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 did I have to complain about, right? Yeah, right, I thought, as I boarded the elevator heading up to my cubicle in the family-practice section of the clinic the next day. I pasted a fake smile on my face as I entered the elevator. My mother had always told me I should smile even when I didn’t feel like smiling because it would help me to develop the “habit of happiness.” I preferred to think a permanent smile gave people doubts about your sanity, and thus they left you alone.
Family Practice was on the eleventh floor of the steel-and-glass high-rise in the Texas Medical Center complex. At every floor, the elevator doors parted and more people poured in as others exited. I found myself pushed farther and farther toward the rear of the car, until my nose was practically buried in the shellacked updo of an orthopedics receptionist.
I always got nervous when the elevator was this full. What if there was too much weight for the cables? What if it stopped between floors? Would we suffocate? Just last week Mary Joe Wisnewski from pediatrics had been stuck between floors for an hour.
And here I was, packed in like a teenager at dollar-a-car night at the drive-in. Two drug pushers—also known as pharmaceutical salesmen—hemmed me in on either side. I couldn’t even move my arms.
So, of course, I had an itch I needed to scratch. On my butt. I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to ignore the persistent tickle on my right cheek as the elevator ground to a halt to take on still more passengers.
The tickle developed into a pinch. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention as I realized the reason for my posterior disturbance. Some guy had his hand up my dress! He was poking and prodding my cheek like a baker testing dough. Or maybe he was a plastic surgeon who thought I was a likely candidate for a buttocks-lift.
I shifted, trying to move away from him, but in the packed elevator, it was impossible. The invisible groper started working on my other cheek. “Stop that!” I yelped.
My fellow passengers regarded me curiously, and there was a decided leaning away from me. Fury choked me. Where did this pervert get off feeling me up like that? I’d show him.
I shifted my weight to my left leg and swung my right foot back, connecting solidly with the joker’s kneecap. If I’d had more room, I would have aimed higher. As it was, he grunted and let me go. The doors opened and I surged forward, elbowing two old women out of the way as I broke for freedom.
I stood beside a potted palm in the corridor and tried to see into the elevator, to identify the man who’d groped me. But the doors shut before I could make out anyone. Sighing, I adjusted my purse on my shoulder and headed for the stairs to hike up the three floors to Family Practice.
“Phoebe, you’re late.” The office manager, Joan Lee, shoved a stack of patient folders into my hands. “Dr. Patterson is in rare form this morning.” Standing four foot eleven inches in a size-one Jones New York suit, Joan looked like a geisha who’d gotten lost on her way to Wall Street. Her voice