just follow the cat

Part 5 - How to Choose a Car (if you're God)

Saturday, November 13

For much of the evening, Cassandra sat by the in-between door hoping for a response. But none arrived. Finally, she went to bed around midnight after instructing 208 to let her know if anything was pushed under the door. But all the while, she was restless. She flicked the lamp beside her bed on and off hoping the light that slipped under the in-between door would look like some sort of code. An SOS to Room 902 but maybe not quite that urgent.

Since she couldn't sleep, she paced around her room. She re-folded her clothes and checked three times to make sure that 208 had plenty of water in her fancy (fancy) water bowl. Finally, she searched the closet and all the drawers for anything that she hadn't seen before. Stuffed in the back of one of the drawers was a pile of brochures for automobiles. These slick pamphlets extolled the wisdom of buying a small car or a big one. One that was expensive or cheap or red or green or black or silver. There were seemingly different kinds of cars for every type of person and for every day of the week. The one thing the brochures had in common was that every person sitting inside these cars looked like they had never been happier in their lives. They smiled the toothless smiles of people who were born to own a car as wonderful as this. They were gods and goddesses ready to live their lives between the white and yellow lines that went from here to everywhere worth going.

Cassandra pulled out another spring-green 3 by 5 index card and hastily wrote down this question: "If God drove a car, what kind would it be?" Then with a flick of her index finger, she shot the card well under the in-between door and finally fell asleep. When she woke up a few hours later, she had a response.

In those hours before the hot pink card was slipped under the in-between door, Aldrin Springlet struggled to think of an answer. Though he woke up at his usual 3AM, answering questions about God and cars was not part of his typical morning routine. On most days, Aldrin would spend his mornings trying not to see himself in the mirror. Even though time had been no more cruel to Aldrin than it had been to all other old men, he hated seeing the brown spots on his face, the thinning hair near the crown of his head, and the bleached patches of excessively white skin on his hands and arms. He was, in a word, ugly. But that was Aldrin's word. Other people might have chosen the word inconspicuous or simply unmemorable. But our eyes and brains don't work that way. We notice the flaws in our faces in the exact same proportion as we are unable to see those same flaws in the faces of our newest loves. When that newness wears off, we see these people as they are, but we are never quite as kind to ourselves.

Ugliness, you see, is the great deception of old age. It is nature's camouflage because it draws our attention away from the secret of a happy life – the knowledge that all those things that pained, punished, or disappointed us through the years are also things that we did to others. And yet (all along), we could have acted on this knowledge like a surgeon lopping off a cancerous arm. We just had to give ourselves permission to forgive.

AldrineHe turned toward the ghosts in his room hoping that one of them might have an answer to the question about the car. The pallbearers and the woman in the sailboat hadn't spoken to him in years and the baby had never spoken at all. The half-crushed squirrel probably had strong opinions about cars, but none of them were likely to be positive. That left the man in the long (long) sweater. Aldrin spoke to him on a daily basis, in part because he looked an awful lot like a younger version of himself. The only real difference was that the skin on the man's face was blotch free, his hair was full and wavy like magazine hair, and his hands were so delicate that a Renaissance painter might have wanted to steal them for a portrait of the finer members of the royal court.

"I'm embarrassed to ask," said Aldrin. "Do you have any ideas?"

In a voice that was an echo from Aldrin's past, the man in the long (long) sweater answered, "As you well know, I have always been partial to the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. The convertible model, of course. It has all the features that any God would need. That has always been your favorite car, too, although it seems that you have forgotten that fact."

Aldrin knew right away that this was right answer. The best possible answer, in fact. As he took out another hot pink index card, he imagined God gliding through the soundlessness of space. Coasting from galaxy to galaxy. Speeding past the fastest comets and teasing all those pits of black (black) gravity that would fail to suck Him in. He thought, "It must be great to be a God."

"I hope I have helped," the man in the long (long) sweater said quietly to Aldrin. "Now, don't forget to flip the coin. Tails are catching up, you know."

Aldrin walked over to his nightstand and took the nickel from inside the small notebook. Then he closed his eyes and listened. He stood motionless and waited until he heard a sound. It didn't matter what sound he heard. He just waited until a car honked its horn, a train blew its whistle or people he didn't know chattered back and forth on the street below Room 902. Then with his eyes still closed, he flipped the coin and asked the same question that he asked every day. He said, "Is it time?"

Sometimes the coin would land softly in the palm of his hand, but more often than not it bounced on the floor making that awful clunking sound that only nickels can make. Then Aldrin would record what happened. He recorded whether the coin landed heads side up or tails. Whether it looked shinier than usual. Or duller. Whether it seemed like it landed the right way or the wrong way. And whether it looked different in any way at all. Or whether it was just the same as it had always been.

Each day, Aldrin hoped the coin would give him a clear answer about whether he should stand on the ledge outside his room and walk backward. Or finally (finally), walk forward instead. But the answer was never clear. Or never clear enough.

Before going back to bed, Aldrin slid a hot pink card under the door and into Room 208. God would surely drive a Cadillac.

x = y = x