So, I left off with the whole Darebus thing, told you it was important, and now am about to tell you otherwise. Things move fast in the world of automotives, so here we go.
See, the thing you missed with PodunkWorks from the last episode is that they're the guys who outfit jets with all sorts of cool gear and fly them into remote areas for firefighting and aerial refueling and cargo stuff and all that. George got Snowbaroo on the line, since we were the beta testers for the Darebus sales force anyhow, and decided to relinquish sales to the point of Snowbaroo being the manufacturer, and PodunkWorks being the destination and outfitter and dealer. Since Darebus needed Podunk's market, it all made sense. So, George called off the whole thing. I didn't need to become a pilot, but Wil, Orv, and Alex were set to finish their training anyhow. Who knew, maybe they'd pick up a side hustle? I mean, Alex was already at Snowbaroo nearly full-time, and she also coached the high school's soccer teams, and the brothers were hard at work with the service department. How much more time did they have?
George had also called construction off just in the nick of time to halt construction of the two hangars they were going to store the A320 and A330 "for show" models; now it was just a large plot of levelled dirt. Ben refused to park a single car on it, even the Base trim models. The stalemate was supposed to be broken by a meeting we'd had the day after the paperwork went through with PodunkWorks, but all Alex kept insisting we do with it was lay down a patch of turf and use it as a soccer field. Wil and Orv wanted to use it as a test field for their hovering car projects – they'd already figured out the Jealousy hovering mechanism, but they wanted to expand to the Crossback and TRX next.
For my part, I said we should lay down a slab of concrete and make it a certified pre-owned lot, but like I said, George would never sell a used car unless it was a Snowbaroo and previously leased. Frederick did agree with my idea, but he also suggested we make it another office space, so we store our stuff somewhere and move that old paperwork and the pallets of old and new brochures somewhere while we waited for someone to have enough time to sort them out.
The idea was still in the works, although George created a "suggestions" box for us to use about the issue. I think Alex just wrote "soccer pitch" on a stack of fifty post-it notes and slipped them inside. Ben, whose idea it was to create a private golf course where he could try to get more of the big businesses that needed bulk cheap Impastas, probably had the most leverage among us. At that point the whole thing was stalled, leaving us with a big patch of dirt. The brothers, Wil and Orv, were quite happy with that; they didn't need anything fancy for testing, and so they quickly turned it into an interim practice space for their hovering Crossback.
I won't get into the Crossback again, but I'd sold a few since the spring. It was, oddly enough, our most popular model.
Now, attention got abruptly turned to two facts. One, the TRX was floundering. Two, I needed to convince my coworkers that pizza was awesome.
You all know by now that I used to be a pizza delivery kid. Or at least, I hope you do. I drove a '13 Impasta for a few months to rack up that money that I ended up blowing on the so-called "Injector Gadget," my newly beloved 2011 Lexus LS 460. So that's all to say, pizza was tied to me in a way.
Plus I love to eat it, as does ninety-something percent of the rest of the United States. Unlike, I should note, my coworkers.
The only time I'd ever seen Isaac eat pizza was by necessity, that night he, Nathan, and I went to that field to try and whip my nonexistent soccer skills into shape. Otherwise, he ate tons of bread, forgot to eat at all, or just had vegetable stuff.
George only ate fish, pancakes (in alarming volumes), and red meat.
Ben went for steak, burgers, and soups, so he was sort of similar to George; they got along well at big luncheons like that.
Freddy loved his soups as well, and some seafood in due measure.
The brothers, Wil and Orv, were mostly similar in that they cooked simple, ate simple, and drank coffee nearly all the time. I think they liked to do stuff with pastries, but I also knew them to eat a lot of oat stuff like trail bars and oatmeal.
And then Alex...
Alex was an interesting case, because she had this strange fixation on spicy foods and therefore had a lot of Tex-Mex sorts of stuff on her radar. Bean burritos and guac and the whole nine yards, the kind of stuff that required folks like me to buy stock in whoever made Tums.
In short, I was the only pizza guy in the building. And it started getting frustrating, because all we ever ate out was breakfast-all-day diner fare, the brothers' home cooking, burgers from Blue Bluejay, or Chipotle.
It was time to change that.
So, I poked my head into Frederick's office. Or rather, his desk.
Like always at 4:45, he had two windows open; one that displayed his Instagram message feed, and the other with a Word document. Freddy had a running tally of celebrities and notable world leaders and folks in power he'd messaged, to see if any of them would actually take the time to reply and read his messages. He usually would offer something simple, like a word of encouragement or suggestion, but I honestly think these people really did take heed. At least, the few who took the time to reply.
Frederick liked to say that our day and age was being determined by the influencers, and that they bore a lot of the good and bad and ebbing tides of the world trends and attitudes. I had to agree.
"Freddy, you want to grab some pizza with the rest of the crew?" I thought for a moment, trying to look convincingly eager but also candid. "You know, so we can mull over this TRX business?"
Frederick cracked the wry smile usually only reserved for clever business on the part of the dealership.
"There's nothing to mull, Grisly." His voice, even and deep, had that quality that could totally invigorate a statement. "They took away the power and left us with a coupe at best; it is no small wonder that performance enthusiasts aren't buying into it."
"And Japan's getting the souped-up Forager as well."
He noted my lamentation with a rather bland frown. It was like he'd already anticipated the move on Snowbaroo's part. Which, probably, he had.
"The BRA will sell better now, and I can remember a time where shifting those cars was a hassle." Freddy, ever the Crossback fan, looked a touch exasperated at the discussion of Snowbaroo's two performance cars. It was literally talking about sports cars with a guy obsessed with a crossover SUV!
Being our social manager, though, I thought Frederick might have had a bit of a grand strategy involving the TRX and trying to make it look better to customers. The front end and body styling redesign of the TRX that year had taken a while for me to get used to, but at least now I liked that part of it; engine power under the hood was the real trouble in trying to unload them.
Alex showed up beside me at that point, either having caught word about our TRX discussion, or about the fact that I was currently swimming in sales.
"Just moved another Crossback! Jeez those things are flying out the door, am I right?" Her peppy smile seemed almost to mock the crossover in the way I'd expect; we each had our specialty, after all. A Decent lover herself – as most of you know – Alex would drive an Impasta before she drove a Crossback. Which was funny, because now that Snowbaroo was also doing away with the Impasta sedan model, the Impasta that was left was essentially a non-lifted Crossback with mildly different styling.
"Yippee for you," I teased, trying my best to convey the casually ironic. "That means all of us have sold one of them in the past month. Right? Or did Ben sell a Forager?"
"Ben sold the plasma yellow Crossback," Alex confirmed. "You know, that gold one?"
"Thing looked like a rap star's dream," Freddy noted as well, punctuating with a fleeting chuckle.
The "plasma" colors with Snowbaroo were always hit-or-miss, and usually looked pretty obtrusive compared to the more normal palettes. The plasma yellow, as you could probably guess, looked essentially like liquid gold. It was Snowbaroo's attempt to look more like the cars our customers modded and tricked out and painted.
Alex smiled at Frederick, but whipped her finger over my way. "You want to go out to the lot?"
Historically, "the lot" had just been used to refer to where we sold the cars. That stretch of slightly curved pavement in front of the building, you know? Now it was being used for that big patch of level dirt out back, level until Isaac decided to demonstrate the benefits of X-Mode on an Outrun he'd just done an oil change on. Dealer miles, right?
"To kick a soccer ball around? No thanks; I don't want to see me near a soccer field anytime soon."
She flexed a disbelieving smirk at me, as if remembering that time a few months – and several chapters – ago. That was, of course, when Isaac and Nathan decided that Alex was some sort of goddess figure and wanted me to join the high school soccer team just to pepper her with questions or something. Funky.
"Just come out, okay?" Alex asked of me, levelling her powerfully magnetic eyes at me, on the edge of disappointment.
And what was I going to say?
So, I found myself walking out into the early evening, watching the golden light splash its way across the pavement, onto the hoods of the Outrun, Forager, and Crossback we'd parked outside of the showroom, on that curtain provided by the ultra-wide sidewalk. The only ones trusted to do that were George, Ben, and Alex. All three had the best driving records among us, certainly. Alex's IS 350 was parked in the few reserved spots we had along the left side of the building – viewed from the street – and she beeped it open as we crossed the entrance to the lot.
"I have to remember to bring my Decent in one of these days," Alex mused, popping the trunk open with another click of the key fob. "Here."
She reached into the empty space and pulled out one lone soccer ball. The toss came while I contemplated how interesting the situation was. Most people kept spare tools or roadside emergency kits tucked away in their trunks. Alex kept spare sporting equipment.
I caught the ball easy enough, because Alex had sort of pushed it towards me at chest-height, and I neared the Lexus' trunk to see if she had anything else back there.
"Need something else?"
I shook my head, just as she whipped a pair of those fancy soccer shoe cleat things from another corner of the trunk. Now, as I visually confirmed, the compartment was completely clean and free. It also smelled like that special rubber or whatever they use in sports equipment, like that aisle of Target that you go to, or when you walk into a mom-and-pop sporting goods store for a team jersey for your school or something.
Without a real word spoken, Alex shut the trunk softly and proceeded to lock the car with a press on the fob.
"So you guys are really into sports, huh?" I probed, as I fell in beside the striker. "Wil says he used to play hockey, and Ben..."
"Don't ask too many questions about that, by the way." Alex spun and began to walk backwards. Somehow, she'd already puled her cascading locks into one tight ponytail, that type that goes straight back. Her lips made that true smirk that Alex was known for, with a seriousness sprinkled amongst the playfulness.
"What? Wil's hockey or Ben's golf?"
"Either. Wil's hockey career ended by a guy knocking his front teeth out with a purposeful hit, and Ben's career... didn't really conclude on his terms."
The smile dwindled as Alex recounted these details, but she quickly motioned for me to do something with the sports object in my hands.
"C'mon, try to kick it," she urged, steadying her frame as if ready to catch it or something. But I wasn't about to kick this thing at her! Especially because with my aim, I'd conk her in the head or something.
And, since I just stood there, half stooped over the thing, in the patch of dirt, Alex just looked confused. She didn't get that way often, but she reiterated her instruction just the same. "C'mon!"
Right before I was going to have to actually do something as opposed to stand there and look bewildered, or else scared to sock Alex with this thing accidentally, George rushed the field.
I may have already talked about it, but I'm pretty sure I haven't. See, George, Alex, and Frederick were amazing runners. It was like they all used to work for FedEx, because the three of them could sprint faster than anyone I'd ever known. Alex was definitely more of a sprinter and jogger, but George and Freddy could run for miles long-distance. So when George ran onto the field, his coattails flapping in the breeze he'd created, I just had to stand and be amused.
"We have to make a decision!" he puffed, pulling alongside Alex and pulling his towering frame into a respectable posture. "All of the dealership takeout menus have disappeared!"
Okay, so you might wonder why we kept over six menus stocked over by the coffee station, right beside the hanging organizer for important phone numbers and a list of customers' phone numbers for repairs that got updated daily. And, as specific as that question would be – suspiciously so, if I'm putting those words in your mouth and not mine – I'd remind you that the majority of Snowbaroo dealerships stay open until seven at night. We get hungry, what can I say?!
Especially with the Lurkins competition, us Dark Dimension Snowbaroo folks were keen on strategizing and spending our late nights in order to get repairs and orders ready quicker.
In my endeavors to get the crew to eat what I wanted for once, I hid the menus purposefully. And...
"All that was left was this menu from a place called, 'Down the Street Pizza,'" George continued, pulling a folded pamphlet from his pocket.
"Hey, don't we have Impastas with them?" I offered up, wondering if George knew of the pizza deals Ben struck. Funny how someone who spent that much time invested in getting Impastas into service with pizza delivery was never seen eating a slice of product.
"You'd have to speak with Ben on that matter..." The dealership's owner was a good bit taller than me, so upon realizing my rather childish motives and whatever else, he sort of looked down at me with this patriarchal discernment. "You want us to get pizza tonight, don't you?"
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I couldn't believe how much George ended up getting on board with my idea.
We were up to our knees in pizza boxes, because with the true mix of culinary tastes in our group, we needed to buy at least several pies to make everyone happy. Remember Nathan and the deep-dish pizza stint? Maybe I mentioned it in passing.
Well, now Ben was the guy getting hooked on Chicago-style deep dish.
Meanwhile, we'd set up Alex with a New Haven-Style garden vegetable pizza with grilled lunchbox peppers, and George, the brothers, and I were chowing on some New York-Style pies. Isaac had some Neapolitan-Style pizza on his flimsy paper plate, burgeoning under the weight of the slice and the bony-fingered framework upon which the vessel rested. We also had a bacon-topped Sicilian-style pizza that was something else, but it seemed like the most popular types were adopted as I mentioned above.
And, if the operation of opening each box and divvying out slices to the crew without your own pizza sliding right off the matted yet incredibly slick surface of your pizza-grease-slicked plate wasn't intense enough, Ben had also treated us to the whiteboard demonstration of the lackluster TRX sales performance. Things weren't good, let's just put it that way...
"What we need is to burst in on the luxury performance market," the seasoned pro preached in his smoothly commanding drawl.
It figured that someone who used to be a Cadillac man himself was telling us about the need to bring a similar automobile to market. Yet, George's pleas for Snowbaroo to create a pickup truck hadn't gone anywhere at the moment, and he'd been on them about that since I joined the dealership! But old George had a decent solution. No, not a Decent solution – a decent solution.
"Ben, have you perused the back catalog of non-US Snowbaroo models?" Even through the three mandatory boxes of pepperoni New York-Style which separated the two leaders, George managed an air of gravity.
"Certainly."
George nodded at that approvingly; he and Ben shared that same eagle-eyed level of thoroughness. When Ben said he'd reviewed the docs, he'd most likely be able to tell you the exact engine model in each of the foreign Snowbaroos, as well as the basic mechanical characteristics of each. At the very least, he was honest enough to admit it if he didn't.
So for a second, the conversation trended into one of those head things, where each of the cool guys – Ben and George – operate on some really heady, instinctual level, all just with these looks and eye movements and serious pouts of contemplation. The silence went undisturbed by the rest of us, and we just went on munching our respective slices of pizzas while they went to the metacognitive thinking table or whatever.
"Alex, you're up." George motioned to the whiteboard onto which Ben had been doodling sales figures and blobs that remotely resembled each of the Snowbaroo models, letting the princess goddess of Snowbaroo step up to the plate.
Amidst the half-empty pizza boxes, strewn paper plates and napkins, and the errant lurking of a familiarly Italian-style fragrance – that of pepperoni and tomato sauce – Alex made her revelation. And, should I add, clinched the position that Miranda had once occupied; Ben's right-hand salesperson and the head of Snowbaroo performance category vehicles. She had a laminated copy of a Snowbaroo of Oceania brochure, sporting an image of a silver-painted sporty wagon thing, low to the ground and taking a corner in an oh-so-car-catalog sort of way. Precise, with just enough motion blur to look like the car was going sensibly fast. And don't forget, this was a marketing material from Australia, so this bend was like in the middle of the hinterlands. Beautiful, but formidable.
And so, the strategy began...