Dead Center by Bill Noel

Author:Bill Noel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enigma House Press

A good chunk of Charleston’s car dealers were west of town on or near Savannah Highway, so that’s where I headed with Charles in the front seat and Heather, along with her guitar that was as ever-present as Charles’s cane. When she got in the car carrying the guitar case she said she wanted it to be as happy with the car they bought as she and Charles would be. I thought she was kidding, although I wouldn’t have bet on it.

Charles’s previous car buying experience had taken place twenty years ago when he bought a used Saab 900 convertible. I knew because the Swedish vehicle was still sitting in his parking lot in a spot it hasn’t moved from in the last five years. As yard or parking lot art, it was attractive, but as transportation it had as good a chance of moving on its own as does the Folly water tower. I wondered who would inherit the Saab after they moved, but didn’t ask; more out of fear it would be bequeathed to the person who was driving them car shopping.

After a back-and-forth discussion between Charles and Heather, they decided they wanted to find something large enough to carry Heather’s worldly belongings and Charles clothes. Charles’s apartment was rented for three more months, so he would have time to come back for his books. Unless they bought an eighteen-wheeler today, he would have to rent a U-Haul to move the collection to Nashville. Heather said she wanted them to get a Toyota because she had a dream last night where she was driving one through a field of sunflowers and a quartet of rabbits were propped up on their hind legs singing “You Are My Sunshine.”

I was proud of myself for not laughing. I said, “Okay.” After all, she was a psychic.

Charles felt he was being ignored and added, “George W. Bush said, ‘More and more of our imports come from overseas.’”

I was beginning to feel I was in that sunflower field. Instead of laughing or crying, I pulled in the parking lot of a Honda dealership. Heather asked me to drive through the used car area so she could see if the car of her dreams was there. It wasn’t and she said to keep going. Charles gazed at four long rows of used vehicles and shook his head.

After the same results at three more dealers, Heather yelled for me to stop. We were in the second row of used cars at the Fred Anderson Toyota of Charleston. She hopped out of the car and made a beeline for a red metallic Toyota Venza crossover, and a middle-aged man wearing a Toyota logoed jacket made a beeline toward Heather.

In the next five minutes, the helpful salesman, who told us his name was Thom, with an h, shared that the three-year-old “almost new” vehicle had thirty-nine thousand “easy” miles, was one owner, accident free, packed with everything Toyota put on a car, and the color was called Barcelona Red.

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