DATSUN ’75 280Z, Runs/looks good, inside a little funky.
$3500.
The man liked the weight of the hood, the solid way it latched into
place. Old as it was, this car was fast, too. He would bet on it.
He lowered himself into the driver’s seat, put his hands on
the steering wheel, and fiddled with the smooth, black knob of the
shift—let his mind work through the gears until he could almost
feel the G-force plaster him to the seat.
He’d barely made drinking age when the Zs first came out—same
age as the girl who had placed the ad, he’d guess. He’d
seen his first one just as he’d emerged from a Seven-Eleven
with a six-pack. Heard the purring rumble of its approach and then
froze on the spot as it accelerated off the green light, sleek as
a jungle cat. Vowed then and there to own one someday.
He hauled himself out and stood looking down at the girl. “Tell
you what,” he said. “I’ll give you Two K even. Cash.”
She shook her head. “You’re kidding, right? Two thousand?
This is a collector’s item.” She avoided looking up and
instead gazed past him towards the freeway.
“Gotta be cherry to be considered a classic. It’d take
a lot of work to restore.” He flicked a rip in the seat and
gestured towards a brown stain in the passenger’s seat. “And
that mess there...”
The girl pushed the strands of hair off her face and frowned. “Except
for that, it’s in great shape,” she said. “But maybe
you’re not the right person to buy this car anyways.”
“Come again?”
“First of all, do you have a garage? Or would she have to spend
evenings out on the street?”
“She?”
“Lulu. That’s her name.”
“She doesn’t look like a Lulu.”
“You didn’t answer the question about the garage.”
“Yes,” said the man. “I’ve got a garage.”
“You smoke?”
The man patted the bulge in his shirt pocket.
“That’s bad. What about drinking and driving?”
“Look. This isn’t an adoption. I don’t need an
inquisition just to buy a goddamned car. Here’s how it usually
works: I give you money. You give me car. I drive off into sunset.”
The girl chewed one of her nails. “Most people appreciate buying
a car from someone who cares about its welfare. It’s not exactly
easy for me to part with it after all we’ve been through.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Oh, stuff.”
“I’m needing a bit more info, here. If it’s so
special, why are you selling it?”
He walked around the car, checking the tires. The girl shadowed him,
hands in pockets. “I need the cash,” she said. “Things
are a bit tight right now. I can’t take care of her like she
deserves.”
The man’s gaze tracked from the Z’s aerodynamic front
end to the wisp of a girl hunched inside an oversized sweatshirt.
“Don’t take this personally, but you don’t seem
like the Z type. How long did you say you’ve had it?”
“It used to belong to my boyfriend Kip,” she said.
“Yeah? And where’s Kip now?”
“With Stacy.”
“So Kip dumped you for Stacy and gave you the car out of guilt?”
“That’s a nasty way to put it. He didn’t dump
me per se. It was kinda sorta mutual.”
“Listen. It’s never anything like mutual. There’s
always a dumper and a dumpee. I ought to know.”
“Which one were you?”
“Is this on your questionnaire too?”
The girl shrugged. “No. But it could be a factor. I don’t
want to sell Lulu to someone who’s a habitual dumper. She doesn’t
deserve that.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what kind of gas I’d
use?” The man ran a critical finger across a knick on the hood.
For the most part, the car was acceptable—except for the big
ugly stain in the passenger seat. It could only be blood, and that
he didn’t like.
“So what’s the story there?” said the man. “Someone
didn’t die, did they? Was it an accident? Or maybe a shooting?
That’s soaked in pretty good.”
The girl peered in the window at the spot. “No, nothing like
that,” she said. “You can replace the seat. I figured
whoever bought her would probably want to do that. Or get one of those
seat covers. I saw some real cute ones advertised in the paper.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“Does it matter? It’s kind of personal.”
“Yes, it matters. I don’t want somebody’s ghost
trailing me down the highway.”
“I had a baby in it,” said the girl. “We got stuck
in traffic and didn’t make it to the hospital.”
The man whirled to re-examine the spot. “That’s not possible,”
he said.
“That’s what I would have thought,” said the girl.
“I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.”
He tried to picture the scene: the girl lying across the bucket seats,
threaded between the gear shift and the steering wheel. “No
way there’s enough room for that,” he said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“How, then? Show me.”
“What are you, some kind of pervert?”
“You want to sell the car, don’t you? Show me. I don’t
believe you.”
The girl hesitated. Finally, she sauntered to the passenger’s
side. “OK, mister. You want to know how it works? Check this
out.” Settling into the passenger’s seat, she braced her
tennis shoes against the glove compartment, pushed back into the seat,
closed her eyes and started panting, her breaths increasing in intensity
until they merged into a long, dry scream. She stopped, her face gleaming
with tears and sweat. Her hands clutched the air between her legs
where the baby would emerge.
She lowered her feet and fixed her defiant sea-grey eyes on his.
“So what is it, mister?” she said. “You gonna buy
this car, or what?”
Linda Saldaña manages a group of technical writers
for a software company. When she needs a break from worrying about
nonfiction, she writes short stories. Her work has appeared in Bust
Out Stories, Convolvulus, Roman Candles, and Pacific Sun.
