Just my goddamn luck.  I leave my rustbucket Ford Explorer alone with Koreatown for a week, and look what happens – four slashed tires and a crappy graffiti makeover.  I’m guessing it’s a communiqué from the local Hispanic gangbangers.  Gringo, get the fuck out of our barrio.  Or maybe I should blame their Korean rivals.  Either way, this is what I get for having Iowa plates in southern California.  It’s like adorning the truck with KICK ME signs front and back.

So much for enjoying this perfect December day.  60 degrees of bright crisp sunshine and I’m sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, my tools spread around me.  I had four “like new” tires with rims delivered from a junkyard and bought enough acetone to blow up the block.  That’s an afternoon of work, easy.  Plus right now the Explorer is jacked up to expose its right rear hub.  While I’m at it, might as well fix the shriek I hear every time I step on the brake – a loose adjuster responsible for yanking the graphite shoes tight against the drum.  I could’ve waited and had it fixed in Tijuana, where auto repair is dirt cheap.  But that’s still more expensive than doing it myself.

The key is in the ignition and the windows are down so I can listen to a National Public Radio program about illegal immigration.  My cellphone is within easy grasp, since Hercules keeps calling every couple minutes to complain about the outrageous shit that white people say.  He’s the former Brown Panther whose civil rights experience goes all the way back to 1968.  I figure he should be used to it by now.  I lubricate the brake mechanism with lithium grease from a 15-year-old can, my fingers slimy with the pale goop, hoping he doesn’t ring me right now.

My cellphone buzzes.  I groan and wipe my hands on my jeans and fumble the clamshell open.  “Yeah?”

“Hey stranger,” says Phoebe.  Her voice is almost lost in gangster rhymes and bone-jarring beats.

“Where the hell are you – Compton?”

Abruptly the background goes mute.  “Sorry.  I was watching rap videos while I pack for Hong Kong.  You in your apartment?”

“Nah, I’m down on the sidewalk fixing my truck.  What’s up?”

“You know that little jade statue I gave you?  I need you to check and see who the maker is.  The name should be carved right on the bottom.  I want to buy another one when I’m over there.”

The little jade statue.  A small carving of a Buddhist temple guardian, scowling with emerald fierceness.  Phoebe surprised me with it after one of her trips to China, back when I was taking a heavy course load of East Asian Studies classes.  Proof that we verged on something more than fuckbuddies.  Of course, she hasn’t given me a gift since, and I parked the statue on top of my bookshelf and forgot all about it.  Until now.

“You can have it back, if you want.”  The words come out sounding cruel, although I don’t mean them that way.

“God, Nick.  You’re such an asshole sometimes.”  Even wounded, Phoebe can’t summon much emotion.  “Just text me whatever’s carved on the bottom, alright?”

“You know what I miss about us?”

“The sex?”

“This.  I miss this.  Like, knowing you’d call sometime.  Knowing we could hang out if we wanted to.”

“You miss the sex,” she laughs emptily.  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but honestly?  I miss the sex less than I thought I would.  And when I do miss it, there’s always my vibrator.”

“Things.  That’s all I have left of you.  Just some leftover things.”  Phoebe is dwindling into historical artifacts – that jade statue guarding the dusty heights of my bookshelf, the speed-dial number I never use anymore, a half-empty box of her favorite ribbed condoms.

“But not my macrame beach bag, right?  You better not have that lying around.”

“Nah.  I never found it.”

In the background I hear footsteps and the tinkle of liquid, maybe water, maybe piss.  “We were together a long time.  I kind of expected something different when we broke up.  Some drama, you know?  But we just…fizzled out.”

My other line beeps.  I tell Phoebe to hang on and click over in irritation.  “What now?”

It still isn’t Hercules assaulting my eardrum with reverse racism.  Instead I’m listening to a girl.  A shy, familiar girl.  “Nick?  Are you there?”

“Nooshin?”

“Yaayyy, it worked!  I finally figured out how to use this stupid calling card thingy.”

Any enthusiasm I’m feeling is choked into monotone.  “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again.”

“I know.  But, well…  This is okay, right?  Nick?  I didn’t mean to…”  Her voice is getting smaller by the syllable.

Silence on my end.  The silence of a busy street in LA.  The silence of traffic idling, passersby chatting in Spanish, a passenger jet thundering far overhead.

“Shit,” Nooshin finally sighs.

It’s the first time I’ve heard her curse.  Something about the swear word erodes my wariness.  Finally a spontaneous unguarded moment, the kind of intimacy she always kept from me.  Or maybe it’s the brave dejection in her voice – realizing she royally screwed up, mourning a connection, moving on.  All in a single word.

“Can you hang on?” I relent.  “I’ve got Phoebe on the other line.  Let me get rid of her.”

“No, I can’t hang on.  I think there’s only, like, a couple minutes left on this calling card.”

“Then I’ll call you back.  What’s the number?”

“Um, I’m not sure.  Can’t you see it on your display?”

I briefly hold the cellphone in front of my face.  “It’s saying unassigned, whatever that means.  Where are you calling from?”

“I’m at a payphone at this restaurant, but I don’t see a number.”

“A public payphone?  There has to be a number displayed right on the phone.  It’s federal law.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Really.”  I listen to her frustrated murmurings until my patience runs out.  “Look, just call me when you’ve got a number.  Then I’ll call you back.  Okay?”

There’s a despairing pause.  “I’ll try.  But it might not be today.  Or tomorrow, even.”

“But you promise to call, right?  No sending me a blow-off email later?”

“Promise,” Nooshin says with nervous determination, and hangs up.

I click back to static.  Phoebe is gone.  As if she was ever here to begin with.  We’ve been passing through each other in slow motion.  Four years of slow motion.  I used to think our trajectories were carrying us apart – me into academia, her into Corporate America – but now I know better.  We had something in common for a while, a convenient and superficial loneliness, and now we don’t.  She’s probably planning to buy a little jade statue for the new guy in her life, the one who’s supposed to be settling-down material.  I’m chasing a long distance friendship with a married Muslim chick who won’t tell me anything about herself.  And that’s all it takes, how it ends.  Just like Phoebe said.  We fizzled out.

I set the cellphone aside and dip my fingers into the lithium grease and attack the brake assembly again, waiting for Nooshin – or just Hercules – to call me back.