“You don’t have to clean out your car you know.”

“Yes I do.”

He pulled into the do-it-yourself car washing lot and parked by the vacuum machine.

“I just want to vacuum it.”

“Fine. I’ll go smoke a cigarette,” said Donna.

“Can you help me clear out the car first?”

They were in North Oakland, near the Temescal district. The sky was blanketed with dark gray clouds on a winter’s afternoon. It felt as if it were evening, with lighted windows making bright spots along the dark gray street.

“You know my dad’s a biker,” dismissed Donna as she unbuckled her seatbelt and brushed back her long, bleached blond hair.

“You dad doesn’t even ride anymore,” he said as he got out of the car.

“Not since the accident,” she replied as she started taking her cigarettes out. “My ma still rides though.”

He had been going out with Donna for three months, and they were about to take the next step in their relationship: Meeting the parents. Donna told him her parents wanted to meet her new boyfriend, especially since he had passed the probationary period, according to Donna. She stood with her pack of cigarettes, habitually rubbing her right side, right along her ribs again. That’s where she had that long, straight scar, the one that she said she got in a fight, an incident for which she was only willing to provide vague details.

It was just one of those intimate details he had gotten used to in the past few months.

“Help me clear the car out.”

Donna put her cigarettes away. “It’s not even that messy.”

“A lot of clutter has accumulated in the back,” he said as he studied the interior.

Donna started climbing into the back of the car. “My car used to look a lot worse than this.”

“So did my old cars. I don’t want this becoming a rolling sewer like my previous vehicles.”

“Were they really that bad?” called out Donna as she started gathering random papers from the back.

He made his way into the front of the car, looking for things to throw out. “So your mother’s a biker as well?”

“Yeah,” said Donna as she came out of the car and threw away some papers. “You think my dad would marry someone who wasn’t a biker chick?”

“Are they even gonna wanna get into this Prius?”

Donna went into the back seat again. “Hell, my dad’s gonna ask you all kindsa questions about it. My ma will just scoff at it.”

He sat down in the front seat, looking though the arm compartment. “Biker chicks. How come you aren’t a biker chick?”

“Everyone I know who rides all the time has metal parts and fucked up limbs and scars from accidents, or they managed to get themselves killed. That’s why I never bothered getting my own bike. Besides, you already had a biker chick.”

He stepped out of the car with some miscellaneous car clutter. “She was a beamer biker, not a denim and leather Harley rider.”

“Sometimes I think you made her up,” called out Donna from the car.

“Really?”

She popped out of the car again. “A pharmacist and a biker?”

“Beamer biker. It wasn’t like she was selling meth.”

They turned around when an old luxury car drove in, vibrating the ground with thunderous hip hop.

Donna turned back to him. “Well she sounds psycho from what you told me.”

He started looking through his wallet for vacuum money. “Hey, her and her friends are calling me psycho.”

“You are psycho.”

“I’m crazy, I’m not psycho.”

“I’m tellin’ ya’, you’re psycho.”

“I haven’t gone on any shooting sprees or captured people and eaten them. And neither has she.”

“Fine,” scoffed Donna with a wave of her hand.

“Anyways, it’s all just a buncha name calling. My friends call her psycho, her friends call me psycho…”

The thunderous hip hop stopped. Donna turned to the luxury car. “Hey! What happened to the music?”

The driver in the hip hop vehicle just shrugged.

“I’m gonna check under the seats,” said Donna, as she dived back into the car.

He stuck his head through the driver side door. “Whatcha’ lookin’ for? Loose change?”

“Hey, check this out!”

“What?”

Bringing herself out of the car again, Donna held up a small origami frog made out of green paper.

“Did you make this?” asked Donna as she held up the frog, grasping it delicately by one of its legs.

He stood up straight. “No.”

“Where’d it come from?”

He walked around and took the frog. “I thought I had lost this. The biker chick made it.”

Donna shifted around and put a hand on her hip. “Did she make it for you?”

He was still looking at the frog, as if he were an archaeologist who had discovered a rare find. “She used to make these origami animals and leave them in my car for me to find.”

“You never told me that.”

He realized there were a lot of things he never told Donna about the biker girlfriend, even though she figured prominently in their conversations about past relationships.

Donna took out her cigarettes. “You never told me anything nice about her anyways. Sounds like a really cute gesture, making little animals for you to find.”

“I suppose so.”

She lit a cigarette, moving to a downwind position. “So she could be nice. The way you talked about her made her sound evil.”

“The breakup was really bad. That’s probably why I talked about her like that.”

He placed the frog back into the car, placing it on the dashboard. Coming back out of the car, he looked to Donna as cigarette smoke swirled around her hair.

“So tell me,” said Donna, “Did she ever do anything else that was nice?”

“Sure. There are reasons why I went out with her.”

“Gimme another f’rinstance.”

“You want to hear more about her?”

“You only told me the bad stuff.”

“Yeah, but that’s when we were talking about old exes.”

“Tell me something else. How else was she nice?”

He hesitated for a moment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Donna any more about her. But he also knew that when Donna made up her mind about finding something out, she could be very stubborn.

“Well, she used to make homemade ice cream.”

“Ice cream?!” blorted Donna with a look of surprise.

“Yeah. She loved to make ice cream.”

“You had a girlfriend who made you ice cream and you let her go?”

“Sometimes she made me coffee ice cream, which she couldn’t stand, even though she loved coffee and ice cream. She’d make it just for me.”

Donna stubbed out the rest of her cigarette and walked around the car. “Well fuck, tell me where this bitch is and I’ll go out with her!”

“You’d leave me for ice cream?”

“Hell yeah!”

“What if I made you ice cream?”

“Then I’d marry you.”

He became quiet. They had only been going out for three months, and he was quite fond of Donna, and obviously their relationship was progressing since they were going out to meet her parents. But he didn’t want to get caught up in another relationship that wouldn’t work out. He still had too many questions about how they would mesh in the long run, but it was clear she was growing fonder of him.

It would make it easier for him if she didn’t smoke.

She stood right in front of him. “What else?”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, she liked going to art galleries and to see documentaries about weird singers.”

“Hey, I take you to those galleries.”

That much was true. Donna knew everything about the Bay Area art scene. She was one of the few artists he had ever met who made a good living at her work. It was one of the reasons he was so attracted to her.

She started running her hands on his shoulders. “Come on, tell me the good stuff.”

“The good stuff?”

“There’s something you’re leaving out.”

“What? You wanna hear about my sex life with biker chick?”

Donna waved him off. “You don’t have to talk about that part. We’ll discuss it later.”

Shifting on his feet, he was anxious to change the subject. “So, we had this thing, where we’d take turns reading to each other.”

“No shit?”

“One of us would read while the other one cooked.”

Donna started fingering her cigarette pack. He could tell she was anxious to smoke another cigarette. “I thought you said she was a backseat cook.”

“Usually. Sometimes she’d actually leave me be. And I usually did most of the reading.”

“That’s fucking awesome. It sounded like you totally scored a good one.”

“I did score a good one, when I met you at that show.”

She took out a cigarette and stuck it behind her ear. “Oh you smooth talker you.”

“Why do you want to know this stuff?”

“You only ever said bad things about her, about how she was always picking on you, how she was controlling and had a crappy temper, and I was wondering ‘Why did he ever go out with her in the first place?'”

“Yeah, well the frog reminded me of the other stuff.”

Donna stepped up, and put her arms around him. She wrapped herself close and kissed him. “I feel like I know you a lot better now.”

“Because I gave you more information about a relationship that ended with a horrible breakup?”

Donna took her arms back and looked at him. “You still love her?”

He hesitated. “I guess in my own way I still do.”

“You can’t resist the nuts, can you?”

“Obviously. Look who I’m going out with now!”

Donna gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. “You do still love her, don’t you?”

Now he put his arms around her. “All I would ever want from her is to just talk to me. That’s all. Just talk about what happened. If she could do that and we could be amiable with each other, that would make me happy.”

“She’s worth knowing, huh?”

He held her tighter. “What about your boyfriends? Are we gonna talk about them?”

Donna broke from his grasp and took the cigarette from her ear. “Hey, the only ones I really liked are the grease monkeys who fixed my car. I never went out with anyone who knew how to hold up his end of a relationship. Not before you anyways.”

“Likely story. You’re just pining for one of your exes, aren’t you?”

“Yeah right. Good riddance to all of em’.”

He looked right at her. “So why do you like me so much?”

“Because you know how to read and you’re socially functional.” Donna tossed a hand at the Prius. “My mother isn’t gonna wanna get in this thing y’know.”

“She can ride her motorcycle.”

The wind kicked up. “You should vacuum this thing out already,” said Donna. “We should get going.”

He vacuumed out the car thoroughly as Donna stood in the car washing corral and smoked another cigarette. A light rain started up and they got back in the car. Donna took the frog and repositioned it on the dash. “It needs a name.”

“Okay.”

“You wanna name it after her?”

“No. But give it a fiery name.”

“Like Pele’?”

“What?”

“The volcano goddess.”

“That’s very fitting.”

They drove out just as the hip hop music started thundering again. They waved to the hip hoppers as they drove back out onto the street.

“On to Concord!” he declared.

“You think we’ll ever run into her?” she asked.

“Man, you’re really obsessed with her now, aren’t you?”

“I want to meet her.”

“No you don’t. If we see her it’s better to steer clear.”

“Fuck that. If we run into her I’m going to talk to her.”

“Okay, I’ll get in the car and hunker down in that case.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek as he concentrated on the road.

“When we go back I want to stop by my ma’s house,” he said.

“What for?”

“So I can borrow her ice cream maker.”

Donna leaned back and looked right at him. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Are you any good at making ice cream?”

“Yeah. I learned from the best.”