Driving stick

I’m in the middle of dinner with my housemates at Café Ganesh, the dimly-lit restaurant a few steps from my new house. The Germans (Payim and Markus) are recounting the night they bought their car on the black market. Payim is talking at me about how he loves bargaining, he can’t get enough of it, he’s been doing it since infancy. I’m ready to leave. Thankfully Sam calls (to pick me up for a movie night with his friend Nomsa and her baby Hannah), but he’s annoyed because I didn’t pick up the last 2 times he tried. I find it hard to apologize for my small mistake when I feel so wronged by him, but I do it anyway, on the way to the car. The car park asks for a tip even though Sam’s car has been parked for about 1 minute.

“Sorry, sir! I was watching your car?” He is wearing the neon yellow vest that all car park guys wear, and I can hear some shame in his voice. I’m thinking this must be a hard way to squeeze out a living.

“Yeah, thanks for keeping your eye on it for 45 seconds” snaps Sam, in a mean tone that shocks me. I wonder what has fueled this sudden anger.

“Sorry, you and your girlfriend…”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Burn.

“Your sister, sir?”

“Ach, no!” Sam spits, exasperated. “I’ve got a boyfriend, thanks.”

Yeah go ahead, rub it in. As we jerk away from the curb, I remind myself that Sam has no idea that I’m mad. I can’t expect him to know until I tell him.

“I have to pick up my mom’s car and bring it home before we go to Nomsa’s, so I was thinking we could have a little lesson and then you could drive this one for a bit, ok?”

He says ok in the way that he usually does, with a descending inflection. This version of the word is less a question and more a statement. I will drive the car for a bit. I say fine. I’m feeling like even if I do something really wrong it will somehow not be my fault and therefore I have nothing to lose. After several stalls we I get the car into gear. Sam is in teacher mode, inserting ego-boosters at just the right times. I’m not as mad at him this way. I start to feel scared as we come to an area with traffic and I need to make a right turn around a barrier. I am making a focused effort to be calm.

“So hey, is this the right side of the thing?” I ask serenely, if a little high-pitched. Suddenly sensing the possible danger involved in a driver with right-side instincts, and simultaneously sensing the added danger of a terrified right-side driver, Sam responds evenly.

“So yeah, you’re going for the left side of the barrier. Great. Perfect.”

We survive. Nomsa is lovely. We watch an episode of Heroes as Hannah sleeps on Nomsa’s lap. Nomsa wonders aloud about the tinyness of Hannah’s organs. Little lungs, little kidneys. Sam objects to this conversation for a moment and then lets it go.

I have become Sam's project. The next morning we meet at the university parking lot to work on my new skills. He is shocked at how little I know about how cars work. We sit with the hazard lights on and he grabs the nearest objects in the back seat, a soda bottle that once contained something mango-flavored, and a pen, and uses them to illustrate what happens with the clutch. I try my very best to stay engaged throughout all of this but I’m still angry, and I keep getting hit with flashbacks of times in this car when we were a couple.