Your Chariot Awaits (4 page)

I rushed over and shoved the door shut. “No.”

Okay, it was petty, but the guy who had just dumped me was not going to be the first one to drive my limo. I wasn't about to admit to that pettiness, so a little lamely I added, “There's probably a . . . a manual or something about it I should read first.”

“It's in the trunk. With the uniforms,” Larry said. “All the scheduled maintenance work is up-to-date. It's in really good shape. Except the fridge is empty. Though all Uncle Ned ever kept in it was Snapple anyway.”

“Okay, we'll go in my car,” Jerry said. I had the feeling he was now trying to butter me up. He was good at that.
But no
luck this time,
I warned him silently.
Because you are not driving
my limo.

Larry got in the front seat of the Trans Am with Jerry. I sat in back. They chatted about the car as we drove to the bus station: speed, power, gadgets, all that testosterone-type stuff. Then Jerry started asking similar questions about the limo. I wondered about the gas mileage, but they didn't discuss that. Perhaps, when you're into the high-powered world of limousines, mundane matters like mileage aren't a major consideration.

Vigland's bus station isn't really a depot
.
It's just a corner inside the Lumbermen's Café, which in turn occupies a street-level corner of the long-defunct Vigland Hotel. Larry got his suitcase out of the trunk, where Jerry had stashed it, and I went inside with him. The clerk checked over his ticket and said the bus should be coming within five minutes, right on schedule. He also warned that it only stopped for about two minutes.

“It's been nice meeting you, Larry,” I said as we went out-side. I felt a little awkward. I had a limousine, and Larry had seven electric toothbrushes, two of which were used. “I appreciate your bringing the limousine all the way up here.”

“Sure. Actually, it was kind of a fun trip. In little towns you get lots of stares, and girls wave at you. If you ever get down to Texas, look us up. Mom said she's never met you. She still lives out at Dry Wells, though I've been in Dallas since I went to work for Uncle Ned.”

I couldn't see me ever getting down to Texas, but I said, “I'll keep that in mind.”

The bus pulled up to the curb, and Larry picked up his suitcase. The door whooshed open. The last thing Larry said before he stepped inside was, “Oh, by the way, the windows in the limo are bulletproof. You can't open them. Uncle Ned had it custom-built. So if you ever decide to rob a bank with it, you'll be safe.”

“Bulletproof! Why would Uncle Ned need bulletproof windows?”

“He probably didn't. He was paranoid as well as eccentric.” Larry paused, a thoughtful expression on his freckled face. “But then, Uncle Ned had made some enemies over the years. A lot of people thought he was an old shyster, and some of his business dealings were questionable. So who knows? He also had it customized with an oversized tank so he wouldn't have to stop for gas very often. He hated gas stations.”

Larry took a seat halfway back in the bus. Only one other person, an older woman, got on. I waved as the bus pulled away. I realized I'd have rather liked to get to know Larry better.

Jerry already had the engine running when I returned to the Trans Am, and I knew he was eager to get back to the limo. I opened the door but didn't get in.

“I'm going to walk back to the house.” It was almost three miles, but I didn't want any favors from Jerry. “I hope everything works out great for you in San Diego.”

I'd try very hard, I promised myself, not to hope that his parachute failed on his first skydive.

“Oh, come on, get in. We're friends, aren't we? You can't walk all the way home in those.” He nodded toward my feet.

Flip-flops. The cheap plastic kind. He was right. I'd have blisters to my knees if I walked three miles in them. Reluctantly I slid inside.

Back home, I thanked him for the ride. By then he'd apparently figured out he hadn't a worm's chance at a robins' convention of driving my limousine. He tried another tack as he pulled around the limo and parked in my driveway. “C'mon, Andi, one little spin in it, okay? For old times' sake.”

Old times? We'd never had
any
times in a limousine together. “I don't think so.”

I slid briskly out of the car. Jerry came around and draped his arm around my shoulders, and we looked at the limo together. I was momentarily too entranced even to object to the arm. The sun had slipped over the forested hillsides to the west, but the long metal hood gleamed as if lit with an inner fire, the tinted windows a dark contrast of mystery.

I won't drive it. There's no point in driving it. It would be like
taking one nibble of a Godiva chocolate, knowing you can't have the
whole box.

“Basically, it's just an overlength car, isn't it?” Jerry said, his head tilted and his tone uncharacteristically philosophical. “But there's something . . .
captivating
about that extra length.”

Yes, there was indeed. Captivating.

4

I
was just standing there, wanting to run and jump into the limo but unwilling to give Jerry a chance to ride in it, when Joella opened her door, did a double take, and dashed across the lawn. Well, maybe not
dashed,
considering her condition, but hurried.

“Andi, what's going on? What is a limousine doing here?”

“It's Andi's,” Jerry said. “She inherited it from some rich uncle.”

“You inherited it?” Joella gasped. “I lie down for a nap, and when I get up, you're an heiress with a limousine?”

“It's only temporary. A cousin drove it up from Texas. I'll have to sell it.”

“Oh, can we take a ride in it first?” Joella clapped her hands, starry-eyed as a little girl looking at her first Christmas tree. “Does it have an intercom system and a TV?” She rushed over and pulled open the rear door.

I followed her and peered over her shoulder. A black leather sofa-type seat curved across the front and down one side. Another seat ran across the back, the long stretch from front to back carpeted in burgundy. The far side held a wine rack, a small fridge, and a TV and DVD player. And on the ceiling—

Joella and I looked up at it, dumbfounded. It was a painted scene of an oil field crowded with big derricks and heavy equipment and little stick men in yellow hard hats, all done on what looked like a piece of old tarp fastened to the ceiling. You could almost smell the oil fumes from the derricks. Or maybe that was the tarp. It was totally out of character with the luxuriousness of the limo.

“I don't believe I've ever ridden in one with a mural on the ceiling,” Joella said tactfully.

Jerry was right there peering into the limo too. “You've ridden in a limo
without
a ceiling mural?” he asked skeptically.

Jerry didn't know anything about Joella's past, of course. To him, she was just the unmarried pregnant girl to whom I was renting the other half of the duplex at below the going rate, which he disapproved. I'd never thought about Joella and limousines, but now that I did, I realized they probably weren't all that unfamiliar to her.

She closed the door and stepped back, her hands now clasped behind her as if she were ashamed of her enthusiastic outburst. “I haven't ridden in one for a long time. They're, well, you know,
different.
But . . . no big deal.”

“Would you like to go for a ride now?” I asked impulsively.

“It might be fun.”

For Jerry I wouldn't do this, but for Joella I would. There wasn't a whole lot of fun in her life. “Okay, let's go!”

I had the keys where I'd stuffed them in the pocket of my shorts. I opened the driver's door, then paused. More black leather seats that were oh-so-buttery soft, so rich smelling, a world apart from the discount-store seat covers that scratched my legs in my Corolla.

There were a few buttons and switches I didn't recognize, but the basic controls looked identifiable enough. I slid in and tried them. Lights, turn signals, windshield wipers, tachometer, gauges for gas and temperature and oil pressure. I was happy to see that the transmission was automatic. But the heating/ air-conditioning system looked as if it might take a rocket scientist to operate. As did the radio and sound system.

Joella opened the rear door again. I hadn't invited him, but Jerry scooted in with her. I turned the key in the ignition. I was so accustomed to my noisy old vehicle that it took me a moment to realize that the limo's engine was running. A kit-ten's purr, sweet and low. Though when I cautiously revved the engine, it turned to a roar of tiger power.

I drove slowly up to the circle where Secret View Lane dead-ended, then carefully stopped and backed up to turn around, uncertain if the limo could make the circular turn in one sweep. All around the circle, doors opened and people stepped out to stare. It was like synchronized cuckoo clocks. Tom Bolton was at his gate, staring again as I drove by. At the corner, a teenager in a jacked-up pickup lost his cool long enough to brake and stare.

Hey, this was fun!

We cruised up through town. Limousines aren't unknown in Vigland, of course. Every once in a while you see one parked at the nearby casino or headed for one of the waterfront resorts, and a newspaper article about last year's senior prom had photos of several couples who'd hired limousines from a service over in Olympia. But neither were they commonplace, and we were definitely drawing second looks.

In the back, Joella and Jerry were playing with their own controls, turning on the TV, opening and shutting the privacy divider, pushing something that closed the curtains. Something buzzed beside me, and I didn't know what it was until Joella yelled at me to pick up the intercom.

When I did, her voice said, “Madam Chauffeur, this is fantastic!”

I wanted to open the window beside me, then remembered what Cousin Larry had said. By the time we got up near Wal-Mart, where traffic was heaviest, I knew how the long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs feels. The end of the limo as seen in the rearview mirror seemed miles back.

At the red light, a teenage girl in a denim miniskirt waved frantically. I couldn't make out her words, but it seemed clear she wanted to hire me.

I was just beginning to feel more confident with the driving when a beat-up Chevy zoomed through a yellow light and turned left in front of me, barely missing the front fender. I jammed on the brakes, and in back I heard a big thump.

“Jo, did I hurt you?” I yelled in a panic. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Jerry's on the floor, but he's okay.”

She sounded disappointed, and less clearly I could hear Jerry grumbling about my driving. Tough. Nobody invited him to come along.

“He's getting up now.”

We cruised on down the hill beyond Wal-Mart, then back along the bay to the center of town, and finally on around the hill to Secret View Lane. I parked at the end of the walkway to the house. I'd move the limo into the safer area of the driveway as soon as Jerry got his car out of there. Maybe I'd be all heartbroken about him in a few hours, but right now I just wanted him gone
.
Out of sight, out of my life.

Jerry stepped out of the rear door of the limo first, rubbing his neck and glaring at me as if he figured I'd knocked him down on purpose.

Joella rushed up and gave me a big hug. “Thanks, Andi. I don't miss stuff like that, but it really was fun.” She grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch. Hers had stopped working, but she couldn't spare the money to buy another one. “Oh, hey, I'm late for Bible study.”

A minute later she was backing her old Subaru down her half of the driveway. She'd had a Mustang convertible when she first moved in, but she'd sold it to help with expenses.

I turned to ask Jerry to move his Trans Am, but JoAnne Metzger, a neighbor from the end of the street, was running down the sidewalk and waving at me.

“Andi, got a minute for a nosy question?” she called.

“Sure.”

JoAnne is the social organizer of Secret View Lane. She puts together neighborhood barbecues and recycling drives and organizes the annual garage sale for the whole street. I went down the sidewalk to meet her.

She patted her chest and puffed with the exertion. “My niece is getting married in a couple of weeks, and when I looked out and saw this limousine, I thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to give Tanya a ride in that as a wedding present? She'd love it. But I have no idea how much it costs to hire one, so if you don't mind my asking . . .”

She glanced around as if wondering why the limousine was here, since there didn't appear to be any special event going on. I had the feeling she was pointedly ignoring Jerry. The “fat slob” he'd disparaged at that barbecue had been her sister.

“I didn't realize you could rent one and then just drive it yourself,” she added.

“Actually, I'm not renting it. I'm as surprised as anyone, but I seem to have inherited it from an uncle in Texas.”

“It's
yours
?” Her interested look went wide-eyed. “Andi, that's fabulous! How
fun!
So maybe we can hire you
and
the limo for Tanya's wedding?”

“Well, uh, I don't think so. I don't see how I can keep it. I'll probably sell it as soon as possible.”

“Couldn't you hang on to it just until the wedding? Tanya would be so thrilled. Dan could drive it, if you don't want to get in heavy traffic with it.”

Cousin Larry had suggested that I start a limousine business. He was probably being facetious, same as with his hot-dog stand suggestion, but was a limousine service perhaps a real possibility? Even if it wasn't, if I could just make a few bucks with the limousine before I sold it . . . why not?

“Give me a day or two to see what I'm going to do with it, okay?”