To call it a garage would have made anyone I knew back home fall over in disbelief. There were no bins of junk, no ripped cardboard boxes on wooden shelves, no bicycles hanging by hooks from the ceiling. When Thad reached around the corner and flipped a switch, suddenly the polished concrete floor glimmered as the place became illuminated by intense ceiling lights. These same lights shone upon five polished things sitting in a row.
My heart nearly stopped beating when I saw the fourth.
The magnificence of this mansion, every piece of expensive furniture it housed, I would have eagerly thrown away for the device before me now. I’d glanced over the black Bentley Coupe, the silver Maserati Gran Turismo, and even the white Audi R8—locking on the single piece of flaming red glory behind them.
A Shelby GT500. The most glorious car the world had ever been graced with; the car no road deserved to feel trample its gravel. My BMW would have melted in jealousy at the sight. Its wheels were the blackest of black, windows tinted, the sweeping red angles of the hood and side and door like a carefully crafted ship. The silver cobra on its front whispered seductively at my heart. If I’d had my camera, I could have photographed its two front lights, and likely would have been able to read nothing but eternal bliss behind their pupils.
Did it matter that I couldn’t remember what its V8 engine could do, or what its lack of a white racing stripe meant, or that the other cars were far more expensive? Did it matter that I’d seen more than my fair share of nice vehicles when working with wealthy clients? I was still captivated by this piece of machinery.
Callista punched me in the shoulder, finally breaking in to my thoughts.
“I take it you’re going to marry the red one?” she snapped. I heard Thad laughing at me from the corner.
“You’re just better at hiding your admiration for this god-machine,” I told him. I approached the car with caution, hands out until I’d touched its warm metal. Callista tilted her head at me in surrender as I ran my fingers over its hull.
“Well good,” Thad called. “Maybe your admiration will make you a safer driver.”
The shadow of something came flying across the room from Thad, and I yelped and grabbed it out of the air before it could dent the Shelby. I was about to hurl obscenities at him, before I realized that I was holding a ring of keys.
I looked from them to Thad in alarm but no words would come out, because I saw that he was standing next to a row of key hooks on the wall. He was already heading for the Audi with another key in his hand. I turned my head and saw that Callista had climbed into the passenger seat of my new car.
“Let’s go!” she demanded.
The speed at which I got to the door could have won marathons. I tore it open and dove into the chair before I had fully realized I was even moving. The black leather formed into my back, a button on the side adjusting the seat to be just right, the slam of the door snapping like a battle tank’s hatch. I turned the ignition and the engine sound sent a thrill to my heart.
The garage door opened behind me, letting sunlight stream in. It felt like the first time I’d seen the outside world in ages. With shaking knees I pushed on the gas to ease us out, and suddenly I was going down a driveway, passing trees and a yard, then out an open gate, then facing the runway of a road before me. I pressed the brake a bit too quickly, not accustomed to its taunt control.
Thad was at the end of the street already, waiting impatiently for us to follow. We sat in the center of a beautiful lane, trees overhanging the street and everything blissful.
Not for long. I switched gears and pressed the pedal, and we shot off.
Riding in the Shelby was like traveling by road submarine. The world outside was entirely blocked out by the tinted windows and the thick metal as we dashed across the Beverly Hills, following the car ahead. Had Thad punched the address into his GPS? I certainly didn’t know where we were going, so I hoped he had. I just knew that I was driving a Shelby GT500. When a person is driving a Shelby GT500, it doesn’t really matter where they are headed, because anywhere they end up becomes a landmark.
“I think I’ll name her Ophelia,” I said over the hum of the engine.
“Who?” Callista whirled to me in alarm.
“This car,” I said, rubbing its dash. “This wonderful car. This piece of dreams.”
I’d never felt more thrilled to irritate a person before. Callista grabbed the radio dial and spun it up so high that it suffocated my voice. But I was too far on top of the world now for anything to dampen my spirits. So I flicked the volume up even more than she had put it, feeling the bass beat against the walls and the chairs and my foot as it pressed the pedal.
I glanced at Callista, whose lips were pressed tightly together, and when she looked at me she pushed them even tighter, though I could tell her disgust was mostly faked. She was biting her tongue to keep from making fun of me.
Soon I was forced to slow the car down as Thad took an exit in front of us, and we began to venture down the streets into the heart of Los Angeles. There never really was a “good time” for traffic in LA: the only times it really let up was between 2 and 4 AM, and then only if there wasn’t late-night construction. It was midday so the lunch hour traffic was out, and I had to dodge my unfamiliar car around blocks and up busy streets as Thad weaved in and out of the lanes insubordinately. People would stare at my car when we stopped at a light but luckily none of them could see me inside. I was horrible at being covert. In fact, flying might have brought less attention. We hadn’t thought this one out well.
Finally, I saw the massive bank building: a towering behemoth of crystal black windows that reflected the city, straight and tall without so much as a single curve to interrupt its sharpness. The only things that broke the black were two clear, revolving doors at the bottom, people going in and out in a constant stream. And far at the top of the building was a red sign that said, in blocky letters: VERSTONE BANK.
Thad swept his car around the corner and onto the side street. I parked behind him, forcing myself to turn the key but hesitant to get out. I came around the front where Callista was waiting with a raised eyebrow.
“She’ll still be here when we get back,” Callista growled.
“Are you jealous of a car getting my attention?” I asked. She refused to acknowledge me.
Thad gestured between us at the building, which now rose so high in the air that I had to bend backwards just to see its top. I’d probably passed by this building hundreds of times while driving downtown—it was just one of those bank skyscrapers so common in the city that nobody’d look twice.
“I think Callista and I should stay out here,” Thad suggested. “It might be suspicious for a bunch of teenagers to walk in and ask for a bank box. We don’t know what’s in it yet. And besides…”
He spread his hands over both our cars. “We don’t have quarters to pay the parking meter.”
“Well that decides it,” Callista said, hopping onto the hood of my Shelby. “I can face ruthless murderers who control the world, but please not a parking cop.”
I rubbed my hands together nervously, trying to think of any flaws in Thad’s logic but finding none. So I turned and left them for the sidewalk, pushing my hands into my pockets to try to still some of the nervous tension that had begun to creep up again.
I’d been through this before, those minutes preceding some event that would reveal terrible secrets or answer some of the million questions that faced me. I still couldn’t calm myself though, as I turned the corner amidst lines of cars that rolled down the hectic streets, pedestrians babbling to one another, crossing signals whistling to let the blind know it was safe to go. I looked back to Callista and Thad but they were already out of sight, so I pressed on through the revolving doors of the bank.