What Makes a Snowbaroo

Chapter Seven - The Silver Secret

Heck of a revelation in that last one, am I right? Not really, though. After Nathan's whole weird obsession with Alex, it seemed abundantly clear that either Nate was a madman, or he was trying to get me to ask Alex out or something. Either way, as the nervousness of being displaced in time wore off, Nathan got chillier, more distant. Working with a bunch of introverts, among which I probably counted one, you didn't really notice. To be honest, Alex was the only extrovert we had around, except for Fran. And that was the other thing; Fran's Outrun was around, but Fran himself was always going somewhere and doing something. Restless soul, or else an overactive mind. His storm-busting 2003 Outrun was still there every so often, since the thing needed too much TLC to get fixed all in one day, especially as the winter ground to a close and spring brought in a new round of Snowbaroos in need of a service.

No one really worried about it, because Ben was a natural at keeping us sales folks in line, just as well as he could with the service department. In general, I liked to think that we didn't need telling twice; Alex was competitive enough to stalk the lot for prospects, Freddy was in his own lane, and I was the young hopeful looking to prove himself. Together, we'd sewn up a total of three deals in the previous two weeks, moving a pre-owned TRX, Outrun, and Crossback off the lot with relative ease. With Nathan joining the ranks, he seemed to do well at bringing in a new demographic for us. I won't say that it wasn't annoying though...

"That's the tenth young woman that Nathan has been escorting around the premises," Frederick noted, leaning over his desk so that he could look out the showroom glass and into the lot beyond. With anyone but the Three Geniuses and Freddy, you'd have expected the number to be an exaggeration.

"He's popular with the old ladies, too." Sidling up to my desk, Alex finished up the remark with an equally wry facial expression. I was just about to say something in response to Frederick, which in that moment I proceeded to forget, given Alex's second conversation point.

"I have to step out for a little while, guys. I've got a car in the shop, and I just got a call that it's all set." She drooped her shoulders a bit as she implanted her hands into the edge of my elf-sized desk – it used to be a brochure table – and made her eyes catch between spritely and severe, in the same way that Nathan could dilate the tonality of his between grey and blue. I knew it was all mental, but that's how it seemed.

Freddy glanced up and gave her a serious nod as he did so. As he rotated back around to put the finishing line on an unknown piece of writing, I could feel myself hang up. Hang up in the sense of my mind, due to the relatively strong pull to want to see what this was all about. Either you had a Snowbaroo and got Wil, Orv, and Isaac to have a peek at it, or else you were driving the automobile of a rival and wanted to cover it up. Or, you didn't trust our mechanics to work on other manufacturers' cars after Isaac detonated the engine of George's diesel Dodge RAM "accidentally." 

"Alex, it's not your Decent, is it?" My question was a seek, probably even a punt, to get out of the dealership and tag along with Alex. Between the inexplicable interest I now had in her, albeit as a hopeless crush who I once described as being a totally platonic and even surrogated familial tie – in my head, not in reality, of course – which I frankly admit made no sense at all, and this whole thing with Nathan being stone cold except to the ladies, I was ready to get out.

As quick on her feet mentally as she surely was out on that field that Nathan and Isaac had me out on in the last episode, Alex calculated what my insinuation was. "Project car of mine; it's my first car I ever bought, and I figured that I'd do something with it to help my parents out. My dad let me keep it in his garage for way too long by now, so I wanted to help free up space for him."

"Is that the sedan you had a while ago? The silver one with California plates?" Freddy had shifted in his office chair once more, fixing Alex with inquisitive flavor. Given that Frederick and Alex had started at Dark Dimension Snowbaroo around the same time, and much earlier than me, it was natural that some history would have been shared with Freddy that hadn't found its way to me.