"The Call"

As usual, it was way too early in the morning when Paulson made the phone jangle in my sleeping ears. I didn't have to look at the clock to realize it was just barely dawn outside, and I knew who was calling the instant I opened my eyes.

"I found a car for you," he says, sans any civilised greeting, and I could literally hear him grinning like a fresh schoolboy over the telephone line, 300 miles away.

"What?" I mumble ....How the hell does he know I'm looking for some new wheels to replace my terminally decaying and increasingly recalcitrant '89 Mercury Sable?

"It's a nice old Cadillac." he gloats, insolently sunny and chipper for the hour.

"What fucking time is it?" I groan, torn now between my piqued curiosity and the sweet bliss of my warm, ephemeral slumber, rapidly slipping away.

"It's a big old Caddy," he says, ignoring my standard protest to his habitually regular, early morning calls. I can still hear him grinning away, up there in his snug little northern retreat, like a mischievous little idiot smirking from ear to ear.

Paulson tells me he heard I was in the market and whilst he was out running some errands yesterday, he just happened to see this lovely old boat sitting pretty as a picture out in front of Scottie Chase's used carlot.

Paulson doesn't miss a beat as I moan several groggy "Mm hmm's" during his dry, mono-tone description of the coveted, elusive, and nearly extinct, fine rare example of the fabled land yacht-icus Cadi-erecticus.

"And just how old is old?" I finally ask, blinking a little harder by now.

He says, "I think the tag said '83, but My Gawd, she's beautiful, man! There's not a spot of rust on her!"

Is it a Coupe? ....an Eldorado? ....what?" I ask, a powerful lust now suddenly washing over me, my tweaked imagination kicking immediately down into bull low.

Then he says, "No, it's got four doors."

"Hm, well ....OK ....What color is it?" says me.

"Blue," he says.

Oh, Shit! My rising excitement is suddenly burst violently asunder, a tumbling, cascading shower of disappointment. A million ultra-cool, bad-ass, Caddy visions, ....heady visions of classic big-cruiser glory, ....suddenly nothing but fading shards of broken euphoria.

All I can picture in my minds eye now is a brand new Chrysler E Class sedan we had on the lot back when I was selling cars a hundred years ago. It was a new, first year model, I think, basically a more softly and subtly sculpted, less box-like version of a standard K car––a decent, middling quality rig for the shaky domestics of the era. It was most certainly more refined and appealing than your basic Aries/Reliant clone. The car had one glaring fault, though.

I believe they called it "Nightwatch Blue."

"Nightwatch Blue" actually looked pretty good from the road, ....like a nice, shiny, classic black. The trouble with that E Class was that anytime you got closer than a 100 ft. away from it, the paint took on the astonishing appearance of the ink from a million, ruptured and bleeding, BIC ballpoint pens, ....a kind of deep-space, almost sickly, liquid, heavy, dark blueish-purple.

I hated that color! It was somehow repulsive to me. Really repulsive, in a truly physical sense, in that it actually made my stomach queasy, ....and I remember, I avoided touching it out of a strange compulsion that it would really stain my hands and clothes.

...Yecch, I thought, going chameleon and plunging maniacally into an instant mood of wretched misery. Lying there, I could taste the stench of that old loathsome aversion in the back of my dry, first-thing-in-the-morning dragon mouth.

"You still there?" intoned Paulson in the middle of my still half-conscious reverie.

"Mmm, ....yeah ....I'm here."

"Well," he says, "do you want me to call and find out about it?"

"Not really. Do you realise that it's 7:01:28 A-fucking-M in the damned morning?!?"

With a smirk of my own, I gently hang up the receiver and roll back into my warm fuzzy crib.