“Sounds it.”

“So what if they come to take the stuff back next year and sell it all over again to the next yo-yo? It was never anything but junk anyway.”

“You’re right.”

“And appliance stores, those too,” Max said, “and—you know it—used car dealers.”

Stan nodded. “They been to see you, Max?”

“No, but they hit one in the Bronx, and they hit one in Staten Island, nailed them for perfectly ordinary business practices, but, you know, the stuff that’s difficult to explain to the layman.”

“I know what you mean.”

Max did his best to look pathetic. “Stanley,” he said, “I don’t want to be under scrutiny, you know that.”

“None of us does, Max,” Stan agreed. “It’s like a contagious disease.”

“You know it.”

“Maybe they’ll pick a competitor.”

“Your lips to God’s ear. In fact, I got a couple suggestions, only I’m not about to attract attention.” Max shivered all over, relit his imaginary cigar, and said, “But why should I borrow any trouble? Usually, you come to see me, you got a vehicle, it’s a fine vehicle, only the dog ate the registration.”

“That’s what happens, all right,” Stan agreed.

“Also,” Max said, now smiling on Stan like some son or other close relative in whom he was well pleased, “you understand the ways of the real world, how, when you bring me these orphans, how it costs me out of pocket to bring them back into the world of ordinary commercial trade, which is why there’s gotta be a little discount from book value between us from time to time.”

Stan, who found his cost of raw materials not burdensome, said, “We help each other out, Max, and I appreciate it.”

“So now,” Max said, finished with the emollient of human empathy, “what have you brought me today, Stanley?”

“To begin,” Stan said, “a black Caliber, maybe two years old.”

Max looked at him. “To begin?”

Unpocketing his cell phone, Stan reached it across the desk to show Max the pictures he’d taken. “I can get you,” he said, “one of these a day, as many as you think you like. After that, maybe a few more, who knows?”

Max took the phone and scrolled through the pictures, then frowned at Stan. “What’d you do?” he asked. “Follow them to their nest?”

“Where they are now,” Stan said, “they’re kind of goin to waste. They were used on TV shows, but now they’re just like in storage, like an old costume.”

“TV shows?” Max didn’t like that. “Stanley, I don’t want somebody from television news to come in here and recognize one of these vehicles. Hey, I used to drive that, call the cops.”

“Not that kind of TV,” Stan assured him. “Nothing to do with the news, these are reality people, they don’t come to the outer boroughs.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. And these cars, I think they’ll be happier out and about in the world.”

“You’re a very thoughtful boy.” Handing back the phone, he said, “I’ll give a new home to every one of these, you pick the rotation. You want I should run a tab?”

“Oh,” Stan said, carelessly, “I think pay as you go is easier, you know. Less paperwork. We look at each of these when I bring it in, we tell each other what we think it’s worth, we come to an agreement, and then I’ll take the cash. Simple. Friendly.”

“Some do it that way,” Max agreed, as though it didn’t much matter one way or the other. Heaving himself to his feet, he said, “Well, let’s look at your first episode.” But then he stopped, to stare out the window again. In some astonishment, he said, “Look at that.”

Stan looked. The new customer who’d just joined the random molecules slowly crisscrossing the lot was a huge man with a huge black beard and a whole lot of woolly black hair. He was dressed in a kind of muted orange muumuu, so that he looked mostly like the king of the apricots.

“Wow,” Stan said. He meant it as a compliment.

Leaning forward over the desk, hissing toward the window, Max said, “Could he be undercover?”

“As what? A blimp?” Stan shook his head. “Come on, Max, lemme show you the car.”

But Max was still staring out the window. “Look what he’s doing.”

The new arrival had taken a big interest in a Volkswagen Rabbit, not a particularly big car. Stan said, “What’s he gonna do with that?”

The big man opened the Rabbit’s driver-side door. Before Harriet’s nephew could get there to discuss the situation, he’d started to insert himself behind the wheel.

“That’s not gonna work,” Max said.

The man kept squeezing and twisting himself farther and farther into the Rabbit. Stan said, “Is he gonna drive it or wear it?”

“If he can’t take it off,” Max said, “he’s bought it. Let them work it out for themselves, Stanley, come show me what you brought.”

So off they went to have a look at Stan’s ex-Caliber.

35

THIS TIME it WAS REAL. Darlene knew it, and she knew Ray knew it, too, so they both knew it. At long last love, the real thing.

And to think it was all because of a reality show. The irony of it. To find true love in such an artificial setting, it just went to show, didn’t it? You never knew what was going to happen, you just never did.

It all began on the Thursday, the second day of taping, when the gang got the day off while Darlene and Ray and Marcy and Roy Ombelen and the tape crew went to Central Park to work out some improv, which was just simply fun to do. Inject some of your own personality, your own feelings, your own ideas, into the story line.

The setup was this: Ray, the wall-walking specialist of the gang, had recently met Darlene and had wanted to show her off to the guys, but when he did, the contrast between her nearly fresh innocence (it’s all in the acting) and their jaded disbelief (no acting required) had shown him his life in a whole new light.

So they’d gone off to Central Park together, that was the idea, to be away from the others, unobserved, so they could talk things over. What was their relationship, really? (In reality show terms, that is.) What was their future? Did they have a future together?

They spent most of that day filming all over the park, with all the necessary permits, that was part of what made the day so special and so much fun and so liberating. They rowed a boat together on the lake, they wandered together in the Ramble, they watched the joggers endlessly circling the reservoir (without joining them, although Marcy would have dearly loved it if they had), they walked around Belvedere Castle, they observed the imposing stone buildings that stood like sentinels in long straight rows all around the periphery of the park, and they talked it all out, coming to several different conclusions in the course of several different takes of each sequence, because Roy wanted to keep his options open. (At that time, so did Ray.)

And they shared one brief tentative tremulous kiss, late in the day, on the path beside the Drive, surrounded by taxis and hansom cabs and joggers and bicyclists, all of whom, this being New York, ignored the smoochers in their midst.

And then they all went home, walking out of the park, Darlene and Ray and the others, and they didn’t even hold hands. But they knew, they both knew, and a little later that evening they confirmed their knowledge.

Ray had a very nice apartment in a small old gray stone building on West Eighty-fifth Street, pretty near Central Park, a third-floor walk-up, at the back, large living and bedrooms, very modern kitchen and bath. He was after all a financially successful actor, in everything from off-off-Broadway Strindberg revivals to Christmas-season electric shaver commercials. He was also a member of three actors’ unions, SAG, AFTRA and Actors’ Equity, which was too poor to have an acronym.

The show didn’t need them any more that week, so they spent all that time in Ray’s apartment, getting to know one another from every angle. He had a callback for an incontinence commercial Friday afternoon (he didn’t get it), and she spent that time searching the place for secrets, careful to leave no traces. She didn’t find any secrets, which was both pleasing and a little disappointing, and rewarded Ray on his return (also making up to him for the incontinence rejection) by some very special attention.