"Well we have your $50, so any time you need the van just call, we'll hold it for you." A few days later we called, assuming the van would be waiting for us.  'Tim' answered the phone and said, "well your $50 was forfeited, but that doesn't mean you have a van. What we would need to do is make a new reservation and receive another deposit." We explained to Tim what we had been told previously and he replied with a question:

     "Was it Dave who told you this?" We said we didn't know who 'Dave' was. Tim confirmed (for us) that is was in fact Dave we had spoken with and that, since Dave was new, he didn't know what the regulations were. (Why then was 'Dave' answering the phone may I ask?) 

     'Okay, fuckit we gotta do this move,' I thought, and so I settled for a situation significantly less desirable than that of the original agreement. On the way to Star Rental we got lost and stopped to call for directions. Tim answered the phone and was considerably less enthusiastic than commonly dictated by customer service protocol.

     Finally we arrived at Star Rental to meet Tim, who looked like a has-been high school track star redneck (he fit into the category the, months later we would dub 'white gold'— i.e. white trash polished with sports culture). Suffice it to say that Tim seemed like your basic loser.     He emanated a pink glow. Somewhere in his mid twenties, his pasty little white face was encompassed by a pelt of well coifed reddish-blonde hair right down to his neatly trimmed Kenny Rogers-esque beard. He wore a cute little earring in his left ear (because he was just that cool), and his pudgy, stubby fingers bore a resemblance to well-manicured vienna sausages. Something in his facial expressions,  body movements, and voice inflections delineated a wincing knowledge that this shitty job was going to be his final story. All his glory days were behind him now and even if he didn't know it, we did.

Tim took us to see the van which, of course, turned out to be a minivan with seats when in fact we had specifically requested a cargo van. We explained the problem to Tim who replied,       'I have 'minivan' here.' After much deliberation, we told Tim he had to take the seats out (which he pretended he was happy to do). With morbid satisfaction we watched Tim and another schlep do just that, while Tim tries to pull shit like "well there's really not that much of a difference in terms of size" etc. He then explained to us that "there's only a quarter of a tank of gas in the van so that's all you have to bring back." In fact the tank had less than an eighth of a tank.

*****

     In spite of everything, Jeff and I agreed that the vehicle was a nice, quiet ride complete with tape deck, and that we should simply make the best of it. With our many grievances in hand, Tim became the butt of three days worth of jokes and assassination fantasies.  During this period we inferred, or created if you prefer, Tim's life story, based upon our fifteen to twenty minute encounter with him. 
 
 

	****	Potential Tragedy      Two days later we had collected my belongings in Brooklyn and were preparing to head north to Albany so I could bid farewell to my family, before moving to the wilds of the Midwest. We were driving along first avenue, near 14th St. in Manhattan looking for a place to double park so I could go to the ATM.  Suddenly — WHAM! — I clipped another minivan (which was already illegally parked itself). No one appeared to be inside, so I just kept going (what can I say?). The passenger side mirror on Tim's van was busted.  I was bummin' cuz I knew I had just lost the $280 insurance deductible on the rental agreement.

     The next day, however, Jeff came up with an idea: 

     'We should just stretch some Mylar® over it and return it.' While he was only joking at the time, the jest would evolve into a full-fledged scheme over the course of the day. We concluded that we would seek out one of those plastic utility/vanity mirrors you find at K-mart, cut it to shape with Jeff s jeweler's saw upon our arrival in Northern Kentucky, and see if it would pass. In Albany we began the search for this wonder mirror. My mom (who whole-heartedly supported our plan) looked for one at Wheels automotive store but had no luck. Jeff and I scoped out K-mart and a Montgomery Ward auto parts place the following day. Still nothing. By this time it was around five o'clock Sunday afternoon and we had to get on the  road.    In a last effort we approached the Montgomery Ward proper (main store). Worried that they may already be closed, we barely even noticed the two ambulances parked out front. 

     The hours  posted on the side entrance said they closed at 5pm . My watch 
said 5:15 but the door was open so in we went. Not two minutes later we came upon junk jewelry carousels. They had just what we were looking for—but not for sale.  Rather, the mirrors were provided to allow prospective buyers a glimpse of how they looked with garish hot pink hoop earrings clipped to their ears. Theft certainly entered our minds, but we felt a little nervous and moved on to see if they actually sold the damn things anywhere. 

     We made our way through some clothing stands to the next aisle when — WHAM! — right at  our feet was a woman being Velcro®-strapped to a stretcher by four brightly colored EMS dudes. She was calmly babbling something encouraging (about her condition) to them — not three feet from our toes. Aghast, we realized why the store was still open and quickly concluded that there was no better opportunity to steal the plastic mirror we so desperately needed, than at this very moment.  We didn't even consider absconding with anything else — though it most certainly would have been easy as pie. No, we had a mission! A mission to 'fulfill' our rental agreement, and God was plainly on our side. I stuffed our prize under my coat and we departed victoriously. It was now around 5:30 PM. All we had to do now was drive to Kentucky, unload my shit, and install the new mirror in sixteen hours.

     Charging dangerously through pea soup fog and heavy rain, we arrived in Covington, KY at 8:30 Monday morning. I lugged my stuff up the stairs while Jeff diligently proceeded with the operation. But then he hit a snag. 

     "I was afraid to tell Mike about the mirror', explains Jeff. 'Carelessly I used Scotch tape to fasten the paper template we'd made on the plastic mirror. When it was cut and the template was ready to be removed, I noticed that the tape had pulled off some of the mirror backing from the plastic. I showed the flawed product to Mike with tragic hesitation." A new dilemma! We no longer felt that the mirror could possibly have fooled an earlier Star Rental cleaning crew as the real thing; this was the focal point of our plan.  Someone would have noticed. 'Whuddawe do now?' Well ... another joke, another solution! 
 
 

After much fretting about the situation—our time was now limited to an hour before we'd have to shell out $50 for a fourth day's rental — we came up with a plan that was so utterly ridiculous that they'd have to believe us: We would pretend that a previous renter of the van had attempted to 'fix' the mirror — 'which they must have broken'— and that their shoddy job had come apart in some parking lot in Pennsylvania. Off we went to the hardware store to buy contact cement. 'Uh, oh.' We now noticed that there were shards of glass all over the interior of the vehicle. Jeff suggested 'we can go to the self-service car wash center and vacuum it out.' Fifty cents, five minutes, and problem solved. Now all we had to do was glue on the mirror, rip it off, pick up Jeff's car (fifteen miles away), and return the van to Star Rental within half an hour!

*****

     Sleep deprivation and general angst had led us to a mild state of paranoia, and it was decided that the actual gluing on/ripping off of the mirror should be a clandestine operation.  We drove around to the back of the car wash and applied glue to both surfaces. This presented yet another setback — the glue stank like petroleum hell and our plan dictated that it be completely dry. To speed up the process I held the mirror out the side window for about three miles along I-75. 

     We collected Jeff's car and headed for Star Rental. Suddenly Jeff pulled over and stopped. I followed suit wondering what was wrong. In fact, Jeff had decided to 'dirty up' our masterpiece. After laying on some authenticating scuff marks, we were ready for the moment of truth.

     We arrived at Star Rental with five minutes to spare ... and there was Tim. Luckily, he was on the phone and some other guy took care of us. The conversation went something like this: 

     "We're here to drop off a van."
     "Name?"
     "Mammon."
     "Okay you're dropping off a '94 Astro, right?"
     "Yeah, and ... we also have this" ... replied Jeff as he placed our work of art on the counter. 
     "What's that?"
     'Well, it was —'
     "— Oh, was that part of the mirror?" 
     "Well sort of; it fell off the thing." The guy looked at it, confused, and went out back to look at the van. He returned a short time later — still mighty confused. 
'Did you guys put this on or was it there already?' he asked, in a purely inquisitive, non-accusatory tone.

     "No it was there an' just fell off," we said in a tone of feigned bewilderment. "Well I'll be darned. " With that we wrapped up all the paper work for the rental and that was that. Then I realized I'd left something in the van. I walked back in to the office, explained the situation, and got the key. When I returned, the "I'll be darned" guy was showing our handiwork to Tim saying, "apparently someone put this on the..."  It was an extremely sweet sight, but I really wanted to get out of there in case they started to second-guess the situation. We headed for home and, at around noon, caught our first Z's in about 24 hours.