by Susan Juby
“Didn’t Americans invent the strip mall?” he asked.
“Don’t play the blame game,” she said. “It’s so unattractive.”
When they reached Rutherford Road, Cleo looked over and saw the VW dealership sign.
“Cool! V-Dub!” she exclaimed.
“I’m in the wrong lane.”
“So turn right and then do a U-ey.”
Alex frowned at her. There would be no U-eys while he was driving. He turned right, then left, and left again, landing them in a McDonald’s parking lot. They ended up trapped in the lineup for the drive-through lane.
“May I take your order?” asked the crackly voice emanating from the speaker.
“Nothing,” said Alex.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice. “I didn’t hear that.”
Cleo leaned over Alex and shouted, “Nothing! We’re in the wrong lane. Because he refuses to do U-eys!”
“I’m sorry,” said the voice. “I didn’t hear that. May I take your order?”
After they escaped the McDonald’s with a small order of fries, Alex experienced a few tense moments trying to pull into the VW dealership.
“Left! Left!” shrieked Cleo. “You’re going to miss it! We’re going to end up back in McDonald’s.”
“The turnoff is a one-way,” said Alex through gritted teeth. “Going the other way.”
This trip was turning into Alex’s worst nightmare. It was bad enough when his sisters and aunt and Cleo teased him about his lack of driving skills. The thought of a group of potentially attractive mechanics seeing him in action was almost too much.
He slowed the IROC to a crawl and drove behind a row of garages and oil-change places. The car rumbled embarrassingly. He prayed it wouldn’t stall.
“Pull in there,” said Cleo, pointing to an empty spot between a row of plastic-wrapped VW Bugs.
She was out of the car before he stopped the engine. He grabbed the fries so he’d have something to hold on to and followed her.
Four salesmen stood at the door of the sales center. They looked at the IROC, at Alex and Cleo, and three of them turned away.
“Hello,” said the remaining salesman. Alex had seen enough episodes of What Not to Wear to know that the guy’s suit didn’t fit very well. The sleeves looked too short and there were strange puckers in the fabric around the arms.
He was young, too, more of a salesboy than a salesman. Alex had expected someone more like his dad’s RV sales guys: older, with a paunch and lots of unfortunate jewelry. He hadn’t expected a guy who looked like he was just out of high school and wearing his first suit.
The boy extended his hand toward Alex, who quickly stepped back and pointed at Cleo.
“Her. She’s looking for a car. I’m just, uh…” He looked down at the container of French fries in his hand. “Eating fries.”
The guy shook Cleo’s hand and seemed to notice her outfit for the first time.
“You look like…” His voice trailed off as he struggled for words to describe this look that he recognized but couldn’t quite name.
“I attend an equestrienne school,” said Cleo.
Alex squinted at her. Was she using some kind of accent?
“Oh,” said the salesboy. His hair was combed back and still damp. Alex felt a rush of sympathy.
“I’m in the market for a vehicle,” Cleo announced.
The salesboy blushed deeply. “Are your, uh, parents coming?”
“I’m nearly seventeen,” said Cleo, her voice now offended as well as self-important.
Alex ate a fry.
“I’ll be putting the deposit on my credit card. My mom will send the rest.”
“Oh,” said the salesboy.
The fry stopped halfway down Alex’s throat.
“So you’re interested in a Golf or maybe a Bug?”
Cleo wrinkled her nose and put her hands on her slim hips. “Noooo. I don’t think so.”
She looked around and then pointed at a large, shiny station wagon with elaborate hubcaps.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the Passat Wagon.”
“That looks nice.”
Alex’s French fry was stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his esophagus.
“It’s kind of an expensive car,” said the salesboy uncertainly.
Cleo ignored him and spoke to Alex. “I don’t want to be some cliché boarding-school girl, you know, driving around in a Beemer or whatever. That car looks mature. Dignified. It looks like a dressage car.”
In Alex’s mind a dressage ride was a truck that could pull a horse trailer, but he wasn’t about to argue.
The salesboy took a deep breath and started his spiel as though reading it straight out of the sales manual.
“The Passat Wagon is very popular with customers who care about safety and comfort. It’s ideal for people with small children. You’ve got your two-liter, two hundred horsepower, six-speed manual all the way to your three-point-six-liter V6R with two hundred eighty horsepower, six-speed automatic with Triptronic.”
Cleo pursed her lips. “You know,” she said. “I don’t really care.”
“Oh,” said the boy.
Alex resisted the urge to offer him a fry.
“I do like the sounds of that Trip stuff, but mainly what I’m after is a big, shiny new car.”
“It’s forty-seven thousand dollars before tax or extras,” whispered the salesboy.
“Perfect,” said Cleo. She reached into her purse and handed him her credit card. “I think there’s like twenty on there. My mom will send you the rest.”
“Don’t you want to take it for a test-drive?” said the boy in a strangled voice.
“I suppose.” Cleo’s tone made it clear that she couldn’t care less.
The salesboy looked at Alex, who shrugged and ate another fry.
After the boy went in to get the dealer plates and run Cleo’s credit card, he came back accompanied by an older man wearing a much better suit. He was one of the men who’d turned away when Alex and Cleo had first pulled up.
“Well, hey there,” he said. “I’m Peter. I’m the manager here. Sam tells me you’re interested in putting a deposit on the Passat Wagon.”
Cleo looked bored.
“Do you have another piece of ID, honey?”
Cleo sighed and dug around in her purse and pulled out her passport and her driver’s license. The man checked it against her credit card.
“Well,” he said, suddenly much friendlier. “Feel free to ask me any questions Sam hasn’t been able to answer.”
“Actually, Sam doesn’t need any help,” said Cleo. “He just sold me what I assume is the most expensive car on the lot.” She looked down at her watch. “In five minutes. Sam is quite a salesman.”
Alex and Sam looked at each other, then Alex smiled down at his French fries. Cleo could be a pain sometimes, but she definitely had style.
After the manager went back inside, Sam attached the dealer plates and helped Cleo into the car.
“You coming?” Cleo asked Alex, who stood to the side with the now-empty French fry container in his hand.
“I’ll wait here.”
Cleo’s behavior as a passenger made him suspect that she might not be a very good driver.
“Oh, shut up, you’re coming.”
Sam, the salesboy, opened the backseat and Alex got in. He was immediately enveloped by the smell of leather and new car.
The moment Sam closed his door, Cleo threw the car into reverse.
“Whoa,” said Sam. “I guess you’re pretty excited.”
From his vantage point in the back of the car, Alex could see that Cleo was hunched over the steering wheel. There was something about the aggressive tilt of her blond head that made him nervous.
“You’ll notice the instrumentation panel is—holy crap!” exploded Sam, as Cleo barely missed clipping a car on her way out of the crowded parking lot. “I’m sorry. It’s just that that was a little close.”
After making a series of illegal turns, Cleo got onto the highway. Traffic was heavy and moving slowly. At least, most of it was. The Volkswagen Passat swerved in and out of the fast lane, darting around slower-moving vehicles like a bionic rabbit in a field of three-legged tortoises.
“Hey, Sam, has this thing got air bags?” asked Cleo after an excruciatingly close call with a panel van.
“God, I hope so,” said Sam in a small voice. When they finally stopped at a light he said, “Okay, I think you’ve got a pretty good idea of how it runs. What say we head back to the office now and I’ll fill out the paperwork for you?”
“Already?” said Cleo.
“Yes!” shouted Alex from the backseat.
When Cleo screeched to a stop in the dealership lot, Sam practically leaped out of the passenger seat.
Cleo turned back to Alex with one of her eyebrows raised.
“I think that young man earned his commission today.”
Alex just nodded as he waited for his heart rate to drop back to its normal range.
After establishing that it would take a few days to get the exact car she wanted and that Sam would deliver it to Stoneleigh for her, Alex and Cleo headed downtown. Cleo hadn’t spent much time in downtown Nanaimo and pronounced it “way less divey than I thought!” Alex had to follow her into store after store and watch in awe tinged with horror as she bought everything she laid eyes on.
At the Flying Fish gift shop she purchased a leather ottoman, which Alex calculated cost the same as a custom bridle. She also bought a large wicker wall unit (equivalent to the price of a decent saddle or artificial insemination by a so-so stallion) and a fake zebra-skin carpet (three months’ worth of horseshoeing).
“Don’t they give you furniture in your dorm rooms?” he asked when the saleslady was out of earshot.
“Yeah, but I don’t love it,” said Cleo. “I think this will give us a much better atmosphere for studying.”
After she made arrangements to have her new furnishings dropped off at the school and then changed her mind, squealing, “No, wait! I will pick them up next week in my new station wagon!”, Alex had had enough. She was like a kid on a sugar high.
He propelled her out of the store.
“Okay. We’re here to go to the record shop. Now.”
“Oh, but there’s a cute café over there!” She pointed over his shoulder. “And there’s an art gallery right beside it!”
“Music first,” he said.
“I was just hitting my stride,” she whined.
They walked down the narrow streets, Alex pulling Cleo back every time she tried to go darting into an “adorable bakery!” or “the most awesome little skater shop!”
“Later,” he said, reflecting that this must be what it was like to try and shop with a toddler—a toddler with a giant credit limit. It occurred to him that he was no longer irritated with Cleo. He felt sort of fatherly, instead. As he ushered her along, his voice deepened. “Come along now,” he said, looking fondly as she skipped up the street in front of him.
When they reached the music store, which was located in an ungainly purple building, he walked boldly up to the door and tugged. It didn’t budge.
“They must be closed,” he said.
Meanwhile Cleo had found the customer entrance and held the door open for him.
So much for pretending he was the kind of person who haunts record stores and is up to the minute in his musical tastes.
“I download most of my music,” he mumbled as he walked past her and through the real doors. That wasn’t true, of course. He was afraid that the first time he downloaded a song, the FBI, CIA, RCMP, and Interpol would swoop down on his house in helicopters. No way was he taking the chance. Plus, he wouldn’t have known what to download, since most of the time he listened to whatever radio station was playing in the barn.
The front of the store was filled with televisions and stereos. Alex looked around, unsure where to go.
“Back here,” said Cleo. He followed her up a step and into the back of the store.
“So what do you like to listen to?” she asked, waving a hand around the store like she was a majority shareholder.
“I don’t know. What are you going to use?”
“I’ve decided I’m going to buy my freestyle music. There’s a woman who’ll put it together for you.”
“Oh,” he said. He’d heard of that woman. She did a great job, but there was no way he could afford to hire her.
Alex stood uncertainly in the back of the store for a moment, looking at the racks of CDs and DVDs. A clerk in a black T-shirt that read ARCADE FIRE sat at a stool behind the special orders desk. He carefully avoided looking at Alex and Cleo.
“What kind of music does Detroit bring to mind?” Cleo asked.
The big gelding had a relentless curiosity about the world as well as a certain dignity and quiet reserve with strangers. He was a horse who had opinions.
“I don’t know. Maybe something kind of…” Alex struggled to find the words. He moved his hand to indicate waves.
Cleo squinted. She waved a hand back at him. “What does this mean?”
“To me that means sinewy,” said Sofia, coming out from behind a rack. She wore dark-red lipstick and her black hair fell in a sheet to her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. She looked very beautiful. Alex noticed the music clerk staring at her.
“Can I touch you?” Sofia asked, making a show of reaching for his shoulder. “I want to make sure you’re real. I was beginning to think you didn’t exist outside of school. And the barn. Hey, Chris!” she called. “Look who’s here!” A moment later Chris appeared behind her. When he saw Alex his face broke into a wide smile.
Alex was surprised at how pleased he was to see them.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked.
“If you want to see Chris outside of school, you have to be willing to go to the record stores,” said Sofia. “But the real mystery is what you are doing out of the barn.”
“We’re trying to find some music for Alex’s freestyle. That’s a dressage test set to music,” Cleo replied.
“Cool,” said Chris.
“Yeah, the music’s supposed to match your horse,” she continued. “I was just asking Alex to describe his horse. So far he’s come up with…” She mimicked him waving his hand.
“Is that the horse we met?” Sofia asked.
“Turnip,” said Chris.
Alex felt oddly touched that Chris had remembered his horse’s name.
He shook his head. “No. I’m riding a different horse now. Turnip is sort of retired.”
“So you need a style of music that suits the horse?” Chris had pushed back his giant headphones so they cupped the sides of his neck.
“The beats in the music are actually supposed to match the footfalls of the front feet at the walk and trot. At the canter, the beats are supposed to match the downbeat of the horse’s leading foreleg. We use a metronome to figure out the tempo of each of the different gaits.” Alex abruptly fell silent, realizing he sounded like a textbook.
“Then you’re supposed to consider the horse’s style on top of that,” added Cleo.
“And so far all you’ve decided is that your new horse is…” Sofia waggled her hand around and grinned.
“No, I’ve timed him and done the choreography of the test. I just don’t know what kind of music to use,” said Alex. As he spoke, it suddenly came to him that he was talking to not one, but three people. And those three people were his friends! The sensation was strange but also thrilling. This, he thought, must be what it’s like to be popular. To have a social life.
An image popped into his head of himself wearing a crown. He was surrounded by adoring fans. He stepped onto a stage where he was handed the reins to the world’s most beautiful horse. Sitting astride the horse, shirtless, would be…
“Alex?” said Cleo, rudely pulling him back to the present and ending his fantasy. “What kind of music?”<
br />
“Well, probably not death metal or gangster rap,” he said, and then blushed because he wasn’t used to making jokes.
“How would you describe your new horse?” asked Chris, getting into the challenge.
“Well, he’s not my horse,” Alex said. “But he’s kind of athletic and, I don’t know, deep.”
“He’s handsome,” said Cleo. “And graceful.”
“There’s something kind of mysterious about him. Like I could see him running along a tropical beach somewhere after a shipwreck,” said Alex. Then he really blushed, because now he was letting on about his Black Stallion fantasies.
“I think I get it,” said Chris, nodding seriously.
Cleo squinted at Alex. “My God, are you being eloquent?”
Alex shrugged.
“Okay,” said Sofia. “We’ve got athletic, deep, graceful, mysterious, elegant, exotic.” She ticked each adjective off on her fingers. “I’m going to make an executive decision and rule out Korn.”
“What about bhangra?” asked Chris.
“Isn’t that the stuff your aunt listens to?” Cleo asked Alex. He nodded and as soon as he thought of the insistent rhythms of the East Indian dance music he knew Chris was right.
“That could work,” he said.
“It’s very cool. Very rhythmic,” said Chris. Alex noticed that his friend had on a Pixies T-shirt under his old cardigan. He found himself wishing he was familiar with the band so he could say something intelligent about them.
“The world music section’s over here,” said Sofia, and the four of them walked over to the rack. The India section had about ten CDs in it, and none of them seemed to be bhangra.
“Let’s ask the clerk,” said Cleo. She led the way to the special orders desk. The clerk peeked up when he saw her coming and quickly looked back down again.
“Excuse me,” Cleo said. “Do you have banga music?”
“Bhangra,” Chris corrected quietly.
The clerk reluctantly raised his head. “Do we have what?”
He had longish straight black hair, parted in the middle, and a sharp widow’s peak. He kept glancing at Sofia.
“Bhangra,” said Cleo. “It’s an extremely popular type of music.”
