Page 74 of We All Live Here
“No—no—no!”
“I know how to start my own car, Jensen,” Lila snaps at him. “You’re not going to tell me how to drive, are you?”
“No. What are you doing leaving the roof up?”
Lila follows his gaze upward.
“C’mon! You have to put the roof down! It’s pretty much the law if you have a convertible.”
It’s a cold day, but dry, and the sky is the kind of crisp azure that tells of frosty nights ahead. They button their jackets to their collars, and she shakes her head at the madness of it as he turns the heater to full blast. And then she pulls out onto the road, feeling the engine purr obligingly in front of her, trying not to feel like an idiot, first for snapping at him, and then for being the kind of show-off numpty who drives around in the cold with the roof down.
“I never see you take this car out,” Jensen observes, as they head toward the high street. He runs his hand over the walnut dashboard. “It’s a pity.”
Lila, who has deflated slightly, has to shout over the sound of the V8engine. “I bought it for my mum. As a sort of tribute, I mean. It was the kind of thing she would have done, buying a completely unsuitable car for everyday use.” She indicates and pulls onto the main road. “Besides, I’m not sure I’m really a top-down kind of person.”
When he doesn’t say anything she adds: “It’s just…impractical, right? It’s a gorgeous thing, but it’s not very reliable and English weather means it’s only usable for a couple of months a year.”
“But that’s not the point of a car like this. You put the top down and turn the heater right up and you scrape every bit of joy out of the day with it.”
“And freeze your head while your toes boil. I don’t think so.”
“Lila, you’re looking at this car in totally the wrong way. This Mercedes is not just a car. It’s an injection of serotonin. You need to climb in, open her up, and just enjoy yourself. Even if it’s just a few times a week. Roof off, music up, and you’ll feel like you’ve had a mini holiday.”
Lila glances at him. “You’re very fond of telling me what to do, aren’t you?”
“Only when you need it.” His fingers reach for the music console. “C’mon. Let’s do it—let’s have the full mood-enhancing experience.”
She feels a little self-conscious with the 1980s disco beat pumping at the traffic lights—she’s sure people are looking at them. But Jensen doesn’t seem to care, nodding in time to the music, smiling with pleasure, tapping the side of the car with his broad hand, and turning it up louder when his favorite songs come on. After a few miles, when it becomes clear that he isn’t going to stop, she decides just not to think about the possible judgment of strangers, but to do what he’s doing, and enjoy the—admittedly quite pleasurable—assault on her senses.
“Why did you say that?”
She’s slowing to let someone out when he turns the volume down.
“Say what?”
“That you’re not a top-down kind of person. What did you mean?”
She stops at a zebra crossing. A small boy casts an unembarrassed, lingering look at the Mercedes bonnet as he dawdles across in front of them, tugged gently along by his mother, who is on her phone.
She shrugs, suddenly not wanting to look at him. “Well, my life isn’t really a top-down kind of life, is it? It’s…I don’t know…school runs and moody teens, grumpy elderly men and dodgy bathrooms, and we’ve run out of dog-poo bags.” She taps the steering wheel. “This car is for the kind of person who takes impulsive trips to Paris, and has white linen trousers and a selection of handbags without crumbs in the bottom.” This sudden realization makes her feel oddly melancholy. “I think I bought this for my fantasy life, rather than the one I actually live in.”
His silence is unusually long. For Jensen, anyway. “You are absolutely a top-down kind of person,” he observes eventually. “You’re just at a pinch point so you can’t see it right now.” He turns to her, at the exact moment she is brave enough to look at him, and his expression is almost unbearably kind. “You’ll have your top-down life before you know it, Lila. You’re getting there.”
Mortifyingly, and for no obvious reason, her eyes prickle. She tries to laugh it off.
“Don’t be nice to me, for God’s sake.” She wipes them furiously. “Ugh. I think I preferred you telling me how to drive.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have been nice if I’d known there werecrumbsin your handbag,” he responds. “In fact, I wouldn’t have agreed to come if I’d known.” He gives her a sideways look. “C’mon, we’re out of the twenty mph zone here. Put your foot down a bit. Honestly, what kind of driver are you?”
They take off on the winding roads around the Heath, and she feels the car growling underneath her, the insistent pull of the torque, the steering wheel warm in her hands, and Jensen turns up the music, singing “I’m Every Woman” unselfconsciously and off-key, and Lila finding herself singing too, starts to get a whisper of what he means. There’ssomething about the cold blasting onto her cheeks, the exposure to the world around them, the music in her ears, her hair whipping around her face, that clears her head, scatters her endless looping thoughts. And then she is singing along, not caring who sees, laughing at Jensen’s made-up lyrics, the beauty of this ridiculous, unsuitable car.
The feeling of joyousness lasts a good hour after they return home and put the car to bed, their cheeks and ears glowing, and for some time after he has dismissed her thanks as unnecessary and headed off to his next job. It’s another hour before she wonders whether that feeling was something to do with Jensen.
•••
Gene’s advert isdue to air on the Thursday evening. He professes to be nonchalant about it—“Hey, it’s just an ad, not exactly Arthur Miller”—but Lila suspects that no one in the local postcode is unaware that Gene will be selling Strong Yet Sensitive whitening toothpaste at a quarter past eight this evening. When she had popped into the corner shop that morning for orange juice the young Turkish man behind the counter, who has never once acknowledged her presence even though she’s used the shop at least four times a week since she moved in, handed over her change and said: “It’s Gene’s advert tonight, isn’t it? My mum says she’s going to watch.”
Gene has invited them all to join him for pizza before it airs—“I’m paying”—but Bill has sweetly offered to cook instead. He is making American fried chicken with corn fritters and a tomato salsa in tribute. Penelope is coming, and Eleanor, and Jensen has apparently been invited too. There is a carefully worked-out schedule in which food happens beforehand and, according to Bill, they will all have finished the washing-up and be seated around the television “with homemade chocolate and pistachio cookies,” ready for Gene’s appearance.
