CAR WASH
When my husband Miky made the turn onto busy Ulster Avenue in Kingston, I asked him why on earth of all nights, we had to take this way home with its gaudy road sprawl of strobe lit fast food joints, strip malls and car dealerships, instead of our usual route, the dark calm of rural Route 209 and Lucas Avenue? Why tonight of all nights, when I was still encapsulated in the bubble of Haydn’s 1799 production of The Creation which we had just seen at the Fisher Center at Bard College. We had both been transported by that performance and had floated out on the final “Amen” which never sounded more buoyant or powerful. Every detail had been perfect – the exquisite solos, the billowing silken costumes, the graceful staging. How could we leave that elevated heavenly world, a world without conflict or adversity, for the plain of the mundane?
Miky answered that he wanted to show me the NO TOUCH car wash on Ulster Avenue. This innovation would simplify our car washing and, at this late hour, there would be no lines at the drive through. Miky’s sense of the divine had, apparently, left him back at the concert hall and he was ready for the more practical part of life.
In silence, we drove into the deserted carwash where the long horizontal squat brick building offered four openings to enter. They revealed long ugly water hoses dangling from the ceiling and a panel of buttons on the side wall. But one door yawned open with the exclusive invitation: NO TOUCH WASH. Here there were no brushes that looked like cooked green fettuccini noodles which could scratch the gleaming dark blue finish of our new Toyota Prius. This entry posted its higher price of $12 and the open money slot inhaled Miky’s offering of a crisp ten dollar and two singles.
We drove our new Prius into this featured section. The doors closed in front and behind us and the sprinkler system began to spray the car with water. The metal squirt bar made one swoop in front of the car to the left, then stopped. All the lights went out except one dim bulb flickering on and off from above. In this anticipatory gloom, we sat and waited. Nothing happened. Perhaps there was a pause before the soap was dispelled? We waited several more long minutes…Something was wrong. Miky and I looked at one another in alarm: We were stuck in this car wash, at midnight, with no attendant, or even bystander, in sight.
Miky got out of the car and I shouted for him to get back inside: Watch out for water, electricity – you could get electrocuted! He tugged on a rope that said “for emergencies only”. He was hanging from it with his feet off the ground, but to no avail. The doors stayed shut in a grim and permanent resistance. He started the engine and rocked the car back and forth, thinking that it might trip some mechanism to begin the soaping process. What next? Asphyxiating gas fumes? I was imagining the headline: “Double Deaths at No Touch Car Wash.” Before we succumbed to the carbon monoxide fumes, he turned off the engine, got out of the car and started pushing on every button he saw, but the doors stayed shut. I sat paralyzed in my seat and envisioned calling 911 and having three police cars, two fire engines and an ambulance arriving to pry us out of the car wash with the Jaws of Life.
“Haydn was wrong. It’s an imperfect world,” Miky said as he again stepped out into the dim flickering light… “There has to be a way out.” The non-descript button which he discovered in an obscure corner made a loud buzzing sound, then an electronic shriek. The front door creaked open. We escaped.
The next morning, Miky and I woke up and came to the conclusion that when Josef Haydn’s infallible God created water on the second day of The Creation, he didn’t have the NO TOUCH car wash system in mind.
I called the car wash company to let them know we had almost been entombed. They sent us six car wash coupons as an apology. I have yet to use them.