excerpted from the much longer “Suicide Girlfriends” (2010)

Sunday was the main day for families to get new cars or even just new used cars because, I guess, the dads were rested up enough after a long week at work and the kids were semi-etherized upon the table of tomorrow being Monday and all with classes and stuff. It was a strategic day, the day of the good deal with low money down, no money down, tug it, tow it, lug it, or push it in for fantastic deals Sunday, man, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. And whole families left in the old and came back in the new or almost new station wagons or sport coupes or god maybe mustangs or cougars and it was days of standing in a short line to enjoy the new car smell, rides around the block with somebody else's Dad at the wheel until he said, “Enough. Go home now.;” it was “power windows” this, and “automatic wiper fluid” that, it was “Danny’s new daddy’s new El Camino can lay a patch in third” until the thrill of a new car was long long left in the road and the old car just heaved itself up into the driveway at night, glad to have made it home, glad to have made it all, and just sat there with the brake lights first on and then off just ticking cooler in the carport.