Wheeling and dealing

I said goodbye to my sleek indigo beauty this morning, stripping away everything that made her mine; the title got signed over to my insurance company and everything else went into a box for safekeeping: ice-scraper, tissues, fuzzy blanket, umbrella, sunglasses, gloves, tire gauge, and close to twenty dollars' worth of quarters (for tolls and car washes). I nearly drove off without my blue-heron-adorned license plates, but I went back and got them just in time. The insurance company will tow away my indigo beauty and I'll keep driving a rental car until Sunday, when I have to return it regardless of whether I've found a suitable replacement.

The rental is okay--a silver Hyundai Sonata--but it's not my car and nothing will make it feel like my car. I can't adjust the seat just right and it took me three days to figure out how to set the cruise control. The worst part, though, is what happens every time I come out of a store and look for my car and realize, first, that the rental car looks like every other silver car in the parking lot, and second, that my car is gone and I'll never get it back.

Of course it's possible that I'll find another car that I love just as much as I loved my indigo Camry, but at the moment it's not looking likely. Over lunch I took a quick dash to a used-car lot to test-drive the only used Camry in the area that isn't either silver or black, and although I liked the color, the mileage, and the price, I did not at all care for the distinct rattle emanating from the rear or the pervasive odor of dirty sweat-socks. 

At least this time it's a little easier getting the attention of sales reps. Five years ago when I bought my Camry, I would drive my 20-year-old battered Volvo onto a car lot and watch the salesmen pretend I was invisible. Now they all come out and want to sell me a car, but it's always the wrong car, or the right car in the wrong color, or the right car in the right color with the wrong kind of rattle. 

What I really want is my sleek indigo beauty back--but lacking that, at least I retrieved my quarters.

Gone but not forgotten.