The Year Of Living Famously

I told him about my day.

“Are you having me on?” he said. “You walked to Fred Segal?”

“It’s only a mile or two.”

“Bloody right. I can’t believe you walked.”

“You know how I feel about all the driving out here.”

In short, I wasn’t a big fan. Constant driving was required, since L.A. is really just a string of suburbs, not a city at all, and yet the need to drive everywhere killed any chance of spontaneity. Even if you were lucky to be with friends, and have someone suggest dropping by a party or a bar, there was the inevitable meeting in the parking lot where many important topics would be debated: Should we all drive? Can we take the 10 or will surface streets be better? How long will it take at this time of day? Does anyone have exact directions? Who’s going to be there anyway? Is the casting director from the WB really supposed to stop by?

“Love,” Declan said, “you’ve got to learn how to drive.”

“I will…someday.”

We walked for a few minutes in silence, the pier a short distance ahead of us, the sand cool under our feet.

Declan suddenly stopped and turned to me. He took both my hands in his; he looked very serious, which freaked me out.

“What?” I said.

“Kyra Felis,” he said somberly. “I have a question for you.”

My heart began to pound. “What?” I repeated.

He dropped on one knee. He kissed my hand.

“Kyra,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Will you have me as your driving teacher? Will you trust me enough to put your adorable bum on the driver’s seat of my car?”

I burst into laughter. “I don’t know. I haven’t known you all that long, and I don’t know if I’m ready. It’s a big decision and—”

He stood and interrupted me with a big, Fred Astaire–like dip. “We can do it. We can make this work.”

“The gas is on the right, Kyra! You have to keep your foot on it to make the car move!”

I shot him a murderous look, although I couldn’t blame him for yelling. I tried again. I stepped tentatively on the gas, but when the car shot forward, it scared the hell out of me, and I hit the brakes. Once more, gas…whoo, that weird power of the car lurching, tying my stomach in knots…and I pounced on the brakes.

I put the car in park, peeled away my death grip on the steering wheel and dropped my head. We were in a parking lot of a vacant strip mall, the only place Declan could find where I might attempt to drive and not maim the few pedestrians. I snuck a look at Dec. His face was flushed, his hair a little sweaty and pushed up in spikes. He looked, as he would put it, “shaggered.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said.

Dec didn’t look as if he thought I could do it, either, but he said, “Of course you can, love. If I can learn to drive on the right side of the road, you can learn to simply drive. Now let’s just sit here a bit and review the controls.” By that time, we’d “reviewed the controls” at least thirty times, but I was grateful for a task I could handle.

“What’s this?” He pointed to the dash.

“The gas gauge. It’s half-full.”

“Good, and this?”

He kept pointing to various instruments, and I answered dutifully. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to build up my confidence by mentioning things I knew and could answer. He didn’t understand that while I could also probably learn the controls of the space station, it didn’t mean I was ready to blast off.

“Okay, we’re trying again,” he said. He breathed out heavily, as if he was preparing to pick up a large couch and move it to a third-floor apartment.

I lurched and braked down the street, the car bucking like a rodeo bull.

“Get her to bloody go!” Declan yelled.

You can do this, I said to myself. Just do it.

With a burst of determination, I punched down on the gas pedal with my foot. The car shot forward in one swoop.

“Whoa!” Declan said. “Not so fast!”

Suddenly, looming in front of me was a yellow metal garbage can left too far into the street. I told my arms to turn the wheel, but I reacted too slowly, and the car hit the can with a loud thunk, sending it soaring into the air like a mini blimp.

I squealed to a halt as the can landed with a clatter behind the car.

With trepidation, I glanced at Declan. He looked as though he wanted to cry

“In my defense,” I said, “that yellow was a hideous color.”

He moaned. “Let’s go again.”

I sped forward in short bursts and halted with too much force all afternoon until, little by little, I could withstand the power of the moving car. Four hours later, I drove one block up the street, turned around and drove another block back to the parking lot. We practiced all the next day, too, when I advanced to going through stoplights and backing into parking spaces (I’m sure our neighbor didn’t need that ugly planter in the shape of a grizzly bear. Why put it in the parking lot, anyway?).

Two weeks later, I took my driver’s license test. In the hopes of flirting with the tester for special consideration, I wore a pink tulip skirt and gauzy white blouse. Unfortunately, my tester was a mean little woman named Barbara who used to be a gym teacher and still wore a whistle around her neck. Anytime I made what she called “an infraction” she blew the whistle. Lucky for me, and to Barbara’s chagrin, I passed by a hair. When I came into the waiting room, Declan was there, pacing like an expectant father.

“I got it!” I said. I waved my little plastic rectangle of a license, on which, I must say, was a rather fetching photo of me.

When we pulled into our parking lot at home, there was a car in our spot. A tiny, old, rusted, green convertible. I couldn’t have told you what type it was at the time; I still wasn’t so good at judging the makes or models of automobiles.

“Should I call someone?” I said, staring at the car, annoyed. I wanted to get inside our apartment and celebrate. I wanted a glass of wine or three, and yet here was this car, delaying my intended intoxication.

I glanced at Dec, who was staring at the car with a strangely fond expression. He reached into his pocket and took out a set of keys I’d never seen before.

“It’s for you,” he said.

“That car?”

He nodded.

“You got me a car?”

He smiled.

“We can’t afford that.”

“I got my check for Tied Up.” Tied Up was the movie Dec had shot that summer in Manhattan, but I knew that money had been earmarked for other things—paying off credit card bills, new head shots—and I told him that.

“That can wait,” he said. “My colleen has got to have her own wheels.”

I glanced back at the car. It now looked not so much old and rusted as it did charmingly antique, not so much tiny as it did delicate, and not so much green as it did jade.

I shrieked with delight, then crawled all over my new toy. Dec stood by, beaming.

“Wait right here,” he said after a few minutes.

He emerged from the house a moment later with two bottles of beer, and we sat inside my new car, top down, and toasted to us.

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