Mustang Hearts (2006)
Clyde Whelan was the boss. Mean as cat shit. He wore hairspray, all over himself, hair, clothes, skin. He was short. Looked tortured, like he’d just swallowed a raw steak full of fish hooks and the hair spray was stopping him from fully conveying the agony. He walked like the back of an invisible ergonomic chair had been shoved up his arse and he was gliding around on its invisible castors.
He was some kind of zombie, walking dead. Rotten. He’d never had a head job and his dick had turned in on his body looking for revenge, eating him up from the inside. It seemed to be up to the lungs when I first met him, maybe even the thyroid.
He had a virtue. He had sold more Cortinas than any living human being. I once thought that Cortina buyers were the stupidest farts ever to stain a vinyl seat but as soon as I found out about Clyde’s virtue I revised my estimation of them – they are stupider than that.
The Cowboy was in the next office. He didn’t say much when I first arrived at Austen Autos Mitsubishi. Not to me or the other guys in New, anyway
In the office next to him was Brace Clapknee. Brace had a whole heap of worms swarming around his guts. He was walking dead too. Just like Clyde. They were great mates, sharing parasitic sniggers and mollusc winks. Brace made sure everyone knew that he was an engineer. Not a car salesman. We could have done with a Casey Jones out on those dusty desert plains but he wasn’t that kind of engineer. He couldn’t even pronounce the word. He’d say “I’m an injun ‘ere”.
He was a natural enemy to any cowboy. And the truth is he was worse than an Injun. He was British.
In New we sell Mitsos. One of the perks is that we all get transports. Clyde’s got two – the beloved Pajero (the Cowboy told me that’s Spanish for cocksucker, but maybe he was using load) and he’s also got a part time trannie – the turbo Stallion. The Cowboy has a Smegma Executive (base model but with schmick wheels) and Brace has the Smegma SE (second from the top model). I get a Stigma 2.6 automatic. No wheels. No roof. No air. It beat the shit out of walking.
(Clyde) Whelan and Brace are made for each other. They’re off doing fleet sales pretty regular and that leaves me and the Cowboy to the heads. “Heads” is old school for prospective buyers. Back in the olden days, these mystical heads would just come floating in over mid century Buicks and Cadillacs- all promise and profit. They even look good rolling in on shoulders over the new Smegmas and Stigmas. Cowboy shares pretty fair – him getting the average to good looking heads and and me, I get the ugly ones. At least that’s his plan.
When Maryanne Biggums’ head rolls in he makes for his office and some lukewarm coffee so I say hello to her. She’s interested in the red Turbo-charged Cordial she says and like a Beatles clip he’s out and on the prowl an instant later and introducing himself to the lady. Why, he’s going to take Maryanne up the highway for a test drive. Clyde would never let me take the red Cordial out, he confided later.
I mope around my office studying up on the turbo Stallion. I’ll have my day. I’m wearing a dark school-grey suit but I’ve decided to buy a navy blue one next. Do you know what you get for murder? Seventeen years. If that. I got seventeen years for buying that navy blue suit. I reckon I got off light.
Maybe half an hour later and he’s back with Maryanne and they’re rolling across the showroom floor, back to his office. Flushed. Juiced up on the red Cordial. (He told me later that he drove and that the Cordial would blow the fucken doors off the Stallion – I reckon Clyde’s blowing the Stallion.)
And they’re drawing up the order but we’ve got to wait for Roy to value the trade and he’s tied up. So she can’t wait. She’s got to go and she’s gone but on a promise to return. It’s a weak moment for our team. She’s walked.
Now Roy’s free. He’s the boss of “Used” and he don’t miss much. His trannie is an older Statesman and he rules “Used” with HQ prestige. He’s always ripping in to his deadshits about figures and budgets and sheilas and drink but he loves heads. He loves dudding em to get their cars. He’s the one who told me the secret of the trade – “How do you know if a prospect’s lying? Dunno?” and then real dry “Lips are moving”.
Well you don’t need me to tell you that he’d spotted the big fella and Maryanne in tandem and doesn’t he start up giving him hell about rooting Miss Big Gums? And before it was the cordial but now it’s embarrassment that’s making him red. “She gives me a hew-mungus soft on. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick.”
“How much load did you use?” It’s Roy with the jargon.
“I haven’t used any yet. That’s where you come in. Don’t forget to load up the trade.”
“What is it?”
“An eighty-three Colt.”
“Sounds more like a thirty-eight Colt. Was she holding a gun to your head?”
And the Cowboy blushes again and we crack up.
It’s our turn to do the fleet sales and the big fella’s got me assigned to his detail so that leaves Clyde and Brace to the heads.
We’re headed up the highway to TNT trucking and away from our huge lot with the glass and tin showroom that’s about as sturdy and almost as practical as a two storey screen door. It slams behind us. The big fella’s gonna sell em our new Gallop trucks at mad prices. There’ll be a drink in it for sure.
I’m ridin’ shotgun and y’all know that means in charge of music but there ain’t nothing as exotic as a “coloured radio station” so I’m directed to a tape in the console.
“And when you’re downright disgusted
And your life ain’t worth a dime”
There’s a raven pickin’ over roadkill under old gums on the roadside, the plains rolling out into scrub and the scrub making way for bindis and the bindis doing their bit to hold the dust and the dust breaking free further up the highway and coming in the windows. And we’re on the highway to TNT.
“I saw the Stones a dozen times when I was in the States.” Says the Cowboy.
“When were you in the States?”
“Past ten years. I was just rambling – doing this and that.”
“Did you have a Mustang?”
“Yeah, for a while. I’m not a big fan. A poor man’s wild ride. They’re alright.” He mulls for a second or ten. “The last car I had was a Benz. A gull wing.”
“Silver?”
“Like a dollar. They only made em in silver.”
We both know that the gull-wing is the best and rarest car in the universe. The image of it is blazing in my mind and then I just lurch into the sky, borne by silver gull wings. Over the plains and off across the desert. And then I crash land. “What’s load?”
“It’s a technical term, mate. Jargon for bullshit. When we do a trade, we load it up. We discount the new car but we don’t tell the prospect- we load the discount on to the trade so they think they’re getting more for their trade. If you told em what Roy really values their car at they’d all walk.”
“So we use load?”
“They use load too, mate. Buyers are liars. Every number they tell you is loaded up.”
“So how much was the gull-wing?”
“They new fuck-all about them over there. I bought it for thirty grand and punted it for a hundred when I left. That’s where I got the money for the ranch.”
“So where’d you get the thirty?”
“Coke. Me and my mate, who’s a mad cunt, got this great scam for cutting blow. Eventually we didn’t even put any real shit in it. We’d use borax and crushed aspirin. The last deal we did was a classic. The guy snorts a line which is fifty precent powdered aspirin and his face goes numb and he says “Hey this is great shit” and he paid up on the spot.
“That deal was not in any way contaminated with any illegal drugs whatsoever. But we had to get out of there or we were cattle trucked when he found out.”
We weren’t long at TNT. The drivers buy their own rigs so you’ve got to do the deals one at a time. We’re wearing suits which standout like tuxedos against the bourbon dress code at the truck depot and the big fella feels it real bad. Gringos. Dudes. He’s untucking his shirt and dirtying up his shoes as we walk back towards the Smegma.
“Grouse wheels,” I nod at the mad rims on his base model transport.
“Yeah, grouse” he mourns.
He perks up on the way back and he just outs with “I’m gunna sell em those trucks one at a time.”
*
Clyde’s waiting for me when we get back. Waiting to give me brain damage about figures and budgets and targets. I wish we had that thirty-eight Colt.
Turns out the TNT drivers drink at the Sylvania Waters up the highway so the big fella’s off to do some scouting. The injun ‘ere is smug in his office watching me make the march past the small offices to the boss’s.
But Clyde doesn’t give me any grief up front. Just congratulates me (through five pounds of hairspray) on the new navy blue suit and on selling five new Colts to the Nurses Mob. Seems I’m finding my feet. Seems that he wants to tell me a yarn about something or other. The blinds are drawn and his desk lamp is facing the wall. It’s ambience. And he goes on at length about this air show where some F-14 Tomcat has buzzed the crowd and then just turned vertical at low speed and fired itself into space. And maybe he’d have looked animated if it weren’t so dark.
And I’m inwardly cursing the local ravens, the only birds you could rely on to pick over a cadaver on castors. If only this desert had some decent death birds. Vultures. Big desert vultures. Condors. A half dozen would have cleaned out Clyde and Brace years ago. Put us all out of their misery.
That’s when we hear Maryanne Biggums outside and the boss peeks through the venetians and grimaces. He pokes a sneer at the bird and I know he’s thinking about selling her the juice while the Cowboy’s up the pub with the TNT truckers.
Clyde goes out with a smile they oughta call McTorture and But Maryanne greets him with “Where’s Cowboy?” and I can see she’s been warned about the dangers of dealing with men with invisible chairs shoved half way up their arses. He can see it too as he glides back into the office telling her “Cowboy’s up the Sylvania” and then he locks me in with him again. Back to the F-14.
“It’s a swing wing, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Mach 2.5. Huge payload of Tomahawks, Sidewinders, Mavericks and the like. A Gatling gun that fires cannon shells. The guy in the back operates the weapons systems and the guy in front flies it.”
“The guy in front works the weapons and the guy behind flies,” he corrects.
He’s wrong. Living in WWI as much as he lives at all. But he’s got me cornered and he wants something.
What I’d do for one condor, just one. But there is no solution from the skies. I’m gunna have to worm out of this myself so I out with “Wow, that’s a ripping story. You and your kid must have really enjoyed the air show. I’ve gotta remember to go next year.” And I crack a McTortured smile and make for the door and he lets me out.
Cowboy’s going up the Sylvania Waters again tonight but he doesn’t wear a suit to work these days. He wears one of those sleeveless trucker vests and cowboy boots. Old ones with jenn-you-wine desert dust on em. He’s ordered a box of those nylon trucker hats with “Austen Autos -The Home of the Gallop” embroidered on them.
The boys from “Used” gave him the name Cowboy because he wears the boots up the Sylvania Waters and that’s where they water their horses. His pants are tight with a slim-hipped, long legged swagger under a bear’s barrel belly. And he’s wearing one of the prized new caps. And he’s the same age as John Wayne but his real name’s Peter not Marian and he used to own a gull wing but he traded it for a ranch on the fringe of a desert. And I’m going up the pub with him to sell some rigs to truckies. And to give em trucker hats. In a navy blue suit.
So the trucker hats don’t go down too well because they’re red and the truckies aren’t too struck on those cowboy boots but they’re okay with the beer while it’s free. And then they go home under the legal limit and me and the cowboy stay on till well over the legal limit. And we discuss the future.
Seems he’s had a call from Fred Funt, the man behind the Golden Mile – the Fred Funt. Seems old Fred’s not getting any younger and he needs a forty-something maverick to take over one of the dealerships and he just loves the Cowboy’s load and he’s going to be the boss and he’ll do triple the budget that Maybelline Clyde is doing.
“Like a deputy?” I ask.
“Like a pardner.” He says.
And then he asks me what I’m plannin’ on doin’. And I tell him that my mate’s on the inside at Rand Corporation and that this has been just a three-month gig for me while I get the necessary experience to get a job selling Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles for them. ICBM’s! I’m gunna blow up the fucken world. It’s a good base wage for a young bloke with a family and a mighty healthy commission structure and they don’t dud you.
He tells me that Roy’s looking to train me as a valuer. And I’d be outta “New” and into “Used”. No more brain damage about bullshit from Clyde. They only train one every ten years and it’s a mighty earn and you don’t have to wear a suit and you get to buy in your own trannie and you can wear cowboy boots and then you can come down to the Golden Mile because I’ll need a valuer there for sure. “You could stake your claim.”
I was using load, of course. It wasn’t Rand I was going to. It was Remington and it wasn’t ICBM’s. It was computers. But one day I was gunna have a gull-wing and the best I could hope for as a valuer was a Mustang. If that.
He was gone to Fred Funt Ford on the Golden Mile within a week and I knew when he left that he hadn’t been using load on me. ‘Cept for dramatic effect.
It was the day that I said goodbye to Roy that Maryanne Biggums came back to get the valuation on her Colt. Roy loaded up the trade while I showed her another car. The boss had gone out with Brace but Roy had the keys to the Cocksucker in case we needed to move it.
And didn’t she love that Pajero? Didn’t that red duco look swell with the red of her gingham shirt and those wheels with her belt buckle? Just what she needed too – performance, safety, reliability – the boss’s precious trannie. And Roy only too happy to sell it out from under him. It had six grand in wheels and was completely unsaleable with all the options. The Dealer Principal (that’s Clyde’s boss) was around to approve us punting it at below wholesale. He was real pissed off when he saw the cost (loaded) of decals and steps and wheels and racks and roofs. He’d never have approved all that shit if he seen the figures before. Never. And because I was leaving it was only fair that we put Brace’s name on the paperwork so he could avail himself of the three dollars commission you get on a loss leader. That was only fair.
And Miss Big Gums looked like she’d been a year on health food from behind the wheel. Red Pajero, red cheeks and red lips.
*
A few months into my navy blue life I bought my first company car. A Smegma. Bought it from the cowboy and even though I got everything specced up just right and the money nailed down, I knew he’d dud me. On principle. But turned out it was just the mats.
He was grinnin’ and yelpin’ when he heard how we shafted Clyde but mine was the second account. He was just reliving it. I reckon Roy and him had cooked the whole thing up. “Injun ‘ered” it.
Three years later when I went to buy the second one from him he was dead. Heart attack at fifty.
His bones are up there on the mesa. By now condors have picked em clean. What worms they didn’t beat, they et.
But just thinking about then and him has reminded me of what we had before my seventeen years selling ICBM’s.
Something that was true like load,
Clear like boots on a saloon floor
and clean like dust.
Free like bindi thistles
and lazy like a whip.
And wild like hooves.
And lazy like the crack of a whip
and wild like hooves.
And we had em once.
Mustang hearts.