Chapter 8

Car shows shine.

Shine like mad.

Lucy saw her shoes in every hubcap, her eyes in every window, her dress in every door.

Show floors spun round in slow carousel circles, flaunting perfectly proportioned, heavily made up, carefully corseted women with teeth almost as white as that Cadillac over by the exit.

Ceilings almost forty feet high echoed and swayed, every gray fabric curtain gently swaying in the musical hum of a million air conditioner vents on high speed. Carpet cushioned sound, even car door slams, and gently accompanied Lucy Ballman and her family around about space age style vehicles in every metallic color under the General Motors sun.

Oh, and the smell... that smell, that new car smell was even better than the smell of turkey and legs and funnel cakes outside the door.

Where did it come from? It was as if these vehicles understood how new things smell like flowers understand color.

It was one of Lucy's favorite things. She relished it. Her own cherished car, 12 years old, still looked new, but the smell had long ago faded.

Smells do that, you know. They fade and then they build up again as shadows of themselves: stinkier, less new, shadows.

Here, in this building full of cars, you could shrug off the consequential and throw yourself into the soft shag rug of a brand new upgrade, with its price, and its shine, and its smile, and its smell.

She breathed in happily, eyes closing, hands resting easily.

Elvis was test driving a car with his mother in the backseat and father checking out the glove box. Lucy's parents, with a grandchild around their shoulders, ducked in and out of pickup trucks like they were closets full of toys, rubbing tread on tires with reaching hands, adjusting rear view mirrors to check reflection. Laney looked for nose hairs and dirty teeth before answering a business phone call about nutritional supplements.

Lucy temporarily had no one to entertain, no one to talk to, no one to walk but herself, and it made her happy. She wandered alone around and through rows of cars, the Barbies smiling down at her from their spinning platforms, and the shiny men in suits flashing fake teeth and buttoned up jackets as they put their hands on their belts and tried to sidle over to her. She left them in her happy wake.

Ahh.

She breathed.

And then she saw him.

SNELLER.

That creep from the newspaper, the sexter, the inappropriate coworker, the stalker, the balding mid-twenties shorty, the half-drunk sportswriter.

He adored her.

She had a restraining order.

Lucy hit the deck, crawling underneath a neon red fender on her hands and knees. She couldn't breathe anymore. Stealthily she slid across an empty back alley between two competing car companies. Finding a plain jane Mercedes with low-key silver doors, she quietly opened the back door on the passenger side and slid in.

Ssssshhhh. She breathed a sigh of relief, closing her eyes, leaning into the luscious leather she'd always before been afraid to touch: so perfect, so precious. What if she messed it up?

She scooted to the edge of the seat, trying not to press her butt cheeks into the leather, grateful for the dark tinted windows. Leaning hard into the door, she ducked her head down near the door pocket and breathed into her knees for a while. Everything. Everything. The door held her up, held her in. Held him out.

She stayed there, breathing, loving the dark quiet alone, loving the smell, loving her hiding place. She leaned into it, and smiled.

And then, BANG.

Someone opened the door, and Lucy toppled out, backside first, landing upside down in a giant pink thud.