Josh is ogling the red sports car from the window like Amanda and I look at Chris Evans in a Captain America suit. Actually, Josh looks at him the same way. “We get that?” His arm points like it’s detached from his body. He clearly can’t believe it.
“Yes!” Greg bellows. “A car for everyone!” Last time I saw him this excited he got us all free coffee for a year from an account. Free Habanero-flavored coffee from a failed Boston market test run, but enough chocolate powder and cream and it was acceptable. Okay, no—it wasn’t. But Greg was so proud.
Amanda, Josh, and I squeal like the kids on Glee after winning a sing-off.
After twenty seconds of shouting, we quiet down, and I realize Greg hasn’t answered Josh’s exact question.
“Greg?”
“You get company cars!” he says again, but this time his face is…different. There’s a bit of a shadow there, a sheepishness that makes a tiny little tickle form in the place inside me where my hinky meter resides.
“We get that, right?” Amanda says, pointing. “Because that is a very cool wrap. I think of Chris Hemsworth and racing when I see that. Patrick Dempsey.”
Josh squeals again. “McDreamy!” We’re big Grey’s Anatomy fans. The entire office. Greg has admitted to having a secret crush on Sandra Oh. We’ve rearranged business meetings for season finales. We cried when Callie and Arizona got into that car crash.
Greg startles, giving Josh the side eye. But he doesn’t confirm.
“Greg,” I say, my tone made of steel. Something is off.
“You get cars,” he explains. “Fully paid by the company. You can use your company cards to charge all gas, all tolls and parking, and all repairs from now on. It’s all covered by Consolidated or the client. The contract runs for two years.”
“Okay!” Amanda chirps.
“No more mileage reimbursements,” Greg says dryly.
“Who cares? Shannon finally has a car that starts with a key!” Amanda adds. She seems starstruck. I think she’s just dreaming about a Robert Downey, Jr.-and-Chris Hemsworth-and Amanda sandwich.
“But…” I say, skeptical. Josh is frowning. He sees that I am teasing something out of Greg. Details he’s reluctant to give.
“But what? You guys have been begging for company-paid cars for years. Now I go and find a client to supply them, and you’re giving me the third degree!” Greg’s face is red and blustery, but he’s not offended or angry.
He’s deflecting. You know how there are levels in professional chess playing, like Expert and Master and Grandmaster? Well, the same levels apply in professional defecting. I am the High Princess Queen Pooh-Bah of it, with a finely tuned radar when others do it.
Greg is setting off all my alarm bells.
“Let’s go see the cars, then!” Amanda and Josh rush to the window. “Where are they?” she asks.
“Around the corner,” Greg says, reaching in his desk drawer to fish out three sets of keys. Each set is color coded: dark brown, a rusty auburn, and bright yellow.
M’kay.
Amanda skips down the hall and stairs like she’s the lead in a Disney princess movie, while Josh is giving me nonverbal looks and gestures meant to convey something in human semaphore, but I’m clueless. All I know is that Greg isn’t giving us the full picture.
“OH MY GOD!” I hear as Amanda shoots through the main doors and peels off to the right, where a bank of cars is parked just behind the building.
Then a bloodcurdling scream of “NOOOOOOOOO!”
Josh and I look at each other and take off at a dead run, bolting through the doors into the blinding sunshine, banking to the right. I’m behind him by a few feet and he stops dead in his tracks. I crash into him, but he’s so frozen he might as well be a steel support beam.
And then my eyes register the cars.
I half expect Drew Carey to appear and make that wha-wha-wha sound on The Price is Right, telling us we lost. Because what I see before me is way worse than my crappy little Saturn. The screwdriver I use to start my car seems like a gold-plated Oscar statue compared to this.
“Is that a giant turd on top?” Amanda gasps. “I am not driving a car that has a huge piece of poop as a hat!” Her voice is high and thin, a fluttering, panicked tone seeping in. She sounds like the whiny girl from that movie The Blair Witch Project.
I’m starting to think that standing in the corner would be a better fate than what’s in store for us right now.
“That’s a coffee bean!” Greg protests. My hands and feet have gone numb with shock. The car in question is one of those tiny little Toyota cars, and it’s covered in what appears to be an artistic rendering of a latte with that signature leaf pattern that baristas use to mark their specialty drinks. That part isn’t so bad, and the coffee chain’s logo is fine, but on top of the tiny little car is an enormous brown, textured thing that is about the size of a double kayak and it looks, indeed, like Goliath dropped trou and squeezed out a giant log on top.
It actually makes me imagine I am smelling poop right now, which makes me hold my nose. I look at Josh and realize he’s doing it.
The store’s motto: Coffee gets everything moving!
“I am not driving that!” we say in unison.
“It’s a coffee bean!” Greg insists.
“It looks like a giant version of the Baby Ruth from that Caddyshack movie!” Josh argues.
Greg studies it and tilts his head, examining it like we’re at the Museum of Modern Art. Or…ahem…the Bromfield Gallery.
“Huh. It kind of does.”
An argument begins instantly between me, Amanda, and Josh about who will be stuck with what quickly is named the Turdmobile.
As the two of them duke it out, I extract myself from the argument, because while the Turdmobile was the most graphic of the three cars, now I have a chance to look at the next one, and…
Well, let’s just say if I were a guy I’d get a rise out of it.
The green one is a huge wrap for a popular drug that helps men with erectile dysfunction. The wrap shows a mature (read: AARP member age) couple rolling in an intimate embrace in a meadow filled with daisies.
The logo shows two people dancing. The tagline says: Sometimes you have to be hard to please.
I make gagging noises when I take a really good look at the couple in the picture, because apparently my mother has been keeping her new career from me.
She’s the model.
Amanda and Josh shut up instantly and Greg looks at me like he needs to perform the Heimlich. Josh has met Mom a few times but doesn’t see what I see.