VACANCY & ARIEL

Cliff steps into his office, goes online and checks the news, then searches the film geek sites and finds a copy of Sword of the Black Demon, which he orders. It’s listed under the category, Camp Classics. Still sleepy, he lies down on the sofa and dreams he’s in a movie jungle with two blue-skinned witches and monkeys wearing grenadier uniforms and smoking clove cigarettes. He wakes to the sight of Stacey Gerone standing over him, looking peeved.

“Did you forget I was coming over?” she asks.

“Of course not.” He gets to his feet, not the easiest of moves these days, given the condition of his back, but he masks his discomfort with a yawn. “You want some coffee?”

“For God’s sake, take off that T-shirt. Don’t you get enough of Muntz World during the week?”

Stacey drops her handbag on the sofa. She’s a redhead with creamy skin that she nourishes with expensive lotions and a sun blocker with special cancer-eating bacteria or some shit, dressed in a designer tank top and white slacks. Her body’s a touch zaftig, but she is still, at thirty-eight, a babe. At the lot, she does a sultry Desperate Housewife act that absolutely kills middle-aged men and college boys alike. If the wife or girlfriend tag along, she changes her act or lets somebody else mother the sale. Jerry plans to move her over to his candy store (the new car portion of his business) in Ormond Beach, where there’s real money to be made. For more than a year, he’s tried to move Cliff to Ormond as well, but Cliff refuses to budge. His reluctance to change is inertial, partly, but he doesn’t need the money and the young couples and high school kids and working class folk who frequent Ridgewood Motors are more to his taste than the geriatric types who do their car-shopping at Muntz Mazda World.

As Cliff makes a fresh pot, Stacey sits at the kitchen table and talks a blue streak, mostly about Jerry. “You should see his latest,” she says. “He’s got a design program on his computer, and he spends every spare minute creating cartoons. You know, cartoons of himself. Little tubby, cute Jerrys. Each one has a slogan with it. Every word starts with an M. What do you call that? When every word starts with the same letter?” “Alliteration,” says Cliff.

“So he’s doing this alliteration. Most of it’s business stuff. Muntz Millennium Mazda Make-out. Muntz Mazda Moments. Trying to find some combination of M-words that make a snappy saying, you know. But then he’s got these ones that have different cartoons with them. Muntz Munches Muff. MILF-hunting Muntz He took great pains to show them to me.”

“He’s probably hoping to get lucky.”

Stacey gives him a pitying look.

“You did it with Jerry?” he says, unable to keep incredulity out of his voice.

“How many women do you see in this business? Grow up! I needed the job, so I slept with him.” Stacey waggles two fingers. “Twice. Believe me, sleep was the operative word. Once I started selling…” She makes a brooming gesture with her hand. “Does it tick you off I had sex with him?”

“Is that how you want me to feel?”

“How do I want you to feel? That’s a toughie.” She crosses her legs, taps her chin. “Studied indifference would be good. Some undertones of resentment and jealousy. That would suit me fine.”

“I can work with that.”

“That’s what I love most about you, Cliff.” She stands and puts her arms about his waist from behind. “You take direction so well.”

“I am a professional,” he says.

Later, lying in bed with Stacy, he tells her about the Celeste and Number eleven, about Shalin Palaniappan, expecting her reaction to be one of indifference—she’ll tell him to give it a rest, forget about it, he’s making a mountain out of a molehill, and just who does he think he is, anyway? Tony Shaloub or somebody? But instead she says, “I’d call the cops if I was you.”

“Really?” he says.

“That stuff about the girl…I don’t know. But obviously something hinkey’s happening over there. Unless you’ve lost your mind and are making the whole thing up.”

“I’m not making it up.” Cliff locks his hands behind his head and stares up at the sandpainted ceiling.

“Then you should call the cops.”

“They won’t do anything,” he says. “Best case, they’ll ask stupid questions that’ll make the Palaniappans shut down whatever’s going on. As soon as the pressure’s off, they’ll start up again.”

“Then you should forget it.”

“How come?”

“You’re a smart guy, Cliff, but sometimes you space. You go off somewhere else for a couple hours…or a couple of days. That isn’t such a great quality for a detective. It’s not even a great quality for a salesman.”

Slitting his eyes, Cliff turns the myriad bumps of paint on the ceiling into snowflake patterns; once, when he was smoking some excellent Thai stick, he managed to transform them into a medieval street scene, but he hasn’t ever been able to get it back. “Maybe you’re right,” he says.