Asking for Trouble (7 page)

Alyssa stood shivering in a piercing mid-January wind,
looking across a broad stretch of asphalt at the unlovely sight of Burlingame’s
Auto Row, where she and Joe were spending a winter Sunday on what had to rank
high on the list of life’s least-fun experiences: used-car shopping. They were
standing outside, instead of in the nice toasty dealership, because Joe had
just made her walk out.

She hadn’t planned on buying a car, that was for sure. That
had been no part of her new frugal life plan. But once again, life—and
her bossy brother—had forced her hand.

Alec had frowned when he’d felt the jerk and shudder her
little car had given as she’d reversed out of her parking spot in her Santa
Monica apartment complex for the last time, exactly one week earlier.

“What the hell
is
that?” he complained when it happened again as she turned out of the lot.

“Oh,” she said, tensing a bit through the next stoplight, then
relaxing as they got through the moment, “it does that. It’ll be fine once we
get to cruising speed on the freeway. It’s just when it starts out, cold or
something.”

“Cars do not just ‘do’ that. It’s not cold. It has to be in
the sixties out there.”

“You know.” She took a hand off the wheel and waved it
airily. “When the engine’s cold. When it’s starting up.”

“Did you take it to the shop?” he persisted. “What did they
say?”

“Not yet.” She merged onto the freeway, thankfully moving
much faster than usual at all of seven-thirty on a Sunday morning. Alec—and
Joe—had flown down the previous morning. The two most overpriced movers
in America, but when Alec had heard about her plans to tow a U-Haul trailer up
I-5, he’d barely bothered to insist, he’d just told her he’d be showing up. And
even though it galled Alyssa that her brother still thought she was that
helpless, she’d been grateful for his help, and Joe’s, too. Because, she’d
thought privately, she really
had
been
nervous about the trailer thing, and moving vans were expensive.

“Not yet?” Alec reminded her when she didn’t go on. “What do
you mean, not yet?”

“I mean not yet. Because it’s fine now, see?” Which it was,
now that they were doing 65. And besides, she hadn’t wanted to hear what the
mechanic would say. Anyway, all cars got quirks when they got old, didn’t they?
Just like people.

Two hours later, though, after a delay for some road
construction that had had the car jerking again, Alec told her, “Pull into the
rest stop up there.”

“Men,” she sighed, putting on her blinker so Joe, following
in the truck, could see. “You should have gone before we left the house.”

Alec wasn’t listening. As soon as she’d pulled into a spot in
front of the restrooms, he was out of the car and motioning to Joe, just jumping
down from the cab of the truck.

“You know cars a lot better than I do,” Alec told him. “Come
drive this, tell me what you think.”

Joe raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment, just held out a
broad palm for the keys, which Alyssa surrendered reluctantly. He squeezed
himself into the driver’s seat, looking much too big for her tiny subcompact, backed
out with another jerk that had Alyssa wincing, and did a circuit of the lot
before pulling back into the same spot.

He got out and slammed the door, handed the keys back to
Alyssa. “It’s your transmission. Pretty obvious. Didn’t the shop tell you
that?”

She sighed. “I didn’t take it in yet. It’s just got a couple
hiccups. You guys need to
relax.”

“It’s not a hiccup when you’re merging onto the freeway, and
then all of a sudden you’re not,” Joe said. “It’s an accident. How long has
that been happening, that rough shift?”

“I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “Before Christmas,
anyway. Maybe a month?”

“A
month?”

“I had a lot going on,” she defended herself. Like losing
her job, and looking for a new one, and interviewing in San Francisco, and
getting ready to move to a brand-new city, which had involved a drastic
downsizing in her life. You could call that a lot going on.

“Think we can make it?” Alec asked Joe. “Or buy a car right
here, do you think?”

“I can’t buy a car right here,” Alyssa protested. “I can’t afford
a new car. OK, maybe there’s something wrong. If there is, I’ll get it fixed.
Happy?”

“A new transmission’s going to run you a couple thousand,”
Joe said. “More than it’s worth.” He eyed her little yellow car with a cynical
eye that made Alyssa want to give it a reassuring pat.

“We don’t even know that it needs one,” she said.

“True,” Joe said. “Not until they run the codes. We could
try having them flush the fluids, see if that helps. When was the last time you
had them checked? Your fluids?”

“I
don’t know. How
would I know that?”

“You don’t keep a record in your owner’s manual?”

“Does anybody really do that? Anybody but the seriously
anally retentive?”

He smiled a little. “I do.”

“Annnddd . . . my point’s made. Bet Alec doesn’t.”

“Well, no, but I have a Mercedes mechanic making some pretty
good boat payments on my dime,” Alec said. “I let him keep a record.”

“Sure you do. You’ve got people for that.”

Joe focused on the matter at hand. “We’ll take it to a shop.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, did a quick search. “Another hour, looks
like. Should be all right that far on the freeway, keep the speed even. No hard
braking if you can help it, no hard accelerating, keep it in the same gear.
We’ll get the codes run, get the fluid changed, see where we are.”

They’d made it to San Francisco a bit later than they’d
intended, but they’d made it. And after that, Alyssa really started getting
bossed around, because Rae came over to help with the move-in.

Well, “help” might be the wrong word. She actually just
plain took over. Starting with going out to buy new shelf paper to line
Alyssa’s dresser drawers, and moving on to unpacking all her boxes.

“I can do it tomorrow,” Alyssa had said in a futile bid for
independence. “If you’ll just help me get the sheets on the bed and my bathroom
stuff unpacked, I’ve got plenty of time for the rest. I don’t start work for
another week.”

“You don’t want to spend days stumbling over boxes,” Rae
said. “We’ll do it now. It’s just one room.” She looked around the large but otherwise
completely unimpressive bedroom, the off-white walls with a scuff here and
there, the uninspiring gray carpeting, clearly chosen to hide wear but losing
the battle, the stiff, ugly beige drapes across an aluminum-framed window with
a view of the apartment house across the street. “It’ll look a lot better when
we have it all set up,” she said, which made Alec, humping two boxes of books
through the door, give a dubious snort. “We’ll get you unpacked, and the guys
can take the empty boxes back with the truck, get them out of here. And I’ll
bet Joe can hang those for you, too,” she added as he came in with an armload
of framed pictures, the only ones Alyssa had kept, wrapped in a moving blanket,
and set them on the bare mattress.

“Joe doesn’t have to hang my pictures,” Alyssa tried to
protest, but it was like arguing with the tide.

“Sure I do,” Joe said. “If Rae says I have to.” He bowed his
head in mock servitude. “Just have to go home and grab my tools.”

“Need any help?” Alyssa’s new roommate Sherry had come to
lean against the doorway, which made the room seriously crowded. A curly-haired,
petite brunette, Sherry had a personality that belied her small stature, and Alyssa
had known almost as soon as Sherry had opened the door to her on the fourth day
of her so-far-disastrous housing hunt that they were Meant to Be. Although the
way Sherry was looking at Joe right now was giving her some second thoughts.

“Want a ride?” Sherry asked Joe. “I’m free.”

“Sure,” he said, and Alyssa scowled. “Soon as we finish
unloading.”

“What’s this?” Rae asked, holding up a threadbare item from
the box she was emptying into Alyssa’s second dresser drawer. “You can’t mean
to keep it. It’s a rag.”

Alyssa whipped it out of her hand, stuffed it in the drawer.
“Just something I like.”

She dared a quick look at Joe’s face, saw him looking back.
If Joe ever looked startled, he was looking startled now, and she knew he’d
recognized it, even with the white lettering peeled away in spots.
Eielson AFB.
The shirt she’d worn until
she’d worn holes in it. The shirt she had never been able to throw away,
because it would have felt like throwing away Joe.

“Maybe you wouldn’t mind looking at the dripping faucet in my
bathtub, too,” Sherry suggested to Joe, oblivious to the moment. “If you’re
handy, and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. I’d really appreciate it. I’ve
told the management company twice, but they don’t seem too eager to hop on it.
And it’s so annoying when you’re lying there in the tub, you know?” She gave
him a smile that had Alyssa seriously reconsidering her housing decision.
“Listening to that drip-drip-drip, just when you’re getting all warm and
relaxed.”

“I should be able to fix that for you,” Joe said, and he
looked, Alyssa thought irritably, like he was all set to help Sherry relax,
too. He wasn’t offering to help
her
relax.
He was just nagging her about her car, exactly like Alec.

“Next weekend, Liss,” Alec had said when they’d gone out for
well-deserved pizza and beer after the move, including Sherry, because Alyssa
hadn’t exactly been able to get out of inviting her, “I’m taking you to buy a
new car. I’d do it this week, but I’ve got too much going on. And if you can’t
afford it,” he went on over her protest, “I’ll buy it. You heard what the man
said. A new transmission, or a new car. And that car isn’t worth putting a new
transmission into, would you say, Joe?”

“No,” Joe said. “You need a new car.”

“All right,” Alyssa agreed, her heart sinking at the thought
of the hit to her already-stretched budget. “But I’ll buy my own car, thank you
very much.”

“Call it a Christmas present,” Alec coaxed. “From Desiree
and me.”

“Wow,” Sherry said. “Want to buy me a new car too?”

Alyssa ignored her. “No. Thank you, I guess, but no. You’re
bad enough now, Alec. If you buy my new car, you’ll think you can tell me how
to drive it. You’ll be asking me if I got the oil changed. You
already
ask me if I’ve had the oil
changed. But if you buy my car, you’ll think you have the
right
to ask, and what’s worse,
I’ll
feel like you have the right to ask. Forget that. If I wanted a guy to boss
me around, I’d get married.”

“Ha,” Alec said. “Trust me, that’s not what happens when you
get married.”

“She’s right,” Rae said. “It’s better for her to buy her own
car. As long as you’re not destitute, it’s better to be independent. But
somebody should go with you, Alyssa. Car shopping works a whole lot better with
two people. Not Alec, because he’s not a good enough negotiator. You’re not,”
she went on as he opened his mouth to object. “You either get impatient and pay
the money, or you get impatient and fire the person, or you walk out. I should
go.”

“Or me,” Joe put in.

“Hmm.” Rae eyed him speculatively. “Yeah. Even better.
Because I
am
a good negotiator, but
you know cars, and the car-dealership business has to be the last bastion of 1950s-style
male chauvinism in America. I could probably get the same deal you could, but
it would take me a whole lot longer.”

“I’ll bet you
are
pretty
handy to have along,” Sherry said to Joe. “I’ll bet they take one look at you
and drop the price.”

“Joe doesn’t want to take me car shopping,” Alyssa said,
having some more second thoughts about her choice of roommates. The apartment
was cheap, but the price was looking way too high. She’d always known Joe dated
other women, and it had always hurt. She didn’t need it shoved in her face. “He
already spent his whole weekend moving me. He’s supposed to spend next weekend used-car
shopping with me? Maybe Joe’s got a life.”

“You got a life, Joe?” Alec asked him.

“Nope.”

So here they were, one week later, at their fourth
dealership of the day, having just done their third walk-out, and Alyssa was getting
more than grouchy.
 

“Is this about which car?” she asked Joe, wrapping her arms
around herself for warmth. “I could have told you which one I wanted without
coming all the way out here. The dark-blue one.”

“We can get a better deal on the other one,” he said. “Only
got ten thousand more miles on the clock, a year older, and it’s sat on the lot
for three months, which means they want to get rid of it that much more.”

“It’s
beige,”
she
complained. “Inside and outside.”

“I think if you look at the sheet,” he said, a smile
threatening, “you’ll find that it’s gold, with cloth upholstery in—” He
looked down at the printed list of specifications he held in his hand. “Winter
wheat.”

“Winter wheat my—foot. I know beige when I see it. And
I am not driving a beige car. I’m not poor enough yet to have to drive a beige
car.”
 

“All right. But I’m warning you, we’ll be walking out
another time.”

And they did, but Joe ended up with a deal that the salesman
complained his manager had barely approved.

“Good thing Ford’s paying you to keep the doors open, then,”
Joe said calmly, which made the salesman’s relentless good humor slip for a
moment. And then Joe negotiated her trade-in, and refused to allow the finance
guy to even go into his spiel for undercoating and “stain protection,” which
Alyssa appreciated even more, because she was hungry and tired and ready to be
done.

And at the end of it, she had a new car, and it wasn’t even beige.