The Eighth Gate of Hell
Prelude
“I think you should deal with this,” she said.
Something about the emphasis on 'you' got me to put my coffee down and look at the letter she slid across the table. I noticed our car's branded logo prominently featured on the letterhead. “What now?” I mused as I scanned the letter. What sort of fresh hell was before me, deigned to ruin a perfectly good day? If I'd only known. Perhaps I did.
“Your vehicle's On*Star is about to EXPIRE!”
Oh, so what. I'll be happy to not have my car sending me annoying messages on the dashboard, texting me stuff I already, or don't want to, know. I'll keep track of when my windshield wiper fluid is low, when my oil needs changing, when I should rotate my tires or check their pressure, when the road is wet, or if it's dark outside. I've driven for well over 50 years and never had to have my vehicle tell me what to do, or when, thank you very much. I am not particularly interested in having some On*Star satellite device tracking my whereabouts, my speed and who knows what else. At one point I had even asked the dealer if I could turn all that junk off. “No. And why would you want to?” he replied. He just wouldn't understand.
“To keep apace of improved technology, we are phasing out all 3G On*Star systems and moving over to a more powerful 5G network! Your current 3G On*Star subscription is due to expire on January 1, 2022. Please contact your authorized dealer to schedule a free 5G update before January 15, 2022. After that date you will be charged for this service. Thank you, Valued Customer!”
“Sweetie, I don't want this thing,” I sputtered to my wife. “It can only be installed by a dealer, the closest being an hour away from here. We'll have to sit around some Miracle Mile car lot wasting a good day to get something we don't use or want. I say 'no'.”
She understands my resistance. She knows that technology and I historically have not gotten along very well. “Well, I think we should. It won't cost us anything,” she said, tapping the letter pointedly with her index finger – a sure sign that she meant business. “Hummmphhh,” I grumped to myself.
And so it was to be. I reluctantly called for an appointment and was given my choice of day and time. I picked one and wrote it on my wall calendar in pencil. My wife entered the info into the scheduler on her iPhone – a skill I have yet to acquire, nor do I intend to for I am proudly an analog man in a digital world. Another way of admitting “I am a dinosaur.”
A day before the appointment as I was preparing to engage in my daily practice of the guitar, the phone rang. A chipper young woman's voice asked if I was enjoying my day. This sort of thing makes me immediately suspicious. What sort of ticking bomb was cloaked inside her overtly pleasant greeting?
“So far,” I replied.
“Oh, good,” she chirped, “I'm really sorry to tell you, Mr. Reed, that your appointment scheduled for tomorrow's 5G On*Star update has to be changed. Unfortunately we double-booked you. Could you come in on Thursday?”
As performing musician most of my life, I've had my share of double-bookings. Not a good thing and I've never gotten used to them. Her call set off some dormant resentments that bubbled sourly to the surface. Fortunately, I remembered that she was only the messenger and that I probably should not kill her. I held my tongue.
“No, Thursday does not work,” I replied tersely, thinking to myself “Why the hell didn't the other double-booked party get bounced? Was it because ours was a factory recall that we were not obligated to pay for?” I'm going with that - “Follow the money”.
“I'm so sorry,” she said cheerily, “what would you like to do then?” Now, that was a loaded question she might not like to hear me answer truthfully, but I continued to maintain a modicum of cool though hackles began to rise.
“Next week will be fine,” I replied, attempting to veil the chill in my tone.
“Great! Same day and time work for you?” Sure, I thought, as long as you don't pull a repeat play on me.
“Okey-dokey,” I feigned my best affability.
“Great! We'll put you on the schedule. Anything else I can do for you today?” Another loaded question.
“Do you know how long this procedure will take?” I asked.
“It shouldn't be more than three or four hours,” she chirped.
“Three or four hours! What am I getting? A heart transplant? I have to drive an hour each way for this?” So much for maintaining any cool.
“I'm sorry,” she said. I think she actually meant it. “Some folks get out of here in two and a half hours.” Hmmmmph - “Some folks?”
I exhaled. “Thank you. See you then.”
“You have a great rest of your day, Mr. Reed!”
“Sure thing. You too.”
Fugue
The appointed day came. As we headed out onto the super crowded super highway, the bride and I discussed the old saw about when life hands you lemons, better make sure you don't have a paper cut...or something like that. In order to rescue what was destined to be a wasted day, we decided that maybe it would be fun to find some tasty bar-b-cue for lunch, you know, to break up our monotonous travail. I looked forward to that possibility, though as I had not been to this dealership before, I had no real idea of where it was. Ergo, I had no idea whether there would be any tasty bar-b-cue nearby. Turns out, my premonistic vision of it being located amidst a cheek-by-jowl jumble of Miracle Mile chain stores, repair shops, tire dealers, car washes, mattress stores, fast-food joints, assorted warehouses and competing auto dealerships was right on the money.
We pulled into the sparkling dealership and were cordially greeted by a smiling, not too unctuous, Service Writer who confirmed our appointment and took all the necessary info “to get you right into our system”. I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that.
“You'll be dropping the car off, or will you be waiting?”
“Oh, I suspect we'll be waiting. And waiting some more,” I said with a wry smile. “How long do you think this will take?” The Service Writer looked at me the way a heron stares at the water just before he spears a fish. “The 5G transfer procedure usually takes at least three hours, although a guy got out of here last week in two and half.” Where had I heard that? I resisted the urge to repeat my heart surgery quip. As we would be waiting for our car, he then summarily directed us to the Visitors Lounge. Little did I know what was to befall me.
He herded us outside across a breezy paved atrium devoid of life. We entered a somewhat sterile, modern, glass enclosed area with high, auditorium-like ceilings that served as both Visitors Lounge and New Car Showroom. Brilliant marketing strategy, methinks: Stick a bunch of disgruntled folks who'll have to wait interminably for their broken vehicle to be repaired – which could possibly cost them a second mortgage to retrieve - in very close proximity to a fleet of shiny, sleek new models with all the latest screens and gizmos designed to entrance and distract from the vehicle's rather sizable price tag. Also standing aloofly around, waiting to be at your service, is another fleet of equally shiny, sleek new model sales personnel - smiling, well-dressed and appealing, enticing you to come closer, to look, to touch, to smell, to feel, to experience the newest, the absolutely most luxurious...car. It's a freekin' car, for goshsakes!
The VL (visitor's lounge) was outfitted with some comfy, well-padded faux leather arm chairs. Apparently the dealership knew that one was going to be there awhile and they wanted you to be as comfortable as possible while you awaited your sticker-shock. They provided a modern, stainless steel Italian-looking coffee machine. And there was hot tea, bottled water and some munchy-crunchy snack like things. All for free! Well, not really free because you surely would be paying for it all later when the bill arrived. However, we were relieved to observe in this pandemic time of Covid that the armchairs were 'socially distanced' and that nearly all the other lounge denizens were masked – except the nondescript, 60ish woman wearing a well-worn “Do you Q?” t-shirt who stared vacantly at her pocketbook nestled in her lap the entire time.
I settled in with my Kindle book, my wife with her crossword puzzle. “Three hours? Gonna be a real endurance test for this ol' cowpoke,” I mused, half aloud. “Don't think about it,” counseled my wife. Sure. OK. I began reading my book. And then it hit me between the ears like a riveting ball-peen hammer: Canned muzak - played too loudly - through cheap ceiling speakers. Hip-hop alternating with New Country. Hip-hop. New Country. Hip-hop. New Country. Hip-hop. Ad nauseum.
As a professional musician, I like to think that my musical palette is as deep as it is broad. But when it comes to these two genres, I am apparently closed up tighter than a Wellfleet oyster. I acknowledge that hip-hop is a vital and powerfully representational form of urban street poetry, but it ain't what I call music. With its computerized samples and loops, voice pitch modulators and other sundry electronic gimmickry - and rarely a live musical instrument to be heard - it just doesn't fit my construct of 'music'. However, if one ascribes to the 20th century electronic music composer Vladimir Usachevsky's simplistic definition of music as “man's organization of sound”, hip-hop falls right into that pocket. But I don't like Vladamir Usachevsky either. Try as I might, I simply can not decipher most hip-hop lyrics, and the ones that I can, I don't like the violent, misogynistic, bristling with machismo content. While I can understand the lyrics and stories in the New Country genre, they all seem thematically and lyrically recycled, musically redundant - and very boring.
I know, I know. 'Variety is the spice of life', 'Different strokes for different folks,' 'Change is the only constant' and all that. I willingly admit to some - OK, a lot - of ol' fogeyism on my part, attributed to my being a white, middle-class, suburban old hippie guy with all the cultural biases this implies. That's my rationale and I'm sticking with it.
As I sat squirming in my seat, the two unnerving genres conspired to beat me mercilessly with their nauseating ostinato phrases, redundant rhythms and undecipherable lyrics. There was no 'Off' switch. Seated beneath the ceaseless aural assault emanating from the ceiling and reflecting off of the bare walls and windows, I wondered about how the art of songwriting could have morphed into such overtly banal, homogenous tripe – and how long would it take me to go ditheringly insane? I began to mimic one of the simplistic, repetitive phrases out loud.
“Will you just shush!” my wife whispered to me, gesturing slightly with her eyes towards the woman with the “Q” t-shirt who'd stopped staring at her pocketbook and had begun to glare at me. “It's times like this I envy the hard of hearing,” I muttered to my wife. I got up and walked out into the New Car showroom to seek any possible sonic relief.
Scherzo
“May we be of assistance to you, sir?” said a pleasant young saleswoman, as she stood, smoothing her skirt. I looked around. Except for a lone vehicle and the saleswoman, the cavernous room was completely empty. Unless one counted the several vacant desks behind which sat no one, I wondered who was the “we”?
“Uh, where are all the cars?” I asked.
“Oh, on nice days we like to put them outside,” she smiled, tossing her hair and gesturing with her arm to several rows of shiny vehicles lined up beyond the glass – some no doubt overheating in the warm sun, others enjoying the shade of the live oaks. “Wow!” I mused, “just like barnyard animals!”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I smiled back. “I'm just stretching my legs. Got a long wait. I'm having heart surgery,” I gestured with my thumb towards the Lounge.
“What!?”
The saleswoman, appearing stunned, stared and then turned on her heels and returned to sit at one of the desks. Seeing I wasn't a live one, she redirected her focus to her iPhone. I left, relieved that I did not receive an aggressive sales pitch, and trudged back to my lounge seat to the accompaniment of the staccato, primal beats shooting from the speakers like BBs and the muffled phone conversation of the saleswoman who looked askance at me as if I were diseased.
“What did you see?” asked my wife, looking up from her crossword puzzle.
“Nothing.”
“Well, you're in a mood.” She quietly returned to the challenge of her NY Times puzzle, leaving me to stew. I admire her tenacity, her ability to overlook niggling annoyances. This may have been a survival skill she has developed living with me.
Adagio Molto
Time crawled painfully on hands and knees, leaving abraded scars on my patience. The aural barrage, unrelenting. Outside, afternoon shadows lengthened. My stomach growled; at least I was not alone in my suffering. My mind wandered from my book - When can we get something to eat? Might we find some delicious bar-b-cue? I don't want that crappy junk food. How much longer do we have to wait? I began to note that much of the hip-hop selections used identical, interchangeable beats; the New Country songs were nearly all in the same key – Eb I think, but I don't have perfect pitch. Thank god.
People who'd come into the VL to wait long after we'd arrived in the morning were beginning to leave, their service writer cheerfully greeting them with slips of paper that would reveal the damages they were about to pay. I envied them. I attempted to catch one of the service writer's eye as he breezed by. He didn't notice. The beat went on.
Eyes glazed, I slumped back into my faux leather chair. There was no clock on the wall. I know why. A good thing. For them. “If I'm going to die here, get it over with!” I thought. And then, bursting through the door came our Saviour, our lord Service Writer, bearing documents.
“Emancipation!” I cried. My wife glared at me.
“Mr. Reed?” the young fellow drawled. He moved faster than he spoke.
“That's me. Done already? Lawd, those three and a half hours really flew by!” I said, standing up.
“Mr. Reed, we noticed that your vehicle is due for its engine and cabin air filters to be replaced. Do you want us to do that now while you're here?”
“Ay yi yi! How long is that going to take?” I gasped. My wife gave me “the look”.
“Oh, we're not finished with your 5G upgrade yet, so I think we should be able to change those filters while it finishes up.”
“How much?”
“Do it,” my wife interjected. And that was that. I slumped back into the chair. I pondered whether I could make earplugs out of the complimentary coffee napkins.
I tried my best to concentrate on my book. Nope, not happening. I attempted to recall my efforts at meditation: “Just focus on your breath...in...out...in...out - letting any thoughts pass by, gently observing and then letting them go. In...out...in...out. You are at one with your . . . Holy Mother of Tinnitus give me a rocket launcher, a blow gun, anything, just deliver me from this gawdawful noise!” My brain was buzzing around busier than a bee in a tar bucket.
Allegro non Troppo
We'd been in the VL nearly over hours and I was falling deeper into a murmurating abyss of negativity. And then, another jolly service writer burst energetically through the door. “Wow, Mr. Reed, you're still here!? You must be getting really hungry. I've got a loaner car you can use – it's the grey one out there - why don't you and the missus go and get yerself some lunch! Want to?”
WANT TO!? Want to? Damn freekin' hey I want to! I sprang from my chair, fell to my knees and kissed his greasy Acme steel-toed boots. No, I really didn't do that, but I could have. I gratefully accepted the loaner key fob, and asked him if he could recommend any bar-b-cue places nearby.
“Naw, no bar-b-cue. But we got a Wendy's, Starbucks and a Dunkin' up the road a-ways,” he drawled apologetically. “It's a keyless car. Kin ya operate one those?”
Keyless bulldozer, steamship, unicycle...whatever it was, I was just happy for a chance to get away from that damnable muzak!
Marche Triomphe
My bride, who'd been sitting the entire time, creaked out of her faux leather lounge chair. “Let's get out of here,” she said. It's the first evidence I had that she was wearing thin as well. We hobbled out into the waning afternoon light, keyless fob in hand. “It's the grey one,” she says, as if I needed reminding. Gripping the keyless fob, I squinted into sun at three identical grey cars parked next to each other. Our mission: to figure out which car the fob belonged to. I aimed, waving the fob around at the three grey cars like some crazed Luke Skywalker with a tiny light sword, randomly pressing buttons on it. I received “the look”. I might as well have been in Las Vegas at the slots because, eventually one of the vehicles began to chirp like a robot and flash its lights. Jackpot!
We plopped into the new car and I availed myself to its myriad dials and the mysterious machinations of a rather large screen which occupied most of the dashboard. As this was a keyless car, there was no place to insert a key to start it, so finding the proper button to press to start the car took some exploration. Like a blind man reading braille, I eventually figured it out and we headed out of the parking lot and onto the Miracle Mile in search of something to stave off our hunger.
Danse Joyoso
“Where shall we go?” I asked my co-pilot.
“I don't know where we are, so how can I tell you?” Uh-huh, someone else is cranky, too.
“Well, why don't you ask your electronic guru where some bar-b-cue might be?” I queried.
“Good idea,” she said and dug around her knapsack for her iPhone. “Siri, is there any bar-b-cue restaurant around here?”
In a moment Siri's insipid Australian accent replied: “I have found a Krystal restaurant. It is .6 miles from here. It gets one and a half stars. Do you want that one?”
“Crystal? Crystal what,” I moaned. “I think Crystal is a regional fast-food joint. Or a meth lab. It's not bar-b-cue. Or perhaps we've simply passed over into another dimension?”
As I am speaking this, we pass a Krystal (with a “K”) restaurant, and indeed I am correct - it is a cheap, regional burger chain. It's dilapidated sign informed us, “Sorry, We're Out of Business”. Of course.
“Let's cruise the strip a little and see if there's anything a little more interesting, shall we?” trying to keep any modicum of culinary hope alive.
We drove another mile up the strip, not noticing anything at all promising. Back down the strip we drove and then - my wife noticed a Wendy's nestled cheek by jowl with a huge Discount Tire Center. We knew what Wendy's was and what we'd find there. Wendy's was, well, Wendy's and it pretty much didn't matter where you were. Wendy's was Wendy's. We were becoming hangry and more than a little bored. Neither of us could remember when we'd last had fast food, so it was a consensus: Wendy's it would be! Huzzah!
Danse al Dente
We pulled into Wendy's drive-thru. We each chose an ol' reliable: Single cheeseburger, small fries and chocolate Frostee shake. We placed our order. We drove up to the pay window, and in a few minutes drove to the pick-up window where we were handed our food. Just as the clerk was handing us our bags o'lunch, we mutually looked at each other and burst into laughter. There, on the back edge of the Wendy's parking lot, sitting on a small patch of tired, vacant land with no flag, no sign, no nothing to announce their presence, was...you guessed it: Bar-b-cue!
Danse Macabre
Two old men wearing sooty overalls shuffled in and out of a tiny, tumble-down shack with blistering paint and a rusting tin roof as they labored over a pair of ancient, homemade 55 gallon drum smokers, both stained by years of the smoky soot, grease and the sauce of real bar-b-cue. A small stack of freshly split hickory and orange wood leaned against one of the smoker stands. Sweet wood smoke wafted from the lids of the drums as the old black man reached in with a heavy pair of cast-iron tongs and flipped over a great rack of smoky ribs. His white colleague, shirt spattered with sauce, placed another log in the smoker as his partner closed the lid. He then opened the other smoker and revealed several large, whole chickens that appeared nearly ready as one by one the other pitman gently turned them over. You could tell by the way they moved in concert with each other, this pair had done this delicious dance together for a long time. We rolled our windows down and inhaled the magical scent of the lunch we didn't have.
On another fire nearby, a great pot was steaming away. We lusted to know what savory goodness was within that blessed, soot-covered cauldron and what other tempting delights might be on their fare of the day. But we just didn't feel it would be prudent to go over and nose around their pit after we'd just bought our lunch at a corporate chain restaurant. Instead we stared longingly at them as they grilled. We wolfed down our cheap food, interrupted only by our spontaneous laughs of incredulity, vowing that if we ever had to return to this car dealership again, we'd know where to eat!
Recapitulation
After finishing our anti-climactic lunch, we reluctantly reversed course and returned to the dealership. I steeled myself for what fate lay ahead. We parked the grey car by the other grey cars and returned to the VL. The lounge was empty. Our same faux leather chairs, clearly conformed to our backsides, loyally awaited. We plopped down in our accustomed spots. Nearly five hours had passed since we had entered the VL. I was astounded to recognize exactly the same muzak we'd heard before. It was on a loop and had begun to cycle around again. My psyche was about to explode! It was then that I felt entitled to contribute to Dante's “Seven Gates of Hell” an “Eighth Gate” - forever doomed to an eternity of Muzakian Horrors from which I would never emerge. My wife displayed some sympathy for me and spared me any off-the-cuff remarks about my misery.
Danse il Soccorso
I was beginning shake my foot and rock uncontrollably in my chair when yet another enthusiastic Service Writer came through the Gate and announced “Your vehicle is ready, Mr. Reed!” I leapt up and ran towards him babbling. I embraced him and kissed his cheeks in gratitude, promising him that I would dedicate my life to him...and even bring him bar-b-cue. No, I didn't do any of that. I just followed him into his Service Writer's kiosk and handed him my credit card, saying nothing.
Finale
I mean, what else could one do but chalk it up to another First World problem?
St. Augustine, FL
January 2022
photo: Claudia d'Alessandro
Munch's “The Scream” as bedspread art by C. d'Alessandro