Black Magic

“She took it out of your college fund.” said my husband with a smile.

“I did not!” I shot back defensively.

“I know. I was just kidding.” he laughed.

My daughter Amber had just finished admiring my brand new black 2010 Camaro which had minutes ago taken the place of My Beloved in our basement garage. My husband’s quip was in response to her asking “Just how much did it cost?”

“It won’t crimp our financial style at all.” I assured her, “I paid half up front, and borrowed the other half. The monthly payments are very reasonable.”

It had been easy. So easy. I hadn’t set out to buy a car this morning, you know, - just to test drive one...

After a month of waiting (so long I had almost convinced myself that the 2010 Camaro must be a mirage) I finally got the call. Yesterday morning. I missed it, ’cause I was at work, and the car salesman (some guy named Steve from Quirk Chevrolet in Westbrook, Maine) did not leave much of a message, but I knew the Camaros must be in...

A call first thing this morning confirmed my suspicion. “Yes!” I said, “I’ll be right over!” Well, not right over. No one was available till 11:30am to test drive with me, and besides that it takes over an hour to get from Fryeburg to Westbrook...

The Camaro drove like a dream. It was loaded with all the accessories I ever dreamt of, and some that had never occurred to me (heated seats! USB ports!). It was beautiful.

“Y’know,” I said to the salesman, “I love it, but I’m not sure I like the color...” Black was the only choice in the ‘automatic transmission, six cylinder’ category at the moment.

“I’ll see if our Bangor office has this model in another color.” he helpfully suggested, and then disappeared into a back office. While he was gone, I looked at the car. And it looked back at me. It smiled. A delightfully evil grin. Black looked mysterious. Black looked dignified. Black looked formal. It made the orange-red (8 cylinder) model sitting nearby look slightly clownish.

“Never mind.” I said to the rep as he returned, “I like the black.”

The rest was, as I said, easy. True, I had to zip home and zip back with my husband and my ‘money market’ checkbook, but it seemed to take only moments...

“You snapped it up just in time,” said Josh, the young man handling business at the dealership when I arrived with husband and check, “We got a call from our Bangor office while you were finishing the deal, the manager up there saying, ‘Send the black Camaro over to us right away! We’ve got a buyer for it!’”

Too late! It’s mine. All mine!
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