Kid knows he can’t afford no Cadillac- car, can’t get
within a shout of a Caddy, but he’s curious, you know? So he goes over to the guy and says, ‘How much does something like that go for? ’ And the guy, he turns off the hose he’s got cause he’s washin the car, you know and he says, ‘Kid, this is your lucky day. Seven hundred and fifty bucks and you drive it away. ’
The cigarette lighter popped out. Staub pulled it free and pressed the coil to the end of his cigarette. He drew in smoke and I saw little tendrils come seeping out between the stitches holding the incision on his neck closed.
The kid, he looks in through the driver’s side window and sees there’s only seventeen thou on the odometer. He says to the guy, ‘Yeah, sure, that’s as funny as a screen door in a submarine. ’ The guy says, ‘No joke, kid, pony up the cash and it’s yours. Hell, I’ll even take a check, you got a honest face. ’ And the kid says . . .
I looked out the window. I had heard the story before, years ago, probably while I was still in junior high. In the version I’d been told the car was a Thunderbird instead of a Caddy, but otherwise everything was the same. The kid says I may only be seventeen but I’m not an idiot, no one sells a car like this, especially one with low mileage, for only seven hundred and fifty bucks. And the guy tells him he’s doing it because the car smells, you can’t get the smell out, he’s tried and tried and nothing will take it out. You see he was on a business trip, a fairly long one, gone for at least . . . . . . a coupla weeks, the driver was saying. He was smiling the way people do when they’re telling a joke that really slays them. And when he comes back, he finds the car in the garage and his wife in the car, she’s been dead practically the whole time he’s been gone. I don’t know if it was suicide or a heart attack or what, but she’s all bloated up and the car, it’s full of that smell and all he wants to do is sell it, you know. He laughed. That’s quite a story, huh? Why wouldn’t he call home? It was my mouth, talking all by itself. My brain was frozen. He’s gone for two weeks on a business trip and he never calls home once to see how his wife’s doing?
Well, the driver said, that’s sorta beside the point, wouldn’t you say? I mean hey, what a bargain that’s the point. Who wouldn’t be tempted? After all, you could always drive the car with the fuckin windows open, right? And it’s basically just a story. Fiction. I thought of it because of the smell in this car. Which is fact.
Silence. And I thought: He’s waiting for me to say something, waiting for me to end this. And I wanted to. I did. Except . . . what then? What would he do then?
He rubbed the ball of his thumb over the button on his shirt, the one reading i rode the bullet at thrill village, laconia. I saw there was dirt under his fingernails. That’s where I was today, he said. Thrill Village. I did some work for a guy and he gave me an all- day pass. My girlfriend was gonna go with me, but she called and said she was sick, she gets these periods that really hurt sometimes, they make her sick as a dog. It’s too bad, but I always think, hey, what’s the alternative? No rag at all, right, and then I’m in trouble, we both are. He yapped, a humorless bark of sound. So I went by myself. No sense wasting an allday pass. You ever been to Thrill Village?
Yes, I said. Once. When I was twelve. Who’d you go with? he asked. You didn’t go alone, did you? Not if you were only twelve.
I hadn’t told him that part, had I? No. He was playing with me, that was all, swatting me idly back and forth. I thought about opening the door and just rolling out into the night, trying to tuck my head into my arms before I hit, only I knew he’d reach over and pull me back before I could get away. And I couldn’t raise my arms, anyway. The best I could do was clutch my hands together.