"Good Advice" by Golden

“Expert” advice is in no short supply these days. Talk show and radio hosts, newspaper columnists, about a billion mindless bloggers, therapists, consultants, politicians, and even ridiculous professional “life coaches,” all hawk their knock-off wisdom like cheap peddlers at a busy flea market. But good advice, well that’s entirely different, a rare and beautiful thing. So when browsing the bin of suggestions at the street bazaar of advice, it’s easy to miss the tarnished silver candelabra buried under the pile of pewter lamps. I myself nearly made the same mistake the other day.

I was hurriedly fixing my motorcycle in the back alley behind our apartment amidst the over-stuffed trash cans rotting in the heat of Washington’s swampy air. To be more precise, I was stripping the heads off weathered, rusty bolts which apparently had atomically fused with the engine block. And despite applying torque from three hundred sixty different angles, I was getting nothing but angry from my efforts, well that and loose metal shavings.

I stood up from my aching haunches, ready to kick the cursed machine over, when from behind me I heard a gentle, softly chiding voice.

“You know what that bike needs?”

I turned, wiping the sweat that pooled in reservoirs above the bristly dams of my eyebrows. I studied the drifter before me, a woman I didn’t recognize, who was loitering in our neighborhood alley with no honest intent that I could see.

“Sorry?”

“You know what your bike needs?” She offered again.

I had a few things in mind, yes, most of them violent. She didn’t wait for my frustrated response.

“My father taught me and my sister all about cars, how to fix them, how to use tools, all that stuff. We used to get so dirty lying under the car with him on the cement, oil dripping all over our faces, getting in our hair. He taught us the secret though, the secret how to fix the car, and how to fix your bike too. You want to know the secret?”

I stalled, not sure if I did. “Uh…”

Here it comes, I thought, the catch, the trick, the strings attached. She was going to ask for money.

“Don’t you want to know the secret?”

“Sure.” I surrendered, feeling the outsides of my pockets for change.

“Love.” She stated matter-of-factly. “Love will fix anything, my father’s car, family, life, everything, your bike too. Got to give it just a little bit of love.”

At that moment she appeared an angel, with a toddler’s round belly, a stained polka-dot shirt and a cigarette, but still an angel. And I had thought her a leper.

“I gotcha!” she pointed, “I melted that frown right off your face.”

I conceded with a laugh. “You did. You did indeed.”

Now that was good advice. Love. Love will fix everything. I shook my head, a little ashamed, but amazed by the simple, sound advice from this vagabond sage.

“I got another secret I want to tell you.”

It must have been my lucky day. I waited.

“You have to ask first.”

“Fine,” I laughed. “What’s the secret.”

“You know where Central Avenue is?” She could barely contain herself.

“Of course!”

I didn’t. But I didn’t want to appear undeserving of her gifted knowledge.

“Well you just go down Central Avenue and you take a left on this street, I forget what it is, and then you take a right by I think it was used to be a Days Inn, no maybe Hilton, it’s a Super 8 now. But you go in there, and you go to the front desk, and you tell them you want a room. You ask them for the very last room on the second floor on the right side…“

“Like the right wing of the hotel?”

“Yeah, I think so, the one that’s on the right side.”

“At the Super 8?”

“Yes. Get that room, the very last one, on the top. Go in through the room, and go back to the balcony and look out. That’s where you will find whatever you looking for.”

“Like what, a junkyard for motorcycles parts?”

“I ain’t telling. I told you the secret. And that’s all I am going to say. Just go get the last room on the right side on the second floor just like I says and you’ll find what you are looking for. That’s it. I ain’t going to tell you no more.”

She was grinning, like she had just told me all but the final numbers to the winning lottery ticket. There was no deceit, no guile that I could sense, only that she was enjoying teasing my curiosity.

“Seriously though, what’s out there?”

She pointed at me one more time in urgent admonition, flicked the cigarette ashes burning down to the filter, and walked off silently.

Then she turned the corner, and disappeared forever.

Days later, I continue to smile when I remember her answer to everything – love. Love indeed. But I still wonder from whence that mysterious stranger came and whither did she go. Was her advice the half-crazed ramblings of a drug addict, or the fairy-tale counsel from a wandering magus? Beyond the matter of actually finding it, I don’t know what lies out on that balcony. A black-market warehouse? My metaphysical “self”? A prostitution sting operation? The doorway to heaven?

Good advice is in short supply these days. But do I take it?