1991 Green Range Rover (used)

From the apartment, hermetically sealed with my flights of fancy and deep thoughts, I would ride out in my 1991 Green Range Rover. We drove in America’s repeatable core. Four big hoary tires. More like round stone than rubber. They had plied the streets of Los Angeles on a young actor’s schedule.

To turn the cylinder, I used an object that resembled a door key. The repairman gave it to me after he did transmission work: jerry rigging the beast into a patched-up lawn mower. He appeared from the countryside with a younger man, maybe his son. Each American region has its unique characters waiting secretly in its sylvan rafters, spending their unlimited personal time working on cars.

I had to climb to the conductor’s seat, inside the boxy cabin above the big wheels. When the engine turned I thought of the term: “turned over”. I didn’t know what that meant. The wheels turned too sharply when I was rounding corners. I spread my hands over the dashboard and felt heat coming from the vents that were supposed to shoot air-conditioning. The source of the heat was the engine’s difficulties. The radio worked a while, and would then die, loosing power, leaking sound. There was a problem with the electrical system.

The Green Range Rover was on the verge of an involuntary impounding type of situation. But I wanted to preserve it. I liked its passenger compartment, which held me like a friend. I liked driving in this thing, to… not many places. A gas station just down the roadway from where I stayed, presided over by an Asian man who smiled at me and sold me cigarettes without asking for ID. An adjacent strip mall for wash-and-fold. A CVS pharmacy across the street for pharmaceuticals and other essentials. A school, where I attended classes sometimes. Where else – to a chain market. There I acquired cherry tomatoes, fruits and other edibles that didn’t need to be cooked. Sometimes if it got too late, I drove a few minutes to a Wendy’s drive through for a chicken sandwich (a sticker there said: “open late” with a picture of a half moon in a purple sky.) At home, in my kitchen I had to dissect this thing to render it a cherry tomato sandwich. But I hardly cared about food, and cared more about the Green Range Rover, and this way a mark of my heightened grace.

After the Green Range Rover met its end and was taken by the local police department, I moved to another city, and extracted a new German car from my benefactor. I paid by check from cash funds, with barely a dollar to spare, so that when I drove from the dealership somewhere in the Southland with temporary insurance, I was again illiquid. I didn’t care. My benefactor considered the car a need, but to me it was a pleasure-giving toy. I ran my greedy fingers over the brand-new-ness of the dash and all over the interior, languishing in a voluptuous, olfactory bliss of new car. I opened the glove box and took out the manual that you never open again after you first get the car. Closing the door inside the garage at my new address, the thud sounded stately and full. The car was jet-black with customized tinted windows and wheels. It was crazy to think that I’d ever depended on the old Green Range Rover.