Page 27 - WTP Vol. X #2

have filled the plastic jug Arnie comes over. Let me give you guys a lift back, he says.
~
In eyesight of the Jetta they see an old Toyota, parked almost directly across the road from Rafe’s car, aiming in the opposite direction. The Toyota is gray, the back bumper and trunk areas patched liber-
ally with bondo. Rafe thinks, wildly—someone else broken down, out of gas? He can spare some of what he’s bought, if the problem is gas—help get these people up to Arnie’s station. But then he notices three figures hovering around the Jetta. Simultane-
“There is some strange acknowledgment in
They don’t look at the Toyota as it speeds away, but Zdenek has the license plate, and calls the Dockett police dispatcher—a friend—telling him what has just transpired. Rafe funnels in the gas, listening
to Arnie say, Can you believe what some people do? Holy shit, shaking his head. Rafe wonders what
the thieves are saying now—are they cursing also, indignant at their poor turn of fortune? It seems perverse, at this moment, that even those with the worst of intentions can be righteous about their fate. He thanks Arnie and tells him they’ll see him in a moment at the station. He puts the jug back in the trunk, walks around, gets in, starts the Jetta. Zdenek still has the phone to his ear, in the passenger seat now, repeating the numbers. Pricks were ready to just smash a window and take off, he says. Hope this all catches up with them. Bastards.
Arnie is turning his truck around, revving up over the next rise. A baker’s van rushes by, graphics of giant loaves of bread. The sky is clouding, a streak of violet and orange, and snow falls lightly, collecting on the windshield; such a strange thing, all this— Christmas Eve.
the air, that these men were
ready to take the Jetta—
there is even a sense of odd
embarrassment.” ~
ously, Arnie says Look at this, in a tone of warning, and swings the big truck across the highway, so that it faces the Jetta. Look at these assholes, Zdenek says. Freaking jackals. Two older teenagers and one older man are here: they’ve been casing Rafe’s car, appar- ently—the older man has a crowbar in his fist. They are dressed in paint-spattered denim, as if they’ve just come from a job, looking up as the truck arrives, the teenagers saying something loud to the older man. He leads them quickly back across the highway. Arnie and Zdenek and Rafe scramble out of the truck, and the six men pass each other warily, traffic rush- ing between them. Rafe gives the three a hard stare. There is some strange acknowledgment in the air, that these men were ready to take the Jetta—there is even a sense of odd embarrassment. The older man has a hard, dirty jaw, and he lopes steadily, as if to reestablish his dignity; he holds the crowbar tightly and does not look back now. That’s right, Zdenek says, loudly. You’d better not fucking look at us. You’d better move it. When Rafe and Zdenek and Arnie reach the Jetta it is still locked, the sound system intact. Merry Christmas, Zdenek says. Arrived just in goddamned time.
Three months ago, in the European autumn, Rafe was in Prague with his girlfriend, Isa; Isa, also a Tufts grad student, was teaching and doing her dissertation on Edwardian fiction. The two had grown remarkably close in their year and a half together. They’d saved up, booked this trip on student discounts months in advance. They’d gone to London, briefly, then Vienna; on their first night in Prague they’d made love in a moderately-priced Art Nouveau hotel on Wenceslas Square; they stayed since with Rafe’s relatives on Vinohradská and spent two days walking through
the city—soft sun on gothic spires, beer at a café by the Vltava, reflections of the Smetana Museum, the National Theatre in the smooth current of the river. They’d passionately talked about Kafka, Kundera, Havel; they had visited the grave of Jan Palach on a windy day, leaves rushing through the stones and pathways of the Olšany cemetery.
Now this one afternoon they were in the subway beneath the ancient metropolis. In the flickering brightness and shadows of their car Rafe sat with Isa’s tawny dark hair crushed against his chin. His eyes were closed. He was back in Illinois, imagin- ing his grandfather’s hands—clasped in prayer, the congregation saying Our Father. He remembered
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