Just got off the phone with the Koeppel VW Service stooge.
$439.00 for the 80k, $420 and $350 for the front and rear brake pads that need replacing, $76 to repair the broken center console, $203 to repair the broken seatbelt lock, $470 to replace the missing front grille. Feels like some American Express ad, "Priceless" should follow this list. But alas, Koeppel VW does not accept Amex. Grr.
So I'm essentially paying $2000 to get my car fixed to sell for what I'll probably only get $6000, which, after paying a few debts and moving costs, I'll be left with about $1000 to plop into my forsaken savings. I'll attempt to step back from the jarring practicalities of things and calmly nurse feelings of any fulfillment my darling bug has brought me over the past four years.
I flip through the CarFax Vehicle History Report I printed from online, basically summarizing, in a few short pages, nearly every recorded affair my car has been through.
5/27/02 - Vehicle Sold
9/10/03 - 21,999 miles - Vehicle Serviced (surely there had to be some non-recorded service prior to this)
03/11/04 - Accident Reported in Brevard County, Vehicle involved in crash or collision, Vehicle functional
05/13/04 - 34,766 - Vehicle Serviced
03/07/07 - 69,503 - NJ DMV - Title issued or updated, New owner reported
12/29/07 - 75,601 - Vehicle Serviced, Brake Light Switch replaced
Some gal named Kelly is telling me I can get $7,365, but something in me, or rather, everyone else's judgment, is telling me to bump it down a grand or two. I flip back to 3/11/04 and, in trying to recall, the slew of un-recorded accidents resurfaces.
You rarely remember those moments where you're sitting in stillness inside your vehicle thinking of where the two of you will go and what will change for you because of it. But this particular time, I did. There was a moment's pause before I turned the ignition. It was only a mile to the Southgate apartments from my apartment at the time, random impulse trip to hang out with Derek. Misty Oak Drive, Babcock St, University Blvd, and Albermarle Street. Speed limit was 25. I was going it. Campus apartments on the left; Low income apartments on the right. Halfway down the street, a kid on his bike came sailing out--he might as well have been sailing, suddenly taken aloft into the sky as my the rounded hood of my beetle collided with his body and his bike. They rolled and his left stunt peg turned my windshield opaque with a shatter proof crackle pattern. Endless instants later, post-the loudest scream that ever escaped me, my physical reaction kicked in, and a slammed break just barely kept him from rolling all the way over the dome of my car. He flew what could easily be fifty feet forward in front of the car. Other cars stopped behind me. Blood stained his dark body. My only fortune was the responsiveness of everyone else. Friends from his neighborhood came to his side and determined he was still breathing. They surrounded him. I think I saw him move. In my tangential mind, crying mothers cradling his body screamed at me as her tears pooled at my ankles, blood on my shoes. 911 was already called by the people in the cars behind me and they told me it was an accident because I wasn't sure. A crowd of students on the other side of the street formed. In my mind, Sharks and the Jets. I stood, ambiguous, justice in deliberation, with a hand on my forehead, longer hair pushed back--making gestures of what I hoped would be taken as affectedness. I called Jon and Derek. The start and destination. They came and consoled me. A helicopter landed on the baseball field to take the boy away. Firetrucks and police cars. A photo was taken of my car that would appear in an article in the campus paper the next week. I gave my perspective for the report. Dozens milled about. I let myself be taken care of, be taken home. My car let the tow truck hook up by it's battered face and take it away.
Friends and roommates and lovers came to my side. The boy would be fine. Lawsuits for the apartment complex and it's botanical blindspot would follow for two years. Statements were required of me. My car came out of the body shop with a new face two weeks later. That's the most we've faced together.
And even since I have moved up here to NJ/NY there have been countless adventures she's carried me on. We drive to Redhook to sample local street vendor fare. Rockaway beach. I drive to Deleware Water Gap, camping and rafting. To Albany for a frost-bitten Glover tap performance or to Windham Mountain for disgruntled boarding incidents. To Niagra Falls. In my mind I lay out the map of the roads I have traversed in my minty scarab, here and there, back in Florida, and many roads in between.
When it comes to orientating, the mood of the map-reader colors the map itself. The ability to conjure, the willingness to fill in the blanks, the urgency with which one needs to know--all contribute to what the map becomes in the hands of the inspired imaginer; an instrument of destiny. It can involve public, national destinies, or simply a familial geography or history, a goad to take the transforming journey on which you meet the person or see the landscape or have the experiences that changes if not a life, then at least a trajectory. It is hard to look at a map without sensing, in our bones, private hopes and secret fears about change. In my Mercator daydreams, I see: An erasure, perhaps, of the laid-down lines of the past. A willingness to draw new meridians. A reconfiguration of the private globe. A silent earthquake.- from "I, Mercator" by Stephen S. Hall
