The Bentleys Buy a Buick

by Pamela Morsi

  Ann Marie was nodding, but her expression was still self-satisfied. “Yes, I’m sure it will be,” she agreed.

  Chapter 7

  AS THE SECRET RELATIONSHIP at work continued, Tom became hesitant to leave the shop. Everybody was busy, working, earning their pay. Still, he and Cliff were virtually not speaking. And he no longer felt confident about leaving his best friend in charge.

  “You told me this was a Saturday thing!” Tom had railed at the first private opportunity after Cliff’s midweek disappearing act.

  “Stacy is important to me,” he answered. “If I get a chance to be with her, I want to take that chance.”

  “Your job ought to be important to you,” Tom pointed out angrily. “Running off with a girl like some love-crazed teenager is not what I expect from a responsible employee. You’re having sex on my time clock and it’s got to stop.”

  Cliff shrugged. “Dock my pay,” he said. “It’s an hour on Saturdays and four hours yesterday. I’ll keep track of it and you can just subtract that time from my check.”

  “How will you explain that to Trish?”

  He snorted with disgust. “I’ll tell her I broke something and you’re making me pay for it,” he said.

  “She’d never believe that.”

  “You’re my boss,” Cliff replied. “That automatically qualifies you for SOB status. It’ll piss her off. But it’ll be at you and not me. And you don’t have to live with her.”

  “Five hours cut out of a two-week paycheck is big,” Tom reminded him. “A loss like that will put a heck of a dent in the household budget.”

  Cliff shook his head. “Trish will just have to deal,” he said. “If she doesn’t like it, she can get off her lazy butt and get her own job. Stacy works, even Erica works. If Trish needs money, let her go out and earn it, like I do.”

  Tom didn’t like the sound of that at all. Just a couple of weeks ago, Cliff was declaring he loved his wife and kids and this thing with Stacy was just sex. Now it was beginning to sound like being with Stacy had a higher priority than the security of his wife and kids.

  Tom said as much and Cliff responded with an off-color suggestion of where Tom could stick his stupid opinion.

  It was the good news/bad news aspect about putting friends on the payroll. You knew them, cared about them, trusted them. But they knew you as well. And Tom was pretty sure that Cliff had no fear of being fired. He probably didn’t even think that Tom would follow through with docking his pay.

  Tom wasn’t sure if he would follow though himself.

  Reluctantly, he left the shop a few minutes after nine in the morning to take receipts to the bank. Erica had handled all the billing and bookkeeping from the day they’d opened the shop. Now, with her hours at the hospital, Tom needed to take on some of that himself.

  The paperwork wasn’t all that complicated. Having everything set up was great. Sometimes he didn’t know why things were singled out like they were. But he was beginning to get a handle on what went where, when to tally up and send in his sales tax and where to find the numbers required for his workers’ compensation insurance.

  He didn’t like having to make second and third calls to customers who owed him money, but he was pretty sure Erica wouldn’t have liked it that much, either.

  And he’d come up with his own payment plans policy. He would never again extend credit to a painter, a politician or a preacher. Those three professions, he’d determined, seemed uniquely unwilling to make paying Tom a priority.

  He was very grateful that, by far, most of his patrons paid in full and on time.

  Tom ignored the convenient drive-through at the bank and parked his truck in the branch parking lot. He didn’t really like doing business through a video screen. And besides, just inside the bank’s lobby area was a table with free coffee and cookies. Tom was whistling as he went inside.

  He only stood in line for a couple of moments before he got to talk to the teller.

  “I have two accounts here—I want to make sure this goes into the business one,” Tom said.

  The young man made a couple of clicks on his computer.

  “Actually, you have three accounts,” he said. “Looks like your wife just opened a new personal savings.”

  Tom shrugged. “Well, whatever, just make sure this one gets into the business.”

  The young man double-checked the contents of his bank bag, totaled it all up, entered it on the computer and handed Tom his receipt. Pocketing the paper, he headed directly for the free food. He doctored his coffee with a packet of fake cream and picked up a cookie that looked like oatmeal but appeared to have chocolate chips instead of raisins. That seemed like a good idea.

  “Good morning, Tom, how’s it going?”

  His mouth was full as he glanced up at the greeting. Bryce Feldon, the local bank branch manager, was an occasional customer over at the shop. The staid and slightly balding thirty-something in the charcoal-gray suit looked very different in khaki shorts and a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt behind the wheel of his 1970 yellow Torino.

  “Oh, I’ve been keeping busy,” Tom responded. “How’s the car?”

  “I took her out a couple of weekends ago,” he answered. “We went up to the Hill Country. You know how she loves to hug those curves.”

  Tom nodded, smiling.

  “I just wish I had more time to get her out on the road.”

  It was the upside/downside of vintage vehicle ownership. In order to afford to keep a fine car in working order, a guy had to work so many hours at his day job that he rarely had time to drive.

  “When are you going to get yourself some classic wheels?” the banker asked.

  Tom shook his head. “Probably never,” he answered. “I can only afford to love them from afar.”

  Bryce nodded and chuckled.

  “But there is a real beauty of a car in my shop right now,” Tom continued. “I’d almost give my eyeteeth and my kid’s college fund to own it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s a ’56 Buick, original condition, owned by a little old lady who is looking to sell.”

  “Mmm,” the banker said, as if Tom were describing something deliciously tasty. “Come here. Step into my office for a minute,” Bryce continued. “Bring your coffee.”

  Tom followed him into the glass-walled room at the north corner of the building. It was a masculine office with lots of dark wood and duck-hunting motifs. Bryce sat down in the big leather desk chair and indicated that Tom should take the seat across the expanse of mahogany desk from him.

  “I was kidding about Quint’s college fund,” Tom joked. “There’s not enough in there yet to even buy a good set of tires. But if my eyeteeth will help, let’s get the dentist on the phone.”

  Bryce grinned. “Tell me about this Buick,” he said.

  Tom raised a brow. “Are you interested? Clara’s a real beauty.”

  “Clara? You’ve named the car already? That’s a dangerous sign, my friend. I can almost see a man-tique in your future.”

  The guy-term slang for classic cars and motorcycles, most preferred by male collectors, made Tom smile.

  “Her owner calls her Clara,” Tom corrected. “But somehow the name fits. She’s a real beauty. Two-tone blue convertible with a continental kit.”

  “You don’t come across many of those.”

  “I’ve never seen one,” Tom said. “Or I haven’t seen one in decades.” A distant memory, grainy and indistinct, clicked in his brain. “I think I rode in one once when I was a little kid.”

  “Sometimes,” Bryce said, “when the right deal comes along, a man has just got to take it. I hope you know your credit is good with me. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Tom made a sound that was part chuckle, part sigh. “Car collecting is a little rich for my blood,” he told the banker. “And I sure wouldn’t go into debt to buy one.”

  “Is it debt?” Bryce asked. “Or an investment? I saw those mini-index numbers that showe
d collector cars have held their value better than the stock market or gold.”

  Tom made a tutting sound and shook his head. “You know as well as I do, Bryce, that those sales were almost handpicked and represent the very pristine, the top of the luxury market. And the survey was done during a recession.”

  Bryce shrugged an agreement.

  Tom continued, “I tell guys all the time, if you want to buy a classic car, you do it because you want to own it, not because you hope to sell it. The little guy is never going to make the kind of deals the big brokers can manage.”

  “But a beautiful car, one that you can maintain your self, does hold enough value that you’d probably never lose money,” Bryce said. “It is a tangible asset. And it would be there if you ever had to sell it.”

  “If I ever owned the Buick, I’d be hard-pressed to part with her. I hate to think about letting her go even now. And she’s just sitting in my shop, belonging to somebody else.”

  Bryce nodded. “I’d hate for you to let her go. Have you considered the tax incentive?”

  “What tax incentive?”

  “With a business like yours, a classic car business, I’m sure that an argument could be made that owning and maintaining a beautiful classic car with your logo on it could be a tax write-off as a promotional expense.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It sounds reasonable to me. You’d have to check with your accountant, of course.”

  Tom grinned. “Erica is my accountant,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure that she would say exactly the same thing your wife would say.”

  Bryce sighed. “Women,” he complained. “They just don’t understand the romance of the internal combustion engine.”

  Tom chuckled. “There are plenty of gals as car crazy as we are,” he said. “Erica just doesn’t happen to be one of them.”

  “I’d still hate for you to let a car you love get away from you,” Bryce said.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be talking me into buying certificates of deposit or investment services?”

  Bryce laughed. “Bor-ing,” he said softly, dragging the word out to great length.

  Tom shook his head. “Now I know you’re lying,” he said. “You’re crazy about all this money counting and deal making.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce admitted. “But numbers on a page can never compete with the sight and sound of a great old car.”

  In the end, the only thing that Bryce talked Tom into was a new credit card.

  “With all the parts buying you’re doing on the internet, you need to have a separate credit card. There are lots of scammers and hackers out there. If they happen to get into your card account, you want to limit your exposure. This card won’t have any ties to your accounts at this bank. No one will be able to use it to worm their way into your information.”

  Tom took his advice and filled out the form.

  “It says ‘number of cards,’” Tom said. “Should I get one for Erica, too?”

  “No,” Bryce said. “One is enough. This is not the kind of card that anyone is going to have in their wallet. You’re just going to keep it locked up and use the number.”

  “That makes sense,” Tom agreed.

  He handed in his paperwork and stopped to grab another cookie on the way out.

  “Keep thinking about that car,” Bryce told him. “When fate brings something like that your way, it just seems down right ungrateful not to snap it up.”

  Tom laughed off the suggestion. As he walked out to his truck, however, he couldn’t quite resist the fantasy of owning the beautiful Clara.

  Once again that faint remembrance niggled at his brain. The Buick in his memory had been yellow and white and the convertible top had been up. He was in the backseat with other children. Who those kids were and who the driver might have been, he couldn’t imagine.

  Tom shook his head. The memory was a strangely pleasurable one. Although, who wouldn’t be happy riding around in such an incredible car?

  Erica had just returned from her morning break. In fact, it hadn’t been much of a break. She’d filled her coffee cup in the staff lounge and gone back to her cubicle to retrieve an energy bar from her desk drawer. She had just taken a bite and leaned back in her chair to sip her coffee when Mrs. Converse suddenly appeared.

  Erica startled guiltily and splashed a bit of coffee on her skirt.

  “Could you please come into my office,” the supervisor said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Erica replied. She got to her feet and quickly cleaned up the evidence of the spill on her clothes before following the older woman.

  It never seemed like a good idea to get called into the boss’s office; however, Erica couldn’t pinpoint anything that she might have done to get herself into trouble. She’d picked up the pace on her charts and she was gaining confidence in her skills every day. She wasn’t a “real” newbie, but she couldn’t take her veteran status for granted, either.

  Get a grip! You are very good at your job, she mentally chided herself. It was one of the unfortunate facts of her upbringing that her mother’s constant criticism lingered in her psyche as self-doubt. Like a patient who’d been administered a potent prescription—the residual side effects often took a long time to dissipate.

  Mrs. Converse was already seated behind her desk when Erica stepped over the threshold. She was a small woman, with diminutive facial features and tiny hands and feet. Her brown hair, streaked with silver, was cropped close to her head. And her eyeglasses seemed oversize. But somehow her presence never seem to conjure up words like “dainty” or “petite.” Her appearance evoked ideas of efficiency and sparsity, as if her whole being were devoted to a conservation of resources.

  “Please close the door,” her supervisor said.

  Erica turned to do her bidding and caught the eye of Darla Ingalls standing next to Rayliss Morton’s cubicle. She was watching Erica and appeared to be reporting her visit to the office to the woman hidden behind the short, blue fabric wall.

  With a wan smile, Erica closed the door and seated herself across the desk from her boss.

  Mrs. Converse was glancing through some paperwork on her desk, but when she looked up she smiled.

  “You seem to be settling in very well,” she said.

  Erica felt the muscles in her shoulders relax. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “I guess it’s like riding a bicycle, it all comes back.”

  Mrs. Converse nodded. “That’s true. Still a lot of things have changed since you last worked here and I see that you are able to adapt to that.”

  Erica shrugged. “We didn’t have nearly as many digitized records coming in when I left. But clicking through screens is much easier than shoveling paperwork. The new coding manual is actually more user-friendly than the older edition. So yes, there are changes, but it seems like good change.”

  The supervisor chuckled lightly. “For many in this department no changes are good changes. But you’ve always been very capable and competent.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I’ve been positively impressed with your grasp and skill at using the EMRs. You’re quickly becoming my best producer.”

  EMRs, electronic medical records, were rapidly changing the nature of Medical Records. When Erica had left the job, they were the newest, latest thing and had only been implemented on a trial basis in certain areas. Now they were hospital wide, the norm rather than the exception. Occasionally a paper record would arrive through the emergency room or with a transfer from another hospital. And there were still whole storerooms of old documents kept in files. But the future was already upon them and savings in manpower and accuracy made EMR a winner even before a discussion of tree-saving or ease of retrieval.

  “I like having a neat desk,” Erica replied, smiling. “Remember when we would come to work and there would be so many piles of charts that there wasn’t room to put down a cup of coffee?”

  Mrs. Converse chuckled. “I do remember that. And I don’t have a lot of n
ostalgia for it.”

  “Now, if we can only get the rest of the health-care community on board,” Erica said. “I know that small hospitals and doctors’ offices are going to love this as soon as they get it implemented.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Mrs. Converse replied. “I thought you would be in my corner on this, but it’s good to hear you voice it aloud.”

  The woman tapped her pencil thoughtfully against the desk for a half minute before she continued.

  “Erica, I’ve had my eye on you as a potential team leader, even before you left to have your baby,” she said. “I wasn’t planning to rush into anything until you were thoroughly back into the routine, but you seem to be doing well and I need you.”

  Erica felt a flush of pride in her cheeks. “Whatever you need me to do, Mrs. Converse, I’ll try my best.”

  The woman accepted her assent gratefully.

  “I want you to take on the EMR Training Workshop,” Mrs. Converse said.

  University Hospital had developed course work to teach records professionals from smaller facilities as well as staff from private physicians’ offices and clinics how to implement electronic charting and maintenance where they worked. Among older physicians and community-based services in lower income areas, the transition to digital had gotten stalled. While grant funding was still available for equipment purchase, the real stumbling block had become the lower level of computer literacy and the foot-dragging that sometimes verged upon intransigence.

  The software companies provided excellent staff training once their product had been purchased. But getting these facilities knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision about what software to purchase was a community challenge that Mrs. Converse had taken on as her own. She had for the past two years utilized her department’s resources for broadening EMR use in South Texas. And it was working, slowly but surely, it was working.

  “I want you on the team,” she told Erica. “Melody will still be in charge. Nobody on my staff knows more about how systems work than she does. But like a lot of those who truly understand computers, she’s not always at her best among people.”