He parks where Charlie tells him to, then ignores everything Charlie says until he’s standing in line at what looks like a reputable coffee shop.
“Go walk around. I’ll get your coffee.” Simon waves Charlie off. “Go, go, go.”
A few minutes later, holding two coffees that cost enough to suggest that this cute little town does a brisk tourist trade, Simon leans against the outside of the building. Old cars are parked along the streets for clusters of old white men to admire. As Simon takes a sip of coffee, a car that looks like the Batmobile from the oldBatmanTV show drives past.
“It was a stupid idea,” Charlie says when he comes back. “I don’t know how I thought I’d find him.”
“Eat the banana bread.” Simon shoves the paper bag into Charlie’s chest. “We’ll walk around.”
The streets are lined with low-slung buildings, with lots of striped awnings and little American flags. Neon signs that straddle the line between seedy and quaint say things likehotelandgifts. Somebody here discovered vintage fonts and just went for it. Even not counting the old cars, the whole place is a little bit twee and one hundred percent camp, in a way Simon can respect.
“This town is what set designers are thinking of when they buildgeneric main streets,” Simon says when he realizes why it seems familiar. The design choices of a dozen movies suddenly make sense. They walk past a sign for a gas station museum. Simon would bet five hundred dollars they’re going to see a soda fountain within the next fifty yards. “They can’t get enough of Route 66 here.” He’s counted five signs in the past block.
“That’s because you’re standing on Route 66,” Charlie says.
Simon, like an idiot, looks down at his feet. Charlie starts laughing.
“That’s why they have the car show here.”
“Vintage car aesthetic? Americana vibes?” Simon suggests.
“Something like that. Also you’ve gotta stop saying vintage cars. Vintage cars are basically Model T era. Antique cars are from before ’75, and classic cars are more than twenty-five years old, but people fight about that all the time. A ’98 Civic is not a classic car, don’t embarrass yourself.”
“How do you know all that off the top of your head?”
Charlie stops walking, so Simon swings around to face him.
“Seriously?” Charlie asks.
“What?”
“You know what I did beforeOut There, right?”
Simon apparently left his entire brain on the highway north out of Phoenix, because of course he knows that Charlie got his start on a show about car restoration. Teenage Charlie worked in a garage owned by a—“Dave owned the garage you worked at.”
“You watched the show?” Charlie looks shocked and a little pleased.
“I watched everything Alex and Samara did too.” There’s no need to admit that he watched every scene Charlie was in at leasttwice, trying to figure out what Lian saw that made Charlie worth the trouble.
There’s definitely no need to admit that by the end of the very first episode, the answer was obvious. Charlie is one of those people who have a magnet in them that makes it impossible to look away.
“And this isn’t a stupid idea,” Simon says. “You’re doing due diligence before going to the police. This is the best you can do.” He isn’t in the habit of being reassuring to anybody but Jamie—and even then, it’s hardly one of his strengths. But now he has to because there isn’t anyone else around to do it.
“Okay,” Charlie says, tossing his empty paper bag into the nearest trash can. “Let’s keep walking.”
“How many pairs do you have?” Charlie asks when Simon swaps out the sunglasses he wears to drive (not too dark, polarized) with the ones he wears when walking around outside in the sun (a bit darker, but not super dark).
“Six? Maybe seven. I don’t fuck with sunlight.”
When Simon realized that light—flashing light, bright light, light leaking through tree branches, the brake lights of the truck in front of him at a stop sign—can sometimes trigger his migraines, he splurged on a few pairs of sunglasses. He spent a dumb amount of money on Tom Ford Wayfarers, and an even dumber amount on a pair that’s allegedly identical to what Cary Grant wore inNorth by Northwest. He even has a pair of aviators with pinkish-tinted lenses that he wears indoors when things are especially rough.
Simon and Charlie get recognized twice that Simon clocks, which is more than he might have expected, especially since Charlie is wearing a baseball cap and has a beard that ought to make him less immediately identifiable.
Charlie remembers why Simon’s here in the first place, and they take a bunch of selfies, one inside a bright orange convertible that Charlie tells him is a 1970 Shelby, whatever that is. Charlie pets the car—actually pets it—and calls it a beauty, gorgeous, just look at her. Something goes fizzy and awful in Simon’s stomach hearing the low rumble of praise. He decides that investigating this sensation is not compatible with sanity. Instead he lets himself get hauled into Charlie’s side for picture after picture.
All Simon has to do is occasionally smile while Charlie asks car owners incomprehensible questions about engines and hubcaps and chrome. Whenever Charlie talks to someone who’s part of this scene—for lack of a better word—he works in, “You haven’t seen Dave Antonetti around, have you?”
Simon assumed Charlie’s show was basically scripted, the sort of reality television that’s an excuse to put attractive people in front of a camera. But Charlie knows about this stuff.
