Santorini Blue

“Face it, Mark. The day your ol’ man buys a Mustang is the day Coco Chanel bottles my farts,” Larry said, warming his hands over the windshield defroster. “Christ. It smells like the truck burns road tar just to keep the windows clear.”

“No, really. Dad said, ‘We need another car ‘cause Pat and I have too many after-school activities.’”

It was 10:30 PM on a Friday in November, 1976, in Anchorage, Alaska, and several inches of snow had already fallen by Halloween and covered the ground. Mark drove his Dad’s 64 Chevy pickup, AKA the Beast, as they cruised the strip. The nights would only get colder and longer the closer they got to Christmas break.

Larry furiously cranked the window down, climbed into the opening, and pounded on the roof like a kettle drum, his wide ass creased by the window’s edge. “Hey, Carla,” he yelled.

 She glanced at the truck easing by at 20 miles per hour, grimaced, and flipped Larry off. She wore a short jacket with a rabbit fur collar. A steamy breath cloud hung in front of her round face, framed by a bobbed hairstyle, just before somebody handed her a joint.

“Get in the goddamn truck,” Mark said. “Dad will sell my nuts in the classifieds if you fall out and die.”

“Relax,” Larry said, rolling up the window and turning up the tinny radio’s volume. The Bee Gees sang Stayin’ Alive, like it was a command. “I’m so fucking tired of disco.”

Mark smiled and gripped the top of the steering wheel. “Dad said, ‘We’re gettin’ a Mustang, the Mach 1 with the Fastback.’”

“Bullshit,” Larry said, drawing out the U in rhythm to the music.

Larry reached for the radio again. “Don’t change the fuckin’ channel. It took me an hour to tune it in.”

Larry sighed and sat back. “One of us has got to get better wheels. This truck is chick repellent.”

“Fuck you. You’ll see. Mom’s selling World Book Encyclopedias for extra money. I told Dad he could have everything I’m making at Qwik Stop.”

“Right, like $2.10 a fuckin’ hour is gonna add up to $2,000 in the blink of an eye. Face it. We’re social pariahs.”

As they passed Jam’s Burritos, Steve, wearing his ever-present Denver Broncos jacket, and his girlfriend Tove snuggled in his brand-new Ford Gran Torino. Tall and handsome for a guy, he was one of Mark’s best friends. Tove was a five-foot-ten Norwegian beauty who made Larry and Mark feel like boys. “Lucky sonofabitch,” Mark murmured.

“Pull in. I want to get a Coke and a Supreme. I’m buying what do you want?” Larry asked.

“A Coke, I guess.”

Larry fished in his jeans, and his keys fell out. A bug-eyed, purple-haired troll doll hanging from a key chain hit the floor. Larry held three quarters. “Loan me a couple of bucks. I’ll pay you back.”

Mark rolled his eyes, parked the rusty gray pickup beside the gleaming Torino, and pulled two dollars from his wallet. Larry jumped out of the cab, rocking the truck on its bad shocks. Mark watched as his key fob swayed gently in the ignition, clinking against the metal dashboard.

Arctic cold quickly settled into the truck’s engine with a tick, tick, tick. The key fob was an assignment from leather class. Mark shaped the leather, cut in the Olin ski logo, and dyed it a bitchin’ blue. He prayed over the fob that his Dad would get the Mustang and let him paint it the right color. Ford painted the Mustang in something called Grabber Blue, a metallic paint that looked weird with his skis, which were a sort of glacier blue but deeper and richer.

“Hey Dickwad,” Steve said, thumping the pickup’s door. Mark rolled down the window. “Don’t park The Beast so fuckin’ close. That stage IV rust cancer is contagious.” He placed a hand on the orange and white Torino’s roof. “Starsky isn’t vaccinated.”

Mark sighed, turned the ignition over several times until the engine caught.

“Relax, Dufus, I’m just bustin’ your balls. Seriously, though, when’s that Mustang getting here?”

“Yeah, Marky,” Tove said, coming closer. Her perfume, the scent of heaven. “It sounds like it’ll be pretty.”

“Soon. Maybe next week,” Mark said, convincing himself as much as them.

Larry returned with a burrito supreme, Cokes, and a churro, and set the burrito on the greasy seat before climbing in. “Is that a shit stain? Oh my god. It better not be,” he said, pretending to gag.

Mark started the truck, letting the defroster run, while sipping on the Coke and watching as teens from all over the city cruised the strip. Hot rods, muscle cars, and nimble sports cars, slipping and sliding in the snow-filled streets, moved slowly. “I gotta get home before midnight.”

Larry nodded, stuffed half the burrito in his mouth, and said with a maw full of bean mash and mystery meat, “Let’s go. The strips dead anyway.”

Mark lay in bed night after night, rubbing the key fob, letting the oils from his fingers soften the leather, and imagining driving to school, parking in the student lot, and leaning against the Mustang’s hood. Weeks went by, and he began to lose hope. Had his desires been nothing more than daydreams, the yearnings of a hormone-addled teenager? Surely, his parents had ordered the Mustang by now. After all, this was Alaska, and Ford couldn’t afford to send a Mustang to a backwater dealership in Anchorage, simply because a lovesick teenager wanted one so bad his right ankle ached from pretending to accelerate.

On a spring afternoon, Mark and his sister pulled into the neighborhood. The Beast rumbled and growled due to its broken muffler. In their driveway, an unfamiliar car glowed in the sunshine, a perfect blue that matched his key fob and skis, like the pictures in the encyclopedias his mother sold. It was as blue as the homes on the Island of Santorini. Mark glanced at his sister, sure his heart would bang out of his chest. The car had a fastback. The back end was chopped in a sort of fastback style. But then... not chopped… more sloping. What the hell?

The pickup idled roughly as Mark parked in front of their home, leaped out, and ran up, inspecting the Frankenstein vehicle. It was as if a car maker had been taken by aliens and forced to build a car, while little green men inserted an anal probe, studying the human brain. Everything, except the color, was wrong. The back end was bigger than his Aunt Betty’s butt. The two-door style looked stolen from some broken and depressed Detroit car designer. The front end stuck out like buck teeth. The interior was a blue-gray plastic, with a sticky vinyl bench seat, sagging in the middle, and an idiot light on the dashboard flickering with a mind of its own. Mark spied the name on the quarter panel. Kids at school had told stories about a car so ugly it wasn’t worth the gas to drive. Parents said the car was intended to keep teenagers from driving dangerously. Now, the terrifying monster, an AMC Gremlin, sat in Mark’s driveway, sucking up his life like a Kirby vacuum.

Mark’s Dad leaned against the car, smiling like he’d bagged a trophy Moose, and holding out the keys. “Go on,” he said. “Add these to your precious key ring.”

“Are you sure? Maybe I should drive The Beast… I mean the truck.”

His Dad stood erect. “Yeah, I’m sure. You need a car that will keep you and your sister safe. This will do the trick.”

With a faux smile, Mark accepted the keys, adding them to his key ring, but keeping them as far as possible from his coveted blue key fob. His Dad snapped his fingers and pointed at the small collection of keys. Reluctantly, Mark moved at a snail’s pace, sliding off the truck keys and handing them over. Mark’s father always seemed to be one step ahead.

The next day, Mark and his sister drove to school and parked as far from the lot’s overhead lights as possible. He slipped between a field of cars, mostly old and boring, hoping no one would notice his monstrous demon hellspawn. Near the front of the lot, Steve and Tove leaned against the Torino, watching Mark approach.

“Hey, did the truck finally go tits up? Where’s the Mustang?”

Mark shrugged and kept walking.

Steve gazed across the parking lot, then pointed and, laughing, said, “Whoa, who brought that blue piece of shit to school?” He elbowed Mark. “Look. It’s a goddamn Gremlin. A fucking clown car. A creature from Detroit’s very own Black Lagoon.”

Mark’s eyes avoided his soul-sucking Gremlin.

Tove leaned into Steve as if designed to fit beside him. Mark’s eyes settled on her friendly face. “Is that your car, Marky?” She asked like he was a child lost in a department store.

Mark flushed red in the cold.

“Aw, it reminds me of my cousin’s dog. She’s a mangy mixed Malamute. Her breath smells like rotting fish, and her slobbery tongue hangs out between missing teeth. She’s so ugly she’s cute.”

The eight-minute warning bell rang, and Mark dashed off to class.

After school, he and his sister waited until the lot was empty. Notes had been left beneath the wiper blades, while on the windshield, girls had scrawled smiley faces and Ha, Ha in red lipstick. The next day, Larry gave Mark the nickname that appeared in the yearbook, Gremlin God. He survived the next twenty months with the Gremlin wrapped firmly around his shoulders. Mark swore he’d never try to be more than himself, ever again. When he left for college, his sister got the Gremlin keys, but he kept the fob.

More than a decade later, Mark landed a position helping people with disabilities find jobs. One of his first clients, a grizzled, old, bearded fisherman named Gus, had injured himself while crabbing in the Bering Sea and seemed destined for a life of welfare and Social Security benefits. No one wanted Gus on their boat. His broken body was simply too much of a liability.

 Besides fishing, Gus knew guns. With a little help from the agency Mark worked for, he started a business storing handguns and rifles for commercial fishermen. Gus spent the winter oiling and working over hundreds of guns. The next year, Mark visited Gus’s little shop in Dillingham, a tiny fishing village near the edge of the Bering Sea.

Gus lumbered, hunched and twisted, around the counter of the tiny shop, an oily apron hanging like a bib, and shook Mark’s hand. “Thanks for believing in me,” he said, his hair grayer, but eyes brighter.

“You did all this?” Mark said, waving around the small space, marveling at all that had been accomplished.

“No,” he said. “You did. You saved my life.” Gus hobbled back to the counter. “I’ve got something for you. It’s not much, but it’s always been important to me.” He reached beneath the counter and pulled out a ball of blue braided paracord, about the size of a marble. “Do you know what this is?”

Mark studied the tiny ball with a two-inch plaited line hanging from it in Gus’s greasy fingers and shook his head.

“It’s a monkey fist, but don’t let the name fool ya. These save lives. We use ‘em on the sea to throw a line from one ship to another.” Gus handed it to Mark. “If a vessel loses power, it needs a tow. We throw a monkey fist attached to a light line to get a tow rope on.”

Gus leaned on the counter, and his glasses slid down. “After my accident, I was dead in the water, drifting. You brought me back. I will never be able to thank you enough.”

Mark held the ball, unsure what to make of it. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but he had no idea what to do with the damn thing. He offered Gus a humble thank you before stuffing it in his front pocket.

“Don’t do that, you’ll lose it,” the old man said in a panic. “Put it with somethin’, somethin’ important like your keys. That’s where I keep mine.” Gus picked up a wad of keys, and a red monkey fist hung from them.

Fifty years have passed since the day Mark became the Gremlin God. Larry and Carla ended up at the same college. They married and have three boys. Steve wrecked the Gran Torino and broke up with Tove. Mark’s brother, six years younger, jumped the Gremlin over Campbell Creek and broke the engine block. He swore it was an accident. Gus died a few years after Mark’s visit, and the gun storage business closed.

If asked, Mark couldn’t say when he lost the old leather fob. His wife laughs when she thinks of it. “It’s no wonder,” she said. “That damn thing had worn thinner than your favorite boxers.” The monkey fist, as blue as ever, survived the keys of every car they ever owned. He still carries it, and all his grandkids have played with his keys. They rattle, making a gentle clinking. Mark can still hear them, despite what his wife says. The other day, Mark found himself hugging his daughter a little tighter, his arms aching with dreams of what might have been, but soothed by the realities of a life filled with more than he’d ever imagined. He let go, and she placed a brand-new grandbaby in his arms, swaddled in a blanket of Santorini Blue