Chapter 21

August 25th, 2005

"Jaune, how often do you masturbate?"

There was a loud thud, followed by the sound of a wrench landing on the concrete floor. I heard him yell under his breath something nondescript, and then his face appeared over the bedside of his truck, his hand rubbing the back of his head.

"Excuse me?"

"Didn't you hear my question?" I probed, flipping through my magazine. "I asked you how often you touch yourself."

He gave me a look.

"Why the hell would you want to know that?"

I pushed out my bottom lip for effect, and lolled my head around to look at him.

"Call it an innate sense of curiosity?"

Jaune scoffed at me and bent down to pick up his wrench, disappearing below the bedside.

"More like an inane sense of curiosity. Why, how often do you masturbate?"

My face went flush, but he was out of sight so he didn't notice.

"You can't answer my question with another question, Jaune, that's called deflection, and I won't have it."

"Well I don't really appreciate you asking me…" I heard him pause and grunt with a bolt. "... how often I pull my horn while I'm down here doing something you asked me to do."

I shrugged, sitting up against the front of the truck's box. I could see him struggling around inside the cab through the back window. I reached up and slid the glass partition open and stuck my head inside.

"All this dancing around the subject isn't gonna do you any good, dude. Just answer the question and we can move on to a new topic."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna… oof, that's tight… Answer a personal question like that without some kind of background or preface beforehand. Are you reading some kind of personal health and wellness magazine? Are you trying to find out about my prostate health or something?"

I grimaced but giggled, and slid back down into the bed of the truck.

"Ew, no, an AutoTrader."

"Okay, so how did you go from looking at cars to wondering about me and my alone time?"

I laughed, hearing him drop a bolt out of the cab and onto the floor.

"Well, since you asked, I was flipping through this here AutoTrader, and I found an ad for a ninety-one Town Car Regatta edition," I said, accentuating the syllables to add a hint of class to the name. "Which I remember one of my buddies said was the ultimate car for a Drive-In Wrestling Match, and since I know none of us have held relationships long enough to warrant buying a yacht with a back seat big enough for proliferating our species, I figured that like myself, you were relegated to hanging out alone with Mister Johnson and the juice crew."

I heard Jaune sputter hard and bust out laughing, and I leaned over the bedside just in time to watch him fall backwards onto his butt, eyes teared up and face red like a tomato. This straw broke my delicate camel's back and I laughed as well, doing my utmost to not have spit come flying out my mouth, as my new braces caused me to do. Stupid crooked teeth.

"Mister J- fuck off, you little… I dunno, irritating thing."

Jaune stood up and regained his composure, wiping at the corner of his eye with the the collar of his shirt. This action of course left his midriff exposed, and I may or may not have looked at it and his sprouting abdominals. I chuckled and sat up on my knees, leaning over the piano black bedside of his truck.

"You still haven't answered my question, Jaune."

"Ahhh…" he sighed and put his hands on his hips, standing for a second and scratching the back of his head. "I dunno, Friday nights and the weekends. I go to bed kinda early, so I never really have time for it. What about you?"

I elected to not be so cagey with my answer.

"Oh, jeez, like every day, dude."

He raised an eyebrow at me. I frowned back.

"What? It's natural."

"Oh, absolutely, I don't blame you. If I had that kind of free time, the inside of my room would be like a Jackson Pollock painting."

I snickered and stuck my tongue out.

"Gross, dude."

"You asked!"

I shrugged and sat back down, leaning against the back of the cab.

"I mean, yeah, you're right, I did. But you didn't have to elaborate like that."

"What were you expecting me to say, that I was a good Catholic boy who only read his bible at night and repressed all my inner sexual deviancies?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Or that I wake up every morning at five o'clock and hire a humongous Russian dominatrix to dress me up in all leather and spank me with specifically a Spalding-brand ping pong paddle while I'm forced to sing 'God Save The Queen' in G Major?"

"That actually sounds kinda hot."

Jaune paused and looked at his feet. I could see the blush on his cheeks as his brain caught up to his mouth.

"Y-yeah…"

"Especially the 'you in leather' part."

He sighed deeply and flipped me off, turning around to his toolbox to grab more tools. I laughed at his back and turned back to my AutoTrader, flipping past another boring page of Corsicas and Astro Vans.

"You know I called you over to help me, not sit around and look pretty."

I slapped myself in the knees with the magazine.

"Finally you tell me I'm pretty, Jaune. I've been waiting for that for eight years!"

"Don't think I meant it as a compliment, lazy ass."

"Too late, already taken as one."

"Oy. At least be useful and hand me that seat belt assembly."

He gestured to the cardboard box I had my feet propped up on in the back of his truck. I let out a disgruntled, melancholic sigh and reached for the box, flipping open the oil-stained brown flaps and pulling the box closer to me. I pulled out the mechanism we had spent the morning scouring the local pick-n-pull in the thirty-five degree sunshine to find, and lifted it over the bedside, just out of the reach of his fingers.

"I'll trade you for a drink."

"Yeah, yeah."

He stood up and sauntered over to the fridge in the corner, because like a lot of Canadians, there was a beer fridge in his garage. You know, the one that used to be in the kitchen, but slowly faded to a beige over the years and got replaced by the new hotness, stainless steel double-wide with an ice maker in the door? Anyway, Jaune pulled open the ugly, neglected appliance and pulled out a can of Coke and opened it with one hand, leaving a tiny dent from his thumb just to the left of the upper ridge of the can. He placed it in my hand and collected the seat belt mechanism.

"Thanks." he mumbled, sliding back onto the floor of the cab.

"No, thank you," I replied, honestly.

I coughed and leaned back against the front of the box and flipped open my magazine again, taking a sip of the ice-cold Coke. you know, for an old fridge, it did a great job chilling drinks.

"How're you makin' out in there, Jaune?"

"Just gotta bolt in this belt and feed it up through the seat."

"So like, what, ten minutes?"

"Five, at most."

"Cool."

I rubbed the corner of my eye on the back of my hand.

"Find anything worth buying in there?"

I shrugged and sucked air through my teeth.

"There's a lot of good shit in here, and a lot of really expensive nice cars. Just flipped passed a C4 ZR1 for like ten and a half."

"That's not a bad deal, you should buy it."

I chuckled. "I don't have Corvette money, I do have Cavalier money."

"I didn't have 454SS money, but here we are," he said, gesturing to the truck we were working on. "I asked for a little bit of a loan from my dad for this."

"Not sure if I could convince Winter to lend me any money. I hear the rent on our apartment's not cheap. How much did you pay for this?"

"Forty-five hundred bucks."

I nodded.

"That's not a bad price at all for the hot-rod version of the top of the line Silverado."

'Not at all. This truck had all the options, the nice wheels, the bigger engine, the sport package, tow package, bucket seats-"

I interrupted.

"Which you've now removed and replaced with a bench seat."

"Yeah, yeah. But the way I see it, there's three of us, you, myself, and Emerald, and we need to get around somehow. And we pulled this bench out of a Chevy with a matching interior, so it looks factory, even though we know it's not."

"Right."

"So hopefully you can find something just as good as this in your kind of price range. Which is what, if you don't mind me asking?"

I bit my tongue.

"Hopefully less than five."

"That's actually a reasonable margin to work within, you can find a lot for that kind of money. What is it that you want?"

I sat up and put the magazine down next to me, and leaned over the edge of the box to watch him struggle to figure out what the correct size wrench was for installing the seat belt.

"I dunno, I think I'll know it when I see it. I want something that's fun to drive, but won't cost me an arm and a leg to fix."

Yeah, that statement bit me on the ass.

"Anything in mind?"

"Well, maybe like an MR2 or an old Celica Supra. Fun to drive, cheap to fix."

"You like old Toyotas? You want to buy the Previa?"

I grinned.

"The Prev's cool. It's a stick-shift, rear wheel drive minivan. And I have a sentimental attachment to it. How much you think your dad would sell it to me for?"

"Probably like a million bucks, he loves that van. Come across anything worthwhile yet?"

I shrugged and picked up the magazine and rifled quickly through the pages, before slapping it back down on the bed, open to a random page near the back.

"There was an Eighty-eight 323i convertible for twenty-five hundred bucks."

"That fits your requirements, doesn't it? Small, sporty BMW convertible?"

"Yeah, but it was an auto and it looked kinda rough. Plus I need to be able to drive this car all year 'round, and I dunno about a soft top in the winter." my eyes drifted back to my magazine. "I feel like I-"

I stopped suddenly and sat bolt upright, shaking the truck. I snatched the magazine up in my hands and drew it to my face, not believing what I was seeing.

"Yeah?"

"Holy shit, I found it."

Jaune stood up and leaned into the back of the truck.

"Found what?"

"I found the car I have to buy."

I started to shake, my fingers gripping the edges of the AutoTrader.

"Well, what is it?"

"Jaune, holy shit, look at this. A ninety-four M5 with a hundred and ninety thousand on it. Ad says 'one owner, garage kept in winter, needs some reupholstering to the interior, but otherwise mechanically solid. Comes with valid E-test and safety. $5,500, Located in Manotick', Jaune, that's down the street, we have to go see it!"

He frowned at me as I almost pushed the auto trader into his nose.

"An M5? For that little? You're sure it's not like a 528i or-"

"I don't care, we have to go look. Even a Five-Twenty-Eight for that price is worth it, it's an E34, you know that's my favourite BMW!"

"Alright, alright, we can go look at it. Do you have that kind of cash on you?"

"Of course not. Are you done with the seat, can we go now?"

Jaune sighed and put his hands on his hips.

"Yes, I'm done. You're sure you can afford that?"

"Almost. I'm sure he can be negotiated down a little bit. It is awfully high mileage for a BMW…"

"Alright." he said after a beat. "Give the ad a call, and I'll go tell my dad where we're going. Probably gonna be asked to pick up groceries on the wa-"

"Go! Just- I'll call him! Hurry!"

Jaune laughed and left me by myself in the garage. I've never dialed a phone number so fast in my life.

/.../

I have a feeling Jaune was driving extra slowly just to draw out the feeling of anticipation as long as he could. He was like that, though. He was not above drawing out my suffering, the bastard. I tapped my foot rapidly against the firewall, and whipped my head around accusingly.

"Dude, California Stop this shit, why are you driving so slow?!"

"The law requires I stop for three seconds at stop signs," he said with a smirk.

"Oh, come on, you always roll stop signs just like everybody else, you're doing this on purpose."

"I just…" he paused to create tension. "...I want you to understand my point of view here."

"And that is?"

"It seems awfully suspicious that there's a reasonably new top-of-the-line BMW for only five and a half. Those cars were what, seventy grand new, and that was only eleven years ago. I feel like it shouldn't have depreciated that much."

I shrugged.

"The ad said it had a lot of miles."

"It's still a high performance car. I could understand five and a half for a well-used 535i or a fender-bender 540i, not an M5. I just don't want us to get there and have you be disappointed."

"Jaune, I don't care if its a 528, a 530, a 535, a 540, or whatever it is, it's an E34, and that's literally my favourite style of my favourite car. The only way it gets better is if it's an E34 Touring, which is unlikely since they only sold like a thousand of them in Canada. I will not be disappointed, Jaune. I'm going to trust that the ad is correct."

He did that eyebrow thing at me. You know, the mild disappointment raised-eyebrow sigh thing? Yeah, that. I rolled my eyes and bonked my head on the window.

"Look, I know the lady said it was an M5 on the phone, but my money's on a dressed-up 535i."

"Jaune, it's a sin to put M badges on a non-M car."

"I jus- I want you to be realistic, okay? I don't want us to show up and be disappointed by an embellished advertisement."

"I don't like your fatalist attitude, Jaune. Also can you please hurry up."

He sighed.

"Alright, whatever."

"Look, I wouldn't sell a V6 Mustang with GT badges as a GT and lie to people, in fact I would take the badges off before I sold it so the buyer was getting a more accurate end product."

"You wouldn't have badged a V6 as a GT in the first place, though."

"No, I wouldn't have even bought a V6 Mustang to begin with, but my point is in advertising honesty. I'm sure there's a clause in the fine print of the AutoTrader submission form about writing a dishonest advertisement and selling a car that is misrepresented as something else. Why would this seller misrepresent his car for sale when ten times out of ten, someone actively looking for an M5 is gonna go see that car and know within seconds that it's the genuine article or not? No regular Joe looking for a car to ferry his kids around in is gonna buy a second-hand M5 and be duped by false advertising."

Jaune just kinda blinked at me.

"Alright, you've really thought this through."

I nodded vigorously.

"Besides, if it turns out that it is in fact incorrectly advertised, I'm sure we can sue for misrepresentation and then buy a new M5 with the winnings."

"This isn't the U.S., you can't just sue people willy-nilly."

"I can do what I want. Especially if there's willy, and consequently nilly involved."

Jaune chuckled and turned slowly into a long driveway in the rich neighbourhood, shrouded by short, well-trimmed maple trees on both sides. This alone suddenly changed my impression of the car we were going to see, and it's owner. I frowned nervously as we cruised up the red gravel driveway and up to the, well there was no other way of putting this, parking lot sized area that sat in front of the imposing building fascia. Jaune pulled up and stopped, and we both sorta stared at the house through the windshield for a few moments. I turned to him.

"I uh…" I stuttered. "I-I-I I'll… I'll be honest, I don't know what to expect here."

"Yeah I rescind all my previous statements."

I drummed my fingers on the dashboard.

"If he's this wealthy…"

"Don't try and confuse yourself," his voice was soft and soothing. "Let's just go, talk to the guy, have a look at the car, and then be on our way."

I nodded.

"Okay."

Jaune shut the truck off and pulled his key out with a zip from the old ignition cylinder, and we stepped out in unison like we had choreographed it beforehand. Trust me, we were just in sync sometimes. Not in the same way that Emerald and I were occasionally in sync, but in a semi-similar vein. Kind of.

"After you, Weiss." he gestured to the front door of the house. Castle was more an appropriate word, but that was just the opinion of someone who lived in a tiny apartment. "We're here for you."

"R-right."

I was suitably nervous all of a sudden as I approached the huge oak doors that were probably not the building's actual main entrance. I climbed the steps, careful to not trip over my shoelaces which were a bit too long for my sneakers a second time that day, and approached the little ringer button mounted at about elbow-height to the left of the door. I didn't even notice it was on the wrong side, being a southpaw myself, as I reached out and pushed my finger into it. After a beat, a chorus of deep metallic chimes rang out, clearly coming from real bells somewhere in the large building. I heard Jaune chuckle next to me.

"My, that's awfully luxurious."

"Shut up, Jaune."

I watched the wood surface with an intensity I only ever reserved for special occasions, like when I was neck-deep in a calculus final at the end of the school year and I couldn't figure out one of the differentials because it used a the only trig equivalency that I hadn't put on my cheat sheet. I stood and listened with my feet. Most people used their ears, but I wasn't most people. I 'heard' someone approaching the door, and then actually heard the door's big deadbolt slide open. With a creak of antique house, you know the sound, the eeeeeeekkkk of brass hinges, the door sung inward and a man stepped forward.

Okay, I say man, I mean flagpole. This fellow must have stood six foot nine or ten, and like a scene out of a kids movie, looked right over my head for a second, frowned, then looked down at me with surprise.

"Oh!" his voice was low and saccharine. "My apologies, I did not see you there."

This man had an incredibly thick German accent, and a similarly thick and stylish moustache. It was much more civilised than the one I used to have. Clearly he was from a more noble and professional upbringing.

"Yes, that happens a lot, I'm very short. Sorry, I'm-" I stuttered again. "I'm here to see the car? I called… I guess your wife about twenty minutes ago?"

"Ah, of course, you must be Weiss," he said, pronouncing my name with a V instead of a W. The correct pronunciation, actually. "My name is Arthur, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. So, you want to see the M5. Yes, follow me, it is around the corner."

It was actually kind of hilarious watching this Arthur fellow have to duck under his own doorway and come out into the open. Why wouldn't he have bought a door the correct height for himself? I dunno, but I followed the tall, lanky man down the driveway, Jaune following me close behind. See, today was a shorts and tank top day, as it was a blistering thirty-three degrees outside, with a humidity of nearly forty-one. Now, I understand there are places in the world that are hotter than this, but this was Canada. The Great White, as in, 'covered in a thick layer of snow', North. So Jaune and I were dressed appropriately for the weather, but just looking at Arthur's crisp brown suit jacket and matching slacks was making me sweat. I mean, he must have been wearing twenty thousand dollars in clothing, so I suppose he was just trying to get his money's worth.

"Right, just in here."

We rounded a corner to find a reasonably sized garage with a pair of doors, separate from the house, sitting in the shade of a gigantic willow tree. I watched him stop and pull out his phone, a funky looking device with a big screen and an entire computer keyboard on the front. This must have been one of those new-fangled Blackberrys everyone wanted but no one could afford. I don't know why you'd need one, though, my Nokia did everything I ever asked. Anyway, after a beat, both sets of doors whirred into life and opened outward, revealing the insides very dramatically and very slow-motion.

"Well, that's a neat trick, controlling it with your phone." I said, hands on hips.

"Thank you," he said with a genuine smile. "I wrote the program for that myself. I created a signal interceptor, and used the phone's antenna to transmit a simple binary signal to a device in my garage that activates the door motors."

"It's very clever, I like it. Too bad I don't have a garage."

I peered into the garage as the doors finished their opening cycle, and caught a glimpse of the two cars stored within. The one on the left was under a cover, and the one on the right was so new I could still see the stickers on the front tires and the plastic wrap on the grille.

"That's an E60 M5."

"You are right, my dear. It just arrived last night, fresh off the boat from Dingolfing, I haven't had a chance to even drive it yet."

I chuckled.

"As much as I would like a five-hundred-horsepower V10, that's not the car you were advertising, was it?"

Arthur chuckled and unbuttoned his blazer, pulling it slightly open and slipping his hands into his pockets.

"It would be a shame to sell that car without having driven it first myself. No, the one you are here for is under that sheet."

I returned a chuckle. "Of course."

We stood for a second, immobile.

"You-re- free to go take the sheet of, my dear."

"O-oh, you mean for me to do it," I fumbled out. "I didn't want to presume."

"No no, it is alright. You are here to look at the car, you should be the person to take the cover off, I'm thinking."

"If you insist."

I carefully approached the car under the sheet in the dim garage. My hands fell gently to the soft cotton that felt more like a bedsheet than a car cover, and I started to peel it back. The wide, low front end greeted me as I retracted the cover, careful to fold it over itself and not wrinkle the fabric which probably cost more than the contents of my room, and very carefully lifted it over the retracted antenna post on the rear quarter panel. I folded the cover in my arms and gently placed it on the shelf just behind the car, and finally turned to admire it.

"Oh, this is the real deal, Jaune."

"Yeah, I can see that."

The car's slightly wider fenders arches front and back gave it away immediately. As did the M5-exclusive wheels and tiny front and rear air dams. I stepped around to the front.

"You said it was a ninety-four?"

"That's correct, my dear."

"Those aren't the right wheels?"

He chuckled.

"Interesting that you noticed, very few people would. No, those wheels are off of a ninety-one. I didn't enjoy the ride of the eighteen inch wheels, so I found the older seventeens and fitted them instead. I prefer this look."

"So do I." I nodded. "Looks cleaner. What's the history of this car?"

"I bought it brand new in ninety-four when I moved here. It had six kilometres on the meter when I picked it up. I've driven it every day since then."

"Wow, that's really new. Where did you move from, if you don't mind me asking?"

He chuckled and leaned against the open garage door.

"Oh, not at all, I moved here from Germany after being offered a job here for much better pay. I had to sell my E28 to afford the tickets for my wife and I."

"You had an E28? An M5 too?"

Arthur nodded with a big grin on his face, that was most definitely contagious.

"I will drive nothing but an M5, my dear. There is no substitute."

"I agree. SO, you had an E28, an E34, and I see an E60 just there. Did you have an E39 at some point?"

"I did, I bought it in two-thousand. My son bought it from me last year because he needed a car to take his son to school in. I was happy to sell it to him."

I looked at Jaune, who just kinda raised an eyebrow at me. I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to Arthur.

"What do you, uh…" I coughed quietly. "-uh, what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a systems and communications engineer for Research In Motion."

"Oh, over in Kanata by the Corel Centre?"

"You know your way around, eh?"

I shrugged. "I moved here about the same time as you did, I've had a few years to acclimatize."

"An immigrant too? Where are you from?"

"Germany, like yourself. Hamburg, actually."

"That would explain the very Germanic name. My mother lives in Hamburg. I'm a Saxony man, myself. You speak German?"

I scratched myself on the chin and made a face.

"It's been a few years, but it was my first language."

"You got rid of your accent, I notice."

"When you're young, it's easy to mould away."

"That would explain why I have a hard time pronouncing certain words still. Like the word 'brewery'..." he said, stumbling over the w pronunciation. "...And the word for those little rodents in the garden with the bushy tails."

"You mean a squirrel?"

"No, I mean Eichhörnchen. I'm not even going to try to say it in English, I'm going to mess it up. My wife, Hazel, she can do it, but I just hurt my jaw every time I try."

I laughed, but not with any kind of malice.

"Yeah, I had to learn how to make my mouth not do that, same thing would happen to me."

"Of course." he paused for a moment as we all admired the car. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a keyring and jingled it a few times. "How about instead of standing around and talking, we actually open the car up and take a look, eh?"

"Great idea."

I was handed the key. It was heavy, hewn from a single block of bronze, and attached to an aluminum keychain of the BMW spinning propeller logo. I unlocked the car, noticing that all four doors unlocked at the same time with one spin of the key, and pulled open the driver's door. Arthur leaned over the window frame and watched as I got in the very low leather bucket seat. I laughed as I realized I didn't exactly fit in the car so well.

"Do you know how to adjust the seats?"

"I'm gonna have to figure that out, I can't reach the pedals. Damn, I'm short."

I heard Jaune snicker to himself, but ignored it and let Arthur show me where the seat controls were.

"On the side, just there."

I fiddled around with the side of the seat for a moment, finding the controls pushing them forward as much as it would go until I could get my foot on the clutch and push it all the way down. Of course, the steering wheel was now in my face. I gently caressed the underside of the column for a moment.

"How do I adjust the-" the wheel retracted slowly into the dashboard. "-Ahh, there we go."

Once I was comfortable in the seat, which was significantly farther forward than where it had started. I nodded.

"This is very very comfortable."

"I know, it is just the best. Do you know the tagline BMW uses for its cars?"

"Sheer Driving Pleasure?"

Arthur nodded.

"That's right. Why don't you take it for a drive. See how you like it. I encourage you to be a little… spirited with it. Not too much, mind you."

"You're… not going to come along?"

"I trust you. Besides, if I'm in the car, you'll drive slowly."

"R-right."

Jaune pulled open the passenger door and leaned his head in.

"D'you need me to come with you?"

"I'd be more comfortable if you did."

Arthur leaned back and slowly closed my door for me, and gestured to the driveway.

"Go on, take your boyfriend for a quick tour around the neighbourhood."

I flushed a deep red, luckily hidden by a spattering of acne.

"Oh, Jaune's not my boyfriend, he's my financial advisor."

Jaune said nothing more than a sharp chuckle and slid into the passenger seat and closed his door. Arthur smiled and took a step back.

"Alright. You have fun, we'll have some tea and talk about the car some more when you get back, okay?"

I let my face cool off, slipping the key into the ignition.

"Okay. I'll be gentle with it, I promise."

I turned the key. The big six cylinder lugged a few times then bit, firing up and settling quickly into a buttery smooth idle. I let out a gasp, turning to Jaune, who nodded appreciatively back at me.

"That's a good sound."

"That's a beautiful sound, Jaune."

I slipped the car into first and babied it out of the garage, the featherweight clutch lifting and falling with almost zero effort under my skinny legs. As we crawled down the gravel driveway and towards the road, I adjusted myself in the seat and pulled on my seatbelt for safety. Jaune was busy fiddling with a button on the dash. As I stopped to wait for traffic to go by on the street, I peered over at him with an inquisitive look.

"Something the matter?"

"I don't think the heated seat works on this side."

"I can fix that. Try some other stuff."

"Alright."

There was a gap in traffic long enough that I didn't feel nervous about pulling into, and I took that opportunity, lifting the incredibly intuitive clutch and pulling out onto the road. I really didn't need to give as much room as I did, as one squeeze of the skinny pedal pushed us both into the seat with more force than we were expecting.

"Oh! My!"

"Woah, that's got some poke!"

I shifted the car into second, surprised by how easy the gear lever went.

"Holy shit, this is the smoothest transmission I've ever felt!" I said, keeping my eyes on the road and flipping the lever up into third with one finger.

"How many other stick-shift cars have you driven?"

"Well, there's the Previa, like all of us," I paused and brought the car up to eighty with maybe one percent of the pedal and slotted it easily into sixth. "Uh, my sister's friend Robyn's YJ, and our buddy Nadir from science class's eighty-eight Prelude. I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but this is better than the Prelude."

Jaune raised his eyebrows.

"Didn't you already say that his Prelude had the greatest transmission in the world?"

"Yeah, this is better."

"I've driven that car, it's amazing."

"Jaune…"

I paused as the road had opened up in front of us. I dropped the car down into third, bucking the clutch a little after a sub-par rev-match.

"...This is so much better."

I squeezed the gas pedal halfway down. Halfway! Power surged from the engine as all six of the throttle valves opened up, sucking air in almost musically and propelling the car forwards and squatting the rear suspension. We were both pushed into the plush buckets as the motor hurled us forward, singing its way up to the top of the dial and never once dropping in force or smoothness.

This was it. This was the car. The one I needed to have. It was time to go back and ensure that I got it.

/.../

"Right," I tapped my foot gently on the kitchen floor. A cup of tea was set down in front of both of us. "Oh, danke schön."

Arthur's wife smiled at me and turned around, retreating back into the side room with her own cup of tea and a book. She was a very tall woman, and incredibly stocky as well. Arthur told me later that she had taken part in the nineteen eighty-four Summer Games in Los Angeles. In shot put. Which explained the tree-crushing arms.

"So… I like the car."

Arthur nodded and sipped his tea.

"Very few people don't"

"I would like to buy it, I really would, but there are some things about it that I wanna talk about."

"Of course."

"Uh, when we were driving it, we noticed that the passenger side heated seat doesn't work."

"I know, it's been broken for about three years. I've been meaning to get it fixed, but I just keep driving the car, I like it too much.

I nodded.

"Yeah, that's fair. Uh, the heater vent is stuck on defrost and feet. It doesn't come out the dash."

"Yeah, BMW wanted four thousand dollars to fix that, it wasn't worth it for this car. On my E39 or my E60, absolutely, they're still under warranty."

My heart sank a bit, but I soldiered on.

"Uh, the steering wheel is about three degrees to the left of centre, and the passenger side power mirror doesn't work."

"It needs an alignment, it had a tie-rod replaced for the safety and they didn't align it so well. It passed with flying colours, however. The mirror is probably just stuck in place, I haven't adjusted it in eleven years."

I nodded.

"Okay, that's all my grievances. If I may, why are you selling it so cheap?"

"I think it's a reasonable price. The car is high-mileage, with a few bits that don't work so well. I looked through the classifieds for other, similar cars, and none of them were even over a hundred thousand kilometres, and they wanted ten, eleven thousand dollars for them."

"See, that's the kind of price I was expecting."

"It's…" Arthur paused. "...a well used car, if you noticed the driver's seat bolster is a bit torn."

"I did notice."

"The car does not owe me anything anymore, it has served its purpose, and I don't need to charge a large amount of money for it. I have absolutely gotten my sixty thousand dollars out of it, it would be in my opinion dishonest to charge any more than this. I am aware that I could ask twelve thousand dollars for it and I could get it without problem. I just don't feel like that is really what the car is worth. As you can see, I'm not exactly in need of the money. I was going to actually give it to my son, but he wanted the E39 instead."

I tapped my fingers on my cup.

"So fifty-five hundred?"

"To me, that is reasonable. The car is far from original. Different wheels, torn seat, you know. It has a new hood on it from when I sat down on the original and dented it."

"Oh, that sucks."

"It was off a 540i, but it was polar white so it matched."

I nodded.

"I think…" I chewed my lip. "I think I can do fifty five. My problem is I can't do fifty-five right this second, I get paid next thursday and I can afford it in full then, but I don't want you to sell the car to someone else."

Arthur mulled this over in his head, and stroked his moustache. It must have been dyed black, there's no way someone in his sixties still has facial hair without even a touch of grey. To be fair, he did seem to take care of his moustache.

"I think I can take a deposit today if you want. How much can you live with?"

I scratched my head and looked over at Jaune. He mouthed 'half' to me.

"Twenty-seven fifty?"

Arthur coughed on his tea and put his cup down.

"Mein Gott, I was only thinking a thousand. Tell you what, whatever you want to pay today, you go and get your money, and I can write up a bill of sale and sign the ownership over to you. You can take it to the DMV whenever you like, get your plates, come back with the remainder of the price when you have it. I'll make a bill of sale with a lesser amount on it so you don't have to pay as much tax, even. How does that sound?"

I shivered with glee, smiling like an idiot. I must have looked like such a child, thick, dorky glasses, pink and blue braces, not exactly clear skin. I was surprised Arthur even entertained my showing up at his door.

"I can do that. There's a TD bank in town, I can go there right now. I'll give you half today, half next week. That will give me some cash left over for taxes and registration."

Arthur smiled across the table and extended his hand.

"Then I think we have a deal."

"I think so as well."

I shook his hand, which was a little comical as his long, slender fingers wrapped around my tiny, child-like hands. In hindsight, he would have made a good pianist or guitar player.

"Congratulations, Weiss. You've bought yourself a BMW M5."

That I had. I looked over at Jaune, who smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. I beamed, my cheeks glowing red.

"Oh, I'm… I don't even know what to say. Thank you."

"No need to thank me, Fräulein, you chose the right car for you."

"I'm gonna keep it for the rest of my life."

"I hope you do."

And that's exactly what I did.