Merge

Francine loved talking about Pacific Coast Highway, the road beside the cliffs, the ocean so blue besides. She remembered the times she had gone with Wladimir: they sat at a table drinking vodka and watching the sun sink into the ocean. You’d love it too, she said. We’ll definitely take you. Once we get a minute.

Pacific Coast Highway went all the way to Canada.

Though all those two did was work work work and it wasn’t long before I figured out that if I ever wanted to see Pacific Coast Highway, I would need to go myself. 

One day I waited until I knew Francine was up then dashed across the courtyard to the big house. Wladimir sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea from a glass, his dark hair tied back with a black grosgrain ribbon. He also wore many silver rings. Francine stood at the stove making him a hot ham sandwich.

I came close to her. “I need a car!”

She drew a finger across the bottom of her eye. “You said Uber was working well.”

“Uber doesn’t cut it. I want a car.”

“But you don’t know how to drive.”

“Teach me.”

“You’re kidding,” she said and placed a tiny cup beneath the black stream falling from the machine. “Ask Wladimir. He has a low heart rate.”

Wladimir wasn’t listening so I said, “Fran says you can teach me to drive.”

He glanced up from the glass of tea. “A long time it takes to learn.”

“Then I’d better get started.”

“Wladimir, you teach her,” Francine said. “I have no patience.”

He set down the glass of tea. “Tomorrow,” he said. Tomorrow was Sunday.

“Tomorrow when?”

“Early,” he said.

At six the next morning, Sunday morning, downtown’s silver skyscrapers reached towards a perfect blue sky, and Wladimir and I arrived at the Los Angeles Zoo. He drove a white BMW convertible I had not seen before. The parking lot was gated so he got out and fiddled with the lock and in not that long a time we cruised onto the immense blacktop. The first thing he did was to steer the car in slow enormous circles. After a few of these, I asked what was going on and he answered, “Listen.”

An engine held different tones. “The car talks to you, Baby.”

When the tone changed, a driver must do two things: press the clutch and shift the stick. Wladimir removed his hand from the stick and told me to put mine there. He then laid his hand on top of mine. His skin was electric, his many rings pressed into my fingers and my hand could not budge. That this might happen, I expected. I knew it could. In fact, I knew it would. So why was I surprised? Francine must not know. I remembered the thick snow falling on Citadel Hill, my shiny red sled and a face-first landing in a pile of fluffy white. Each time the engine revved, Wladimir said, “Shift!” and forced my hand to shift. After a few times, I knew to shift before he spoke.

Again and again we passed beneath the fluttering banners of big eyed baby lemurs. By the sea lion pool, Wladimir and I switched places. Now I drove. At first the tires inched forward, then I gained confidence and steered the car in gigantic looping figure eights. The clutch and the shift worked together– I understood now. On a technical level driving was pretty simple. 

"Which is brake?" Wladimir asked. "Which?"

Driving was fun! Fun and powerful and I loved pressing down on the gas pedal. I could spend all day driving around this parking lot. Until Wladimir pointed to the exit – the exit leading to the freeway onramp. 

That icy feeling of sliding into the bank of snow.

“No, Wladimir.”

He thrust his index finger towards the green sign. “Learn or die.”

Beneath us the wide grey freeway rushed, a river of cars forced into an artificial canyon. As we descended the ramp, Wladimir muttered, "Clutch clutch clutch." 

What if I stalled, stalled right when I was entering? We would be crushed in a crinkling of steel and blood.

“Merge tricky, very tricky,” Wladimir said. “Signal left SIGNAL LEFT!”

“How?” Signaling hadn’t been mentioned.

“GAS GAS GAS!”

The transmission squealed, the transmission thunked, but the BMW never stalled, merging almost seamlessly with the speeding blur of cars. Soon I was driving at 65 miles per hour. As long as I didn't have to change lanes, we could make it all the way to Mexico. 

Wladimir stared straight ahead, palms against his thighs.

“Look, Wladimir,” I said. “I am driving on the freeway.”

“Good job, Baby,” he said. “You are a driver. Time for wodka and rooskiebilyard.”

I didn’t know what those things were but Wladimir said nothing more only pointed to another green sign. Our destination. Luckily I didn’t have to change lanes because the lane we were on split apart from the rest of the freeway, lifted high into that perfect LA blue sky and swooped round to become the 2 freeway to Glendale. We exited almost immediately. Nearly all the other drivers were courteous and made room.

We drove for a while until Wladimir motioned for me to pull besides a concrete block building. A sign read Atwater Billiards. Parking was tricky but Wladimir was patient, saying the most important thing in life was the achievement of serenity. We hadn’t touched again. Atwater Billiards was dim inside, all the windows painted black. A tiny old man wearing bulky-framed glasses stood behind a bar. He nodded at Wladimir and Wladimir nodded at him. Beside the bar was a green velvet curtain. Wladimir swept it aside, revealing a large room filled with pool tables.

He took off his leather jacket and walked around the pool tables, bending low at times to inspect their felt-covered tops. The table tops were green, green like new April grass on the hills. Once he found one he liked, he beckoned me to come. The old man returned with a bottle of vodka on ice and two little glasses. He spoke in Russian and Wladimir answered back. Then Wladimir explained the rules of rooskie bilyard. Fifteen white balls, one red. The first player to put eight balls in the pocket won. For each of his shots, Wladimir said, I would shoot four. Sipping the vodka was like sharp little pinches. He demonstrated how to play, touching my arm, pressing his hips against mine. This is how to shoot. Rooskie bilyard was more difficult than learning to drive. The freeway had white lines marking the lanes and big green signs telling you where to exit. Rooskie bilyard was all on you.

The old man came back to watch, clutching another little vodka glass for himself. I wondered what Francine thought we were doing. Rooskie bilyard was fun, though hours passed before Wladimir got eight balls into the pockets.

And as for me, after a while, my shoulder started to ache.

Wladimir drove back to Hollywood, neither of us saying a word. The rest of that Sunday, wearing dark glasses, I lay by Francine’s pool, falling asleep to the splashes of her fake waterfall. I dreamt of Pacific Coast Highway, a perfect dome of sky, the ocean’s blue always at my side.

Because now I knew how to drive.