Green Sky

Liam Michaels was crying in the staff restroom again, when the receptionist knocked hesitantly on the door, interrupting his weekly purge of guilt and emotion. Bonnie’s free hand held her nostrils closed against the smell of the men’s toilet.

“Mr Michaels? Mr Michaels are you in there? Are you OK?” Mr Rogers, the boss of Rogers’s Prestige Preloved Vehicles had demanded she go in and get Liam out. A potential client, would only kick tyres and slam doors for so long before leaving for the car lot next door. 

Mr Rogers was a big man. Tall and wide, with a constant expression of pain on his large red face. Customers didn’t naturally warm to him, which is why he mostly stayed in his office and sent out the more affable Liam Michaels to greet the prospective clients.

But right now Mr Rogers thought he was inches away from closing a sale on a 1970 Mercedes Benz 280SL Pagoda Top. A classic beauty of a car that had sat high on a fibreglass display mountain at the front of the car yard for four years. Feeling so close to a sale made Rogers anxious, but it was the frog pond green sky, in the near distance, that really skyrocketed his blood pressure. Green sky only meant one thing. A thunderstorm with hail. And hail was the worst enemy of prestige pre-loved vehicles. A hail-storm could destroy a whole car yard in minutes. 

“Mr Michaels?” Bonnie said in a nasal tone. “Mr Rogers wants you to serve a customer. He’s trying to sell that sports car on the mountain, and someone is interested in the Oldsmobile.”

Liam left the cubicle, red eyed and shaking. He splashed some cold water on his face and headed out to the lot.

“Come on Michaels, pull yourself together,” Mr Rogers had no idea why Liam broke down in the toilet at 3pm on a weekly basis. Nor did he care. He just needed the salesman to serve the client and put away the cars before the storm hit, and then he was going to fire him. He was trying to run a business here, not a psychiatric ward.

Conversely, Liam Michaels didn’t care to help Mr Rogers sell the sports car. Liam had been doing his best not to sell it for two years. Ever since Mrs Rogers had put her hand on his crotch, in the stationery room, and threatened to tell her husband they were having an affair, if the car ever sold. This was initially a total falsehood. But their proximity and Mrs Rogers’ delicate hand pressing against his pants had enticed Liam to kiss her ruby red lips. She responded with wild abandon, then feigned shock and ran down the corridor to her husband’s office. 

The following week she returned, wearing a tight fitting dress that displayed her cleavage. He could smell her perfume from across the room, something flowery like jasmine or roses. She stared at Liam from under her long eyelashes until he couldn’t take it any longer and took off to the office toilet. When he emerged from the stall Mrs Rogers was in the washroom waiting for him. 

“I suppose you think I’m bad.” She said this last word with conviction, making it in no way a question. 

“No, Mrs Rogers, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Please don’t tell Mr Rogers.”

“Hmm,” she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to one side. “Well, I don’t know. Are you going to tell Mr Rogers about our affair?”

“But Mrs Rogers, there is no affair!”

“Oh, now don’t say that,” she drawled, and made sure that Liam understood there definitely was an affair.

From that day, for the next two years, Mrs Rogers met Liam once a week to remind him never to sell the Mercedes on the fake mountain at the front of the yard. Fearing being caught in the restrooms, Liam changed their rendezvous to various locations. One being a mustard and tan 1970 Oldsmobile wagon, in the furthest corner of the car yard. No one ever came to look at that car. Liam wondered why it was even there. It wasn’t a ‘prestige’ car like the others in the yard. In fact, it was one of the ugliest cars he’d ever seen. Which made it the ideal place to meet Mrs Rogers. The possibility of getting caught was low, but not zero, which added to the thrill. A thrill that had been missing from his own marriage for years. His wife was a good woman and mother. It wasn’t her fault that five babies had changed the once svelte figure into something more homely. He didn’t blame her that the challenge of making his meagre wage spread to feed seven, had left her not as fun as she was when they met. He was doing her a favour having the affair. It meant he got to keep his job, and his wife had lost interest in physical intimacy since their fifth baby was born.

So, what were the chances that both the Benz on the mountain, and the Oldsmobile in the far corner would sell on the same day?

“We’ve gotta get all these fucken cars under cover. That storm ain’t gunna do no-one no favours,” Rogers barked.

Liam internally winced at his boss’s use of language. Not that he thought he was superior or better educated, but he at least knew that Rogers’s Prestige Preloved Vehicles didn’t quite roll off the tongue. And he knew that being a Preloved Vehicle salesman was no more impressive than being a Used Car salesman. He also knew that the disregard he felt for his boss was equal to the high regard he had for Rogers’ wife.

Liam sniffed and took a deep breath, before heading to the back of the lot to see a thin angular man walking around the Oldsmobile, trying to open the doors and the tailgate.

“Fine looking car!” Liam hailed the customer. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Why d’you say it’s a fine lookin’ car?” The man’s gruff voice belied his gaunt appearance.

“Oh, I guess I have a soft spot for the Oldsmobile.” Was he blushing? “I’m sorry, I don’t want to rush you, but there’s a storm coming and I have to move the cars. Would you like to take her for a test drive? Or maybe come back tomorrow?”

“I want to look in the cargo area. See if it’s big enough. You have a key?”

Liam was confused, as the cargo area in the 1970 Oldsmobile was unusually large, with unusually large windows all around, giving it an appearance more like a hearse than a family car. Then he heard the rolling grumble of distant thunder. 

“Mr Michaels, please report to the front desk immediately,” Bonnie’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

Liam tapped his sternum three times. “Sorry buddy, that’s me. Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Just give me the key,” the man said with an icy smile. “Not too much to ask is it?”

“I’d have to go back to the key register.” Liam pointed across the eighty yards toward the office, then looked pointedly at his watch. He felt uneasy. This guy gave him the creeps. He also wondered what Mr Rogers was doing with the Benz sports buyer. Nothing quite added up.

“Liam!” a high voice sounded behind him, he turned to see Mrs Rogers looking more lovely and more alarmed than ever before. Her cheeks pink and her eyes like saucers, she was shaking her head slightly, as if she didn’t even know she was doing it. “Liam! The car!” she whimpered and collapsed into his arms.

The thin man looked at the two of them for a minute, disgust on his face, then made a run for it.

“That was a strange customer,” Liam breathed, struggling to hold Mrs Rogers up.

“That was Choppy Tyrone,” Mrs Rogers said. 

“Who’s Choppy Tyrone? How do you know him? And how come you’re here? A storm is coming. You should stay undercover.” He made a little roof with the flat of his hand over his head to demonstrate.

“Choppy owns the yard. He won it from my stupid husband in a poker game. Every month he comes and deposits packages in the back of the Oldsmobile, then collects new packages the next day.”

“Why doesn’t he have his own key then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he gets the key from the office. It’s not usual for him to turn up during the day. He’s more of a silent partner.”

“So, the car yard doesn’t belong to Mr Rogers?”

“No, it did once, but now he’s just the manager. Choppy has given him a quota of cars to sell each month, to keep his job. But he fiddles the books to make your sales look like his, otherwise Choppy would…” her voice trailed off.

Liam struggled to keep up with this new information. “But what about the Benz, on the mountain? Why is it so important not to sell it?” He had a sick feeling in his gut. He’d blindly continued the affair with Mrs Rogers, conveniently not asking why she was with him, or why he had to stop the sale of the car. 

The last two years he’d lived from week to week. Looking forward to the days that Mrs Rogers would visit the car yard. Then breaking down in tears of guilt after she left. He would trudge through the days in between. He went home to the chaos of five kids all in a different state of pre-bedtime crazy. A wan smile from an exhausted wife, sitting on the lumpy couch, happy that another adult was finally there to share the burden. 

The weight of his guilt descended upon him. The secret of Mrs Rogers, bore into his integrity until only crumbs remained. 

The green mass above moved quickly towards them. The wind whipped up dust and trash. Liam grabbed Mrs Rogers by the hand and ran toward the office, letting go when they could see the back of Mr Rogers watermelon head.

Bonnie was rearranging the cars in the glassed showroom, from angled spaciousness to a bumper to bumper car park. They had to put the most expensive vehicles under cover first, then the rest of them. The lemons that they couldn’t sell, were left outside to claim under insurance. Mr and Mrs Rogers didn’t acknowledge each other. Mr Rogers grabbed a few of the car keys and headed back to the lot, wheezing and turning more beetroot by the minute. Liam threw a set of keys to Mrs Rogers and pointed to a late model Porsche. Mrs Rogers flung them to the ground, ran to the key register and snatched up the keys to the Mercedes Benz on the mountain. 

Liam chased after her. “Mrs Rogers, please be careful. It’s dangerous backing the car off the mountain!”

“Just leave the damned car!” another voice bellowed into the incoming storm. It was Mr Rogers. Fake owner of the yard. Unhappy cuckolded husband. And patsy to Choppy Tyrone.

Just as another clap of thunder sounded very close by, Mrs Rogers let out a blood-curdling scream.

Liam was surprised that a woman of Mrs Rogers resolution was afraid of thunder. But quickly saw what had caused the scream. The fibreglass mountain sat empty. The 1970 Mercedes Benz 280SL Pagoda Top was gone!

“Did you take it?” she whirled on her husband with crazy eyes. “Have you moved it somewhere already?” Another crack of thunder, and the first few plunks of hail falling.

Mrs Rogers ran to the office and scooped up the car keys Liam had thrown her and raced to the Porsche. Liam jumped into the passenger seat, pleading with her to just calm down. Mrs Rogers shot him a look, typical of all women across time, being told by a man to calm down. She whipped the Porsche out of the car yard, her eyes darting as she wove between the traffic, then turned onto the road gripping the cliff’s edge, winding up to the mansions on Lost Peak.

“What are you doing? Please tell me what’s going on Mrs Rogers.” Liam was beginning to fear for her sanity. And for his life. Visibility was low. Hail smashed against the windscreen, as she took the cliff top bends at an alarming speed. “What is so important about that car?”

Mrs Rogers gave Liam a look of pity, with a tinge of disdain. “It was a gift to me. From Choppy Tyrone’s twin brother, Niall. We were in love and Choppy found out about it. Niall was in an arranged marriage with the daughter of the gang boss. Choppy demanded we end the relationship or we would all end up dead.”

The car swerved suddenly when a blind corner appeared unannounced.

‘Where are you going? This is crazy!’ Liam clutched the door handle.

‘I’m going to the Tyrone mansion.’ She turned and looked at Liam with wide eyes, that he wished she would keep on the road. “The man I said was Choppy Tyrone, is actually Niall.”

Liam took a deep breath in, Mrs Rogers perfume pungent in his nostrils. How had he got this so wrong?

“Choppy discovered us in the car, at Bald Eagle Peak making out,” she rolled her eyes, as if to say it was more than making out. “He and Niall argued. I thought he was going to kill Niall, and.. well things happened, I can’t remember, but I accidentally killed Choppy.”

“Okay,” Liam tried to sound calm. “So you, accidentally killed Choppy…”

“And Niall took on Choppy’s persona. The car contains evidence. As long as it sat on that ridiculous plastic mountain in the car yard, I couldn’t be suspected of anything, and my children wouldn’t be taken away from me, and Niall wouldn’t go to prison, or worse, executed by the Irish Mafia.”

“So what am I in all this? Are you still in a relationship with Niall, Choppy, whoever?” Liam shouted above the deep grunt of the Porche’s exhaust and the sound of mandarin sized hail falling on the car. In the back of his mind he thinks, well here’s another write off.

“Oh, sweet Liam. Did you think you meant something to me? You were just another piece of insurance against the car being sold.”

“Let me out please Mrs Rogers!”

“Mrs Rogers! Ha! Do you even know my name Liam? You’ve been screwing me for two years. Do you even know my fucking name!” she roared the last sentence. 

“Please, just stop and let me out. I don’t want to be part of this any longer. I want to go home.”

“You want to go home? We’ll all just forget this ever happened?”

The car abruptly braked to a stop. Mrs Rogers leant over to kiss Liam on the mouth. Her scarlet lips contorted into a facsimile of a smile. Liam recoiled and launched himself from the car. But the few seconds of relief he felt at escaping this ill-fated ride with a murderous madwoman, soon turned to disbelief as his feet scrambled on the loose stones at the edge of the cliff. As he felt himself free-falling, he wondered what his life would have been if he wasn’t a used car salesman. What would he do? He’ll find something else, maybe selling furniture. He imagined himself at home on the lumpy couch, with his homely wife and their five children. Yes, that’s where he’ll go now.

He thought these things just before his head smacked on the rocks, below the cliff.