Nowhere to go but Up

Short Story (c) 2006 Jennifer Manson

 

I looked across the table at the empty chair. Katrina would cheer me up. But where was she? It was unlike her to be late. A minute later she swanned into the restaurant looking like an American Express advertisement: suede jacket, great hair, a smile to light up the city.
"Hi." she said, kissing me before she sat down. "How are you?"
Real concern. Just what I needed. I tried to keep my face from crumpling, restricting the slide to a baby lip wobble and a single tear.
"It's okay to be upset, you know. We won't have you wallowing, but a few tears are natural and salutary."
"The bastards." I quavered. "Why me?"
"Listen, you don't even have to think about why. Feel the emotion so it doesn't get bottled, but there was no rhyme or reason to it. Just think of it as a starting point. You lost your job. This is where you are. Where do you want to go from here?"
I sniffed. That sounded hopeful. Where did I want to go from here. That sounded as if I had choices.
"They gave you redundancy, right?"
"Three months."
"Wow! Three months to get up and going with something new! That sounds exciting, challenging, fun."
I smiled weakly. I was feeling better.
"Let's order, then take the afternoon so you can think."
I mumbled something about her having work to do.
"That's the joy of being self-employed. I've got my phone, I'm a mobile office."

 

I ordered salad and mineral water but she changed it to French toast and champagne. "I know you love those. Don't get trapped in self-denial, it's an imagination killer."
I found myself laughing as we ate together. Katrina has a hilarious turn of phrase and a forward-looking positive outlook which is contagious. She was in first-class distraction mode. "Forgetting something is the first step to getting over it" she had said to me many times.
At one point I slipped back into misery. "I'll never see Justin again!" I wailed suddenly.
Katrina was dismissive. "Photocopier romance! You only fancied him because you were bored and he was there."
"That's not true!" I protested.
"So what fantastic interests did you share?"
I was silent.
"And what spectacular aspects of his anatomy would you give worlds to get your hands on?"
Silence again. Katrina raised her eyebrows. She has great eyebrows, reddish-brown against her blue-white skin and spectacularly expressive. One descended leaving the other to quiz me.
"We both hated McCauley." I said, questioningly.
"An extremely edifying way to spend your time at work, gossiping about your boss. No wonder . . ." She stopped herself, annoyed she had gone so far, but I had heard the criticism.
"Say it." I said, quietly.
"You know I love you?"
"Yes. Say it."
"Well, perhaps your heart wasn't totally in your job. Perhaps if you had looked more at what you were doing, he wouldn't have seemed so bad."
I looked down at the table cloth. She was right, I knew she was right, but it seemed like compromise, like selling out, to work hard at a job I hated.
She seemed to read my mind. "Was it his fault you hated what you were doing?"
"No."
"No. You shouldn't have been there. But . . ." she waited until I was looking at her. "that's in the past now. Find something you love, don't settle for another dead end. Then none of us will have to go through this again."

 

She paid the bill (I tried, I really did, she was adamant) and we strolled through the shops and down to the river.
"Another thing."
"Yes." I held my breath. I didn't feel strong enough for another blow.
"I think you should move out of your parents' house."
"I plan to."
"I mean now. Today. This week, anyway."
"But I have no idea where my next dollar is coming from!"
"It's the ideal time. You'll only spend your redundancy anyway. So use it for a bond on a flat."
Every reactionary instinct said no, but at the same time, the suggestion had a seductive freedom in it. I slowly nodded.
"Let's get the paper, we'll go through it for flats and jobs."
She ran across the road for a newspaper, then we sat down on a bench. But she didn't open it straight away.
"If you could have any job, if you couldn't fail, what would you like to be doing in ten years' time?"
I stared at her, my mind blank. I tried not to think in ideals, usually, they just depressed me. "Go on, anything."
She was scanning through the job pages as she waited. I looked over towards the river and beyond. Anything. Well, think of this as a holiday. Anything. Imagination run wild. "Well, I like old cars."
She looked at me, interested. "Do you?"
"Yes." I could see what she was thinking, I drove the dullest thing on the road. But my dad had said it was reliable, and it was cheap.
"Okay. So what would you do with that?"
I looked forward into a dream, a winding road in front of me, no-where to be, just time and the feel of the steering wheel.
"I guess I could run a classic car hire company." The words came out of no-where, but they were mine, like they had been imprinted in me genetically.
She sat back, impressed. "Okay!" Her eyebrows flexed together. "So what's a first step I wonder? "
But this I suddenly knew. "I should get a job with a hire car company! See how they work."
She laughed. "Hey, babe, you're gettin' good."
I took the paper from her and scanned through. Nothing leaped out. "No problem." I said, confidently. "I'll get a c.v. together and go ask them. Now. Flats."
I hadn't done this before, so Katrina guided me. "If it says ‘female', you have to work out why that is. Are they girls who don't trust guys, are they guys who want a servant, or is it a nice bunch of people who want a balance?"
"Can't I have a flat of my own?"
"Too expensive. You need to be saving for your car. And you don't have furniture – you don't want furnished, it's either hideous or hideously expensive. Besides, I know you, you'd get lonely. Hey, this one looks promising. Give them a call." She handed me her cell phone, knowing I wouldn't have any money on mine.

 

It was incredible. Four days later I had moved into a flat, a great house, in a great area, with a bunch of stylish, churchy twenty-somethings. And I was putting on my uniform to go to work at Hertz! At the airport! I knew the job would be routine, but it was exciting, thinking of all those people setting out on journeys. I enrolled in Japanese lessons, German lessons.
Best of all, there was $6,000 left of my redundancy to look for a car. Something small, impractical, beautiful. I sold my runabout, borrowed a little from my parents, and there I was. The day I drove home in my little Spitfire was the happiest I had known for years. My flat mates came out and cooed. Katrina hugged me. "Well done, friend, this is perfect!"
She showed me her contribution. "I haven't ridden it for years. But there may be days you don't get started, and this will get you to work on time." She wheeled a black moped into the end of the garage.
"Now, throw yourself into that job, this new life. Not a negative word. Not a negative thought. If you don't like something, change it. If you don't like someone, be nice to them, turn them around. Make it work, because you've really started something."

 

At work the customers loved me. They wrote letters about me to my boss, about how helpful I was. I loved helping them plan where they would go, talking about the best routes. Then one day I had a brainwave, I would research the routes myself. After that, every weekend I packed a little bag, put my tent in the boot and went, eating fish and chips on the way, spending every spare cent on petrol. The car only rarely let me down. I like to think it knew how much I loved it. I got the full AA membership, with the tow-me-home option, and found a mechanic who was as passionate about old cars as me. He never shook his head and said I would be better with a modern car, and he never charged me all the hours he spent. In fact, after quite a while, romance began to blossom through the shared time under the bonnet. Steve was ten years older than me, but shy, never been married.

 

We talked about my idea for a business, classic car hire with planned itineraries. Steve got excited about it, and then the idea hit me. Why not start it now? It didn't need to be a full time thing; with the Internet, we could set up a site, start with one or two cars, and see what happened. Now I got really excited. This dream was taking shape. "Pictures, we need pictures" and I posed the car in front of every spectacular view I could find. We looked at them. A little dry.
"Let's put you in it." suggested Steve. So laughingly I wound a scarf over my head, put on dark glasses and posed, too. These looked great. One of my flat mates put together a simple web-site.
My heart in my mouth, I thought of strangers driving my car. "That's just the start." said Steve. "Soon there will be loads of cars, and you'll be able to choose, or keep yours for yourself, whatever you want." I nodded. I wanted this, so I needed to get comfortable with it. Clients would know if I was reluctant.
A month went by. Charles tweaked the search words on the site, and we took the plunge, registering with Google Adwords. Then, magically, the first email came. I pored over it, answering it in detail, suggesting destinations and routes, pointing out the limited luggage space. The car was booked for a week, in three weeks' time. Wow!
"No one else is doing this." said Steve. "Not the same way. I think you need to increase the price."
I was about to argue. I knew what cars cost to hire, what people were willing to pay, how they haggled. But then I thought about the rare customers who just wanted things to be nice, to be easy, and didn't seem to worry about money at all. They were the nicest to deal with, the most interesting. "Yeah." I said slowly. "Those are the ones I want." So we got Charles to update the web-site again, and the most amazing thing happened. Emails started flooding in. Who knows why? Was it the Adwords? The keywords? Or was it the perceived value, making it more expensive? Whatever, no-one suspected we only had one car, and pretty soon it was booked solid until the Autumn.
"We need more cars." said Steve.
"Yeah." I said, blinking.
"And you need to give up work."
"What?"
"Look at these bookings. The car is earning nearly as much as you. Someone needs to meet people at the airport, talk them through everything. I could do it, but I don't fit the image. It has to be you."
"But this was supposed to be a ten year plan!" I protested. "It hasn't even been one."
Steve stared at me.
I stared back. But then I thought about it. Spend my days organizing this. Days of just communicating with clients about magical holidays, meeting them, going wherever they wanted to drop off the cars and driving them back. That was what really sold me. We could charge a fee for one-way hires, and I could be paid to drive around the country. And it was obvious we should buy more cars. How great was that?
"But I can't do it without you."
He ruffled my hair. "Who suggested you had to. I'll work on the cars, you know I love it. But the business is yours. I like my life the way it is, with one exception."
Katrina helped me write a business plan to take to the bank. It was unbelievably easy. They looked at the current bookings, the multipliers, saw it would only take three months of hire to pay off the cars we were looking at and went for it straight away. Only the interest rate was high.
"Why don't you let me lend you the money? I could easily increase my mortgage, the rate is only two thirds."
I put a hand on her arm and shook my head. "It still works this way. I want to do this myself. I'd worry so much more if I owed it to you, so it's cheap for extra peace of mind."

 

So began the best month of my life. Or it should have been. I phoned Katrina and wailed into the mouthpiece. "Help! Everything's perfect and I'm panicking."
"Calm down." she said as we sat in the caf?© again. "You're just reacting to the positive change. Your brain is freaked, trying to get you back to your normal state of mind. All you need to know is that things have got better, permanently, so it is normal for you to be happier than you were before. Adjust."
I took a deep breath. "Okay."

 

In the back of my mind was a little fear, but I argued against it logically and kept the joy at the front. I gave two weeks notice and every day after work, Steve and I looked at cars. We would start with three, another small one and two larger cars. Most enquiries were only two people, but the luggage space was an issue for many. We offered a storage service for extra luggage, but often they wanted everything with them. We got a Mark II Jaguar, a Triumph Stag and a classic little Austin. Then once I had finished work, we drove south, taking a car each, for more photos. I made Steve get a stylish haircut so he could model also. The Austin we photographed nearer home.
Just think of it! Every week I was driving to Queenstown or Picton, even Auckland, to meet clients or pick up cars. I was planning trips, communicating with people who were excited and passionate about what we were offering. Very grateful. Friendly and understanding.
We had surprisingly few breakdowns, and those we did, either the AA got going again or Steve went to sort out. Soon we decided we needed to keep an extra car, to cover breakdowns. People were very disappointed if they had to finish in something dull – but even then, they were nice when they saw we understood their disappointment.
We found travel agents coming to us, and business expanded again. Six months in we bought another batch of cars. I had thought at this point I would reclaim my Spitfire and keep it to myself, but I lost the need for absolute possession, enjoying the feel of each car differently, and even happy on Katrina's moped when they were all out.

 

Katrina and I met for lunch again. I took her two envelopes. "This is to say ‘thank you'" I said. She looked at me questioningly and opened it. It was a voucher for a trip in one of our cars.
She smiled. "I've always wanted to ask, but I know you're always fully booked."
"Not for you – although you'll need to let me know when."
"And what's this?" she asked, fingering the other letter. "It feels . . . expensive . . . it feels like . . . an invitation."
"Actually, it's a little back to front. Will you be a bridesmaid?"
She hugged me. "Yeah, I'd be delighted. And as a wedding gift . . ."
"Yes?"
"I'll look after things while you take a real honeymoon in one of your cars."

 

If you liked this story, please email Jennifer at jennifer@jennifermanson.co.nz

 

Jennifer is currently actively seeking agent's representation of her work

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