Bernie Ribkin
Bernie Ribkin sat at the outdoor table that overlooked the customer service area, scanning Majestic Life, the “exclusive lifestyle magazine for Jaguar owners.” The alarm system on his Range Rover was out again.
Something about Bernie’s body put the hex on electrical things. It had always been that way. When he pushed the arming button on his key ring, the doors wouldn’t lock — or went haywire, locking and unlocking in seizure-like succession. Sometimes he could activate the system from hundreds of feet away; then again, he’d be standing right at the door and nothing would happen. There were other problems. Much as he loved the way the car looked, the interior was chintzy. The dash and environs continued to shed whole plaques of poorly glued walnut lookalike. The plastic burl on top of the gearshift popped out in his hand and a cheap husk of passenger seat molding kept crapping onto the carpet. You could literally see the masking tape that held it in place — and this was supposed to be a new car. Each day brought another hassle. Like Wednesday, when the key froze in the ignition and Bernie had to be towed all the way to Santa Monica. He was over by Western at the time and wasn’t thrilled.
Once semi-famous for a series of zombie films made in the early seventies, the producer was desperate to re-enter the Business. He had traveled the world for twenty years and the money was nearly gone. Now he’d come full circle, back to where it all began. He would have to reinvent himself — Christ, it’d been done before by lesser lights then he. If the concept was right, he could strike gold again. He had just paid fifteen hundred dollars in corporate filing fees: Bernard S. Ribkin was the new President and ceo of Scramblin Entertainment, Inc. He loved the ballsy, mischievous allusion to Spielberg. Made the broads laugh. (Next time, he’d do Scream Works.)
The best part about a Range Rover was that if towing was needed, you simply dialed an eight-hundred number and they came in about twenty minutes with a giant flatbed to cart you away. Bernie was towed three times in five months, once when he stalled on the Sony lot — an ignition thing again — and another, when the hydraulics jammed at Le Dome. All told, the car was in the shop around eighteen times in the year he’d owned it. Buying it had been one of those impulse things. He went to the showroom in Beverly Hills and wrote out the check, fifty-five thou, high-roller style, that’s the way Bernie always did it, bigger than life. He used to play the tables like that in Vegas, back in the days with Serena. One bet, twenty-five grand, win or lose. Then walk away.
For months, when the thing acted up, Bernie didn’t seem to care. He came to view his forbearance as a sign of mental health. Why fret? His way of saying “fuck you” to the car and its sundry hissy fits. Besides, it was the other fellow’s nickel. If repairs took a few days, they got him a loaner. He paid only with his time. The ritual of service relaxed him. He came in early, got his cup of coffee, flirted with the cashier. Sat at the customer table outside and worked the cellular. Watched the bored Fendi ladies cruise by and make the servicemen jump through hoops.
Bernie enjoyed the shop’s wide, clean driveway and the men who emerged from glass hives to diagnose and schedule. They wore white lab coats and studiously entered the producer’s complaints into a computer. They had carefully manicured beards and were even outfitted with sterling Anglo-Saxon surnames, courtesy of their supervisors. Bernie didn’t mind the subterfuge, as long as its aspirations were first-class. For shorter repairs, an obsequious Mexican in a Jaguar Polo shirt shuttled him back to the Edith-Esther, his apartment house off Burton Way. Yes, the producer perversely admitted, he sopped up everything about the place, even the part when he paid his bill and a “porter” was paged to bring down the just-washed car. Like checking out of friggin Claridge’s.
He sat there trying to come up with a Concept, a twist that would buy admission to the game — horror again? — or something like that crazy Pet Detective he’d seen on cable. His mind kept drifting to the car. The producer had bought English before and knew all the problems; he just couldn’t see himself in a Lexus. But then the airconditioning fritzed (twice) and the seat belt snapped and the window jammed and the hood wouldn’t pop and the dash CHECK ENGINE light stayed on three months and the sunroof wouldn’t sun and the engine hummed, hideously augmented through Howard Stern (because of the power lines, said the men in white smocks: “It happens with all cars”), and the hatch door wouldn’t hatch and Bernie replaced brake pads thrice the first six months (“because the car is so heavy,” said the men). Often, they fetched him from the Edith-Esther at the end of the day with great apologies because the mechanic discovered a part was needed that wasn’t in stock and would have to be UPSed “from the East”—assuming the mystical East was in possession, which was never certain because by the time they requisitioned, the East was usually already closed. A “part” might take three weeks to arrive. When the alarm system went code blue (fifth time), Bernie sat in the manager’s office to show he meant business. The smocked men coaxed it to work but along the way uncovered something grievously wrong with the pistons, a good two-to-four-week job — warranteed, of course. That was the day something turned and Bernie saw himself as the pawn of a bunco repair syndicate, an addled mark, juicy as a widow. They had singled him out. He couldn’t help but wonder: would these men actually have the gall to tell Zev Turtletaub the reason he couldn’t listen to the news — literally could not hear the commentators through a banshee of revving engine interference — was because of the fucking power lines? Maybe they would.
So Bernie got the name of a law firm specializing in lemons. He paid a small fee and completed a form relating the lengthy, redundant history of repairs. After a week or so, a paralegal called to say they didn’t think he had a case just yet — the legal hitch being, none of the recurring problems were deemed dangerous. Bernie’s inventory described a minor, exasperating potpourri; alarm-system shorts, freon glitches and frozen ignitions — a nuisance, to be sure, yet a far cry from your chassis dropping out on the four-oh-five like the surgeon’s wife’s a month before (Jag) or the realtor doing sixty on Fountain when the brakes spontaneously seized (Land Rover). The would-be litigant was encouraged to document future repairs.
Maybe he’d just sell it and take the loss — around thirty K. He could drive around in Donny’s Impala, who the fuck cared? Life was too short. Even now, after all he knew, he combed the Recycler for Jags. Sell the Rover for thirty, buy something old for fifteen. Ride around in stone class with pocket change to boot. Bernie had that “classic” feeling again, always the same: the “blow-job Bentley” Serena hated, the little MG that knocked out his teeth, the murderous Mini — the Jensen, crapped-out at Cyrano’s, overheated at Romanoff’s — the XKE, puttering from Perino’s, stalled-out at Schwab’s…
That’s the way it was in this English life.
Zev Turtletaub
“Hey, cunt.”
“I’m sorry?”
That was Taj, the relatively new Assistant.
“What happened to the Dead Souls coverage?”
“What did you call me?”
Shortish hair in tight curls. The kind of preppie skin that mottled pink when he blushed or got cold or evinced outrage. Fear quickly soured his breath.