Chapter 13
Bill had thought it was a nuisance, and he'd been putting it off for weeks. To Amy it was like a little holiday, though. She managed to get out of the city so seldom that driving through the industrial desolation of northern New Jersey was a pleasure.
It would have been much easier, of course, to go to a Volkswagen dealer and get a new headlight to replace the one he'd busted on his last trip to this area. But Bill felt that economy was in order. He'd happened to notice an extensive automobile graveyard when he'd gone out here to take his pictures at the oil refinery, and he believed that a cheaper replacement could be had by getting one from a wrecked car.
Economy certainly was in order, now that they were both undergoing counseling with Wanda Fleurette and her crew. The fees got steeper with each progressive level of advancement, and the counseling took so much time that Bill hardly had time to do any work anymore.
Amy smiled and felt a delicious little tingle of private pleasure as she thought of the counseling. She certainly didn't regret spending the money, since it meant seeing dear Kathi so often. She squirmed in her seat and tried to put her mind back on her driving, but she could feel a growing dampness between her legs at just the thought of Kathi.
She'd almost hated her, after the first time when she'd tricked her so cruelly by arranging for Bill to fuck her when she thought they were making love to each other in privacy. But she didn't stay mad for long. Kathi had only done it for her own good, she saw that now. It was wrong to reject half the human race because they were crude and hairy and coarse. And some of the men whom Kathi brought around to her apartment when Bill wasn't home-men like Juan and Julio and Leroy, for instance-weren't at all crude or hairy or coarse.
She was even getting to the point where she enjoyed fucking Bill-and she made a point of using" that word when she thought of it, just as Wanda and Kathi would have wanted her to have done: fucking. It had a nice sound, Amy reflected, once you got used to it. She was beginning to realize that she'd wasted an awful lot of time in her life by rejecting it, but she planned to make up for lost time in a hurry.
Following Bill's directions, she soon found her self driving up to the tarpaper shack that served as the office of the junkyard. Acres of wrecked autos surrounded her in silence. It looked like a good place for gangland executions. The loneliness of the place chilled her, and she reflected a moment before switching off the ignition and getting out of the car. She only did it because Wanda taught that you can't love people if you're afraid of them. You can't be raped, she maintained, if you cooperate wholeheartedly with the rapist. Amy wondered if she'd ever be able to live up to such high principles.
She knocked timidly on the door of the office. She got no answer. She knocked a little louder. Still she got no answer, but the unlocked door swung open. A man sitting at a roll top desk stared at her guiltily and rose to his feet in apparent confusion.
He didn't look like a junk dealer. He looked sort of like Anthony Perkins. She decided that her first impression must be wrong, however, because she noticed smudges of grease on his button-down shirt. He must work here, even if he didn't look the part.
"Hello," she said brightly. "I'm looking for a headlamp for a 1972 Volkswagen. I wonder-"
"I'm sorry, the man isn't here," he said. "Oh. Don't you work here?"
"No, I'm the owner."
"Well, if you own this place, why can't you sell me a headlight?" Amy asked, and a touch of asperity crept into her voice.
"I'm very bad at selling things," he explained. "People always get the better of me."
"Not many people would admit that," Amy said, wondering if he was dangerous.
"You have to be completely honest with people," he said. "Otherwise, all human contact is meaningless."
That sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it. She noticed that the room held a couple of extra chairs. "Do, you mind if I wait in here?"
He looked as if he wanted to refuse, but he said: "Not at all. Make yourself comfortable."
Amy sat. The strange man went back to his chair and indulged in a variety of nervous mannerisms. It made her nervous to watch him staring at the ceiling, examining his nails, tapping his toe, trying to whistle, rumpling his hair, rummaging through his desk and glancing guiltily at her, a rapid routine that he kept repeating in no particular order.
"When will he be back?"
"Who?"
"The man who sells things," Amy said patiently.'
"Oh. I don't know. I have no idea. I suppose...."
"Go on," she urged.
"I suppose I could sell one to you. I know where there is one. Do you know what it's worth?"
"No," Amy said honestly.
"Neither do I, to tell you the truth. I'll have to look it up," he said, and he stared at some big loose-leaf books over the desk as if the sight of them scared him.
Amy was beginning to feel more at ease. She'd reached the conclusion that he wasn't dangerous. He wasn't crude or hairy or coarse, either. On the contrary, he was kind of cute. She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs, letting her skirt ride up a bit higher than it might have. She withdrew a cigarette from her bag. The weird junkman was on his feet with lighter extended before she could begin to look for a match, reinforcing her impression that he was somehow out of place here. His hand shook slightly as she accepted the flame, and she steadied it with hers.
"Don't you get terribly lonely out here with nothing to do?" she asked.
"Oh, I have...." He looked around at the cluttered desk at a clock that wasn't working, at last year's Playboy calendar on the wall. He included them all in a gesture. " ... things to do. You know."
She noticed that the shack contained a rumpled cot and a stove. She would have been willing to bet that this man lived here all the time. He was good looking, he spoke like a reasonably well educated man, and he wasn't yet forty. She wondered what could have brought him to this sorry pass.
He saw that his answer wasn't quite satisfactory, so he added: "I like to tinker with cars."
"You mean, it's a sort of hobby?" Amy prompted.
He frowned. "It used to be. Now. ... I had a niece who was a wizard with engines."
He gave the last bit of information with obvious pride, but unexpectedly his face then crumpled into sadness. He hunched forward and stared at his shoes. A personal tragedy had brought him here? But the loss of a niece hardly seemed that much of a tragedy, nor did a junkyard seem the place to find solace.
"She could tear down the rocker arm assembly of a 1957 Chevy and put it back together blindfolded," he added.
"That sounds truly remarkable," said Amy; and it did, even though she didn't know what it meant.
"When you try to own someone completely, you always wind up losing them completely."
Amy was startled: it sounded like the sort of thing Wanda would say. Of course, Wanda didn't have a monopoly on common sense, she reflected. Even a crazy junkman in the wilds of New Jersey could come up with a good thought now and then.
"That's true," she said, and he nodded agreement with her agreement for a while.
"I suppose I ought to...." He looked in dismay at the loose-leaf books again, but he made no move to reach for them.
Amy was toying with a daring idea. She knew what Wanda or Kathi would have said this man needed if they could have seen him isolated in his nervousness and loneliness; and they would promptly have offered him the cure. But she wasn't supposed to be ready for that sort of thing yet. She was only a Class A Seeker, and it wasn't until she reached the third stage, the Probationary level, that she would be qualified to start practicing Wanda's philosophy actively. It was one thing to fuck the men Kathi brought to her apartment, but quite another to go out and start something-without Kathi to guide her. But it might be evidence to her teachers that she was ready to advance a grade. Bill was already way ahead of her.
She couldn't withhold it; she blurted: "Would you like to make love to me?"
She knew it wasn't going to be easy. After all, shyness and nervousness were his obvious faults, and he would do nothing to remedy her own shyness. He stared at her, his face pale. She found herself blushing. She should have waited until she'd reached the third stage of Wanda's instruction before begging into this kind of thing.
"What?" he asked.
"I said, would ... I said, would you like to ... um ... make love to me?" she squeaked.
"I haven't ... not since...."
"Well, would you or wouldn't you?" Amy demanded, stamping her foot in exasperation.
"Yes ... of course I would. I don't know if I can, that's all," he said. "Something happened...."
"You mean you were wounded in the war or something?"
"No, no, it's just-an emotional trauma. I lost someone. And since then I-I haven't even thought about ... doing that," he finished lamely, not even looking at her as he gestured hopelessly. Then he added: "It's a funny question for you to ask like that."
"I like you," Amy explained, although that was slightly less true, now that she had to go through this agony of explaining herself. "When you like someone you should-follow your instincts."
The junkman laughed silently and mirthlessly. It took Amy a moment to convince herself that he wasn't laughing at her, but at some bitter joke woven into the fabric of the universe.
"Your instincts can lead you to murder as easily as they can lead you to love-perhaps more easily to murder," he said. "Man is far from perfect."
Amy now began to see why Wanda wanted her Seekers to have more instruction before they went around offering love to people. She'd just offered this man a pretty good thing, even if she did say so herself, and instead of jumping at the chance, he was engaging her in a philosophical debate. If she expressed the anger she felt, anger stemming from her own wounded vanity, she would be going against Wanda's principles. She wished she'd waited until she'd been better prepared.
"You can't deny an instinct with words," Amy said, proud of how calm she sounded. "The instinct exists. The word is only a word, a noise, the vibration of your vocal cords conducted through the air. If I touch you-" and here she leaned forward and put her hand on his knee-"and you like the touch, it means more than any word, doesn't it?"
"The trouble with romanticism," said the junkman, rising from his chair, "is that the halfwits who started it had an inflexible moral code drummed into them. So that when somebody like Emerson says you should follow your instincts, he really means you should follow the Protestant ethic. We don't have any moral code. We were made orphans by Freud and Darwin. Anybody nowadays who's crazy enough to tell people to follow their instincts is nothing but an anarchist, inviting chaos for its own sake, and ought to be taken out and shot like a mad dog."
Amy burst into tears.
"What's the matter?'" the junkman asked, deeply concerned.
"I asked you-I asked you if-you wanted to make-love-" that word came out as an anguished wail-"and you-you-you-"
"God, I'm sorry! I really am. I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to do that. You see ... you see...."
His words trailed off, but the contrition in his words seemed genuine. He was kneeling in front of Amy's chair, holding her arm, patting her hands.
"I used to know somebody," he continued. "What you said-it reminded me so much of that person, that I started getting angry at that person again. I didn't mean to snap at you, honestly. Please don't cry anymore."
Amy looked up. Seen through a swimmy lens of tears, he looked even more handsome than he had before. She could kill herself. She could die.
"But ... wouldn't you like to make love to me?"
He stood up again and turned his back. "I can't," he said. "I'm sure I can't. That woman ... her ideas ... my whole life...."
Amy managed somehow to compose herself. Her heart went out to him again. Her own humiliation was nothing compared to the depths of this poor man's problem. She'd been foolish to think that she could possibly do anything to help him from the depths of her ignorance. Possibly the only person on earth who could cure him and bring him out of himself was Wanda Fleurette.
"May I come and see you again?" Amy asked.
"Why?" It sounded hollow, like a voice from a tomb.
"I like you-and-I have a friend who-I think you'd like talking to my friend."
The junkman shrugged. "I don't know why you'd bother with...." He gestured at the broken clock, the outdated calendar.
"You'll love my friend," Amy promised.