She had cash in the pockets of her jeans, too. Some of it came from what they’d paid her to make like a ghoul. That was a startling wad, at least by pre-eruption standards. It wasn’t as if she’d had anything to spend it on while she was scavenging. Too damn bad the galloping inflation made it worth so much less than it would have been before things hit the fan.
The same sadly held true for the greenbacks she’d come by in unofficial ways. She felt guilty about that private grave-robbing, but not very guilty. It wasn’t as if she were the only one. Oh, no—not even close. Some of the card games the scavengers got into . . . That much cash wouldn’t have paid off the national debt, but it sure would have made some Vegas blackjack dealers raise an eyebrow.
So here she was. She could eat for a while. She could stay at a Super 8 motel that seemed pathetically eager to get her business. And she could shop for a clunker at used-car lots whose salesmen made the Super 8 desk clerks seemed stoic by comparison.
“Yes, ma’am, I would be dee-lighted to sell you a vee – hick-le,” said one fellow whose plaid jacket was plainly made from the skin of a particularly gaudy 1970s sofa. And he explained why he would be so dee-lighted, too: “Business ain’t been what you’d call brisk lately.”
“I believe that.” Vanessa tried to sound as cutting as she could—which was saying a good deal. She assumed any and all used-car salesmen were there to shaft her. She waved at the lot. “Your cars are sitting there gathering dust.”
That was the exact truth. Red cars, blue cars, green cars, black cars, white cars? No—they were all grayish brown cars. Some of them showed hints of their original color. None showed more than hints.
“You know how it is, ma’am.” The salesman spread his hands in resigned embarrassment. “We clean ’em off, an’ then we get more wind outa the north or the west. Still an awful lot of that horrible dust.”
He wasn’t wrong. Having spent so long closer to the eruption site than this, Vanessa knew as much. She was damned if she’d admit it, though. Give a salesman an inch and he’d take your wallet. Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “Chances are you don’t clean them because this way you can hide a lot of what’s wrong with them.”
He clasped both hands over his heart, as if he’d just taken a mortal wound. “Now, ma’am, that just ain’t fair. Not even slightly, it ain’t. Let me show you this here Ford. Honest to Pete, it’s as good as the day it was made, or even better.”
“How many recalls has that model been through?” Vanessa retorted, and the salesman looked wounded again.
He tried for a comeback: “That particular vee-hick-le, I happen to know, has been supervolcano-ized.”
Vanessa had never quite made up her mind whether she hated the language of hucksterism worse than the language of bureaucracy or the other way round. She withered the man in the bad jacket with a glance. “Oh, cut the crap, why don’t you? If it’s got a heavy-duty air filter, just say so, for Christ’s sake.”
“I don’t speak of our Lord and Savior that way,” he said stiffly.
“I told you to cut the crap,” Vanessa said. “You need me worse than I need you, but you won’t get me.” She walked off that lot.
Two days later, she found a Toyota a few years newer than the one that had perished in her escape from Denver. The salesman there didn’t speak of Jesus at all. He wore a corduroy coat that hadn’t been stylish for a long time but wasn’t aggressively ugly. The Toyota was more expensive than she liked, but not impossibly so.
“I think we’ve got a deal,” he said at last. “I’ll need to see some ID before we finish the formalities.”
“Here you go.” She showed him her license from Colorado.
He looked at it. “Miz Ferguson, this expired three months ago.”
“Well, so what?” Vanessa said. “If you expect me to go back to Denver and renew it, you’re out of luck.” She didn’t say shit out of luck, and patted herself on the back for her restraint.
He sighed. He might have been showing restraint, too. “I can’t sell a car to anybody with an expired license. The second you drive it onto the street, you’re in violation of the law.” He spread his hands. “You see my problem?”
“I see it, all right. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?” Vanessa’s tone took on a certain edge. She’d traded favors for favors before. She hated herself every time she did it—how could you not? But she wanted wheels. She needed wheels. If she had to do it one more time, maybe she could turn off her mind and not think about it while it was going on. She’d sure tried to do that with Micah Husak. Afterwards? She could worry about that, well, afterwards.