Katie said, “What do you mean, for a while?”
“So, three months he’s had the car, and he gets this bad cough. Horrible cough. Sounds like it’s starting down in his toes. So he goes to the doctor and guess what they find?”
Katie glanced his way. She had a pretty good idea, but didn’t want to say.
“Cancer,” Bruce said. “Lung cancer. At least, it started as that. But then it spread all through him. By the time they opened him up, there was nothing they could do. I mean, they took out one lung, the really bad one, but there was cancer in both. But you can’t exactly take out both lungs, right?” A sardonic chuckle. “So they took the one, and that was supposed to buy him some time.” He paused. “Except it didn’t.”
“How... long?” Katie asked.
“Died within two months. So this car, this, to me, was his legacy.”
“So you kept it.”
Bruce, looking ahead, shook his head slowly. “No.”
“You didn’t?”
“My mom sold it.”
“Oh no.”
“I pleaded with her not to. But I’d moved out by that time. I was at Boston College when Dad got sick, and came home for a while, but I got a teaching job in Braintree, my first one. I made Mom promise me she wouldn’t sell it, and she said she wouldn’t, but then I came home on a break and the car’s gone.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I flipped out. But she said there was no point in keeping it. No one could drive it, and it was taking up all that space in the driveway. I couldn’t believe it. I found out who she’d sold it to, some guy across town, and I tried to buy it back from him, even give him more than he’d paid for it, but there was no way.”
“Did you even have that kind of money?”
“No. If he’d said yes, I don’t know what I’d have done. Robbed a bank, maybe.”
“So, how’d you end up getting it back?”
“I kept tabs on it. Every time I was back home, I’d drive by that dipshit’s house, see if the car was still there. Would drive me crazy when I saw how he was taking car of it. The car always looked dirty, and sure, a black car is hard to keep clean, but you can make an effort, you know? And then, one day — this is about five years later — the car’s not there. I figure, okay, he’s out someplace, but I drive by later and there’s a different Caddy in the drive. A newer one. He traded in my dad’s car! So I go up to him and ask him, where’s the car, what happened to it? And he says, who are you? Who am I? Had no idea, no memory of me coming to see him years before.”
“So who got the car?”
“He sold it, privately, to this son of a bitch by the name of Arnie Gloster, a condom salesman.”
“Get out.”
“Not kidding you. Worked for one of the big pharmaceutical companies, drove all over New England selling the things out of the trunk.” He grinned. “You could stuff enough cases in the back end of this car for the whole eastern seaboard. So, he put a lot of miles on it, and he didn’t take much better care of it than the first guy. So now, I’ve been teaching a few years, and I’m married, but I’ve never given up hope of buying that car back.”
“Quick question.”
“Go ahead.”
“How long did you stay mad at your mom?”
Bruce pursed his lips. “Long time.” He pointed. “Check it out.”
About a hundred yards up, a deer emerged from the woods on the right side of the road and sprinted across, disappearing into the forest on the other side. “Whoa,” Katie said, taking her foot off the gas and tapping the brake. “Glad we weren’t any closer.”
“Just hold off a second...”
“What?”
“There,” he said, still pointing. Two smaller deer darted across the road in pursuit of the larger one. “She’s got kids.”
“Aww,” said Katie. “I’ve seen the odd deer, but never a family.”
All three had slipped into the woods, so Bruce gave Katie a nod to get back up to speed.
“Don’t you think it’s weird we haven’t seen another Arrival?” Katie asked.
“Just as well,” Bruce said. “So, anyway. I would keep tabs on this condom salesman, and one day, I’m driving through Malden, and there’s this black Caddy parked out front of Jenken’s Drugs. This’d be 1970. I’m thinking, is that my dad’s car? So, out of curiosity, I pull over a block up and walk back to check it out. And sure enough, it was.”
“How could you tell?”
“When my dad first got the car, second day I think it was, he backed into a fire hydrant. Couldn’t believe it. Had the car two days! He put this little dimple in the chrome bumper, on the back right, way down below the fin. Dad never got it fixed. He left it there as a reminder to himself, to be careful. And he also believed, as long as that dimple was there, the rest of the car wouldn’t get hit. So, I looked, and the dimple was there.”
“Wow. So, let me guess. Condom Man comes back and you make a deal.”
“Not exactly,” Bruce said.
“So, he sold it and you got it from the next guy.”
“Wrong again. The windows were open, and I look inside, and the keys are in the ignition. And I thought, the dumb son of a bitch. Anyone could steal this car. This special car, this car that was my father’s legacy.”
“So, you chewed Condom Man out when he came back?” Katie made a face, like she’d bit into a lemon. “I think that was a bad choice of words. But is that what you did?”
Bruce shook his head. “No.” He paused. “I took it.”
“What?” Katie looked over so suddenly the wheel shimmied in her hand. The car did a minor swerve.
“Careful,” Bruce said.
“You took the car? Like, to teach him a lesson? And then you returned it?”
Now Bruce was grinning. “Nope.”
Katie blinked. “You stole it?”
He nodded.
“This is a stolen car?”
“That it is,” he said. “Stole it on August 4, 1970. Been mine ever since.”
“No way.” Katie was incredulous. “I’m driving a hot car? I’m behind the wheel of a stolen automobile?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said casually. “Been more than fifty years. Don’t think anyone’s looking for it now.”
“How — where—”
“Had a barn on our property. Hid it there. Fixed it up. Needed some bodywork. Tuned up the engine. Got it back into perfect shape. Stole some plates for it, and after — if you can believe it — five years, took it out on the rode for the first time. Figured, by then, no one was looking for it anymore.”
Katie, still aghast, managed one shocked laugh. “You were an English teacher, and a car thief?”
“Not many of those around,” Bruce conceded. “So far as I know. It’s not like there’s a club of guys who are experts in Shakespeare and hot-wiring a car.”
A phone started ringing.
“That must be you,” Bruce said. “I don’t have a cell phone, and I’m pretty sure this car didn’t come with Bluetooth.”
Katie took one hand off the wheel and took the phone from her pocket. She handed it over to Bruce. “Who is it?” she asked.
Bruce looked at the screen. “Lisa Carver.”
“Who?”
Bruce repeated the name.
“I don’t know anyone with that name,” Katie said. “Must be a wrong number. Just decline it.”
“How do I do that?”
Katie told him to hit the red button on the screen. Bruce tapped it, and the phone stopped ringing.