♦
Renata’s typewriter rattles with a quiet desperation.
FIFTY FACTS YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE
ONE: The only part of a Beetle never to have been modified in all its years of production is the rubber seal around the engine lid.
‘Now that is a thing I’ve always really wanted to know,’ Renata says to the air.
Half an hour later she is still in need of another forty-seven facts, and even more in need of a drink. It is then that Terry enters the office and calls her a witch. The Lamborghini Countach has just been delivered. Renata rushes out to it.
She straps herself in, spends a lot of time working out what is responsible for what on the dashboard, and takes to the road.
FACT: A recent American survey says that 11.5 per cent of Californian teenagers lose their virginity in a Volkswagen — over half succeeding in doing it in a cabriolet version.
FACT: The eccentric painter and stage-designer Philip Kaufmann became a recluse in 1972. Until his untimely death from carbon monoxide poisoning last year he had painted nothing but watercolours of his 1952 split-window Beetle.
All right, so she has made up these last two facts, but the imagination runs riot behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. And so what? Terry won’t read the article, the people who buy the magazine almost certainly won’t read it. What has she got to lose? Her journalist’s integrity? Her job?
♦
‘How did you learn to drive like that?’ Ishmael asked Fat Les.
‘Like what? I just drive normally.’
That’s what Ishmael liked about Les. He was instinctive. He was a primitive.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Fat Les continued. ‘In thirty years of driving I’ve never had an accident. Mind you, I’ve seen plenty.’
♦
Renata finds the Lamborghini an animal to drive. It is sexy and black and desirable, but an animal. Renata doesn’t mind. She likes animals.
♦
Fat Les drove home via a scenic route. They stopped at a Little Chef for a homely, family-style meal. They chose the all-day breakfast.
Ishmael toyed with his mushrooms.
‘What do I do about Marilyn?’ he asked, not really of anyone in particular.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Les. ‘You must really fancy this bird.’
‘I worship her,’ Ishmael said. ‘I’ve put her on a pedestal.’
‘Swipe me,’ said Les.
♦
Renata has always entertained some unsound fantasies about hitch-hikers. She knows that she is more likely to find a hitch-hiker who will rob and rape her than one who is the man of her dreams, but that’s how it is with fantasies. She picks up a youth. He is about seventeen, failing to grow a moustache, wearing a studded leather jacket and carrying a ghetto-blaster. He is not the man of her dreams but he doesn’t look like a robber or rapist either. She tells him she is a journalist.
‘That’s interesting.’
Silence.
‘How do you like the car?’ she tries again.
‘Not bad,’ Davey says. ‘Beetles are my favourite, though.’
The cockpit is cramped, not that the boy has much luggage, not any that Renata can see, just the ghetto-blaster and a carrier bag with some tapes in it. She hopes he at least has a pair of clean knickers.
‘Now there’s a coincidence,’ says Renata. ‘I don’t suppose you have forty or so facts that I’ve always wanted to know about the Volkswagen Beetle.’
‘Not really,’ he replies, taking her very seriously. ‘A friend turned me on to them, well I say friend, he’s more of a mentor really. I’m on my way to find him at the moment. If you’re a journalist you could write something about him. He’s an amazing character.’
Davey retells Ishmael’s story, from Branch Library to Nirvana, from librarian to chivalric pilgrim, the nature of the quest, the nature of the dragon, scenes of casual violence in town and country, the rescue of the fair Marilyn which must not fail.
‘Are you serious?’ Renata asks.
‘You want to interview him or not?’
‘Not. But I’d certainly be interested in doing something when you both get put behind bars.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘This friend of yours is obviously a fruitcake. What’s he trying to do — become the English Don Quixote, or the next Charles Manson?’
‘I think you’d better stop before you say something you regret.’
‘I’m not going to regret anything. And you’re even more stupid than you look if you fall for all that quasi-mystical bullshit. OK, you’re young and gullible, but take it from me, kid, if there’s one thing the sixties taught us it’s that the kind of thing your friend’s playing with just leads to a lot of bad business and a few blown minds.’
‘But this isn’t the sixties, you silly cow. Stop the car! You have to put up with a lot when you’re hitch-hiking but I’m not going to sit here and have my most precious beliefs spat on. Let me out at that Little Chef over there.’
♦
Ishmael looked absently through the large window. A car that was a streak of black, lacquered metal pulled up.
‘What’s that?’ he said to Fat Les.
‘Lamborghini Countach.’
The passenger door flapped open. Davey got out. He said something to the driver, the door closed, the car left. He walked into the Little Chef, sat down at Ishmael’s table, expressed no surprise at his being there and said, ‘Those Lambos, they’re some car, pity that the people who drive them are such scumbags.’
He looked at the menu. Ishmael introduced Les and Davey to each other. At first Ishmael wasn’t going to take him to task for his desertion, but as Davey sat there at the plastic table, all youthful, cocky arrogance, it all boiled up inside.
‘Where were you when I needed you?’ Ishmael spluttered.
‘I was in the kitchen.’
‘I know that. Why weren’t you where I was?’
‘I didn’t see any point in us both getting smacked about.’
Ishmael fumed.
‘While you were in the library getting coshed I was having a good look through the kitchen drawers. Here, I’ve got something for you.’
He dropped a set of keys into Ishmael’s palm.
Davey said, ‘A lot of people keep a spare set of house keys somewhere in the kitchen. Silly of them.’
♦
At first Ishmael was all for returning to ‘Sorrento’ the moment it was dark, breaking in, and freeing Marilyn.
But Fat Les advised caution. He advised going home, having eight or nine pints of bitter and getting plastered. Ishmael tried to argue, but Fat Les was the driver, and Ishmael was persuaded that he might feel more in the mood for burglary when his pains and bruises had receded slightly.