Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3969318 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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Effective, literary SF, tailor made for transition to the screen

Synopsis
Rachel is a 17-year-old student who falls in love with a VW Beetle. To raise the money to buy it, she starts work in a factory where she befriends a young man, P.T. She soon shares his fascination for electricity, then she begins to suspects his real intentions, but it may already be too late.

Excerpted from Rachel's Machine by Martin Wagner. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
As soon as Rachel saw the VW Beetle she knew she had to have it. It was blue and cute and sexy and had a little dent in the front, just like Kirk Douglas. It was the most beautiful thing Rachel had ever seen in her seventeen years of existence, not that she could think of too many beautiful things to see in Everton P.A. If there were she must have got used to them by now.

On her one school trip out of state to Washington D.C. she'd been sick and had spent most of the time leaning out of the bus window, in hotels and rest rooms throwing up. Theory had it at the time that she was homesick. Homesick of Everton? Everton P.A.? But people got homesick in all kinds of places given half the chance, even prisons, she had heard someplace. Rachel contemplated her new-found blue friend. If I ever get used to you, sue me.

It, she, the VW, all shiny and all cleaned up as if she had been fresh through a car wash, sat there looking at her, almost smiling, almost knowing that she had found someone who was planning to own her, proudly displaying a sign stuck behind its windshield wipers "Frank's Used Cars - VW Beetle, blue", as if Rachel didn't know, and most importantly "$999", not exactly in her price range, but within reach. Well, not within reach exactly, but she'd think of something. Rachel usually did.

After breakfast (toast, decaff, orange juice) Rachel had strolled through the deserted car yard, under her arm her school-books (Physics, Calculus, Home Economics) and the ring-binder (blue, shabby, much-loved) she had carried around with her ever since she had started high school. She had decided to kill some time and look at some cars. She was good at cars and physics and mechanics and not so good at home economics. Home economics: cooking dead things she'd have to pick up cheaply at the local Pricebusters for her husband-to-be and screaming children-to-be and not having time to hear herself think, something which could easily happen if she let things run their natural course and didn't get out of this godforsaken town she had somehow been born into. But didn't God only hang out in the small towns these days? Rachel couldn't imagine God hanging out in New York or London or Calcutta, wherever that might be, too much.

Rachel, not yet late for school but perhaps hoping to be, carefully investigated the cars as if she hadn't seen them before, occasionally checking a few more promising models for rust and dents by standing at the back and expertly looking first under the bonnet, then straight along the sides looking for imperfections in the bodywork, finally taking a look at the ground to check for oil leaks, just like her dad had taught her. That had been back in the days when he was still interested in cars, not just cars on television, actors in cars on television or anything on television for that matter. Rachel couldn't remember the last time her father had talked to her about cars as he used to, with that passion in his eyes people had when they talked about something that really mattered to them like their new girlfriend, their newborn and, well, maybe their new car. Now the only time she saw him remotely interested in anything was when he checked the TV Guide for what was on that evening. Or remotely disappointed for that matter.

Back in the old days her old man had been more fun. He used to take her for rides, to the movies, to fun fairs and to all the things she asked to be taken to. And, as far as she could tell, not at all disappointed that she hadn't turned out to be a boy, he had shown her how to service cars long before he had taught her how to drive them.

The first time she was allowed behind the steering wheel of his battered but cherished Chevrolet, Rachel already knew how to change the oil, check the battery or replace a wheel in three minutes flat. She had once challenged him to a tire-changing race and had won. To his credit her dad had barely sulked, but he took his sweet revenge by making her change the tires from then on whenever they burst, taking pleasure in staying inside the car, wind or shine, listening to phone-ins on the radio. She got drenched on more than one occasion.

Driving was saved to the last. The best for the last, as it should be. She still remembered the feeling when for the first time she was in control of the car as if it were yesterday. That moment when her father had stopped hovering his hand near the steering wheel in case she made a mistake and put it in his side pocket as a sign of trust, looking out the side window as if to admire the landscape. At that moment she had been in control of that machine. As he eventually turned back to look at his daughter he had smiled at her with pride, but he was also a little sad as he knew that as soon as she would be able to drive she would be able to drive away from him, from her family, rarely to be seen again, only for visits at Thanksgiving and Christmas and perhaps not even then once she had a family of her own. He'd have to drive to see her, never quite knowing whether he was really welcome or not.

Later that day, just after the sun had set and a magical twilight illuminated the streets of Everton, accentuated by the warm glow of the occasional neon sign, he had let her drive round the block on her own. She drove flawlessly, in control of her dad's car, and felt in her element, like a proper adult, only a little disappointed that no one was there to see her. A born driver. That night, after her mother had finally put her foot down and sent her off to bed, Rachel had cried herself to sleep - tears of joy, not sadness.

When she got up the following morning and entered the kitchen, she felt like a grown woman for the first time, more so than when she had her first period - she had been prepared for that - more so than after she had lost her virginity which had been the obligatory disaster she had wanted to forget as quickly as it had happened (back-seat, pain, ending in humiliation), but she hadn't been prepared for what it would feel like to drive. She had been fifteen. And now, two years later, new driver's licence - of course passed with flying colours - in her pocket, she was ready for a car of her own.

She wanted a car like her: small, sexy and beautiful. Not that Rachel was particularly vain or anything, but when practically every boy in high school asks you out on a date - the ones who didn't, didn't because they were too shy, she could always tell - you knew that you were more than just O.K. looking. And she took it for granted that none of them gave a fuck about what was going on in her head. Not that she had much reason to complain, really, she wasn't exactly famous for picking her boyfriends according to their SAT scores either.

Rachel had been car hunting on-and-off for months now but with less and less enthusiasm. The cars she sort of liked were always far too expensive and she wouldn't want to be caught dead in some rust-bucket she would've been able to pick up for a couple of hundred bucks. Other people and the pride they had in their rust-buckets made Rachel sick. Most people's first cars looked like someone else's final car, cars people had died in. No, just anything on four wheels won't do for me, Rachel had long ago decided, I want a car I can relate to.

And today, just as she was about to give up hope, she had found it. Her car. Behind the endless rows of big and ugly cars - cars that boys would dream of because they were big rather than beautiful, powerful rather than sexy, fast rather than charming - she discovered the Volkswagen Beetle unfairly demoted to the back of the car yard. Rachel briefly wondered how she could have failed to notice it in the past - few of the cars at Frank's ever seemed to get sold so there was rarely the need for Fred to get new ones - but that wonder quickly gave way to love.

She'd have to give it, her, a name, not now, she had to belong to her first, but it was the kind of car you could imagine giving a name to once you paid your money and were allowed to take it home with you. Take her home with you. She'd give her a name on the first drive home and not think of it before that. Giving things a name too soon was bad luck.

They say that love at first sight with boys was a thing of the movies, but as far as love at first sight with cars was concerned, on that spring day Rachel had conclusive proof that it was possible in the real world. She had to have the car, no matter what.

Confusingly, Frank's Used Cars was owned by Fred. Depending on the circles of gossip you paid most attention to, legend in town had it that Frank was someone Fred had killed when he was young and the name was a sign of respect for the dead, his grandfather who left him some money, or both. No one dared to ask Fred to confirm the story, which was probably mostly due to Fred's imposing, if slightly slumped, figure and prominent gold tooth which, being in the business of selling cars where it is said that a genuine smile is worth a thousand lies, he exposed frequently to his not-so-frequent potential customers, mostly out-of-towners who usually fled at the earliest opportunity after they saw him emerging from his office from the corner of their eyes. The customers who stayed more often than not drove away with a real bargain. Fred wasn't very good at selling cars.

Fred lived alone, alternating between gentle slumber on the sofa in the office and deep sleep in the back room which featured not much more than a makeshift bed, a television set and countless empty bottles of whiskey which seemed to have become part of the furniture. His routine, if you could call his monotone lifestyle that, would only be disrupted when he sold a car, had to get papers drawn up, credit-cards authorised, but that happened less and less often as the years passed. No one could remember how long Fred had been the owner of Frank's, least of all Fred, but it must have been quite some time as he had become used to the humming of the power line running near his office across the yard which had kept him awake at night after he first moved in.

Now he even found the absence of the humming disturbing and he usually found himself hurrying back home when he went on his increasingly rare trips to car auctions, feeling more at home in the squalor of his car yard than he had ever felt anywhere. And Fred had even become used to the imposing presence of the pylons reaching up into the sky on both sides of his yard. Hell, he had even become proud of them. Chasing away neighbourhood kids who regularly tried to construct tree houses on them - trees no longer seemed to prove a challenge - was one of Fred's few amusements apart from drinking and playing one-armed bandits. He always wanted the kids to come back and try again.

Fred was dreaming of spare car parts when he was woken by a loud knock on the door of his office, even though the sign still said "closed" with a smiley face not smiling. Still half asleep he sat up from the sofa, looked out the window and thought that he must have died and gone to heaven. Rachel, who, even with schoolbooks under her arm, looked at least twenty-one, looked like an angel. Fred, had often seen her around town but had barely exchanged half a dozen sentences with her, sentences like "Excuse me" and occasionally a polite "How'd you do?" accompanied by a gentlemanly, if a little awkward, lifting of his hat, in response to which he rarely got anything more than a blank look. He hardly spent a day without wishing that he was thirty years younger and that they would run away together somewhere, leaving Everton far behind, just him and her.

Yet he knew that Rachel didn't share these feelings, for as soon as she saw his face appear in the window she let out a small scream, took a few steps back and almost stumbled. Her school-books fell to the ground.

"C'mon, Rache. Time to go to school!" Rachel heard a happy voice say from somewhere behind her. She turned and saw Sally's grinning face covering the sun. Sally had to do something about those braces if she ever wanted to get laid, Rachel thought.

"What took you so long?" Rachel asked as she collected her school things just as Fred emerged from his office, changing the sign over to Open and a happy smiley.

"Can I help you, miss?"

I don't think so, somehow, Rachel thought as she looked at the sad and ugly man and was glad when Sally took her hand and dragged her towards the car which was waiting for them at the entrance of the yard, engine running. The car would have to wait.

"Some other time, Fred, we're late," Sally shouted back at him as they were leaving. "Very late."

The happy beat of the latest single came from the car stereo and Rachel and Sally almost danced towards the red convertible to join the other five girls who were busy singing along. Danielle, sitting behind the steering wheel and the second most beautiful girl in Everton high school according to unofficial opinion polls, impatiently stepped on the gas pedal in rhythm to the music.

Even before Rachel had slammed the door, Danielle changed gear and stepped on the accelerator. The tires screeched as the car did its 0 to 60 bit in so and so many seconds as promised by the manufacturers. Left alone in the middle of his yard, Fred watched sadly as the car with Rachel and her crowd disappeared into a cloud of dust.

More than likely his day's work over with, Fred returned to his office, shut the blinds to block out the morning sun and lay back down on his sofa a little disappointed. Hell, not that he was expecting a sale, but he wouldn't have minded trying to sell a car. Selling a car to Rachel Connor. You couldn't spend all your life lying on a sofa, could you? Well, maybe you could, beats working for a living. Beats working for someone else, even Frank, Fred thought and chuckled to himself.

He closed his eyes and tried to dream of Rachel. That he dreamt of spare car parts instead didn't surprise him, even though, on the rare occasions he thought about it, it irritated him that he didn't seem to dream of anything else these days.