Drive Read online

  DRIVE

  ALSO BY DIANA WIELER

  THE RANVAN TRILOGY

  RANVAN: THE DEFENDER

  RANVAN: A WORTHY OPPONENT

  RANVAN: MAGIC NATION

  BAD BOY

  LAST CHANCE SUMMER

  DRIVE

  DIANA WIELER

  Copyright © 1998 by Diana Wieler

  First published in the USA in 1999

  Third paperback printing 2006

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, ON M5V 2K4

  Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West

  1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Ontario Arts Council.

  Library of Congress data is available

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Wieler, Diana J. (Diana Jean)

  Drive

  A Groundwood book.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-347-2 (bound) –

  ISBN-10: 0-88899-347-1 (bound)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-348-9 (pbk.) –

  -ISBN-10: 0-88899-348-X (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS8595.I53143D74 1998 jC813’.54 C98-931363-8

  PZ7.W54Dr 1998

  Design by Michael Solomon

  Cover illustration by Julia Bell

  Printed and bound in Canada by Webcom

  For Mellie and George,

  who taught my sister and me

  to dream out loud.

  ONE

  “Hi! How are you today?”

  The couple studying the sedan turned abruptly, surprised to see me. I didn’t really mean to sneak up on them, but most people don’t like salesmen. If they see you coming they’ll drift away. Pretty fast.

  “We’re just looking, thanks,” the man said, shifting so that his shoulder was to me.

  “Well, good. Because I’m not selling today,” I said.

  The woman looked up, puzzled. “Why not?”

  I gestured around at the lot filled with new cars that glinted in the sun. “I don’t work on nice days. It’s too…nice.”

  She smiled. She was younger than the man, with reddish lights in her auburn hair. Maybe she was his second wife.

  “Must be tough to earn a living, then,” the man said, still not looking at me. “We’ve had the warmest winter in fifty years.”

  He was right. It was the middle of March and the snow was completely gone. I’d only been working at Five Star Ford for seven months, but I’d lived through the leanest winter in the dealership’s history. We’d had rain in February, a miracle.

  “It’s a disaster,” my sales manager had said. “Their damn cars keep starting. Half of us could have stayed in bed last month.”

  I wasn’t someone who stayed in bed. My hand was already in my suit jacket pocket, fumbling for business cards.

  “I’m Jens Friesen.” I swept out a card to each of them with the slightest tilt of a bow. I’d always thought I did that bit well. “Are you looking for something like your current vehicle?” I nodded at the sporty import I’d seen them drive up in. It wasn’t a two-seater but it might as well have been, for all the room there was in the back.

  “I think we’re interested in a family car,” the woman said. The man gave her a look, but I felt a light go on inside me.

  “Then you’re really going to love the safety features of this model,” I said cheerfully, pulling open the driver’s door. “Car and Driver rated it the best mid-size choice for families with small children.”

  I had done my homework. Most evenings that winter I’d spent in my furnished suite, poring over the brochures and even the owner’s manuals of the cars and trucks on our lot. I brought home magazines from the dealership, trying to memorize the ratings. It was easy to concentrate. I didn’t have a television.

  The woman was standing next to me, listening intently. I could smell her perfume — flowers and maybe spice.

  “Now, the manufacturer is very concerned about the effect of air bags on children under forty pounds,” I was saying.

  “We don’t have children yet,” the man cut me off.

  I felt a clutch of panic.

  “You…you’re really going to love the built-in safety bracket,” I said quickly, opening the back door and climbing in. “A baby seat can hook right in.”

  The woman got in on the other side to see what I was talking about. I tried to keep my left elbow against me to hold my jacket closed. I had a stain on that shirt.

  We found the bracket, a thin outcrop of metal at the back of the seat.

  “It’s a great idea,” she said. “How does it work?”

  I was eighteen years old. I’d never handled a baby seat, in this car or any other.

  “You know, this is really premature,” the man said suddenly. “And I have to get back to the office, honey.”

  “It’s got to slide in somehow,” I blurted.

  The man was already walking away. The woman sighed and got out. I stood up, too, my heart sinking.

  “Well, I appreciate your time, and if there’s ever anything I can do —”

  “I’ve got it,” she said, holding up my business card as she backed away. She shrugged, a little sadly. “I’ll come back when…”

  I needed her to get pregnant now. This afternoon.

  “I’m here all the time. Or they’ll page me,” I called. I watched them drive away in their sleek little car, too expensive to be loud. I’d forgotten to tell him what a great trade-in it would make. I’d forgotten to shake his hand.

  It was Friday morning. The lot was dead. I walked back into the showroom.

  Five Star Ford wasn’t the biggest dealership in Winnipeg, but it was the one with fame attached. It was owned by Jack Lahanni, a running back who’d spent sixteen seasons in the CFL. There was a big picture of him hanging on the wall in the showroom, up high so you could see it over the cars on display. Fifty pounds and twenty years were on Jack Lahanni. In the picture he was wearing a crisp gray suit, but when I looked at it I still saw him in a green-and-white uniform, number 39. He had two Grey Cup championships and the league record for receptions in a single game. He was the second-greatest man I’d ever met.

  Jack Lahanni wasn’t the one who trained me. That was left to the sales manager, Sy Sudermann. I liked Sy. He was about fifty, with a square face that drooped at the corners and red highlights on his nose and cheeks. He still had a lot of thick black hair and he was proud of it. Someone had once told him he looked like Elvis and I think he believed it. He wore his sideburns longer than anyone else.

  Before he’d been a sales manager, Sy had sold Cadillacs and other luxury cars.

  “We had great margins in those days, Jens,” he told me wistfully. “The late seventies, the early eighties - those were the golden years. There was so much margin built into a car that you’d earn three hundred bucks on a single caddy. And our lot had a bonus for a hat trick - if you sold three cars in a day, you got an extra hundred and fifty. You could actually have a thousand-dollar day.”

  I was a million miles from a thousand-dollar day. I’d been selling about three vehicles a month, and margins were half what they were in the golden years. Then came February. So far, March hadn’t been any better.

  When I walked into the showroom, the door to Sy’s
office was closed. He was probably getting ready for the sales meeting we had every Friday at four o’clock. Just thinking about it pulled my stomach tight. I needed something to happen before then.

  “Hey, Jens,” Dave called, standing up at his desk, “looks like you almost had a live one.”

  “She’s coming back,” I said.

  “When?”

  “When she has a baby,” I shrugged.

  “Good God, man. And you didn’t volunteer?”

  Dave could make anyone laugh. He was older than me, in his twenties, but he still lived at home. He had three suits and a dozen ties, and he was the last one to run out of money when we went to the bar. February hadn’t worried him at all.

  It had worried Paul. He was the oldest of the six salesmen, with a wife and kids. The rest of us had stayed inside that month, telling stories but watching the lot. We kept our coats at our desks, ready. Paul spent his time on the phone, calling back every customer who’d ever bought a vehicle from him. It must have worked because even that February he was able to earn more than his draw. And the first Saturday in March, when Five Star Ford took out its regular ad in the newspaper, Paul’s picture was up in the corner box, Sales Leader of the Month. Again.

  The Winnipeg Free Press is shipped to all the small towns in the province. I knew my parents picked it up at the Lucky Mart in our home town of Ile-des-Sapins, not every day but always the Saturday edition. I would have given anything for my father to open the newspaper and see me in it.

  I think I look like him. Friesen is a German name, and those genes gave me a square jaw and solid bones, shoulders made for lifting things. A girl at my high school in Rosetown once said I had a peasant’s body, and even though I stopped liking her in that moment, it seemed to stick in my mind. My hair is that middle ash color that only turns really blond in the summer now, but it was nearly white until I was three years old.

  My father named me Jens after his father, and I was proud of it, even though it’s the kind of name other kids like to torture you with. But I didn’t have my first fight until grade two, when Shane Lasko said my brother was retarded.

  Daniel is two and a half years younger than me, and he looks more like Mom. She’s very French; before she married Dad her name was Desrochers. Mom and Daniel have the same huge brown eyes and dark hair, but on him the slender build came out wiry. To me he’s all arms and legs, sinew and veins that seem to be just below the surface of his skin.

  Growing up, we looked so different from one another.

  “One for each of you,” people told my parents, as if we were two flavors of ice cream — one Tiger-Tiger and one Rocky Road. Behind our backs I know they said other things, because Daniel didn’t talk until he was four years old. In a small town, everyone is someone. My brother was the kid everybody thought was deaf, or worse.

  My father, Karl Friesen, is the window man, the small-job renovation man. For awhile he had a guy working for him, Don Shibote, and that was when he had “Friesen Glass” painted on the side of the truck. I know he was proud of that. I remember how his voice seemed to deepen when he told a customer on the phone that he’d send his man out for the quote.

  Just before I turned eighteen my father had a heart attack. In my mind that’s when he really needed somebody helping him. But he didn’t have disability insurance, so he didn’t have the money and he had to let Don Shibote go. Dad didn’t work for eight months. And somehow when he did, he wasn’t Friesen Glass, he was just the window man again.

  That’s when I left home and moved to Winnipeg to work at Five Star Ford. Up until then, all I’d ever sold was chocolate-covered almonds, to raise money for my high-school football team, the Rosetown Raiders. But I believed that if I really wanted something, I could get it. If I just kept trying, if I didn’t give up. When I left Rosetown Senior High, my picture was in the sports trophy case next to the office. Jens Friesen, Number 56, Most Improved Player and Chocolate King.

  Over two seasons I had sold 3,364 boxes of those damn almonds.

  •

  Judi the receptionist was on the phone but I saw her glance up, at the lot. I was out the showroom door before Dave could get up from his desk.

  Don’t run, Jens, I told myself. Don’t blow it.

  Halfway across the lot my heart was still thumping but I was walking casually, breathing easy.

  The prospect was in his thirties, with closecropped curly hair already starting to gray and a tan he couldn’t have gotten in this part of the country, miracle spring or not. His suit had a faint expensive sheen like the ones Jack Lahanni wore. He was looking at what I called the power cars.

  “Hi, how are you today?”

  “Pretty good. The weather’s beautiful.”

  I gestured at the shiny new cars. “And just look at the scenery.”

  He laughed. It was starting to feel like a great day, too.

  I made it work this time — the card, the handshake, and all the right questions. His name was Richard and he’d just been promoted. I felt that light again, inside.

  “What does your boss drive?” I asked.

  He looked surprised at the question, but he told me. We had one on the lot. When I suggested he take it for a test-drive, he laughed in disbelief.

  “Might as well get the practice,” I said.

  It got him behind the wheel. When he sat down in the deep leather seat, he looked at me and grinned. He wanted to be the man who drove this car. My heart was running. I tried not to talk too much, but it was hard. I needed this.

  All through the drive, even while I recited every feature I could remember from the brochure, I was rehearsing the question in my mind. It was the big one, the tough one – eight little words that always made my mouth go dry. Would you like to write up an offer?

  But I never had to ask.

  As soon as we pulled onto the lot again, Richard got out of the car. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the business card I’d just given him.

  “Listen, I’m in a hurry today. But why don’t you take this into your sales manager and see what he says.” He wrote a figure on the back of the card, and a phone number. “This is my cell. You can reach me any time.”

  I took back my card. In a glance I knew that the offer was low — really low. But it was a start. We’d negotiate up. I had a live one.

  “You’ll hear from me this afternoon, Richard,” I said, pumping his hand. As he walked off the lot I wondered where he’d parked and what he was driving now — we hadn’t talked trade-in. But it didn’t matter. I could have done cartwheels back to the showroom.

  “Sy wants you,” Judi said as I came in.

  I was still rushing, still high. I leaned my peasant’s body against her work station. “Of course he does. Everybody does. You want me, don’t you, Judi?” I teased.

  Behind me, Dave snickered.

  Judi looked at me for a second. “Try cold water for that stain, Jens, if it’s mustard.”

  Dave was still laughing as I walked into Sy’s office, my face burning.

  Sy was on the phone. He motioned at me to shut the door, which I did. But I was too excited to sit down. I paced the back of the office, reading the sales board, fingering the card with Richard’s offer. I was looking at everyone’s numbers but mostly Paul’s. He was the one to beat, to be Sales Leader of the Month. I realized the cut-off was ten days away, the same date as my nineteenth birthday.

  Behind me, Sy hung up the phone. In two strides I was at his desk, and I dropped the card on it. This close I could smell his lunch. Three shots of Glenkinchie Scotch, from Taps Bar and Grill.

  “I need us to counter right away,” I said. “I have to call him back.”

  “What the hell is this?”

  I blurted out my Richard story, struggling to stay cool. But my prospect was looking at the top of our line.

  “Now, I know it’s low, but it’s a start…”

  “No, it’s not, Jens. It’s bullshit.”

  I straightened. Sy grabbed a form off
his desk and thrust it at me. It was filled out, in triplicate. One of Paul’s.

  “This is an offer, this is real.” Sy tapped my card. “You don’t even know his last name. How can I take it seriously? For all you know, this guy works for a dealer, too. He’s fishing. He’s trying to find out how low we’ll go.”

  I felt struck. No wonder Richard hadn’t parked where I could see, or given me one of his own business cards. But I couldn’t let go.

  “I’ll…call him. He can come back, or I’ll go to his office —”

  “Jens,” Sy said, getting up. “Why don’t you have a chair?”

  I sat down. Sy came out from behind his desk and leaned against it.

  “I like you, Jens. I really do. You’ve got the talent and you try so hard…” He went on that this wasn’t personal, it was about numbers. Who tied up a desk, how many base salaries had to be paid out. Who the producers were.

  I felt waves of hot and cold breaking over me.

  “I can get this guy, Sy! I think he’s real. I’ll get him now and write up the offer —”

  I tried to stand but his hand was on my shoulder.

  “One offer isn’t going to solve this,” Sy said gently. “Jens, I want you to take some time. Go home and relax and give yourself time to get over this.”

  I was really being fired. It felt like a boot in my guts.

  “I can’t go home,” I blurted.

  “Why not?”

  He thought I meant to my apartment. I was talking about Ile-des-Sapins, where my family was, where my life used to be. Only one person knew what I had given up to come to Five Star Ford.

  I got to my feet. “I want to talk to Mr. Lahanni.”

  “Jack’s on holiday. And…he knows about this.” A look of pain seemed to cross Sy’s face. “We’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  My head was spinning. There was nobody who could help me. I put my hand on the doorknob.

  “I won’t tell anybody yet,” Sy said quickly. “Keep your truck for the weekend. You can bring it back Monday, when you clean out your desk.”

  He started over, but a look from me stopped him cold. Sy lifted his hands helplessly.