Car Sinister

by Robert Silverberg

  You ask why second story also about Cadillac do I not have range? I do not know what you mean by “range” I tell you only Cadillac car is like a woman great in its mysteries and not exhausted not even in twenty-five stories. Second story takes different point of view like woman would to two different men and I surprise you not see this.

  I do not understand what you mean either by reading fee for unpublished writers; I am not unpublished writer as issue of magazine I sent to you makes quite clear but published writer once two other stories accepted. Wages at dealership are union scale plus overtime; take home to wife one hundred and sixty-three dollars and twenty cents last week which was typical week less sick benefits union dues taxes and so on. I can no afford to pay fee for reading or sending around stories. I began writing stories to make more money to add to wages. I enclose third story also accepted story by Mr. Walter Thomas which I hope you like and will sell for me.

  Dear Sir:

  Boss mechanic very pleased by idea Kurt Delvecchio is published writer; pass magazine around in shop. Some make jokes about what Cadillac mechanic doing writing for comic-book type magazine but they over in Fleetwood department working on series seventy-five chassis and do not speak English most of them quite stupid. Salesmen also very impressed; sometimes they take customers and point out me, Kurt Delvecchio, the “writing mechanic.”

  I do not understand your remark about third story; third story about Cadillac just as second and first were because all I write about is Cadillacs because I heard you must write what you know and that is what I know . . . Cadillac sedan de ville, Cadillac coupe de ville, Cadillac calais and Fleetwood, Eldorado Coupe and Convertible, flower cars and commercial chassis for ambulance and hearses. That is what I know and working on overhead valve V-8 plugs and points singing to me at idle speed two thousand rpm true when well-tuned it is like car is alive and speaking to me. All I do is put down words that car speaks car is real and alive I merely its messenger at times like these. Other times I just like other mechanics although have ambitions which most do not. I no pay a reading or marketing fee to circulate one (1) story of published writer and send you this fourth story which Mr. Walter Thomas reject because he say it too different in scope and style while still being too much like in others. I hope you read and send this one out for me as due to recent crisis which you must know and read about I mean so-called “energy crisis” business in dealership down eighty percent business in shop down twenty-seven percent junior men being laid off and although Kurt Delvecchio has some seniority I wish to find another source of income just in case.

  Dear Sir:

  Story told from point of view of see-through hood ornament (option extra cost twenty dollars $20.00) because that is what I feel when wrote it; the way see-through hood ornament on coupe de ville would feel as being driven around Paramus Route 4 and Route 17 intersection also Bergen Mall. If had not felt it would not have written it Cadillac car is a real thing even though “energy crisis” going to destroy it is just as real as “aliens” or “Terrans” and other things in Mr. Walter Thomas’s magazines (which I have read) and you wrong to say that it not salable also to say that this is positively last time you will react to story without fee I must pay fee of thirty dollars ($30) in future. This show no understanding also no realization that Kurt Delvecchio is not amateur but true professional writer who combine love and knowledge of Cadillac car with stories that make Cadillac car real for first time in universe it give it side of story.

  Very angry at you for this treatment white coupe de ville on which I worked today (only car in shop) also very mad despite defective ignition and dropped gaskets which have drenched oil pan and suspension system. White coupe de ville and I agree will not deal with you any more.

  Instead to prove that Kurt Delvecchio is no fool and that he know how to sell to science-fiction magazines or anywhere else for that matter coupe de ville and I (it is ’72 coupe de ville with customized Cabriolet roof and Deora option on portholes) are going to send copies of my letters to you copies which I very cleverly keep at advice of Mr. Walter Thomas who encouraging new author tells him always to keep copies of letters he writes to publishers or editors or agents and white coupe de ville and I send out story together story being copies of these letters to next science-fiction magazine on list.

  When next science-fiction magazine publishes letters proving that Kurt Delvecchio has something of great interest to say you will be sorry! but I will give you no percentage because of the many insults you have heaped on me in your own letters. White cabriolet coupe de ville stay overnight in shop tonight; tomorrow morning early I finish gaskets and it go away and I cry when it leave shop because shop then empty Kurt Delvecchio being one of only three (3) mechanics left but that is life as Mr. Walter Thomas would have said. If you do not think that these cars are alive or that evil men are killing them you not understand what is happening or what real meaning of stories is is what Deora and I we say to you. “Energy crisis” a plot to kill deora.

  ROMANCE IN A TWENTY-FIRST

  CENTURY USED-CAR LOT

  By Robert F. Young

  The work of Robert F. Young has been admired by writers with styles as diverse as those of Fritz Leiber and Avram Davidson. “Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot” is a fine illustration of his ability to capture a mood of strangeness and make it seem commonplace, and of his craftsmanship in introducing a vast amount of fascinating detail into a few thousand words.

  This story is one of a trio of interrelated tales on a car-dominated future, the other two being “This Day Had September” and “Chrome Pastures.”

  The car-dress stood on a pedestal in the Big Jim display window, and a sign beneath it said:

  THIS BEAUTIFUL NEW CHEMMY IS GOING GOING GONE FOR ONLY $6499.99! GENEROUS TRADE-IN ALLOWANCE ON YOUR PRESENT CAR-DRESS—HARDTOP HAT THROWN IN FREE!

  Arabella didn’t mean to slam on her brakes, but she couldn’t help herself. She had never seen a car-dress quite so stunning. And for only $6499.99!

  It was Monday afternoon and the spring street was filled with homeward-hurrying office workers, the April air with the beeping of horns. The Big Jim establishment stood near the comer next to a large used-car lot with a Cape Cod fence around it. The architecture of the building was American Colonial, but the effect was marred by a huge neon sign projecting from the façade. The sign said:

  BERNIE, THE BIG JIM MAN.

  The beeping of horns multiplied, and belatedly realizing that she was holding up traffic, Arabella cut in front of an old man wearing a fuchsia Grandrapids and pulled over on the concrete shoulder in front of the display window.

  Seen at close range, the car-dress was less dazzling, but still irresistible to the eye. Its sleek turquoise flanks and its sequined grille gleamed in the slanted rays of the sun. Its tailfinned bustle protruded like the twin wakes of a catamaran. It was a beautiful creation, even by modem manufacturing standards, and a bargain worth taking advantage of. Even so, Arabella would have let it go by if it hadn’t been for the hardtop hat.

  A dealer—presumably Bernie—wearing an immaculate two-toned Lansing de mille advanced to meet her when she drove in the door. “Can I help you, madam?” he asked, his voice polite, but his eyes, behind his speckless windshield, regarding the car-dress she was wearing with obvious contempt.

  Shame painted Arabella’s cheeks a bright pink. Maybe she had waited too long to turn the dress in for a new one at that. Maybe her mother was right: maybe she was too indifferent to her clothes. “The dress in the window,” she said. “Do—do you really throw in a hardtop hat with it?”

  “We most certainly do. Would you like to try it on?”

  “Please.”

  The dealer turned around and faced a pair of double doors at the rear of the room. “Howard!” he called, and a moment later the doors parted and a young man wearing a denim-blue pickup drove in. “Yes sir?”

  “Take the dress in the window back to the dressing room and get a hardtop hat to
match it out of the stockroom.” The dealer turned around to Arabella. “Hell show you where to go, madam.”

  The dressing room was just beyond the double doors and to the right. The young man wheeled in the dress, then went to get the hat. He hesitated after he handed it to her, and an odd look came into his eyes. He started to say something, then changed his mind and drove out of the room.

  She closed and locked the door and changed hurriedly. The upholstery-lining felt deliciously cool against her body. She donned the hardtop hat and surveyed herself in the big three-way mirror. She gasped.

  The tailfinned bustle was a little disconcerting at first (the models she was accustomed to did not stick out quite so far behind), but the chrome-sequined grille and the flush fenders did something for her figure that had never been done for it before. As for the hardtop hat—well, if the evidence hadn’t been right there before her eyes, she simply wouldn’t have believed that a mere hat, even a hardtop one, could achieve so remarkable a transformation. She was no longer the tired office girl who had driven into the shop a moment ago; now she was Cleopatra . . . Bathsheba . . . Helen of Troy!

  She drove self-consciously back to the display room. A look akin to awe crept into the dealer’s eyes. “You’re not really the same person I talked to before, are you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Arabella said.

  “You know, ever since we got that dress in,” the dealer went on, “I’ve been hoping someone would come along who was worthy of its lines, its beauty, its—its personality.” He raised his eyes reverently. “Thank you, Big Jim,” he said, “for sending such a person to our door.” He lowered his eyes to Arabella’s awed countenance. “Like to try it out?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Very well. But just around the block. I’ll draw up the papers while you’re gone. Not,” he added hastily, “that you’ll be in any way obligated to take it; but just in case you decide to, well be all ready to do business.”

  “How—how much allowance can you give me on my old dress?”

  “Let’s see, it’s two years old, isn’t it? H’m’m.” The dealer frowned for a moment, then: “Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You don’t look like the type of person who’d wear a dress very hard, so I’ll allow you a good, generous one thousand and two dollars. How does that sound?”

  “Not—not very good.” (Maybe, if she went without eating lunch for a year . . . )

  “Don’t forget, you’re getting the hardtop hat free.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Try it out first, and then we’ll talk,” the dealer said. He got a dealer’s plate out of a nearby cabinet and clamped it onto her rearend. “There, you’re all set,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll get right to work on the papers.”

  She was so nervous and excited when she pulled into the street that she nearly collided with a young man wearing a white convertible, but she got control of herself quickly, and to demonstrate that she was really a competent driver, first impressions to the contrary, she overtook and passed him. She saw him smile as she went by, and a little song began in her heart and throbbed all through her. Somehow that very morning she’d just known that something wonderful was going to happen to her. A perfectly ordinary day at the office had somewhat dimmed her expectations, but now they shone forth anew.

  She had to stop for a red light, and when she did so, the young man drove up beside her. “Hi,” he said. “That’s a swell dress you’re wearing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know a good drive-in. Like to take in a movie with me tonight?”

  “Why, I don’t even know you!” Arabella said.

  “My name is Harry Fourwheels. Now you know me. But I don’t know you.”

  “Arabella. Arabella Grille . . . But I don’t know you very well.”

  “That can be remedied. Will you go?”

  “I—”

  “Where do you live?”

  “611 Macadam Place,” she said before she thought.

  “I’ll stop by at eight.”

  “I—”

  At that very moment the light changed, and before she could voice her objection, the young man was gone. Eight, she thought wonderingly. Eight o’clock . . .

  After that, she simply had to take the dress. There was no other alternative. Having seen her in such a resplendent model, what would he think if she was wearing her old bucket of bolts when he showed up to take her out? She returned to the display room, signed the papers, and went home.

  Her father stared at her through the windshield of his three-tone Cortez when she drove into the garage and parked at the supper table. “Well,” he said, “it’s about time you broke down and bought yourself a new dress!”

  “I guess so!” said her mother, who was partial to stationwagons and wore one practically all the time. “I was beginning to think you were never going to wise up to the fact that you’re living in the twenty-first century and that in the twenty-first century you’ve got to be seen”

  “I’m—I’m only twenty-seven,” Arabella said. “Lots of girls are still single at that age.”

  “Not if they dress the way they should,” her mother said.

  “Neither one of you has said whether you liked it yet or not,” Arabella said.

  “Oh, I like it fine,” her father said.

  “Ought to catch somebody’s eyes,” said her mother.

  “It already has.”

  “Well!” said her mother.

  “At long last!” said her father.

  “He’s coming for me at eight.”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t tell him you read books,” her mother said.

  “I won’t. I don’t, really—not anymore.”

  “And don’t mention any of those radical notions you used to have, either,” said her father. “About people wearing cars because they’re ashamed of the bodies God gave them.”

  “Now Dad, you know I haven’t said things like that in years. Not since, not since—”

  —Not since the Christmas office party, she went on to herself, when Mr. Upswept had patted her rearend and had said, when she repulsed him, “Crawl back into your history books, you creep. You don’t belong in this century!”

  “—Not since ever so long ago,” she finished lamely.

  Harry Fourwheels showed up at eight sharp, and she hurried down the drive to meet him. They drove off side by side, turned into Blacktop Boulevard, and left the town behind them. It was a lovely night, with just enough winter lingering in the skirts of spring to paint the gibbous moon a vivid silver and to hone the stars to pulsing brightness.

  The drive-in was crowded but they found two places way in the rear, not far from the edge of a small woods. They parked close together, so close their fenders almost touched, and presently she felt Harry’s hand touch her chassis and creep tentatively around her waist, just above her tailfinned bustle. She started to draw away, but remembering Mr. Upswept’s words, she bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the movie.

  The movie concerned a retired vermicelli manufacturer who lived in a boarding garage. He had two ungrateful daughters, and he worshipped the concrete they drove on, and did everything in his power to keep them in luxury. To accomplish this, he had to deny himself all but the barest essentials, and consequently he lived in the poorest section of the garage and dressed in used-car suits so decrepit they belonged in the junkyard. His two daughters, on the other hand, lived in the most luxurious garages available and wore the finest car-clothes on the market. A young engineering student named Rastignac also lived in the boarding garage, and the plot concerned his efforts to invade the upper echelons of modern society and to acquire a fortune in the process. To get himself started, he chiseled enough money from his sister to outfit himself in a new Washington convertible, and contrived an invitation, through a rich cousin, to a dealer’s daughter’s debut. There he met one of the vermicelli manufacturer’s daughters and—

  Despite her best efforts, Arabella’s attenti
on wandered. Harry Fourwheels’ hand had abandoned her waist in favor of her headlights and had begun a tour of inspection. She tried to relax, but she felt her body stiffen instead, and heard her tense voice whisper, “Don’t, please don’t!” Harry’s hand fell away. “After the show, then?”

  It was a way out and she grabbed it. “After the show,” she said.

  “I know a swell spot up in the hills. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she heard her frightened voice say.

  She shuddered, and patted her headlights back in place. She tried to watch the rest of the movie, but it wasn’t any use. Her mind kept drifting off to the hills and she kept trying to think of some excuse, any excuse, that would extricate her from her predicament. But she couldn’t think of a single one, and when the movie ended she followed Harry through the exit and drove beside him down Blacktop Boulevard. When he turned off into a dirt road, she accompanied him resignedly.

  Several miles back in the hills, the road paralleled the local nudist reservation. Through the high electric fence, the lights of occasional cottages could be seen twinkling among the trees. There were no nudists abroad, but Arabella shuddered just the same. Once, she had felt mildly sympathetic toward them, but since the Mr. Upswept incident, she had been unable to think of them without a feeling of revulsion. In her opinion Big Jim gave them a much better break than they deserved; but then, she supposed, he probably figured that some of them would repent someday and ask forgiveness for their sins. It was odd, though, that none of them ever did.

  Harry Fourwheels made no comment, but she could sense his distaste, and even though she knew that it stemmed from a different source than hers did, she experienced a brief feeling of camaraderie toward him. Maybe he wasn’t quite as predatory as his premature passes had led her to think. Maybe, at heart, he was as bewildered as she was by the codes of conduct that regulated their existence—codes that meant one thing in one set of circumstances, and the diametrical opposite in another set. Maybe . . .