Chapter 262: I Nearly Get Arrested Buying My New Car

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

I had my pre-breakfast at home, then drove to the Williams'. I physically went to the study, but used a large sight blob (large, to collect enough light to see with) to check on Julia and Carol. They were lying close together in bed. Their wearing nightwear ruined my fantasy of their getting hot and sweaty with each other before they'd slept, but I guess my life can't be like some cheap porn story all the time.

Studying was enjoyable, as usual, especially the Physics course. It was dealing with electromagnetism, optics and wave motion. I still couldn't get sound blobs or dual sight sources working, so learning about stuff in those areas was good. With luck, I'd eventually find something that'd get me past those two roadblocks.

I studied right through the time I expected the girls to come in. Fifteen minutes past Julia's normal time to interrupt me, I sent a sight blob to check. They were still asleep, so I carried on studying. They eventually turned up forty minutes later than normal. Both still wearing nightwear, unfortunately. Hopefully my life will get back on track soon.

I scooted my chair back, and they climbed onto a leg each. "You slept late this morning?"

"We didn't get to sleep for a long time; we had a lot to talk about," Julia explained.

It was too early in the day to get in trouble, so I played safe by changing the subject by asking, "I hope your parents do a good job on Mom and Dad this evening."

We discussed that, which meant mostly agreeing with each other when we all wished the same thing, until I suggested that it was breakfast time.

Car buying was the big event of the morning. Julia and I visited the Toyota lot just before 10am, located our salesman and Julia told him, "You have fifteen minutes to improve on your $58,950 offer, so we can make our choice between the three cars we're considering."

He assured us that his offer was already the best one, "because Lexus cars are the best, with great safety features and the best blah, blah..."

After thirteen minutes of his "blah, blah'ing," and fishing about what we thought of our other choices, we started walking off his lot, with him trailing after us.

On the edge, Julia told him, "This is your last chance. Are you going to improve on your offer today?"

It turned out that he wasn't. He couldn't just say that, so we had to put up with some more salesmanship, but we left the lot with the price still at $58,950.

"That's a pity," I said, as soon as we were driving away.

"It doesn't really matter," said Julia. "If he'd dropped any more, it would've only have been another hundred or two. Why don't you call the Portland dealership to see if they'll take $57,950 for a cash deal today?"

I agreed. We parked down the street and Julia called them on her phone and passed it to me.

I got a salesman, then repeated what Julia had said, "I want to buy a Lexus SC430. Will you take $57,950 for a cash deal today?"

"Possibly," he encouraged. "We can discuss that when you come to the lot. Have you driven one before?"

After all the salesmanship I'd been on the receiving end of since we'd started looking at cars, even I knew better than get suckered into responding to either of those points. I said, "Just answer the question please. Will you do a deal for $57,950?"

It wasn't as easy as that. After refusing to answer some more of his irrelevant questions, and repeating my original question another couple of times, he said he'd call us back.

He did so after fifteen minutes, asking me, "Are you trading anything in?"

"No. Will you take $57,950?"

"We've got an SC430 demonstrator available for $51,995. Would that interest you?"

That confused me, but I soon found out that they occasionally sell the cars they use for their test drives. It was nearly a year old and had done 15,000 miles. I let him know what Julia would doubtless think of that idea. It was probably the one we'd driven yesterday, so it was both used by a whole bunch of people and a totally inappropriate color.

It eventually turned out that they wouldn't do a deal for $57,950, "but if you come to the lot, we should be able to work out a deal close to that."

After I hung up on him, Julia directed, "Back to Toyota."

"Oh boy. It's a LOT of money to pay for a car."

"Not nearly as much as I was originally intending to spend."

#4: <That's true. We're saving ourselves $40,000 buying a Lexus. That makes it a steal.>

I said, "Are you sure we have to buy a car? This one's running very well."

Julia answered with The Look - it's one of the compulsory subjects in their secret classes - which killed the conversation, and nearly me too.

#6: <I'm nervous buying a car without Dad's okay. Cars are Dad's department. He's always been in charge of servicing them, deciding when to replace them, what with, etc.>

#1: <Julia isn't going to react well to our saying we want to wait for Dad's okay.>

#6: <I know. We don't really have a choice. If this goes wrong, I'm still going to tell Dad to blame the rest of you though.>

"{Sigh}. Okay Julia, let's do it."

The salesman was happy to see us, and he couldn't wait to tell us that, "I knew you'd be back. It's a wonderful car with the best blah, blah..."

So we started all the paperwork, while we listened to more blah, blah.

The only thing I wanted to hear was the answer to my asking, "When will we have it?"

"Provided one of your parents comes in to co-sign the contract in the next couple of hours, you'll get your car tomorrow afternoon. It needs to be prepped and delivered. We'll give you a call when it's ready for you." (They'd explained to me that my being under 18 meant I couldn't legally sign a contract by myself. They didn't seem to have a problem with me giving them a check for nearly sixty grand though.)

There was a seemingly endless amount of stuff that had to be gone through. Paperwork to be filled out, registration forms, instructions on getting it serviced, yet another description of the warranty Lexus provides. A secretary came and went a couple of times with paperwork stuff, the dealership boss came in to congratulate us for deciding to purchase such a wonderful car, "especially because Lexus have the best blah, blah..." I had to sign something else, I had to call Dad again to discuss how to get it insured (which Dad had warned me might be tricky, because of my age, so we'd have to do some calling around this afternoon in case getting it insured was difficult), I had to listen to more blah, blah. There was a lot of messing around.

Toward the end of which I heard the secretary's voice from somewhere behind me stridently declare, "There he is!"

Her tone caught everyone's attention. We looked up to see two cops walking into the office, with the secretary standing behind them.

The front cop and I recognized each other. He said, "Ahh, Mr. Anderson..."

The secretary loved the cop's recognition, crowing, "I knew it!"

" ... We've been called because this lady thinks you've got a fake driver's license." She'd taken it away during the paperwork storm. I'd been about to mention my age to her, but had been distracted by the dealership manager telling me "Blah, blah."

#2: <We did give them the right license didn't we? Prof took the fake one away after we got back from being on the lam?>

#1: <I'm ALMOST positive he did.>

#3: <The secretary definitely has the legit one. I glanced at it while we were handing it over, just as we were about to explain the age.>

I said, "It's legit. You can check it no problems and..."

#3: <Don't mention Roy Smith. We don't want that asshole involved.>

#6: <We don't need to mention him. When Mackenzie Norris's father did his stupidity, that cop was perfectly happy when he ran our license.>

[My age had been mentioned in post-date conversation with the Norrises here too, so the license annoyance had also repeated. One of the reasons we hadn't done anything with Claire and Diana at the end of our date with Mackenzie was because their parents got nasty over my license. We'd left right after we'd gotten it back following our successful call to the cops to report Mr. Norris's refusal to return it.]

So I changed what I'd been about to say to, " ... it's already been checked by another policeman about six weeks ago."

"We'll run it," said Cop#1. "Where is it?"

He looked at me. I looked at the secretary. Cop #2 held out his hand to her.

She looked less triumphant than she had a few seconds ago, as she placed the pieces of my license into the cop's hand.

"WHAT!" I yelled. "You cut up my license!"

"It's a fake!" insisted the secretary. "They don't give licenses to 14-year olds."

Cop#1 looked at me for an explanation, Cop#2 being too busy doing a jigsaw. It was too much of a pain to explain, so I just said, "Run it. You'll see."

Cop#2 had the four pieces arranged in the palm of one of his hands. He called back to the station, asking for it to be checked, stressing the issue date and my birthday.

It took a couple of minutes before we all heard the answer come back, "It's in the system. It's a special issue."

That raised the noise level in the small office considerably. The secretary started wailing her excuses, "They don't give licenses to 14-year olds", "How was I to know?", etc.

The salesman and the dealership's boss, who'd came back when he'd seen the cops arrive, started apologizing to me.

Cop#2 poured the pieces of my license into my hand, and I spent the time swearing to myself about having to face Roy Smith again. I asked Cop#2, "I don't suppose I can tape it together and keep using it?"

"Nope. You gotta go to the DMV and get it replaced."

"Good grief!" I glared at the secretary, "STUPID woman!"

"It was an accident," the stupid woman claimed.

Dripping with sarcasm, I replied, "You 'accidentally' put my license between the blades of a pair of scissors, 'accidentally' closed them, caught the two pieces, held them together, turned them ninety degrees then 'accidentally' cut them in half again. What a load of CRAP! You deliberately destroyed my private property and now I have to go back to the damned DMV to get it replaced." Julia was the only one here who'd appreciate what I'd gone through to get my license, but the lines at the DMV are a well-known complaint, so everyone would have some idea of how pissed off I was.