A Car For Us All
“You’re live on Radio 2; tell us your name and what you plan to do at school today?”
“Hello, Ryan. I am good, and how about yourself?”
“I’m sorry we missed part of that, Ryan. Are you outside right now?”
“I’ve found a car, James!”
The man paces around a car released onto the hillside like a wayward shopping trolley tamed by misguided youths. The sun makes his face almost unrecognisable, yet the shape of his beaming smile peers out. The entire city is in sight, luring beneath the hills, ready to awaken. His dungarees were tightly woven around his body, grass stains on his knees and a red balloon holding his hand. Whatever excitement this young man once had, the spirit his costume expressed, has been occupied by this abandoned car clinging onto the cliffside.
“Are you on your way to school, Ryan?”
“I do not go to school anymore, James. I completed it.”
“Ah…do you have a friend with you or a helper, perhaps Ryan?”
“You know Miss Blake! She is in Spain just now with her boyfriend, Chris. I like Chris, he plays Pokémon with me, and he is really good.”
The doors are open, and the keys are a cherry hanging from the ignition, too sweet for Ryan to ignore. He stares at himself in the head mirror. The new Lewis Hamilton. Tears try and escape, but he plunges the hole.
“This car must be my birthday present.”
“Would you like us to give your parents a phone, Ryan? Maybe your Dad wants to be with you for your first drive.”
“I tried, but my daddy must be busy. He was meant to pick me up, but I got the bus instead. I want this car to be for everyone. We can share it. Me and Chris share sometimes. I get first turn, though; Chris always lets me have the first turn.”
Back in the studio, James’ expression has gone from perplexion to dread. It is the indescribable feeling one gets when things are about to go badly, things are about to be wrong.
“Now this car you talk about, Ryan….”
An engine roars down the phone.
“I’m such a big fan of the show, James. You can even take the second turn since Chris is on holiday with Miss Blake.”
“I really don’t think your mum will be okay with you driving a car now, Ryan.”
“But she gave me the car? She had one of her long sleeps, so she must have forgotten to take it out the garage, so she drove it out here for me and left it.”
Ryan manages to get the car going. He hits first gear and skids down the grass. The sun is in his eyes, replaced with the glint of an expired youth. His smile and that temporal glint in the battle against the reality defrosting in his mind. Ready to cook any time, and Ryan does not have the stomach for it.
“Ryan, whereabouts are you? I need to know, so I know where to go when it is my turn?”
“I’ll let you know when my turn is over!”
The car crumbles down the hillside. It does not stop flipping for a good twenty seconds. The call went cold long ago. The balloon is forced out of the wreckage like a womb rejecting a sperm cell. It was time for Ryan’s long sleep, time for his mouth to foam, time for his phone to ring without an answer. It is funny the things that haunt you, strangers hijacking your memories. This was James’ last radio broadcast. It is not that he experienced a severe bout of depression or had some existential epiphany over the insignificance of life….no, it is that he just could not bear to say “you’re live on radio 2” anymore. You would be surprised over the turn your daily routine can take. What was once your calculated exuberance is now inescapable torchless potholing.
Cheers