Ink Portals

Mess with the bull...

3

The next day Arthur stood outside an exotic car dealership on Rodeo drive. It was mid-afternoon and he was peering in through the window at the polished sports-cars parked on the showroom floor. There was a whole line up of flashy colors to choose from; a lot of bright red, yellow and green, like giant car-shaped candies sitting on crisp, jet-black, polished rubber.

Arthur had dreamt about this moment ever since Jack gave him that little toy car, the one still proudly displayed on top of his book shelf. He used to take it with him to kinder garden every day, and none of the other kids were allowed to play with it. He took baths with it, and when it was time for bed he chose the little yellow car over his teddy-bear every time.

Arthur checked his reflection in the window, he straightened up and adjusted his collar, he was wearing a button-up shirt, something he never usually wore, but that morning he had fished one out from the back of his closet. He made sure the shirt was tucked in properly and combed his hair back with his fingers. He felt a little foolish for being this nervous.

Then Arthur took off, walking briskly along the front of the building and through the automatic glass doors. He strode inside with the urgency of a man who was about to rob the place. He avoided the reception desk and continued past the rows of cars, making a bee-line straight to the car in the centre of the showroom. It was cordoned off with velvet ropes, something that alluded to the fact that this was no run-of-the-mill exotic; and that made Arthur's pulse race even more.

The showroom was relatively quiet. Arthur glanced around and spotted some of the sales guys cracking jokes by the coffee machine, nobody was paying him much attention as he stepped over the velvet rope and into the ring with the bull. It was the Lamborghini Diablo from his childhood; this one was painted in a dark, midnight-purple with black wheels. It wasn't Jack's bright yellow Diablo, but it was still a Diablo, and that was all that mattered to Arthur.

He trailed the tips of his fingers along the cars' swooping side-arches, imagining how the air would flow over the entire surface at speed, pressing it down onto the road for extra grip.

Arthur looked around the dealership again. No one had approached him yet. He held his breath and tried the driver's side door handle. A smile crept over his face when the door clicked open and slid upwards with an almost inaudible hiss, inviting him inside. The faint, pleasant smell of Italian leather wafted out from the cabin. Arthur put one leg inside the foot-well then, while holding onto the roof, he lowered himself down into a very low-slung seat. He reached up and pulled the door down. It clicked shut, sealing him off from the outside world. There was a sudden silence that made him acutely aware of his own breathing. Arthur took a moment to appreciate the cabin, which instilled in him a blissful sense of familiarity. When Arthur was younger Jack used to take him out for a drive on the coastal roads around California in his yellow Diablo. They used to do that almost every Sunday.

Arthur peered over the top of the steering wheel, imagining what it would feel like to floor the gas and watch the lines on the road zipping by in a blur of speed. His hand had subconsciously drifted down to the gear knob. He pushed down the clutch with his left foot and clicked the shifter into first gear then into second, listening to the tactile clicks from the gearbox, it was like the inner workings of a clock ticking over.

Arthur pulled down the sun visor and flinched in his seat when something fell out into his lap - a pair of leather racing gloves. He held them up in the light, rubbing the soft leather between his fingers. They were a lustrous deep brown, like strong coffee. Arthur pulled one of the gloves over his hand and flexed his fingers. He could hear the leather creaking softly, like a whisper in the silence of the cabin.