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The negotiation is simple, and begins each day at around seven-fifteen. The preliminaries are, of course, washing, dressing and rousing myself enough to satisfy the authorities and safety. Then, ah, then, the negotiation. My car is not what one might call the most reliable transportation. Of course, that isn't its chief attraction. It's a convertible, or, more precisely, a roadster. A roadster. It actually sounds like a hokey American Madison Avenue construct from the early forties. In fact, I think it's British; which, of course, would fit. I tell myself and others that it's probably best that I am single, for I would be unable to maintain relationships with both a woman and this car. For this reason among others, it has a name. The name was in fact her idea (there, I've let slip her gender) and I'm still not quite sure how I heard it, but it was quite recognizable. Her name is Amanda. According to technical and reasonably precise English, she's a 1971 Triumph TR6 convertible, with an inline six-cylinder engine displacing I believe 142 cubic inches (2500cc?). Her commission number is, according to the plate on her doorpost, CC58880. She was produced at the Standard Motor Company's British Leyland works in Coventry, England, sometime between 1970 and 1971. She seats two; carries 13.5 U.S. gallons of fuel in a rear tank and has a four-speed manual transmission, producing 111 bhp at 4500 rpm. I have no idea what some of that means. It is what is written on her and in her manuals. I wish I had the words to give you my own description, but I don't believe I can; even if I could I'm not sure that's what I'm here to do. In a remarkable fit of seredipity, I first met her many years ago at the age of, I believe, twelve or thirteen. My uncle's house had, attached, a number of garages which were used for leased storage. In accordance with lease provisions, the contents of several had reverted to him, and he asked my younger brother and myself to break in to those in question and let him know exactly what he'd got. The first one contained, I remember vividly, a large number of pianos stacked in the most efficient manner; some upside down, others sideways. All were by that point ruined, but retained their dignity. It had been snowing; there was a light coat on the ground. In fact, when getting into one garage, we'd climbed a snowbank to break the high window and thus crawl in. We found a VW Microbus stacked floorpan to roof with film cans, so full one couldn't enter it. Refrigerators in another. And so on. And, in the last garage checked before I put a shard of glass through my ankle four or five millimeters from the tendon, we found a convertible. I didn't even stop to look. It wasn't until many years later, when I had moved to Boston myself and needed transportation, that my uncle offered to finance my purchasing a very used rustbucket of some variety. I counterproposed that I use the money to refurbish the convertible into driving condition. He'd been using it, but being a polio survivor and by that point a lung cancer survivor, he found himself unable to use manual transmissions due to the polio and unable to get in and out of the car due to the upper body weakness caused by the cancer. Besides, she'd been in storage again for several years and wasn't running. L---, a colleague/employee/friend of my uncle's who now used the house and ran things there, delivered her to me chained to the back of his tow truck. I drove to the garage on my motorcycle; he followed, and Amanda was laid to rest on the ground in front of the small auto shop named, appropriately, LFC. They poked around, looked at her insides, and said, 'Hey, you know, she doesn't look bad.' Rolling her down the sharp incline to the shop, one of the mechanics for laughs popped the clutch. With a bang and many coughing sputters, she started, and in fact kept running. With that, they drove her into the shop with a wave and said 'We'll call you.' I left, not having even sat in her at that point. Several days later, they reported she was ready. Unable to pick her up because my work hours clashed with theirs, I arranged for my roommate to drop off a check. They handed him the keys and said they'd leave her in a turning circle near the garage. The keys were a trip; one was standard, the other a funky shaped chunk of metal for the battery cutoff switch I'd asked them to install. That night, I came home and walked the half-mile to the garage to find her sitting in a pool of brownish sodium light from a solitary lightpole. She looked...very small. That's in fact all I could think. When I first sat down in the driver's seat, I had to laugh. I was unable to help myself. In fact, the only way to get both hands on the wheel normally was to hang my left elbow out the window. Although I didn't know it at the time, her vacuum boost on the brakes was shot, her tie rod ends were so worn that the steering column could be moved an inch in any direction, and her headlights were pointed somewhere left of Polaris. I had no idea how it was supposed to feel, driving this car. I drove home. I laughed most of the way. Arriving, I knew her name. I tried it out gingerly, and she shook herself, dieseling, in stopping. The snort seemed to be one of approval.
It's been a couple of good years. I have catalogs of parts I dream of being able to afford. I have endured failed clutch hydraulics, a split fuel line, a broken carburetor damper assembly, shorted ignition cables, a thoroughly bad battery, bad rear springs, an electrical system that seems to provide much of her personality in the way of providing the timing of the incidents that make life so interesting, a failed brake light switch, a bad valve cover gasket, a bad head gasket, instrument illumination that still does not function, and turn signals, hazards, brake lights, running lights and dash instruments that suffer from Schrodinger's quantum theory- until I look at them, I'm not sure if they've failed. This does not take into account preventive maintenance, the ongoing oil leak, the differential leak, thousands of dollars (excuse me, tens of RCUs) of body work/paint job/rustproofing, the both-end-smash when rear-ended into the car in front of me in '96, and the endless amounts of time.
I'm still single. My life is in fact probably in worse shape. I still have no firm grip on my future. I still have my car. I still browse the catalogs endlessly. I still spend too much on her. I plan to continue doing so until I leave her to my children. Every time I get into the car and drive, especially (perversely) when picking her up at the mechanics', I get giggly happy. It keeps me going when I need the boost.
...well, okay, so I'm still single. And I still have the car. Leave off. :-)