“Four-stroke spark-ignition V-8. Four-speed gearbox. Zero to sixty in ten-point-seven. Clocked at one-hundred-and-nineteen on the straightaway. Runs as crisp as a fresh dollar bill. AM/FM stereo sound. Have the whole London Philharmonic in your backseat. All deluxe interior. White leather. It’s a presidential suite in there. Those aren’t seats. Those are sofas. Davenports. Divans. Settees. Air-conditioning good enough to keep your drink cold, heater good enough to keep your little lady warm.”
His little lady? She’s trundled on down the road to who knows where. Leaving him behind with an Occam job that’s nearly complete. Whether he chases Lainie or drives himself, all alone, out of this execrable burg, he’ll need wheels to replace that heap illegally parked across the street. This man of metal is stronger than him. Is it any use fighting? He protests because that’s what you do in car lots, but it’s pitiful. “I’m just looking.”
“Then look at this, my friend. Tip to tail, here to there: eighteen-and-a-half feet long. That’s two basketball hoops, the second balanced atop the first. You think you could sink a basket that high? Look at the width. That’ll fill a car lane, won’t it? Look how low it sits, like a lion. Two-point-three tons, it weighs. You drive this darling out of here, you rule the road, simple as that. Power windows. Power brakes. Power steering. Power seats. Power everything. Just plain power.”
That sounds good. It’s what any American man deserves. Power means respect. From your wife, your kids, flunkies who don’t know anything harsher in life than a car breaking down on the road. He’s better than that. All he needs is a way to tell everyone to steer the hell out of his way. He’s starting to feel better. Not just better, but good, for the first time in a while. He manages one more demurral, though any good salesman can hear his capitulation, and this is the best salesman of all time.
“I’m not sure about the green,” Strickland says.
The lot confirms that Cadillacs come in as many shades as Elisa Esposito’s shoes. Stardust gray. Cotton-candy pink. Raspberry red. Oil black. This one is green, but not the solacing glass-green of his hard candy. It’s silkier, like a creature that ought to have died centuries ago glimpsed through still waters as it trawls a riverbed.
“Green?” The salesman is offended. “Oh no. No, siree. I wouldn’t sell you a green car. This, my friend, is teal.”
Something shifts inside Strickland. The salesman has shown him the way. Power: He had it as the Jungle-god. He still has it now. He thinks back to one of Lainie’s jabbering pastors. What was one of God’s first displays of power? To name things. The Jungle-god can name things, too. They become what he wants them to become. Green becomes teal. Deus Brânquia becomes the asset. Lainie Strickland becomes nothing at all.
He leans down to peer inside. He’ll be sitting inside it in a moment. But it feels good to tease himself. The dashboard has a hundred dials and knobs. It’s F-1, packed into a single front seat. The steering wheel is whip-thin, the strap of a nightie. He imagines wrapping his fingers around it, how easily the red blood from his torn fingers will wipe from the white leather. The salesman has moved behind him. He whispers like a lover. The limited-edition color. Twelve coats of hand-polished paint. Four out of five successful men in America drive a Caddy. Forget the rockets everyone’s shooting into the sky. Sputnik’s got nothing on the de Ville.
“That’s the business I’m in.” Even with the deed all but signed, Strickland feels the need to impress the man.
“That right? Now, how about you slide in there.”
“National defense. New initiatives. Space applications.”
“You don’t say. You can adjust the seat—there you go.”
“Space stuff. Rocket stuff. Stuff of the future.”
“The future. That’s good. You look like a man who’s headed there.”
Strickland draws a long inhale through his nose. He’s not only headed into the future. He is the future. Or will be, once his job as Jungle-god is complete, the asset is gone, his family matters are resolved, and the pills are no longer required. He and this car will be joined together, a man of metal, same as the salesman. Fused on a factory assembly line of the future. A future where the world’s jungles, and all of the creatures therein, are modernized by concrete and steel. A place void of nature’s madness. A place of dotted lines, streetlights, turn signals. A place where Cadillacs just like this, just like him, can roam free, forever.
18
EVERYONE AT KLEIN & Saunders dresses to project style; it’s part of their job to anticipate trends. This old fellow isn’t wearing a suit of modern cut. He isn’t even wearing a suit. His blazer and trousers are mismatched. Maybe his eyesight is to blame; he wears crooked glasses, thick-lensed and paint-flecked. There’s paint on his mustache, too. His bow tie, at least, is clean, though she’s never seen a bow tie in this office before. It has its charm, though, just as the toupee does, though she doubts it’s the kind of charm he intended. Lainie wants to protect him, this grandfather figure, from the pack of wolves kept beyond the frosted glass door.
She recognizes him as Giles Gunderson right away.
“You must be Miss Strickland.” He beams and strides forward.
On his phone calls, of which there have been many, it has always been “Miss Strickland”—not “honey,” not “toots.” For his polite, dogged pursuit of a single meeting with Bernie, Mr. Gunderson has become Lainie’s favorite freelancer—and least favorite as well. Favorite because talking with him is like talking with the gentle grandfather she never knew. Least favorite because it is her job to pass along Bernie’s hogwash excuses and hold back apologies when she hears, popping through the telephone, the cracks of Mr. Gunderson’s pride.
He reaches to shake her hand, an unusual gesture. “Oh! You’re married. All this time, I should’ve been saying, ‘Mrs. Strickland.’ How rude of me.”
“Not at all.” The truth is that she likes it, the same as how she likes that everyone here calls her Elaine. “And you have to be Mr. Gunderson.”
“Giles, please. My royal processional must have tipped you off. The heraldic displays and tableaux vivants.”
Desk work has taught Lainie to hold her smile regardless of confusion or embarrassment. Mr. Gunderson—Giles, what a suitable name—senses it straightaway and offers an apologetic chuckle.
“Forgive my obtuseness. I toddle around most days without a single person following a word of my nonsense. It makes me ever so popular.”
He smiles, and it is so sincere, so patient, so absent of ulterior design, that she has to fold her hands or else risk reaching out to take his again. It makes her feel silly, and she looks at the appointment book to hide her blush.
“Let’s see, I have you down for a 9:45 with Mr. Clay.”
“Yes and I’m fifteen minutes early. Always be ready to go, that’s my motto.”
“Can I get you some coffee while you wait?”
“I wouldn’t say no to some tea, if you have it.”
“Oh! I don’t think we have tea. It’s coffee all the time here.”
“That’s too bad. They used to keep tea. Perhaps just for me. Coffee—a barbaric drink. That poor, tortured bean. All that fermenting and husking and roasting and grinding. And what is tea? Tea is dried leaves rehydrated. Just add water, Mrs. Strickland. All living things need water.”
“I never thought about it like that.” An arch remark comes to mind; typically she would bottle it, but next to this man, she feels safe. She leans in. “Maybe I’ll serve only tea from now on. Turn all these grabby apes into gentlemen.”