He would have thought it was a joke, that’s all. Just some elaborate prank.
I somehow doubted this—the dime was too perfect. He would have shown it around; there might even eventually have been an item about it in the newspaper. I had gotten lucky this time, but next time I might not. I needed to be careful. I thought of my cell phone again, with deepening unease. Then I put the 1953 dime in the coin slot and was rewarded with a dial tone. I placed the call slowly and carefully, trying to remember if I’d ever used a phonewith a rotary dial before. I thought not. Each time I released it, the phone made a weird clucking sound as the dial spun back.
“Lisbon Taxi,” a woman said, “where the mileage is always smileage. How may we help you today?”
8
While I waited for my ride, I window-shopped my way through Titus’s car lot. I was particularly taken by a red ’54 Ford convertible—a Sunliner, according to the script below the chrome headlight on the driver’s side. It had whitewall tires and a genuine canvas roof that the cool cats inDragstrip Girlwould have called a ragtop.
“That ain’t a bad one, mister,” Bill Titus said from behind me. “Goes like a house afire, that I can testify to personally.”
I turned. He was wiping his hands on a red rag that looked almost as greasy as his hands.
“Some rust on the rocker panels,” I said.
“Yeah, well, this climate.” He gave a whattaya-gonna-do shrug. “Main thing is, the motor’s in nifty shape and those tires are almost new.”
“V-8?”
“Y-block,” he said, and I nodded as if I understood this perfectly. “Bought it from Arlene Hadley over Durham after her husband died. If there was one thing Bill Hadley knew, it was how to take care of a car… but you won’t know them because you’re not from around here, are you?”
“No. Wisconsin. George Amberson.” I held out my hand.
He shook his head, smiling a little. “Good to meet you, Mr. Amberson, but I don’t want to getcha all over grease. Consider it shook. You a buyer or a looker?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, but this was disingenuous. I thought the Sunliner was the coolest car I’d ever seen in my life. I opened my mouth to ask what kind of mileage it got, then realized itwas a question almost without meaning in a world where you could fill your tank for two dollars. Instead I asked him if it was a standard.
“Oh, ayuh. And when you catch second, you want to watch out for the cops. She goes like a bastid in second. Want to take er out for a spin?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I just called a cab.”
“That’s no way to travel,” Titus said. “If you bought this, you could go back to Wisconsin in style and never mind the train.”
“How much are you asking? This one doesn’t have a price on the windshield.”
“Nope, just took it in trade day before yest’y. Haven’t got around to it.”Gut.He took out his cigarettes. “I’m carryin it at three-fifty, but tell you what, I’d dicker.”Dicka.
I clamped my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping and told him I’d think it over. If my thinking went the right way, I said, I’d come back tomorrow.
“Better come early, Mr. Amberson, this one ain’t gonna be on the lot for long.”
I was again comforted. I had coins that wouldn’t work in pay phones, banking was still done mostly by hand, and the phones made an odd chuckling sound in your ear when you dialed, but some things didn’t change.
9
The taxi driver was a fat man who wore a battered hat with a badge on it reading LICENSED LIVERY. He smoked Luckies one after the other and played WJAB on the radio. We listened to “Sugartime” by the McGuire Sisters, “Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers, and “Purple People Eater,” by some creature called a Sheb Wooley. That one I could have done without. After every other song, a trio of out-of-tune young women sang: “Four-teenfor-ty, WJA-beee… the BigJab!” I learned that Romanow’s was having their annual end-of-summer blowout sale, and F. W. Woolworth’s had just gotten a fresh order of Hula Hoops, a steal at $1.39.
“Goddam things don’t do nothin but teach kids how to bump their hips,” the cabbie said, and let the wing window suck ash from the end of his cigarette. It was his only stab at conversation between Titus Chevron and the Tamarack Motor Court.
I unrolled my window to get away from the cigarette smog a little and watched a different world roll by. The urban sprawl between Lisbon Falls and the Lewiston city line didn’t exist. Other than a few gas stations, the Hi-Hat Drive-In, and the outdoor movie theater (the marquee advertised a double feature consisting ofVertigoandThe Long, Hot Summer—both in CinemaScope and Technicolor), we were in pure Maine countryside. I saw more cows than people.
The motor court was set back from the highway and shaded not by tamaracks but by huge and stately elms. It wasn’t like seeing a herd of dinosaurs, but almost. I gawked at them while Mr. Licensed Livery lit up another smoke. “Need a hand witcher bags, sir?”
“No, I’m fine.” The fare on his meter wasn’t as stately as the elms, but still rated a double take. I gave the guy two dollars and asked fifty cents back. He seemed satisfied with that; the tip was enough to buy a pack of Luckies.
10
I checked in (no problem there; cash on the counter and no ID required) and took a long nap in a room where the air-conditioning was a fan on the windowsill. I awoke refreshed (good) and then found it impossible to get to sleep that night (not good). There was next to no traffic on the highway after sundown, and the quiet was so deep it was disquieting. The television was a Zenith table model that must have weighed a hundred pounds. Sitting on top was a pair of rabbit ears. Propped against them was a sign readingADJUST ANTENNA BY HANDDO NOT USE “TINFOIL!”THANKS FROM MANAGEMENT.
