Monday 06:39 PM
"I'm Joy," she said, put one black leather booted foot on the running board, and reached out across the roof to shake my hand.
"The name's Bond, James Bond," I quipped stupidly, taking her hand.
She didn't care, didn't laugh, didn't even break character. She had a firm grip for her small hands.
We climbed inside, and I started the truck and pulled away.
"I'm not really Bond," I said bashfully, feeling the need to explain.
"No shit." She replied.
"I'm Nick Adams."
She finally broke.
"Nice to meet you, Nick, and thank you for doing this. I'm bummed about Josh. He was good help, a nice guy too. He hooked me up with the food. That could be a problem," she said, leaning closer to me for a second or two as I shifted gears.
"I eat a lot more than you would think."
I glanced over, hoping to make eye contact, but she stared between my feet at the clutch pedal and the tachometer on the dash.
"These babies are sweet, fucking tractor, though." She murmured.
"He might still give you free food." I offered.
She shrugged, folded her arms, and went back to her icy stare straight through the dirty windshield.
"Never know."
I drove her to the nearly deserted parking deck and pulled in next to her Jeep.
"You work here?" she sounded a slight bit surprised.
"Not anymore."
"You want to work with me?"
"Sure."
"Wait a second."
She smiled, opened the door, and jumped out. After starting her Jeep, she returned with a business card, Betty Boop embossed, holding a set of keys on her extended finger. Betty's Recovery was in bold black with her name underneath and a phone number.
"Call me in the morning. I'm knocking off early tonight."
"What time?"
"About 9."
"Good. Is this really what you do?"
She smiled again; her cheeks spread wide this time as if she were about to laugh.
"Repo Cars? Yes."
"Good."
"Know what? I'll call you," she said. Send me your number."
I did. And I followed her green Jeep down the freeway in light traffic, but as usual, she lost me. Things were looking up. I had only been out of work for one day, and I had a line on a new short-term career and a full stomach, and the bonus feeling that it would be a productive night of writing. I stopped at the package store and splurged on a wooden box of Warsteiner dark. When I got home, I opened it directly, lit several candles, and blew up my air mattress. I drank and wrote until early morning, then fell asleep with my clothes on.
TUESDAY 5:30 AM
The blaring alarm still set from my previous job woke me early the following day. I pissed, showered, and went back to sleep, waiting for nine am. I ate and then paced in my underwear, carrying the phone until it was time to call. I began to think about my motives. It was not all about money. I had not thought of the money yet. I was after the girl. Damnit, it WAS about the girl. What the fuck was this? No wonder I was a nervous wreck.
Tuesday 9:00 AM
I phoned, and she answered on the first ring.
"I was hoping you'd call."
"Oh yeah?"
Yeah, I was serious about you working with me."
"Oh yeah?"
"Meet me at Joe Muggs on Busby. Do you know where that is?"
"Yeah," I said confidently, " I know right where it is. Give me twenty minutes."
"Okay, see you inside."
She hung up before I could say anything else.
I dressed and drove over, speeding a little. She was sitting inside at a pub table when I got there, her back against the glass wall. I could see the back of her head. She smiled and winked at me when she saw my face. Her eyes sparkled, and she had on a little more make-up than the previous evening. Dressed in black fatigue-looking pants and polished black lace-up boots, a tight-fitting light gray v-necked tee shirt rounded out the ensemble. She looked neat in a street-tough video game sort of way. A girl I would not ordinarily approach but would love to bend over a chair. Looking at her made me feel both old and yet immature at the same time. And truth be told, it made me feel pretty damn awesome to be seen with her. There was a life to her eyes that I thought, that I needed, like a drug.
Looking at her was addictive.
"You made it," she said, looking at the chrome watch on her wrist, "in good time too."
I sat down while she drank her coffee and explained the job.
"Repo isn't that difficult, well," she looked into her cup, "once you get over the guilt."
"Guilt?"
"Yeah," she answered, snapping out of her gaze, "but I try not to take any of the hard-luck cases. Still, you never know these days. So many people buy cars way out of their price range. Typically I stay away from minivans and station wagons unless they are like Benz's."
"So, who is Betty?"
"That's me."
She looked pleased that I had looked at her card.
"I thought your name was Joy."
"It is. Betty is a nickname. You know Betty Boop, a Betty, like a pretty girl."
"Do you really need help doing this?"
"Oh yes, absolutely. Josh used to help me. You know the guy at Mac's. He was my roommate for over a year. He got his ass kicked a couple of months ago and decided he would rather be a server."
"Can't say that I blame him."
"I guess not, but he has been a total asshole to me ever since. He was always too soft for this thing, but he is a huge guy and intimidating in the right light. The problem was he couldn't keep his mouth shut. A few words from him, and no one is intimidated any longer. I do feel bad that he got hurt."
She talked as if we were old friends while she gulped her steaming ash-tray-smelling coffee. I wondered how she didn't burn her tongue. I wondered how her tongue would feel. Her voice was soft but with an odd, decidedly neutral accent that did not match her looks. She explained how she worked her repossession lists, storing the vehicles in an old warehouse garage she leased. She tore off a page from a computer printout and handed it to me. It was a list of cars, the loan companies they belonged to, and the last known address of the person or persons who had the car. There were stars in purple ink next to several of them.
"What's this?"
"I put stars next to the ones I've located. Most of these are pretty good, between $500 and $1000, and they are basically in the same area.
"But?" I asked, sensing the ominous tone in her voice.
She smiled cutely and leaned forward, making sure she had eye contact with me.
"But they are all tough scores."
"Okay."
"Well, okay. I want you to ride with me for a couple of days and drive my Jeep to pick me up. I've got a couple of friends who help out, and the better shape the car is in, the faster they pay me. That's one reason I leased the warehouse, you know, so I could store the cars and trickle them out so I'd always have income. It also lets me see if repairs are worth the money before turning them in. It's probably not the squeakiest thing, but what they don't know won't hurt them. Right?"
"Right."
"Let's go," she said, standing to leave, flipping three dollars on the table. She told me not to worry about my car that she had an agreement with the manager and frequently used the coffee shop as a switching lot, one of several she had staked out over the city.
TUESDAY 7:08 AM
The inside of her Jeep smelled slightly of smoke and cat urine, strange. A laptop computer was sitting in the passenger seat, which she placed in the back before opening my door. She started the engine, which responded with a deep throaty growl.
"What have you got in there?" I asked, patting the dashboard.
"A little more than you have in yours," she said smiling, giving a quick wink, "I'll have to show you someday."
"What the hell is that stink?"
"I don't know; I've been driving around with the windows down to get rid of it. He's not new, though, so there's no telling."
We drove down the freeway, windows open. She shifted gears expertly and drove like a rally driver. In a short time, we were in the city. She took the North Avenue exit and turned a quick left toward the pyramid topped AT&T tower. Then, I took the inside lane and sped around slower-moving traffic, just making it through the next intersection as the light turned from yellow to red.
"I love third gear," she said in mock euphoria, "it's all business."
She pushed a key on her dash-mounted cell phone, and it began to ring.
"This is Terri," the female voice answered.
"Hey girl!' she began, "give me the news!"
"Just got my flowers. I haven't read the card yet."
"Well, read it!"
Joy spoke aloud in the car.
"It says 'thank you for a wonderful time. With love, Kevin."
"Awww, see, I told you you had nothing to worry about. Flowers though, damn, he must be an old-fashioned fucker."
"I hope so," the girl answered, sounding as if still reeling from excitement.
"Oh, don't worry. Listen, can you hook me up?"
Joy gave our location and then read a vehicle id number military style.
"Hey, honey," the girl responded after a second or two, "I got you, okay, but that navigator isn't where you think it is. It doesn't look like buddy has made it to work yet."
Suddenly Joy jerked the wheel to the right, and we came to a screeching stop on the curb amid blasts from other drivers' horns.
"Never mind, Terri," she said amid my expletives.
"Buddy stopped for coffee. You hooked me up?"
"You're hooked, baby."
She hung up and turned to me.
"You see that gas station on the corner?"
"Yeah."
"Pull up there and wait for me. Suppose you can try to keep an eye on me too? Now when we leave, you're going to have to keep up. We'll take this one straight to the warehouse," she said, unbuckling her seat belt and starting to open the door.
"You cool?"
"Cool?"
I was not cool. I still barely grasped what the hell I had gotten myself into. Maybe she had been fooled by my play-acting like I was cool. I was not cool. She had her first sense of that while she stared at me, waiting for me to get out and change seats.
"Well, okay, take over."
She opened her door slowly, watching the traffic, then bolted from the car, ran across the street, and into the parking lot of a Dunk-n-Dine, leaping over a black chain draped fence. I was still not quite sure what was happening, and because I was slow to take the driver's seat, I had not even seen which car she was after and did not until she casually opened the door of a dark green Lincoln Navigator. I watched her so long I forgot to pull up to the corner gas station and only did so when she pulled the hulking vehicle to the entrance waiting for traffic to clear.
Suddenly two men emerged from the Dunk-n-Dine, running towards Joy and their vehicle. I pulled quickly into traffic blocking the lane, and slowed to let her in. Drivers behind me began blowing their horns in frustration. She left the parking lot with tires squealing, missing me and her own car by only inches. She barreled down the busy street, changing lanes rapidly, causing me fits trying to keep up with her. I reluctantly broke several traffic laws and was sure the FBI was tailing me, the mafia, or some clandestine operation. I followed on as best I could, even coming to within three or four car lengths of her once. She led me to the freeway and merged into traffic headed south. Damn, I was scared shitless but felt alive, really alive, and that was fun.
Please give a vote for seat of your pants driving, good friends, and feeling alive!
Thank you for the read!