up through her eyelashes.

“Look,” I try again, this time actually managing to keep most of the alcohol out of my voice. “I’m sorry. I want to help. But, I need to know what’s going on.” Her eyes speak so eloquently of the hurt. I pray that it’s not my fault.

“You want to know what’s going on?” A harsh drag from her cigarette. “Never mind. You’re too-“

“Too what?” I cut her off. I’m so sick of people feeling like shit, asking me for advice and then turning around and backing off, brushing me off.

“To what, huh? Too stupid to understand? Ignorant? Just cause my collar’s blue and my boots have steel toes does not make me less than you. So do not tell me I won’t understand. Just fucking tell me what’s wrong.” Maybe that was a little harsh.

Those eyes linger on my face as her mind lingers on my words. In the silence I light another cigarette, feeling righteous and shit upon and angry at myself all at once.

“Prick.” She spits out the word. Goes to stare out the window at the coldwet city, the icy lake beyond.

Enough of this shit! “Goddamnit, woman! Get your ass over here and let me talk!”

She turns around so slowly that I expect to see a gun aimed at my head. Cigarette falls from her lips as she bursts out laughing.
Hungarian Blue ©2004 Ingrid Swillens
“What?” She finally manages, bending to pickup the smoldering tobacco in its brown paper. The embers add their fire to that already in her eyes.

”Did you just say ‘damnit, woman?’” Another giggle escapes quivering lips.

“No. I said get back here and let me talk.” That wasn’t so bad. She bounces back to the couch. Forgets her anger as fast as any child lets theirs pass into memory. Her smile is ironic now as she grins next to me.

“Sometimes I get scared of being alone.” All serious and pleading.

I can see that. Faint lines at the corner of her eyes. The huskiness of her voice. An old soul worn out by the search… for what?

“But the life you’ve lived so far is so…” I grope for words; nothing is appropriate. Nothing accurate without destroying the myth of her timelessness, agelessness. Myth. Odd word choice.

“What? So full?” Her sarcasm smacks me down.

I paraphrase the rebels and anarchists she so admires. Philosophy of the wild. “You have to experience it all. Truth is nothing without experience, right? Just words. And words are hollow.”

I pause, remembering the feeling of being wide-eyed and naïve. When such grand ideas seemed so pure and reasonable. Add a little life into the mix and purity takes on a tarnish and grand ideas are only ideas without action to back them up. And words, words are still mostly hollow. But, there is still something. Something that pulls at me. Ecstatic being, living for the moment. Sometimes life needs to be lived and action really does follow ideas… or ideas follow actions.

“A mad wild rush into it all-.”

She finishes it up, “Let it take you, consume you and you’ll come out the other side of transcendence.” She looks down at the smoldering stub of cigarette clenched between white fingers. “Yeah.” Quieter, “Yeah. Something like that, right?” Almost inaudible, “Used to seem that way sometimes.”

Her eyes glow, sparking. “Listen.” The intensity is tempered by a deep sadness. Regret. “Living a good life, living well… having meaning in your life and that philosophy are not the same thing.” A laugh. “The voice of reason.” Her eyes catch mine. “It doesn’t work you know. It’s all a myth.” That word again.

I sit silent for a moment. “I don’t believe you.” Pull her to her feet, both of us teetering. I lunge at the door and through and back down the stairs into the blaring cold. “Come with me.” Ideas follow action.