THE REVENGE OF THE CLUNKER DRIVER
I had received a more than respectable royalty check and was feeling somewhat good about myself, so to celebrate, I decided to take myself into Beverly Hills on a sunny Tuesday afternoon to treat myself to a lace shirt I had seen advertised at Saks.
Saks is a department store seated squarely in the heart of Beverly Hills’ famed Golden Triangle of high-end shopping establishments; so nosebleedingly posh is it that its parking lot offers valet parking only. The valet on duty on the day when I arrived was young and fair-haired and handsome, and, like many in similar employment in this city of dreams, very possibly an out of work actor. He frowned at my car as I drove up to his stand, and before I could exit it, approached me to speak through the window.
“You know,” he said to me, thoughtfully, “I’d rather you parked that car yourself somewhere else.”
Unlike the valet, my car at the time was neither young nor handsome. It was fully paid for and in excellent working condition; it was more than acceptably clean within and not in the habit of emitting poisonous fumes without. I was, in fact, extremely fond of that car. But a filmmaker friend who once was filming a story about the most desperately pathetic man in the whole of the city of Los Angeles had specifically requested to use it for his character’s car; and that had been three summers and winters, a fender bender outside Trader Joe’s, and a conversation with our neighbor’s white picket fence earlier.
“What do you mean?” I said, stung – because, while not a collector of fine automobiles, I am nevertheless an Angeleno, and, while not a thing of beauty in the world’s eyes, this was, after all, my car.
The young man cast an eye over my beloved chariot’s venerable and honorably battle-scarred body and pondered for a while.
“I’d just rather,” he explained, then, “you parked it somewhere else.”
Well, he wasn’t getting away with it just like that.
“Why?” I said.
The young man pursed his lips as he considered this question.
“Because,” he replied after a moment, “the lot is full.”
It was Tuesday afternoon. I looked up the length of Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills, and then down it. There was not a soul to be seen: crickets chirped in the trees, and a lone tumbleweed bowled down the center of the street.
“Really?” I said.
The young man smiled tightly.
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s a little unusual, isn’t it?” I said. “For a department store’s parking lot to be full on a Tuesday afternoon?”
The young man, who was spending his afternoon parking cars while I was out buying a lace shirt with my royalty check, inclined his head to look me full in the eye.
“It’s the way it is,” he said, firmly, and turned to scan the empty street for a more salubrious client.
I found a spot to park my offending vehicle and went into the store. I am told I sound pretty British at any time, but this afternoon, while I was requesting, identifying and trying on the shirt, my accent slowly swelled and soared unrecognizable stations upmarket from its honest but humble beginnings, and I meanwhile took pains to make myself so absolutely, irresistibly, and gosh darned delightfully enchanting to every single person I spoke to that, if I had kept a portrait in my attic, it would have made the break for freedom and now be running down the street, screaming at the top of its lungs, “For the love of God, make the horror stop!”
Once my purchase had been completed – which was not cheap, this was Saks, after all, but I could afford it on this one occasion, and dare I surmise that this was partly because I was not spending a large part of the rest of my money in monthly payments on a fancy car? – I asked, still repulsively charmingly, to speak to the manager, who was duly and hastily summoned. At Saks, they take their customers’ welfare seriously.
“May Ai awsk you a quaistion?” I said, because this was how I was talking by now. “Is it customary at Sex for the vellay pawkah to refuse to pawk a customer’s caw?”
The manager’s brow clouded like thunder.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Did a valet do that to you?”
“Eactually yers,” I said. “Ai thawt it was a bit awdd, so Ai thawt Ai’d awsk.”
“I can assure you, Ma’am,” said the manager, “that here at Saks, it is a priority of ours that the customer have the most pleasant shopping experience possible.”
“Of cawse it is!” I cried – and I spoke with some authority, having once before purchased a tub of Clinique moisturizer there in a sale. “Ai always heav a simply mawvelous time at Sex. Theat’s whey Ai thawt it was so awdd.”
The manager’s eyes narrowed. I happened to know that this was not necessarily out of concern for me personally: I once had a student job on the cake counter at Fortnum & Mason, where more or less the first thing a new shop assistant was told was that the more shabbily turned-out the customer, the greater were the chances (and even with me, you never knew) that the blood that ran beneath it all was of the bluest.
“Can you describe the valet?” she said.
Ohhhh, could I describe the valet.
“He was heandsome,” I said. “With faya haya. He looked laike he maight be an eactor.”
The manager wrote something on a slip of paper.
“Leave it with me, Ma’am,” she said.
I skipped from the store and home to Mr. Los Angeles, who agreed with me that whatever fate were to befall the handsome young valet parker, it would be no more than he most richly deserved.
But he did make it plain that the very next day, we were to start shopping for a new car.