“Any chance of a mechanic beging open?”
He laughs at me.
He takes me to the towing company lot, drops me off at a sleazy, not terribly cheap motel and tells me to call a mechanic in the morning. He gives me the number of one who should be able to do it.
Man, what a crappy motel. The cable didn’t even come in well. It’s coming down a cable! How does it have bad reception! The shower didn’t even come with shampoo. I had to buy a little packet because I left most of my crap in the locked lot of the towing company.
I wander into a crappy part of town and by sub-par chinese food (who has heard of sesame chicken with no sesames on it?) and a bottle of coke and go back to my room and watch the free HBO. I can’t sleep very well, though, because it’s suck a sleazy place in a rat-shit neighborhood, I’m sure some punk-ass robber is gonna bust into my room. The clerk will have tipped him off to a “rich college boy” (HA!) in room 278 and he’ll come in and take my remaining few dollars and leave me with a bulletwound and a story.
But no, I wake up in the morning, still possesing money and a pulse and make some phone calls.
It turns out the water pump in a Subaru Legacy Station Wagon from 1995 is in the exact center of the fucking engine. It’s a four hour job if it’s a minute. And every place is booked solid. Finally I get ahold of a dealership and they agree to at least look at it. I call AAA after Dad gets them to call me and arrange for a truck to pick me up from the lot where my car is and drop it off at the dealership. Then I walk to the lot and try to get my car out.
They only accept cash. That’s weird, I think. And it was $121 dollars. It seemed awfully expensive but the guy who picked up my car said it wasn’t too bad for them. He also said they are “notorious for not releasing vehicles.” That explains why they were all so pissed at me for not calling them before calling another towing company. They wanted me to stay there