That woman\u2019s going to run her car into the ground. I tell her she could save time, money, and aggravation if she\u2019d just take it easy. She doesn\u2019t strike me as someone who listens, so, until that happens, I\u2019ll fix it. I just hate taking money from people when it\u2019s a self-generated problem. It\u2019s not because she\u2019s a woman. Don\u2019t take me down that road, I know plenty of good female drivers. She\u2019s not one of them. I call her The Off-Roader, but she doesn\u2019t know. She tells me I\u2019m sweet. My ex used to call me sweet when she wanted something. There are two things I can\u2019t stand. Shoveling snow and being called sweet. I hate the last one more, but it\u2019s not so bad in this weather. And it\u2019s not so bad when the right woman says it and all you did was get her a bottle of water.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t hold anything against people, unless they come at me wrong. I will up the price of an invoice if someone expects special treatment. The guys from the studios with German cars are the worst. They think they can snap their fingers and get their car back in two hours. I don\u2019t work that way. I told one guy to get the hell out. The Off-Roader was here that day. I think it was her suspension that time. The guy started running his mouth and I told him to get off my lot. He kept going and I said, This isn\u2019t a goddam dealership. You want it done in two hours? Take it over there. You want it done right, you wait for my phone call. The guy\u2019s face looked like the inside of a gutted salmon. He spat on the ground on his way out. The Off-Roader came out of the lounge, well—she peeked around the corner. I told her the coast was clear. She pointed at me with her sunglasses and said, He shouldn\u2019t have messed with you. I smiled and couldn\u2019t stop smiling, for some reason. Then I got it together and said, Let me grab your paperwork.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I gave her the total and she said, This can\u2019t be right. How come it\u2019s so much lower than the quote? I smiled and I said, \u2018Cuz, I\u2019m not a goddam dealership. She smiled, too, and it made me glad I moved all the way out here. Then I fucked everything up and said, Now you just need to learn how to drive. Her face—her eyes—-I don\u2019t know how to describe it—made me want to walk into oncoming traffic. She looked down and it took awhile for her to say something. Then she covered her eyes with her glasses and said, Give me the real number. I said, That IS the real number. And she said, No. The one for bad drivers. That\u2019s the last time I saw her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She tells me I\u2019m sweet. My ex used to call me sweet when she wanted something. There are two things I can\u2019t stand. Shoveling snow and being called sweet. I hate the last one more, but it\u2019s not so bad in this weather. And it\u2019s not so bad when the right woman says it and all you did was get her a bottle of water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-19690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-cars","writer-darlene-eliot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20233,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19690\/revisions\/20233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}