locate anyone. Not only were there no customers but every salesman’s cubicle was empty, too. Mitch was beginning to think he’d wandered into an old episode of The Twilight Zone when he finally spotted a young janitor vacuuming the office rugs in the third showroom he tried. As Mitch approached him he realized that the young janitor was June.
The heir to Bond’s Auto Mall was quick to notice him. It was awful hard to miss another warm body in that barren wasteland. June shut off the vacuum and loped across the showroom toward Mitch, looking super-preppy in his polo shirt, khakis and Top-Siders. “Hey, good to see you, bro,” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid I have to do a little bit of everything around here these days. People just aren’t buying cars. Plus this isn’t your father’s GM, Mitch. We’re staring at a future without Saturn, Olds, Pontiac and Hummer. We’ve shrunk our full-time sales and office staff, laid off mechanics. We used to have a custodial crew come in every night to tidy up. Now guess who we have?”
“That would be you?”
“Ka-ching.” June was acting very upbeat about it. And yet, Mitch noticed, he had dark worry circles under his eyes. “What can I do for you? Don’t tell me you’re finally giving up on your Studey.”
“Not a chance,” Mitch said as June’s father, Justy, came strutting into the showroom from the service department. He went into a glassed-in office, sat behind the desk and got busy on the telephone, watching the two of them intently through the glass. “I ran into Callie this morning. She seemed kind of upset.”
June eyed him curiously. “She sent you here?”
“Callie has no idea I’m here.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because she told me you want to take off on the Calliope right away. And want her to quit the academy and come with you. And that it’s all real sudden and urgent and she doesn’t know why.”
June ran a hand through his mop of hair, swallowing. “It’s not something I can talk to her about.”
“Why not?”
“Because she won’t understand. Listen, I can talk to you, right? You won’t go running back to Callie with every word I say, will you?”
“Whatever you tell me stays between us. Scout’s honor.”
June glanced over in the direction of his father’s office. “We’d better make this look like a work thing.” He fished around in the pocket of his khakis for a set of keys. “Come on, let’s take a Silverado out for a test drive.” He led Mitch out the door and across an acre of pavement toward a row of huge, shiny new Chevy pickups. “If you actually are interested in a new truck we’re practically giving them away right now. Factory incentives up the wazoo.”
“I’m pretty attached to my Studey.”
“Sure, I understand. Can’t say I blame you.”
“Not exactly Mister Hard Sell, are you?”
“I’m not Mister Sell, period. I hate trying to convince people to buy something that they truly don’t need. At least half of our new car and truck sales are to customers who already own perfectly serviceable vehicles. But thanks to Madison Avenue they get it into their heads that they need, need, need to trade up. It’s totally insane.”
“You’d better not let your dad hear you talk like that. You’re spouting pure blasphemy.”
“Believe me, I’ve done much worse.” June came to a halt before a shiny blue behemoth. “He’s watching us through the showroom window right now. Pretend you’re interested in my spiel, okay? This here’s your new Silverado 2500 HD. It’s got a choice of a Duramax 6.6 liter turbo-diesel or your standard 360 horsepower Vortec 6.0 liter V-8. It has a six-speed automatic transmission, four-wheel anti-lock brakes, air bags…”
“Nice color,” Mitch offered encouragingly. It was all he could think of.
“That’s the Imperial Blue metallic finish. The interior’s light titanium with dark titanium accents.” June swung the driver’s door open for him. “Hop in.”
Mitch climbed in behind the wheel. The cab’s interior was as cushy and carpeted as somebody’s living room. And the wood-trimmed dashboard was so loaded with high-tech controls that it made his bare bones Studey look like a museum piece.
“You’ve got cup holders here, here, here and here,” June said, climbing in next to him. “This right here controls your air conditioning…”
“Wow, it has air conditioning?”
“And this is your heat…”
“Wow, it has heat?”
“This particular model has an MP3-compatible CD player, XM radio, a USB port, Bluetooth and the OnStar Safe and Sound plan.”
“June, this truck is better equipped than my house.”
“If you opt for the crew cab you can just roll out your sleeping bag in the backseat and you’re home.” June’s face fell. “God, I truly suck at this, don’t I?”
“You’re doing fine. But it helps if you believe in the product you’re selling.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He handed Mitch the keys. “Let’s ride.”
Mitch started the engine and steered them out of the Auto Mall in quiet, air-conditioned comfort. The truck drove like a luxury sedan. He couldn’t imagine taking it to the town dump with a load of brush.
“My dad will do anything to make a sale,” June informed him. “He has no scruples, no conscience and no patience with me. He thinks I’m soft.”
“And what do you think?”
“That I like to fix up old sailboats. I think I can make a living at it if I move someplace where people sail all year round.”
“Someplace that also happens to be far from your dad?”
“Well, yeah. That, too.”
Mitch took the on-ramp to Route 9 and punched the accelerator. The truck was so powerful that he was cruising the highway at eighty before he realized it. A far cry from his Studey, which started to shake, rattle and roll if he tried to push it past fifty-five. He eased off the gas and said, “What happened, June?”
“Something truly horrible,” June confessed miserably. “Callie… stays over with me a lot, okay? That’s one thing my dad’s cool about. He doesn’t mind her spending the night. Sometimes, she stays until morning. Sometimes, she goes home after I fall asleep and paints for hours. A few nights ago we had the place to ourselves for the evening. Dad and Bonita were at the club with some friends getting drunk. I picked up a pizza. We smoked a joint, watched some totally lame movie and-”
“Wait, which totally lame movie?”
“Uh, Pineapple Express with Seth Rogen and James Franco.”
“You’re telling me you were stoned and yet you still didn’t find it funny?”
“Not really. Why does that even matter?”
“It doesn’t. You’re just in my wheelhouse is all. Go on…”
“We started, you know, getting busy on the sofa. Then went up to my room and made love. I dozed off after that. I don’t know how many hours later it was when Callie woke me up to make love again. She was totally on fire. And pretty soon I was, too. It had never, ever been like that with us before. We’d always been real gentle and loving. This was just wild. And it was all over so fast that, well, it didn’t hit me until it was too late.”
“What didn’t, June?”
“That she felt all wrong, smelled all wrong. I turned on the bedside light and it was Bonita who was naked in bed with me, her big blue eyes gleaming…” He shot a guilty look at Mitch. “Has anything like that ever happened to you?”
“You mean waking up inside of the wrong woman? No, I’ve been Jewish my whole life. Not to mention a very light sleeper. You’re telling me you honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them?”
June let out a distraught sigh. “Maybe I did know. Maybe I was just beyond the point of caring. It’s not something I want to think about too much. But I can’t sugarcoat it, Mitch. I had freaky sex with my stepmother. I-I jumped out of bed, totally wigged out. Bonita was, like, ‘Chill out, hon, we’re cool.’ She was real drunk. And unbelievably horny. Told me my dad hasn’t been able to get it up for months. Not since they took away his Hummer franchise.”
