FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

A Lesson Before Driving
By Melissa Roth

PAGE TWO
I met Barbara -- a 68-year-old retiree looking to supplement her fixed income/godsend with a room for rent -- and moved to West Hollywood. (Those who don't know West Hollywood consider this - two scents abound: jasmine and marijuana. Once, when I was smoking a cigarette, someone squealed "Who's smoking tobacco?" like they would have said, "Who's smoking diesel fuel?") Barbara drew maps for me, let me call her Bubbie even though she wasn't Jewish, and, when I left the house, called out to me, "Have it all, baby!"

I bought an adequately dinged, formerly metallic '89 Honda Civic I dubbed Old Gold. (When I saw H-O-N written on my first parking ticket, I thought "How sweet, the cops think she's honey-colored.") She died two weeks later. As the tow truck driver explained why women should only drive new cars, I stared back lovingly at her. Old. Gold. Dead. Mine. I promised to care for her, in sickness and in health, and she promised not to die again without ample warning.

The first time I put gas in Old Gold, I spent 10 minutes shimmying up to the pump and wound up so close I couldn't get out. Then there were buttons. I read intently. Nothing made sense. Thankfully a could-be businessman pulled in behind me. (Those who don't know Los Angeles consider this - here, it is nearly impossible to discern a person's line of work based on what they're wearing. Since this guy wasn't wearing flip-flops, I assumed he was heading somewhere air-conditioned. Like an office.)

I assaulted him with questions. He was remarkably helpful.

"I'm from New York," I explained, like that let me off the hook and exalted me at the same time. Forgive me my trespasses, I know not what I do for I am from the holy land.

Fully fueled and back in my car, I discovered my shirt was unbuttoned. To the waist. In the rear view I saw my little helper, grinning from ear to ear.

I started working in West Los Angeles. (When I first heard there was a West Los Angeles, I was confused. "Wouldn't that be in the water?" I asked. ) So I wouldn't have to drive home in the dark, which terrified me, I left at 4:30.

One day, somewhere on Olympic Boulevard, stopped at a red light, my mind whirred.

I'm not in New York.

I'm driving a car.

I have a car?

I looked up and saw a store called Fishland. I wondered - fish as food or fish as pets? I got an answer but forgot it the second the light turned. This happened every day. Same light. Same questions, same Fishland. Then one day, I was at Fishland, but not. Fishland was fishless. A For Rent sign hung in the window. I felt so sad I wrote Fishland on a stickie and stuck it to my dash. I stopped taking Olympic home as a form of protest.

I was soon driving at night. Not because I wanted to, but because night started happening earlier and earlier and pretty much forced the issue. Going 35 mph (yay me!) in the right lane (always me!), the road became dark. Dark dark. Suddenly, a car appeared next to me. Terrified to take my eyes off the road, I chanced a look, and saw a car full of guys. Four, maybe five. That's it, I thought. Old Gold and I'll be in a ditch in no time. I envisioned the front page of The New York Post, then I realized I'm in L.A. Fuck. There I was, about to die a perfectly gruesome death, and there's no New York Post? I looked again and counted six guys, maybe seven. Were they multiplying in there? Fuck fuck double fuck.

"Hey!" the driver screamed. Maybe it's my car -- a tail light out, a bumper dangling, a leak rendering Old Gold on the verge of detonating. Of course it's my car.

"Hey!' he yelled again. Please don't let them ask for directions, I thought, then all forty of them will know I don't know where I'm going.

"My friend thinks you're cute."

In my best can't-you-see-I'm-busy voice, I yelled:

"I'm driving!"

The driver and I locked eyes.

"We're all driving baby!" he screamed, and they zoomed off, leaving me alive, alone in the dark, searching for tail lights to guide me home.

Arnold's business card/invitation is still in my glove box. It's folded in half now, with a chewed up piece of gum stuck inside. Those who think it's weird that I kept it consider this -- I never had a glove box before. Then again, I'm from New York.

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