More high-risk behavior: without her cell phone, her GPS coordinates could not be traced. A stern male voice—the voice of Dateline—whispered this in her ear.
They walked several blocks to somebody’s garage. Inside it, the Barracuda was draped with a canvas cover, like a giant toaster. Timmy rolled back the cover and unlocked the passenger door. “Madam,” he said, opening it with a flourish.
She got into the car. They were both beaming like idiots, flush with excellent weed, the magnificence of the car, the sheer unlikeliness of the moment.
“It’s beautiful,” Claudia said.
It wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t the wrong word either. The dashboard was set with round dials that looked vaguely nautical. The bucket seats, dark green leather, felt smooth and cold. The sleek cockpit was a psychic time capsule, a sacred artifact of a lost tribe. Encoded in the design were all its secrets: the collective unconscious of an extinct people, its unspoken, unspeakable beliefs.
The interior was spanking clean. The chrome ashtray shone like a mirror. Claudia found herself babbling about Street Rodz, her early career cleaning cars for Uncle Ricky.
“I always do my own detailing,” said Timmy. “There’s no one else I can trust.” He glanced at her sideways. “You, maybe. Because you were a professional. I could maybe trust you.”
They sat in silence, their breath fogging the windshield.
“I can’t believe you’re selling it,” she said.
“It’s already sold. Sight unseen. The guy is coming tomorrow.” Timmy stroked the steering wheel with unabashed tenderness, as though petting a cat. “This is the final ride.”
“But why?” Claudia was filled with an inexplicable anguish. “I don’t get it.”
“I need the cash. I have obligations; it’s a long story. Anyway,” he said, “I bought another car.”
Claudia could make no sense of this explanation.
“There is no other car,” she said, with emphasis. “What could you possibly?”
Timmy grinned broadly. “A Honda Civic.”
It was the funniest thing anyone had ever said. Claudia and Timmy laughed until suffocation was a real danger. They laughed to the point of physical pain.
Timmy turned the key in the ignition. A thrill in her stomach as the engine roared to life. Claudia felt the vibration all through her, as if she’d been dancing near the speakers at a loud concert, her body a blind antenna picking frequencies from space.
The heater came on with a huff.
“Where to?” said Timmy.
“Anywhere,” Claudia said.
They rolled east, in the vague direction of the expressway. Dorchester slipped past like a film they weren’t watching. The streets were strangely deserted. Claudia remembered that it was two in the morning.
They stopped at a red light just to watch it blink.
The car’s heater smelled like a lawn mower, it smelled of petroleum and burning dust, it smelled like it might cause mesothelioma. They skated along the empty streets, the blinking red lights like leftover Christmas. Timmy drove with great concentration, in some enraptured state. Claudia turned a little to watch him, his hands large and square and strangely young looking, the hands of an overgrown boy.
AS THEY PULLED INTO THE GARAGE, A LIGHT SNOW WAS FALLING. Deliberately, almost reverently, Timmy engaged the parking brake, closed the door and locked it. They stood a long moment looking at the car.
On the sidewalk in front of Timmy’s they said good night. Snow dusted their shoulders, their hair and eyelashes. The snow was an afterthought, light and powdery, a snow of no consequence. It would be gone in the morning, leaving no trace.