The Excruciating Limousine of Don Gino B.
By: Paul Castrodale
Hundreds of thousands of Americans live in their cars. Two years ago, I began to live in my own: an extraordinary Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine. Her name is Valeria, and mine is Gino B. I am the founder of Gino B. Luxury Limousine of Las Vegas, Nevada. Have you seen the lights of the strip from a long Lincoln town car?
Fated like Don Quixote to errantry in the arid highway lands, I chase luxury in strenuous endeavour. Out in the desert, far from Reno, I met the trouble which I will now describe. My distinguished regalia — a French chapeau and tuxedo, brilliant Gino B. logo embroidered on the breast — was threatened at the seams, both jacket sleeves imperiled. With terrible haste, I left the bingo hall parking lot, careening along the Interstate Highway towards a half-abandoned strip mall where I once knew a seamstress.
Eyes sun-wounded, I rehearsed my discourse in the rearview mirror: “Señora Costurera, Madame Seamstress, I have the pride of presenting you a most surprising gift — a gift of luxury whose luxuriousness is of the highest order of luxury.”
This was my typical answer when asked for money. I paid in scraps fallen from former clients, stashed in an indigo Crown Royal bag. Movement on the highway dwindled to a drip.
“A diamond of peculiar and fascinating origins. A diamond… Hey asshole, what, you don’t see the limousine?!”
Valeria shrieked. A Honda Fit scraped her driver side. The window on this side was frozen in 2006, and I screamed through the open passenger window: “Lout! You will pay for my limousine!”
But the imp was gone. Inside the limousine, my great books slid to the car floor: You Got This: No More Mister Angry! then Don Quixote, yellowed.
“Gino… reconstitute yourself!” I shouted. An insult to Valeria could only be avenged in properly fitted regalia.
***
The most taxing feature of life in a limousine is parking. The callous parking agents of the state — shameless highwaymen called “Parking Enforcement” — pursue the desert’s stretch limousines. Mine, sweet Valeria, is the great prize of these marked vehicles. Across a baking road expanse, the stripmall shimmered, and I knew by hunter’s instinct that parking enforcement spied with eyes of ice in the desert.
“1–2–3 Alterations,” I mouthed the sign of my sleeves’ salvation, praying the name did not tell how many hours the repair might take. In the sun-cracked parking lot, I had no time or defenses. Decaying SUVs wasted scorched real estate, and the lot itself was too narrow, so I had to rest Valeria in a place of great danger, horizontally blocking the parking lot entrance. I quieted her motor and collected my remaining uniform: white leather driving gloves with crimson cummerbund. Then, “Child of Excalibur,” my iron ceremonial sword in its fraying polyester sheath. I traded violent air conditioning inside the car for violent heat outside, and was immediately accosted: “Hey! What are you doing! You’re blocking the whole lot!”
The Parking Agent was here. Only, the bandit appeared in disguise as a soft-drink peddler, his truck adorned with soda images. He leaned out the window with fury like an ogre, brandishing a sweaty ball cap. I saw through him.
“Laughable is your attempt, Parking Officer! Why, there’s nothing but air in that truck of yours!” I stood astride the limousine, hands on my hips, beaming confidence much like the sun beamed hostility.
“The… what? Move that shit, man! I gotta go!”
“Why? So you can summon your goons to sequester my Valeria? Your vile tow-truck allies?”
“Move your piece of shit limousine, man! I don’t have time for this!”
Soon another parking agent shambled over. She disguised herself as the elderly proprietress of some sagging convenience store, awaiting sodas. She was wide and gnarled, feigning anger too.
“Pero que haces hombre? Move your… your… thing so he can get in,” she said.
I swivelled my head between Parking Accusers.
“This thing is a conduit of the stars! None other than Sir Paul McCartney once rode…”
“What’s wrong with you, move the damn limousine, man!” the false convenience agent shattered my appeal, the driver of the truck sounded his horn.
“I will not move until this man proves he is no ogre of the parking confederacy!” He answered with a projectile, and I ducked the can of Coke.
“Move your limousine or I’ll move it for you, asshole!” he shouted.
“Do it!” seconded the proprietress.
I relented, and with honour: “You have shown yourself to be a mere peddler of refreshing elixirs. For the sake of your humble commerce, I shall remove my most extraordinary vehicle.”
I shifted Child of Excalibur to the back of my leg, ignoring the sound of tearing polyester, and opened the door of faithful Valeria. With one foot in the limo and the other on the burning pavement, I warned the soda peddler, “Though I honour your commerce, pay heed, that your life not be undone by your tongue. For, even mistaking me, you have sworn abuses to a vector of the stars! For seven years I was the personal driver of Mario Crapopolis!”
The soda-peddler’s arm retreated into the cab. The real proprietress leered at me from a crumbling curb. Settling into Valeria, I heard another rip of fabric as I depressed the brake pedal and turned the motor. Valeria shuddered, with a sound like whooping cough. A thick bouquet of smoke issued from the hood. Soon, Valeria coughed up one bale of smoke after another, stationary. The soda peddler mounted the curb uneasily, over a patch of straw-yellow grass, and bounced into the parking lot, shouting: “Screw you and your lousy limo!”
I killed the engine and watched the smoke drift to grievous azure. The angry proprietress ejected a hostile middle finger and left to join with the peddler. The cuffs of my tuxedo were in even worse shape now, and parking enforcement was close. But I defeated two accusers, no — two ogres — with a noblesse proper to the driver of Mario Crapopolis. Invigorated, I left Valeria to render my armaments to 1–2–3 Alterations.
At the dusty glass door I encountered an unknown. She had crossed the dim shop to remove a sign which read “Back in 10.” She was not the seamstress I knew, from a remote casino rampage. She was a stout and sunburned woman, with a similar aspect to the angry proprietress. She hadn’t yet seen my parking job, and, with my stance, I engendered to keep it that way. I spread my legs wider and wider as she unlocked the door, my pants issuing more tearing sounds, now at the crotch.
“The hell happened to you?” she asked, opening the door.
“Nothing that the talented hand of an artisan such as yourself cannot repair,” I said, darting my eyes for a moment to the damage at my crotch, blocking her view of the parking lot on my tiptoes. I asked, “An artisan named…?”
She eyed me starkly and replied, “Ivana. I’m Ivana.”
“Lady Ivana, I am but a shadow in the light of your hallowed workshop. Humbly yours, Don Gino,” I said this to the back of her head, as she walked back into the store and I followed, my shirtsleeves, the crotch of my pants, and the sheath of my sword tearing a little more with each step. Ivana turned around to eye me up and down, diagnostically.
“I take a deposit,” she intoned.
It was time to dazzle with technique: “Doña Ivana, a Lady whose true title I have not enough daylight to speak — I’ll sate your want of deposit, brilliantly.”
“Oh…well, the deposit’s thirty bucks. I’ll see what I can do today, because both sleeves are in very bad condition.”
I pulled from my threadbare pocket a pair of diamonds like broken grains of rice.
“And what about the condition of these, my Lady? Señora Costurera, Madame Seamstress, I have the pride of presenting to you a most surprising gift. A gift of luxury…”
Ivana penetrated me with eyes of severest consternation.
“Don’t tell me you want to pay with those!”
I flashed her the smile with which I greeted Paul McCartney.
“Oh no! You’re that crazy old man who lives in his limousine.”
To my horror, Ivana cast a seamstress’s finger at a poster with a security camera image of me, my name: “Gino — last name unknown,” and then, in capital letters:
DO NOT ALLOW THIS MAN TO PAY IN DIAMONDS
DO NOT ALLOW THIS MAN TO PARK HIS LIMOUSINE AT YOUR BUSINESS
I saw instantly that the accusing hand of the seamstress had no ring. Perhaps in a single adventure I could restore my uniform, and conquer the hand of the beautiful Lady Ivana.
“Ivana, Good Lady of Clark County, Nevada, may you bless me in this dreadful hour with the strength to prove my merit, winning not only an enormous treasure, but a life together, you and I.”
I meant to attain the summit of my amorous appeal with a show of ceremonial iron. I violently wrenched the handle of Child of Excalibur. Yet this caused the final gasp of the sheath, which tore open in such a way that the blade itself was pulled back, catching on the dire fabric of my tuxedo pants, ripping them too. In this way, my sword sliced open the entire length of my pant leg at the same time as the crotch of the pants finally surrendered and split wide open. My pant leg blew apart in the path of Ivana’s fan. The sword itself flew into a dark corner, and I shot a hand down to cover myself. Ivana shrieked, recoiling.
“Are you nuts?!”
I tried to reason with the noble Lady of the shop while she secured herself behind the counter to film me on her phone. I spoke very quickly, holding my pants together:
“Lady Ivana, it’s not for lack of real diamonds you were warned. It’s my habit of convincing the recipients of those diamonds to spend them in adventure. Come, seek romance with me in the casinos and highways of the land! Let’s hit the bingo hall, there, Ivana!”
With a middle finger and a recording phone, she barked: “I’m calling the cops! Largate!”
Having won the battle of the parking lot ogres, I was shown the love of providence for balance. The victor of the day’s second contest was Lady Ivana. Clutching my pants where they still held shape, I submitted to the Lady her token of victory: “The Child of Excalibur is now yours, Lady Ivana.”
“Largate asshole!”
I bowed with another major rip on my remaining pant leg. Clasping these tatters, I opened the door to white heat. The man called S.P. was on the curb.
If providence attained equilibrium, favoring Lady Ivana, it was time to favor me once more. The man, youtuber S.P., was to become my apprentice. He was rotund, pale, his lower legs blanketed in cartoon tattoos. He pulsed with life in a neon-pink hoodie and stained cargo shorts, gesturing with mouth agape at my limousine, shouting into the smartphone in his outstretched hand: “It’s this guy’s limousine, y’all! Look at him!”
“Of course it’s my limousine,” I said, holding my pants together, “I’m Gino B. Hey! My limousine!”
The soda-peddling ogre was making one final jab at me from defeat, mounting the curb aggressively to ram Valeria’s hood in his hasty exit. I cursed into the heat. This delighted the young man, who shoved his phone into his pocket and gripped my free hand saying, “My name’s S.P. I’m a YouTuber. You’re… incredible, man.”
He was already awestruck.
“If you like the limousine, I’ll give you a ride. It will cost you, of course. But you look like the kind of big spender who prefers a luxury ride, over a conventional one.”
I beamed the old McCartney smile again, suppressing my fear that Lady Ivana would strike us with my own former blade.
“This is the best content I have ever seen. Please, get me in this crazy limo, man!”
Then, Lady Ivana kicked her door open, and I shoved S.P. off the curb. We ran for the limousine, my pants billowing in the wind like a tablecloth on a clothesline. To my great surprise the motor turned without smoke or flames.
***
“It smells weird in here. Like apples,” said S.P. after silent hours traversing the desert.
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“If you’d rather smell the sand, I can open the door and spill you out,” I snapped.
“Is there something weird back there? Is that why I have to sit in the front seat?”
“No. You’re not ready for the back of the limousine. Mario Crapopolis rode there for years. And you think you’re at Crapopolis’s level? Learn humility!” I declared.
“Bet.”
We rode on in silence.
“How old is this thing? How’s it still running?”
“Valeria is of the noblest pedigree. No repairs needed.”
“The way you talk could go viral!”
“I’m already virile. I was born manly.”
S.P. laughed like a rodeo clown, irritating me greatly.
“We’re getting so famous man,”
“You can’t be famous if you don’t have class, my good S.P. Hear me now. I know you can procure new patrons for me on that phone. If you accept my tutelage, in exchange for getting me clients, I’ll teach you class, S.P. And more, one day, I’ll render to you your own island.”
S.P. gave me a hard look, his first, and nodded with welcome gravity.
“Good. You’ll need a becoming outfit, first,” I said, “so, you will indeed know the back of this limousine.”
“Crazy clothes like yours? Yes!”
“The minor tears and deformations you see in my clothes are just a tally of services rendered. A good chauffeur will accrue his or her fair share of guffs on the tuxedo. But we always get the uniform picture-perfect in time for the stars. And that’s real class, my good S.P.”
S.P. nodded like a bobblehead as I slowed Valeria to crawl over the barren land beside the road.
“No charger! How am I going to livestream this?” He asked.
“No stream fit to drink here. Now, put your phone down and meet me in the middle of the limousine.”
We stepped into the desert, making our way to Valeria’s passenger side, where two windows were replaced with blue tarp. S.P. stood like the client, and, with my sleeves and pantlegs blown apart, I acted like his chauffeur. The door handle was so hot I cried out in pain. I set to open the door again, withstanding the burn, but when I pulled the handle, it broke off in my hand. I tried the next handle along Valeria’s side. It broke off too, clattering to the desert floor.
“This is amazing, Gino,” S.P. said
“It truly is. The height of luxury,” I told him.
I reached around the blue tarp and opened the door from inside. Things of my life tumbled onto the sand. I nudged a frying pan away with my foot.
“I knew it! I knew you lived in here!” said S.P.
“Yes, that smell you noted earlier was the smell of life, S.P. I live here temporarily while my million-dollar company, Gino B. Luxury Limousine, restructures. I am a wealthy man at heart, offering you the utmost of your desire. Your private island. Class. In the ample rear of great Valeria, you will find the regalia your class merits, my dear S.P.”
S.P. swam into my hoard of street treasures, lost.
“Sick jacket!”
I could hardly believe it. S.P. had uncovered for me in the heap that which I needed most: my once-in-a-lifetime imperial driver’s jacket, admiralty white with heavy-braided epaulets and a navy blue Gino B. logo. My once and future armament. I cast my tattered jacket to the desert floor as tribute. We rode again for days, catching ever more luxury.
***
It was coming on evening when S.P. and I pulled into town. We observed protocol, scanning for parking agents. There were, unnecessarily, two gas stations in this tab of a desert town, and I needed both. The barrels of gasoline in the trunk were empty, and S.P. would pay for their replenishment. Anyone who filmed themselves walking around for a living must be comfortable financially, I thought. We sputtered into the first gas station and I painfully reversed into a 45-degree angle with the entrance. I could not even fill the tank like this, and felt great dread. Errors amassed as portents. Two confused old men approached, gawking, I heard a telltale clip-clop, and knew wherefrom my dread.
“Do they have Amish out here? This lady’s in like a horse and buggy!” S.P. was rapt at the window, in a faded polo shirt and extremely tight khakis left behind by professional poker players in 2011. I wore my stunning imperial jacket, my legs clad in pineapple swim shorts.
“I said is there Amish? Look at the horse!”
“Still your inane speech for once!” I barked.
“Geeze, what’s your problem?”
“My problem is Nadia Delgado. She is the infamous poacher, who robbed Sir Paul McCartney from me, and spoiled my vassalage to the great Mario Crapopolis. She is a wretch of a luxury driver, stealing clients, pushing that poor horse to ruin just to squeeze out a buck.”
Nadia Delgado trudged the street in her shambolic buggy. The beleaguered horse unsettled minor dust clouds, pulling the buggy and my shadow with it. If the rumours were true, Nadia, who once commanded the upscale horse-and-buggy market, now lived in the buggy with her horse. Her days were spent abusing poor thirsty Rozinante, who pulled her and her belongings through the desert, roaming from town to town in search of clients. Whereas I did so temporarily and with reluctance, Nadia had taken to this itinerant desert life with zeal. Rozinante was thin as a shinbone all over, shuddering with exhaustion. Nadia was dreadful and lovely, a great predatory beast. If I let her, she would trounce my very heart.
I sat there for some time steeling my spirit. S.P. babbled to his cellphone audience about the virility of this limousine moment. Eventually, one of the two old men from the gas station tapped the window.
“Excuse me… you can’t park that thing here. You’re blocking the entrance!” He too rendered tribute to the parking confederacy. I slid over to the passenger side and opened the limo into an evening that was only marginally cooler than the day.
“Sir, this ‘thing’ once took Paul McCartney to the airport,” I announced, my hand on Valeria’s burning roof.
Before the gas station owner had a chance to respond, I heard the voice of Nadia Delgado: “More tall tales from the master of them. ’Twas I that took Sir Paul to the airport!”
She stood at the gas station entrance in a threadbare uniform: a driver’s cap, a black pleated skirt, and a black polyester blazer over a frilly lilac blouse, all frayed. Her potent green eyes and her soft brown skin were a whirlpool to my soul. Rozinante made a dreary silhouette on the horizon, tied up across the empty road with Nadia’s dilapidated buggy.
“You look in trial, Don Gino. I won’t speak of life. I’ll only speak of business. Surely, you wish to take Chalkboard to the zoo. So do I,” her explanation contained vestigial warmth.
The gas station owner saved me the embarrassment of ignorance, eagerly asking, “the linebacker from the NFL?”
“What?! Chalkboard follows me on TikTok! I’ll get us this ride!” S.P. shouted, plunging into his phone. He glimpsed my confusion and said to no one in particular, “Y’know why he’s called Chalkboard? He’s old school. He deserves a real old school experience. Ours.”
Nadia intoned with the authority of a judge: “Nothing is more old school than a horse and buggy.”
“Your carriage is scandalous,” I replied.
“And yours is a motorized museum of regret,” said Nadia.
“I only have one regret. And we both know what it is,” I said with the faintest break in my voice.
Nadia gave me a hard look, certainly not the first she had given me in this life.
“Second chances are curious things,” she said.
I studied her face and collapsed into the sublime. I held up a finger so that she would wait, while the gas station owner ambled off for supporters. I jerked the door of the limousine open, and a warm bricolage of life’s necessities fell out.
I said “You know I can’t let you get Chalkboard without at least trying to get him myself. But I can give you a… chance. A head start through the desert. And this.” Bending over at great cost to my lower back, I dragged a box of hot and mostly edible apples out of the limousine.
“This is for Rozinante. May she sup well and sweetly,” I said.
Then, from the inside pocket of my spectacular jacket, I pulled out the Crown Royal bag of diamond fragments.
“And this is for you, Lady Nadia. My life’s diamond.”
I threw the bag on top of the apples. Nadia threw herself at me and I caught her in the covenant of a kiss.
“I’ll see you in Las Vegas after the ride is done,” Nadia announced, and we kissed again. She said “I accept these gifts, but I need no head start. Rozinante and I will take a shortcut through the desert.”
“Tarry not. I must see you in Vegas,” I implored, a light breeze finally cooling the air.
“And I you,” she said.
We kissed once more in the small line of a town, and then I watched Nadia Delgado cross the emptiness to drive Rozinante into the sands of sunset. Spiraling columns of dust languished in the agonizing march of the horse and buggy.
“And that, guys, is what you call true love!” S.P. shouted to his followers.
I turned my gaze on the squire. His phone screen was black as the coming night. He had asked me for a charger the day before, and, having never attached myself to the “smartphone” fad, I had none. So he had simply let the phone sleep, and he was talking to no one. He had never spoken with Chalkboard. There were no clients. He had no followers. We drove bleary-eyed into emptying night. The dead radio played Nadia’s name over and over again. S.P. poked his head through the partition and asked “You’ll really get me an island?”
I looked at him in the rearview with wounded disdain, then I looked back to the cascading monotony of highway. He retreated with full understanding into the darkness of the limousine. We said nothing to each other for hours. Then, witnessing the first hesitant steps of morning, the desert streaming around us, he finally asked me again, “Are you going to get me a private island?”
“Yes!” I declared immediately. “The last uncharted, uninhabited island on earth! All yours in time, my good S.P.”
He grinned widely into his dead cellphone and said, “You just heard that, y’all. Don Gino B. is the height of luxury.”
“Yes, he is!” I exclaimed, also grinning, “And you are too!”
Flames exploded from the hood, illuminating the desert around us. I pushed the accelerator all the way down. I drove Valeria into the burn.
THE END
