Art of the Odd

Last night, after Be the Marriage wrapped, NovySan (who’d spent the better part of the afternoon wrestling with the water heater) said, “I need carnitas. Can you drive?”

Of course I could. I’ll never turn down a trip to La Cabana.

Since NovySan was parked behind me, we had to take his car. Like me, NovySan drives a classic Bug, and like mine, it’s got its little quirks. For instance, the only way to adjust the driver’s seat is to slide it forward, then fix it in place with a screwdriver. Well, it doesn’t have to be a screwdriver – but there’s a screwdriver in the map pocket that works very well for the purpose. It can be tricky in the dark, even using your husband’s cell phone as a flashlight (via the excellent TorchButton app), especially when said husband’s sunglasses keep falling out of the map pocket he keeps the screwdriver in. I got it done, though, released the park brake (maybe some other time I’ll talk about the day I didn’t do that, and drove 10 miles with the damned thing on), put the car in reverse, and started to back out of the driveway.

***CRUNCH***

“What was that?” NovySan asked.

“Your fucking sunglasses,” I replied. I could feel the tears starting. “I swear I put them back in the map pocket.”

“I hope they weren’t my favorite ones,” he said.

“I’m sure they were.”

I was right. They were his favorites. But they weren’t the ones from the map pocket. I had gotten those put away. And so now I don’t know if there’d been two sets of sunglasses in the map pocket, and I didn’t notice when the first pair fell out, or if they’d been next to the seat and fallen out when I opened the door. Either way, they were smashed, and I owe him a new pair of shades.

Edit: I should note that NovySan wasn’t that upset about his sunglasses. In fact, I was so upset about the sunglasses (because I do get frustrated with myself when I do stupid shit, like running over my husband’s sunglasses) that he had to go to some trouble to tell me that he wasn’t. “It’s okay,” he said. “The sunglasses don’t matter, because I was just sodomized by the Buddha, and so I’ve reached enlightenment.” That was just the beginning. There was more. By the end of it, I was laughing so hard I almost had to pull over. And dinner was excellent, as well.

I volunteered yesterday to help out at the VES Motion Capture event. I was supposed to be there at 5, but I had that one last thing to finish up first. You know that one last thing – the thing that you absolutely have to get done before you can leave work, that always winds up taking far longer than you thought it would? Yeah. That thing. So instead of leaving at 4:30 and maybe having time to wash my car, I left at 5. (Actually, since the do was at Sony, and Sony’s only three and half miles away, I did think, “If I leave at 4:30, I could ride my bike,” but then I realized I’d be coming home after dark (and lack the proper equipment to ride at night), and there’s no room in NovySan’s Bug for my bicycle. At any rate, I left too late for that to have been a viable option.)

So, I went out to my car, half an hour later than I had intended, turned the key, and glanced at the gas gauge. My gas gauge does tend to be a bit flaky (there’s a reason I carry a jerry can in the boot), but there was definitely something wrong. I filled up Saturday morning, just before driving to Topanga for class, and I haven’t driven it since then. So either I’m now getting 3 miles to the gallon, or I’m missing about 7 gallons of gas.

“Maybe I didn’t fill up on Saturday,” I thought. When you drive so seldom, it’s easy to lose track. “Well, fine. I should have enough to get to the gas station.”

I didn’t.

It died in the middle of a five-point intersection.

As to the people who swerved around me while I pushed it to the curb – well, at least they didn’t honk. (Seriously, people – I realize I’m no fragile flower, but you see a lone woman pushing her own damned car, and you can’t be bothered to stop? Or even ask if she’d like you to?)

The aforementioned jerry can being almost empty (due to a previous incident with the aforementioned flaky gas gauge, and me being in a hurry the last few times I’ve filled up), I drained the dregs into the tank and prepared to see whether it would be enough to get me to the gas station. Meanwhile, I called Novy and asked him to let the organizers know I was on the way. “You’re out of gas?” he asked. “Totally out,” I said, and it began to dawn on me what that meant.

As I put the now completely-empty can back in the boot (after an heroic struggle with the nozzle – the spring kept flinging itself into the gutter), a white van stopped across the street. I heard the words whose absence had echoed while I pushed the car out of the intersection. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ve just run out of gas.”

“Can I give you a ride to the gas station?” he asked.

I know a lot of people would have hesitated. I didn’t.

“That would be lovely,” I said.

And then he said, “Wait, I think I have some gas in here.”

He did. A whole gallon. And he wouldn’t let me pay him for it.

“The van runs on veggie oil,” he told me. “So do my two Mercedes sedans, and my other van. I’ve got a work truck that takes gas, and my ’63 Comet. I learn something new every time I convert one of them, so I keep buying more cars. A lot of my machines for work take gas, though, mixed with oil, but I haven’t mixed the oil into this one yet. With the price of gas,” he said, “I guess a lot of people aren’t filling their tanks up all the way.”

“I did,” I told him. “On Saturday. And I haven’t driven anywhere since then.”

“Oh,” he said. “You should get a locking gas cap.”

Novy agreed. He ordered two this morning.

The gasoline saga wasn’t quite over, though. After the event, I went to the parking garage to find a pool of gasoline under the back of my car. I popped open the engine cover to discover that the hose leading into the fuel filter was so loose, there was gas dripping from it. I jammed it back together and thought, “Maybe someone didn’t siphon my gas. Maybe it just dripped out.” But then I thought, “There’s no way seven or eight gallons of gasoline dripped into the driveway without any of the four people who live in my house noticing.”

So we’re still buying the locking gas caps. And replacing that hose this weekend.