1
MY GRANDMOTHER ALWAYS TOLD ME, you make your own luck. As if luck was something that could be baked like a cake or sewn like a shirt. Of course, my cakes could be used as first base down at the ballpark, and my ninth-grade home-ec class voted me “girl most likely to do bodily harm with a sewing machine.” This could explain why I haven’t had much luck lately, of any kind.
Which would you say is worse: being dumped by your husband who then takes up with a twenty-four-year-old cocktail waitress who has a stomach tight enough to bounce quarters off, or sitting in a cubicle that smells of cigar smoke and sweat, listening to a shiny-faced car salesman try to make you a “deal”?
Having recently endured both, I’d have to say it’s something of a draw. The whole sorry business with my husband dragged on longer, but in its own way, the ordeal with the car salesman was just as tedious.
“Now, I know a woman like you is concerned about finding something dependable.” The salesman nodded sagely and gave me a toothy grin. He had a bad comb-over and his deodorant had long since packed up and hitched a ride out of town. “I mean, what good is a great deal on a vehicle if it leaves you in the lurch?”
Left me in the lurch. That’s what Steve did when he walked out. Just calmly packed his bags and said, “I know you don’t want me here if I’m not happy.” As if his leaving was all about his concern for me, and not about his own pathetic midlife crisis.
“You see what I’m saying, Ms. Frame? My only concern is that you leave here today happy.”
There was that word again—happy. At this point in my life, I was beginning to think the whole pursuit of happiness shtick was highly overrated. “I just need something that will get me where I’m going and doesn’t cost more than six thousand dollars.” I twisted the straps of my purse in my hand.
The salesman made a face as if he’d just sucked a lemon. “Six thousand. Now, I don’t know if we’re gonna find much for six thousand.” He leaned toward me, his yellowing teeth looming large in my vision. “Do you have a trade-in?”
I blinked. “A trade-in?”
“Another car? Do you have another car to trade in?”
“Yes. It’s…uh, it’s parked down the street.” The maroon Ford Probe had died at the corner of Anderson and Alameda, smoke spewing from under the hood. An alarming sequence of pings and rattles issued from the engine before it gave a last gasp and simply quit altogether. I had sat there for a long moment, head on the steering wheel, too disgusted to waste tears. Then I’d gathered up my purse and keys and started walking.
Walking is a relative term in Houston in late August. It was more like swimming through the heavy, humid air. Heat radiated up from the pavement, through the soles of my sandals. Sweat pooled in the small of my back and my hair clung damply to my forehead. As I walked, I tried to think of new epithets for Steve, who had driven away from me in a brand new black Lexus, leaving me with the twelve-year-old Ford.
I’d started alphabetically, with addlepated asshole and was up to middle-aged midget-brain when I saw the sign for Easy Motors. That was it. I’d buy a new car. Or at least one that was newer than the recently departed Ford.
The salesman—the nameplate on his desk said his name was Hector—grabbed a form off the corner of the desk and began to write. “So what are you trading in?”
“It’s a 1990 Ford Probe. Maroon.”
“Maroon.” He wrote down this information. “Mileage?”
“One hundred and seventy thousand.”
His frown got a little tighter. “Car that old, that many miles, most I can give you for it is five hundred dollars.”
I blinked. Wasn’t he even going to ask if it ran? I bit my lip, fighting a decidedly inconvenient attack of conscience.
Hector apparently mistook my silence for reluctance. “Six hundred. Most I can do. Take it or leave it.”
I swallowed hard. “Where do I sign?”
I had never bought a car before. My father had purchased the first vehicle I’d driven, an orange Gremlin formerly owned by a dog trainer. Every time it rained, the car smelled of wet poodle. Steve bought the maroon Probe for me for Christmas one year. I’d wanted a blue Mustang, but he had surprised me with the Probe and I thought it would have appeared ungrateful to protest, though I could never look at the car without thinking of dental work.
“All right, then.” Hector pushed back his chair and stood. “I’ll show you what I’ve got in your price range.”
For the next hour, I followed Hector around the lot as he showed me red Volkswagens, yellow Chevies and a limegreen car of indiscernible lineage. “Now darling, this is the perfect car for you,” he said, patting the hood of the lime-green model. “Very sporty.”
I stared at what looked to be an escapee from the bumpercar ride at the carnival. “I could never drive anything that color.”
Hector took out an oversize handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Well, honey, I wouldn’t say in your price range you can afford to be picky. Besides—” he patted the car again “—it’s proven that cars this color are in fewer wrecks. Why do you think they paint fire engines green these days?”
A flash of blue caught my attention. That’s when I saw it. My dream car. “What about that one?” I pointed toward a blue Mustang at the back corner of the lot.
“That one?” Hector rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I forgot about that one.” He straightened. “Sure. I could make you a deal.”
We walked over to the Mustang. It had a dent in one door and tired-looking upholstery. I slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine coughed, then turned over. “Honey, I’d say it’s you.” Hector leaned in the window and grinned.
An hour later, I drove off the lot in the Mustang. I didn’t really care that it was a ninety-six model or that it had a bumper sticker that read Onward Through the Fog. The important thing was that it was blue, the color of the dream car I’d never gotten. I’d taken it as a sign. I was on my own now, calling all the shots. And, by God, I was going to have that blue Mustang—my dream—dents and all.
THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I CONSIDER not having been born with pots of money to be a gross injustice. Just inside the door of the employee lounge at the Central Care Network Clinic where I work is a banner that proclaims: Two Million in Profits and Climbing! Whenever I see this, I feel majorly annoyed. Not only had I not been born with money, I had managed to find a job that guaranteed I wouldn’t be getting my share of that two mil. Next to nurses’ aides and janitors, transcriptionists are at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy.
But hey, I was young and single and had a new car, so what
