carburettor.
It was that one time when I travelled to the desert with my father. I forget how we got there, probably I’d driven him. He brought along a portable record player. Once out of the car, he opened the hood and hooked the record player to the car’s battery. We were enveloped in dry yellow heat. He carefully balanced the two speakers on either side of the carburettor. He produced a record out of nowhere and put it on. He gingerly lowered the pick-up on the shiny black disk. He grunted as the needle slid across the first few grooves and made a loud scratchy sound. Pavarotti came on with Nessun Dorma. And he completed our party — there was no one else around. It was hot, no shade from the sun. The air was still, I could feel sand on my lips and I was blinking incessantly. “Sand’s going to ruin your stylus,” I said, almost shouting over the music. My father, with his back towards me, shrugged, his jacket releasing a puff of sand. Almost in perfect synch with the last ‘Vincerò’ he yelled: “Not my favourite thing. This aria.” The piece was over and the record player stopped. There was sand under the lid, settling on the stationary record. “Why play this then?” I said, addressing his back. “No choice, really,” he said. I stepped to the rear door of the car, stuck my head in through the open window to check if there’s another record on the back seat. I rummaged through the clatter but found no music. When I resurfaced from the car my father was gone. Not in the car, not under it, not hiding — gone. So were the record player and the speakers. I lowered the hood and dropped it shut with a metallic clunk. “No choice??!! Really!? No choice??!!” I hollered to no one but myself and the desert scrub.
