American Muscle

Monday, the next day, I didn't even consider waking up for school. I was a free man, as far as I cared. I woke up in my own bed, took a shower for the first time since my milk shower on Saturday, and finally put on some clothes that advertised overpriced trendy teen clothing stores instead of a gasoline company. I felt free, and born anew. A new day, a new week. Seven new days with infinite possibilities and opportunities to be attacked killers and hounded by federal agencies.

Amy maintained that she needed to attend her morning classes, so that gave me a few hours before she'd be available for mischief. I only had one thing on my agenda today: get a car.

I'd lately been noticing a certain car with a "For Sale" sign on the windshield parked in the lawn of a house a few neighborhoods over. After I ate whatever I could find in the kitchen that didn't require milk poured over it, I went back up to my room and researched a few car-buying tips online. I wasn't sure the year of the car I'd seen, or the mileage, so I memorized the private party sale value of three different yearly models and with three different landmarks for mileage. I called my bank and asked what the fee was for certified checks; $1.75. I figured I could manage that.

After I'd gotten all that planned, I checked local auto sale listings online to make sure I wasn't missing out on a much better offering a few blocks down the road. I didn't find anything I was interested in, nothing that suited my youthful charm as much as this one.

All that done, I spun my desk chair around and flipped on the small TV in my room and realized how long it'd been since I'd watched any television. Surprisingly, there was no explosive coverage of anything I'd done that weekend on the 24 hour news channels. Nothing about the rampaging teen who trashed a grocery store, hunting for milk like Popeye after spinach. Nothing about the dead cop and the dead fake cop. Nothing about the FBI, or the kid who picks up a gun for the first time in his life and is already an expert at them. Maybe I missed all that coverage on Sunday, and by now it was old news. Or maybe the impact of my life's events don't weigh as much on the global consciousness as most teenagers expect they should.

When Amy left school, I called her and asked her to meet me at the house with the car for sale, then I started walking. For all the walking I'd been doing lately, I thought maybe I didn't even need a car; I could be like the people in ancient times who walked everywhere, before horses or combustion engines were all the rage. Amy was already there when I arrived, sitting in her dad's car parked on the street. She got out when I came up, and we both took a good look over the car for sale parked on the lawn.

It was a white 1998 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. A two-door sports car, it had a long angled hood with curves and lines that made it look like some kind of angry beast. Over in the driveway was an older-looking gray Trans Am, probably mid-1970s. Perhaps the owner traded up for an older model. It had an emblem on the back for theFirebird & Trans Am Club of America.

"It looks fast," Amy said, looking at the white car.
"Should be, it's a V-8," I said, returning to read the list of features printed on a sheet of paper taped to the driver's window. She stepped over to read it as well.

"If I ever get in any more low-speed chases, this would be good for it," I said to nobody in particular.

"How do you know it's a '98?", she asked, "It doesn't say the year on here anywhere. Do they expect you to know by sight?"
"Probably," I said, reading about the factory CD system and engine improvements, "I can tell from the VIN number."
She squinted her eyes, "You what?" She bent down and looked at the tiny digits pressed into a metal plate at the base of the windshield and front of the dash.

"It doesn't say the year in there," she said.
I leaned in again, "Yes it does, right there," I said, pointing at the long series of digits. "The tenth character, 'W', that means it's a 1998."
"Double-you? How in the world does that mean 1998?"
"It just does, I thought everybody knows that."
"That W, in the tenth letter of a big long number that nobody pays attention to at all, ever, means 1998?"
"Yes."
"Well they don't."
I shrugged.

The front door of the house opened slowly. It was a one-storey house, dark brown bricks. An older guy stepped out of the door a few feet and asked out loud, "You interested in it?"
I looked up, over the car at him and hollered, "Yeah, you still selling it?"
The man tucked his hands in his pockets and nodded slowly, "Yep, my son is, anyway." He looked around at the trees for a moment, then wandered over toward us.

"It's a nice car," he said.
"Sure looks it," I said, making a show of looking it over. There were slight signs of a dent on the rear bumper, but nothing drastic. It had a solid T-top, two glass sections of the roof could be removed and stowed in the trunk if you wanted the wind in your hair, and didn't mind the fact thatthere'd still be a metal beam going through the opening.

"This mileage is right?" I asked, pointing at the sheet in the window that boasted just over 28,000 miles.
"It was when he printed that up last month, might be a few more by now, but not by much," the man said.
"And what's the asking price?" I asked.

The man looked at me, hesitating and letting worn gears grind in his mind. "Ehh," he started, "you mind if I ask how old you are?"
"Me? I'm 19," I said. I turned to Amy, "This is my sister, she's 16. We just moved in here last month from Detroit and I've been having a heck of a time finding something that's not a Mitsubishi or a Hyundai or anything."

He nodded, clearly a patron of American muscle.

"Well," he started, "he's asking ninety-six for it. He's starting school up at Brown and he wants something better for the climate and for drives up and back and such, and his payments for this are through the roof, still. Book money, he says."
Uh huh. Whatever.
"And if I can pay cash, today -- no loans or liens to deal with -- how about eighty-nine? That's all I could get for my rusted-outGTO I just sold." Amy looked at me, then rolled her eyes and shook her head slowly.
"I guess he could live with that," the man said after a few scratches on his chin. "He'll just be excited to sell it. Not much market for American-mades around here anymore, as you said."
"Great," I said, "how about this, we can take it on a test-drive over to my bank just up the road, and so long as the engine doesn't fall out on the way there I'll have the teller cut you a certified check. You have the title signed?"
He stuck his hands back in his pockets and said, "Yep, he left the title and signed it, I can fetch it when we get back."

And off we went. Amy stayed at the house, as collateral I suppose, and I drove the Trans Am with Mr. Whoever over to the closest branch of my bank, making small talk about how I liked living in Detroit and other lies. The car drove pretty smooth, but I could feel the power of the engine transferring through the pedal. At red lights I toyed around with the seat controls and radio to make sure everything worked fine enough. The seats were leather and a bit worn, but not too bad. All around it was a nice improvement from the Civic, even when it wasn't smashed into a police car.

We got to the bank and we both got out of the car and went in. I asked the teller to issue a certified check for $8,900 made out to the old guy, whose name I had to ask for awkwardly right there. I had to fill out a withdrawal slip to certify the check, and I could feel the heft of the money as it was sucked from my account. This was the most I'd ever spent on anything, and despite the fact that after the interest I'd earn on my full balance it'd still be greater than it was before this, it still hurt. I sucked it up and handed the check over to the smiling man, and we drove back to his house where he went inside and brought out a manila envelope with the title to the car, signed by the owner to initiate private transfer. All I'd have to do is sign it myself and take it to theDMV and they'd register the car to me and re-issue the title to me. Too bad I probably wouldn't do that. At least not until the possibility that I might have to crash the car into a person abandon it in the woods has decreased.

We shoot hands, then Amy and I left in our own cars. Her in her dad's Oldsmobile, me in a car I'd just bought without any parental help. The man was standing in the doorway looking at the check in his hands as I pulled away.

Amy dropped her car off at home, then hopped in mine, and we drove off with no destination. For a moment, I almost felt like a kid again.

"It's nice," Amy said, rubbing the instrument panel.
"Glad you like it," I said.
"What was with all that junk about being your sister and living in Detroit and having a GTO?"
"I dunno, really," I said, squeezing the steering wheel and trying to get a feel for the car's handling, "he's obviously into Pontiacs, so he's probably into American cars so I gave him a story he'd like so he'd feel more comfortable selling a car to a 17 year old who has car-buying money to throw around."
"You should be in sales."
"Maybe when this is all over," I said.

We drove past a Dairy Queen, they were just opening for the first time now that the cold season was ending. "You want an ice cream?" Amy asked.

"I've been having trouble with dairy, lately," I said, feeling my stomach climb up. She laughed, figuring I was joking.
"Well we should do something. When you do something big like a buy a car, you're supposed to go get ice cream or something self-rewarding like that."
I thought for a second, "Chinese food?"
"That's pretty rewarding."

She began looking around the car again. At the strip of probably-illegal tinting on the windshield to match the probably-illegal tinting on the windows, at the center console and in the glove box, then turned around. "Not much of a back seat," she said, "doubt two people could fit back there."

I kept driving, trying not to infer anything from that statement.