The world doesn’t have time to stop for a roof caving in. Oliver bought all thirty-four packs of band-aids from the dollar store, but not the generic brand, actual band-aids. I don’t know if he really believed that it would work, but he must have hoped because five hundred ten waterproof band-aids peeled away on the roof after time and we ran out of towels. He should have known that rubber and thin glue couldn’t put together pierced metal and bent canvas. And now I fall asleep with snow on my cheeks and ice on my lips.
People like Oliver Mallord always have something they’re hiding. People like him: the James Dean type: sit, slicked hair, wild eyes, hands slightly tucked in their pockets. The kind of guy that looks at you and smiles when you get excited about something, shaking his head and saying, “Florence, Florence, Florence. You just get me ya know.”
Mama said he must have been hiding something there, in the pockets of his jeans. And you wouldn’t think that someone like him, someone so dark, so distant, would have anything to say about anything. He was ashamed of the way the words came out of his mouth like fire, spreading across the room in leaked gasoline. He hated how he knew so much, how much he liked talking to me.
When you’re young, the idea of running away together sticks close to the back of your mind. Mama must have told me the story a million times of running away with my father to a town with one gas station and no grocery store, somewhere they would be safe. But he’s not here now and Mama forgot to come home two weeks ago. Forgetting runs through the family and Oliver never wanted anybody to know how much he remembered.  
Mama was a hard-faced woman with leathered skin and messy hair, the kind of woman
that was probably beautiful at some point. We weren’t allowed to talk about my father. A man that used to buy me presents and read to me, a man that sits still at the corners of my mind. Locked away hard enough to not remember his voice. And then Mama left with a carton of cigarettes and a tube of thick toothpaste to  be with some man. “It’s love,” she would say. Pressing her hand against her heart. Then again, it was always love.
I’m guilty of it too. Like with Oliver. Then I realized that while I fell for him, he fell in love with the idea of me. He was desperate for the spontaneous road trips, the children running down the sidewalk to greet him after work, the perfect wife to kiss his cheek. While I couldn’t help smiling at the way he bit his nails when he had something to say and the way he pursed his lips when he looked at her, the car. He just loved that idea of love. The one that sweeps us away when we’re fourteen and shoots us down at fifteen and a half. He loved it so much.
When he saw the car for the first time, he traced his finger along the dashboard and wrapped the rear view with duct tape. We used to like to trace letters into the dust that coated the top of the leather seats and the film that sat like syrup on the radio. But then our fingers got dirty, and we ran out of space. People always run out of space. I still wish I could say that we had tried to clean it up, maybe try to patch together the pieces that scattered on the floor like snow. I wish we had shaken all the blankets out, brushed away all the bugs and dust bunnies that hobbled and hopped through the threads at night.
New cars always seem to whisper the essence of something new. They slide through the parking lot and shine bright red under the sun. Then they lose it all, that essence of something different, the future. New cars are always going to be those things best kept hidden, because rust always shines bright red under the sun and that’s why it must have been there. He thought he was going to fix it up or something, because cars like that, they’ve got to be seen, even when they’ve hidden far away from everything as best as they could. 
There’s a moment after the sun sets, a brisk five minutes of blue, deep blue that wraps you up in chills and swallows the clouds whole. He liked that time best. He liked the way the sky dozed slowly and followed him back home.
Suddenly, we were running and I didn’t know where we were going but he grabbed my hand and dragged me down the narrow path in the woods we used to run through, focused just enough to follow the royal blue skies.
There must have been about two and a half minutes left. The blue seeped through the cracks in the trees enough to see the the colors reflecting on his shadow, illuminating the rear view he was absentmindedly checking his hair in. There she was, young enough to see the rubber twisting around her tires and the mirror from where he must have shined it. Then she turned purple, the sky, and faded while he sat waiting for my reaction.
He told me he found it here, dusted over, windows broken in, leather seats torn by bad days, and rear views cracked by trying to forget but remembering in the end. His lip turned, but not smiling, almost scared. “Maybe we could fix it up or something? I mean I just thought that maybe I mean it’s for you. Only if you want it. It’s fine. No it’s stupid.”
Oliver never stopped arguing with himself. He thought that it was silly to fight over something with someone, those kinds of things could ruin relationships.
I still wish I knew what it was about that car. The one with the tires dried over with mud and frozen solid in ice. He said he thought that places like that deserved to be remembered. An old abandoned car deserved to be loved. But that’s the thing about being abandoned. Sometimes things were better off left alone. You can’t fall in love with them. Because they can’t love back. And no matter how many times he goes there, nothing’s going to change the fact that an old car can’t love him like I did.
***

He began to spend every second of every day working there. He tucked a shovel under the bed of the car and any second he had he cut away all the wires, all the filters and batteries and radiators with thin scissors. It must have been dangerous but boys with dark hair and mystery aren’t challenged by that word. He thought it would be a good place to keep things.
“God it’s cold,” he whispered. He grabbed a tartan red and yellow blanket from the hood and wrapped his sweatshirt around me.
All we ever did was sit there sipping on Mountain Dew and picking at the foam that seeped from the seats. It’s like when I was younger. I felt so tired all the time. I just wanted to go, see what was out there. Now I think back and fondly remember the daisy chains I used to know how to make, my father’s laugh, Mama actually smiling.
He used to say that someday we could have something bigger than a car, something big enough for the both of us. He motioned to the ashtray. “You could keep your fifty cent coins, or perfume, or whatever it is you want to have right here.” He pats the hard plastic and looks down. “I mean you could put whatever you want there. Anything small enough.”
He motioned from underneath the blanket, “I found this little compartment here. Look you could keep your dictionaries here and then you could stuff that book you like so much here!
North Carolina has summers that sticks to your palms and drip down at your fingertips. The winters freeze on your legs and frost over your lips. Winter always comes early when the skies turn black. One time it was so cold we had to stay there all night. Locked inside her. His fingernails scraped the ice that spread across the glass in thin wires, scratching his fingernails on the surface until the ice cried, tears running down his hands.
Oliver started to tell me stories about why things were what they were. He said he liked to watch my reactions and my facial expressions. Oliver made me feel so young. Not in the way a middle-aged man takes his wife out to dinner, takes her dancing. In the way someone makes you feel small, like a little girl, without even meaning to.
Apparently the clouds were created by a freak blue paint accident. The white was just where the paint didn’t explode. And the holes in the ceiling, those were from where the stars burned through too hard. They were bullet holes.
“What’s that one right there?” He pointed to a mess of constellations.
“The Big Dipper.”
“Yeah. You know I heard that those tangle of stars dipped down and made those tiny holes just so we could have some light.” He smiled. He thought he was funny.
According to him, this car was an old racecar. It burned up once at the back tailpipe, and they couldn’t get it to stop smoking. He lit his cigarette and whispered, “In the end they decided to give him a nicotine patch.” He chuckled and coughed, watching me. I smiled weakly.
“Ya know, someday I’m going to build you a million cars. I’m going to clear out all the hoods so that you can put whatever you want there. You could put some blankets or flowers or books. It doesn’t really matter ya know. But that’s what I’m going to do. This thing, this old piece of junk.” He patted the metal with his fingertips. “You won’t even remember it.”
He smiled at himself. Oliver always thought he was good with words.
“If you like it a lot. If you want to keep her though, I’ll fix her up for you. I could try and put back all the wires together. I could, yeah that’s it! I’ll do that. I’ll have to fix her up, maybe I can do something about those scratches and the cracks in the rearview. I’m rambling again. Never mind. It’s stupid.”
He nervously tucked a stray hair behind his ear.
I smiled. “Well I want more than a million. How about a billion.”
He frowned. “You’re a pain you know.”
He stopped laughing and traced his finger along the crude carving on the car. Oliver flipped open his pocket knife and he scratched it into the thin leather of the headrest, carving his name, o’s fading into m’s and knife fading into metal.
“What? I mean this way nobody can take it over.” He frowned at the way his l faded into his i.
“The sky’s turning purple. I think it's time to head home.”
Now that I think about it he must have hated me. He must have hated how I talked so little about what he said and so much about the ideas that bounced around in my head.
I smiled, small enough for him to stop trying.
Oliver said it was mine but he couldn’t let the fact go that it was always his. Sometimes people get obsessed with things. Things.
***
Summer of 1982, she caved in. He claimed it wasn’t him. He punched the ceiling a few months back, let the air suck into his chest, stay there. I can’t remember what I was doing. It was something about how I spilled Mountain Dew on the seats, the ones he scrubbed and patched together with his mother’s sewing kit. I just remember his voice, how it shook. “Jesus, Florence. I mean, you couldn’t for once just not mess up something I cared about.”
Somewhere in that moment, the car stopped belonging to me. Sometimes things cave in.  
He stopped walking me home right about then. It was like he didn’t trust me anymore or something. There’s something about mystery. But sometimes you piece together all the clues and watch everything unfold. He was just a boy who did not know right from wrong and let himself fall in love with things. Things always get you back.
Oliver started to notice that he didn’t like the way I wrung my hands when I was thinking or that he didn’t like how I kicked the back of the seat when I was angry.
“You can find your way home, I mean it’s not like I have to walk you look there’s still light, Florence. I can see my feet you can see yours you should be fine.”
I guess he never really did say anything more. When he didn’t come back, I sort of realized myself that idea about running away. It’s so stupid that people think it’s perfect. It’s never love, no not really.
You can’t find just plain yellow cornflowers anymore. Then he called somebody to come pick it up. No he called the dump. The metal wasn’t even worth anything. Then they decided it was too heavy, it wasn’t worth it. Because it’s not often flowers grow out of rusted over tailpipes and lace thin like paper out of orange metal. Somehow even after he picked them for me, pressed the petals in between the cracks of the seats.
I wonder if they all fell through. He had a habit of that. Of punching the walls, the ceilings. He didn’t even tell me. I wonder if maybe when he hit her if the cornflowers fell like ash, pollen exploding in marshmallow clouds.
I wonder if he knew.
Oliver let himself fall for someone who didn’t learn her abc’s until second grade, forgot to keep her elbows off the table, even on special occasions. Why would he let himself believe that I, of all people, was worth it? He didn’t forget much.
“Jesus, Florence. I mean, you couldn’t for once just not mess up something I cared about.” His words stuck still like cement in my ears.
I lay down, my hair seeps into the cracks of the leather, split ends tracing the curve on the seats. My fingers fall along the crooked edges of the roof. I let my hand drop to my side. Royal blue visible just beyond five hundred waterproof band-aids.