While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

*****
“Like the Swiss, it was neutral, it did not love him back.”
———Andrew Sean Greer
——--Less is Lost

I lived in a third floor walk-up on Grand Boulevard in Saint Louis. I loved Grand because it was both a broad city thouroughfare and a walker’s paradise. Weather permitting, I walked it every day. Past a tiny shop stuffed with German beer steins, past a family owned Italian restaurant, the scent of marinara sauce sneaking out the door, past a weird medical supply store with unrecognizable contraptions in the windows, past my grocery store, which always played Motown, past the School for the Deaf. My walks ended at Tower Grove Park, an expanse of lawn, flowers, and trees connected by winding pathways, with several dozen gazebos sprinkled throughout.

On a muggy day, heat shimmers put the world in slow motion. A convertible pulled alongside me, slowing to match my pace. The driver leered at me, pulling his shades down his nose, and licked his lips. He ignored cars that sped around him, beeping their impatience. “Say, baby, where you going by yourself? Lemme keep you company.”

I sped up. He sped up. I slowed. He slowed. Stoically marching toward the park, I prayed my knees wouldn’t buckle from fear, prayed he wouldn’t get out of his car. I turned in to the park and speed-walked to one of the gazebos farthest from the street. I hid on the floor. Had he circled the park to look for me? He knew I was in there, so I stayed hidden for an hour. On my circuitous route home, I avoided my favorite street. My street. My neighborhood. My safety zone. Grand Boulevard had betrayed me.
But Grand Boulevard didn’t care.

Passing time in a car parts store while Ben searched for a radiator cap, I wandered over to a display of steering wheel covers. Piled haphazardly on a table, they were stretched around cardboard discs, looking like Frisbees abandoned in somebody’s yard. One of them bore the familiar logo of my Honda. A white H on black leather. Bold. Distinctive. Sporty. Man, it would look great in my car. And nothing matched that smell—new leather. I picked it up, traced the raised letter H with my fingertip. After a quick glance around assured me there were no witnesses, I held it in front of me and pretended to drive.

My Honda roars past a Mustang at Daytona. Checkered flag is in my sights. The announcer screams. NASCAR newbie Dawn Downey comes out of nowhere. She’s going to …

Nah. A steering wheel cover would turn into one more thing to clean, no doubt requiring some special leather cleaner we didn’t own. I tossed the cover back on the pile.

Ben came up behind me. “That’d be perfect for your car. Want it?”

“Nah. Too expensive. We came in for a radiator cap and that’s all we need.”

“I see how you’re looking at it. We’re getting it.”

Something made me hold my breath. The kind of breath-holding that happened right before my grandma paid the clerk for my brand new white patent Mary Janes that I’d wanted for forever plus.

Something clamped my lips together. The kind of lip-clamping that happened when my sixth grade best friend told me the big fat secret that she’d just gotten her you-know-what, and I didn’t want the secret to slip out through loose lips that sink ships.

Something made me stand perfectly still. The kind of still that happened after Dad took all the kids to A&W, and he handed me the glass mug, root beer foam spilling over the top, right before I slurped up that foam.
I kept my lip-clamping, breath-held, stillnes all the way from the display table to the cash register to the car. Ben opened the passenger side door for me. He handed me the Honda-frisbee. “You can help drive.”

Yippee! I placed my hands in the ten and two position, waiting ever so patiently for him to climb in on his side.

Very slowly, I checked over my shoulder and backed us out of the parking space. Very carefully I looked both ways before pulling into traffic. And then I let her rip. Took the turn from Oak onto Main on two wheels. Betcha Ben was surprised to hear the tires screech and smell the burning rubber and see the smoke belching from the tail pipe. Betcha he thought he was driving.

The last few blocks down Main, I draped my left hand over the top of the wheel real cool and steered with my arm, like the big boys did.
 
After I maneuvered us into the garage, Ben said, “Want me to put that on your steering wheel now?”
Fat chance.

I drove through the family room, upstairs to the front closet. Had to switch driving hands right to left, then back again, to squirm out of my coat. While I fixed dinner, I drove with my chin, revving up over the sink and downshifting to an idle near the stove. Watching a movie, I drove my LazyBoy down a stretch of road so ribbon straight I could steer with just my pointer finger. Vroomed back to the kitchen during intermission to make popcorn. Toward the end of the movie, I fell asleep at the wheel. Time for bed, but Ben was moving slow as a turtle. It would take hours  for him to walk up two and a half flights to the bedroom.

“C’mon,” I said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

He climbed in behind me.

It took a lot of concentration to drive us up a narrow mountain pass, around a hairpin turn, and through a tunnel, but boy oh boy, what a ride. I parked the steering wheel cover on the nightstand. Maybe tomorrow I’ll let him put it on the steering wheel.

While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
###

“… every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show.”
—Leigh Bardugo
--Six of Crows

Our fake fireplace aglow and fake fire-crackling sounds completing the illusion, we settled into our T.V. room to stream Carmen Jones. I looked forward to Harry Belafonte’s gravelly calypso singing voice, but when he opened his mouth, out came the sound of a white man. And Dorothy Dandridge, the lyrics came out a micro-second after her mouth shaped the words. The powers that be had dubbed in white voices for these two internationally acclaimed black singers.

How did director Otto Preminger present the deal to Dandridge and Belafonte? I’ll make you two colored singers into stars! But—you won’t sing. Your voices will be silenced, replaced by white ones. One more thing, the white voices will sing the way Oscar Hammerstein II thinks you people talk. “Dere’s a café on de corner.”