The Nova

Monument
For whatever reason the Nova was still fucked up after I bailed it out, it would never run right. It sat for a month while I paid off the garage that worked on it. I may have as well been a girl to the mechanics for as little as I knew, but they couldn’t rip me off, I had no money. After awhile they just wanted it gone.
I didn’t really have to buy it in the first place, after all I was only test driving it. I just thought I should. It would have been crappy if I didn’t, although the guy was knowingly selling me junk. Aside from the mechanical failings I liked the car, the look of it. I liked it even more after the accident. It looked like it’d been bit by a shark.
I erased its mustard color with flat black spray paint. This was dumb because it drew heat causing more and new engine problems, but it looked good. I flipped the tires to hide the unsightly white walls and if no one knew how small the motor was it looked menacing.
Down the road from PC was this thing that I wanted to drive to the top of. It looked like a giant upside down planter or Devo hat. From a distance it appeared to be carved from rock but up close it was just hard dirt. It was difficult to figure how or why, or even when it had been constructed. I didn’t care, I wanted to sit on top of it. My sister was coming out to visit so I thought I’d take her there.
I was living at Beas boarding house at the time and got my sister a room there too. I had to even if it was only going to be for a couple days. Bea insisted on separate lodging. I don’t think she thought Dianne was really my sister, and she didn’t encourage cohabitation. She didn’t even rent to girls.
Beas was a big old house in the canyon at the top of Main Street. It defined ramshackle and like all the other old structures was Victorian era. I liked living there and had moved in after the mess with Tony lost me the condo. I could climb out of my window onto a roof pitched just right for tanning. I still hadn’t started using sunblock anywhere but on my face, and had atrocious spots of damage on my shoulders and upper arms. I looked bad, as in awful, but I liked it. I fit the car.
I didn’t really leave the immediate vicinity of Park City much, unless it was to go down into SLC for shows at the Indian Center or shopping at the mall. There was no reason plus I tended to get harassed by the police.
A friend and I had driven East to Wyoming once to register his van and stock up on cheaper beer. You didn’t need proof of insurance over there and they had real beer, not 3.2, for real world prices. The Mormons had it all jacked up, liquor wise. They didn’t believe in consuming alcohol but they did believe in fleecing the people that did.
We turned off the highway. The thing could be seen in the near distance. I’ll call it The Monument, it had to be one of some kind, like Ayer’s Rock. I wondered if anyone died at it. I wondered if we would and started laughing at the drama that would ensue if we did. Dianne looked at me but I couldn’t share the thought, it was too stupid.
There was nothing of any significant elevation near it, although far off was the ever present mountain vista, topped by snow. We climbed out of the car and into a cloud of dust we’d stirred up. We both coughed, and waved our hands around in front of our faces like old women.
The ramp to the top was little more than car width. Medium sized American. In order to stay on track I never unturned the wheel. I think we maybe made three revolutions before reaching the top. I stopped, pulled the emergency brake on and we got out. No one else was up there but I already knew that. You would have been able to see them from ground level.
We sat on the roof of the car. The sun hung low in the sky casting long shadows behind the cactus and rocks. Its rays reflected dimly off the water of a manmade lake a few miles to our south. This lake wasn’t made for recreation, and it was in no way scenic, it was simply the byproduct of some never finished industrial excavation. A slick surface surrounded by rock outcroppings. It was long, you couldn’t see the far end.
Locals did windsurf on it, and I’d been over there a couple of times. When the wind was up it was perfect for that but no matter how hot the air was no one ever went in without a full wetsuit. The water was murky green with foam piling up along the shore. It never got shallow enough to see the bottom. Fish had been planted decades before but you never saw anyone fishing and from what I saw of the dead ones I can’t imagine the kind of freak that would eat one. Or maybe I could, The Hills Have Eyes had been filmed nearby. The mutants would eat these fish. I’m sure animals wouldn’t though, they can tell when stuff’s not right, like Indians…