Chapter 18 : Sign Here

Chapter 18: Chapter 18 : Sign Here

For a few seconds, nobody in the Toyota store said anything. Ray looked at Bob, then at Ethan, his mouth still open.

Ethan didn’t jump up. "You said you needed to think about it," he said. "That was ten minutes ago."

"I thought about it." Bob straightened up against the doorframe, still hoarse. "I’m fifty-eight, kid. At my age, either you go big or you sit there waiting for the bank to come take the keys. Pick one."

It was a good line. A little too good for the man who, ten minutes earlier, had stared at that car without managing a single word. Ethan studied his face. There was sweat on it, and he was still breathing hard, but the ache that had been there before was gone.

Then again, the man had just run across four lanes of traffic to say yes.

"Then let’s go sign it." Ethan stood up.

"Wait, wait." Ray was on his feet too. "If the Corolla’s not enough, I’ll swap in a Camry. Last year’s. Fifteen grand."

Ethan stopped. Fifteen grand was double the first offer. Ray really did want this video.

"I appreciate that, I really do," Ethan said. "But this time I need a car that stops people in their tracks. Something in the M3’s range. Is that something you’d be able to put up?"

Ray opened his mouth, then gave a rueful smile. "That’s a call to my regional manager, then it goes up to the factory. Earliest I’d hear back is next quarter." He shrugged. "Toyota doesn’t work overtime for a YouTube video."

"Understood." Ethan took a business card from the holder on Ray’s desk and put it in his pocket. "Next time, Mr. Delgado. Whatever I shoot next might need exactly a Camry."

Ray blinked, then laughed and walked them to the door. Bob was already ahead of them, crossing the street without bothering to look either way.

Back in Bob’s showroom, Ethan took the contract out of his backpack. He’d typed it up in B14 that morning before they left: a three-page sponsorship agreement with blanks where the prize, the sponsor, and the amounts went. He spread it on Bob’s desk, uncapped a pen, and filled in the blanks one at a time. Prize: one 2002 BMW M3, silver. Sponsor: Big Bob’s Auto. Commission: one thousand dollars per vehicle, verified by promo code.

"You brought a contract?" Bob gave him a sideways look. "That sure I’d say yes?"

"Not at all," Ethan said. "If you’d said no, the blanks would’ve said Toyota."

He turned the contract around and slid it across. He was about to say something, but Noah got there first. "Sir, can I start shooting now? I’d like to get the signing on tape."

Bob waved a hand. "Knock yourself out."

Ethan raised an eyebrow at Noah. Not even a month into school, and the kid was picking things up fast.

Noah popped open a case, settled the new camera on his shoulder, and the red light came on.

While Bob was still on page one, Ethan took the contract back, turned to the blank space at the bottom of page two, and added a paragraph by hand.

The prize must match the vehicle shown in the video and be delivered on time by the sponsor; otherwise the sponsor bears all legal liability, and MrPelican reserves the right to explain the situation to the public.

That clause hadn’t been in the draft. But this was a dealership whose bank had just called to tighten the screws, run by a man who’d gone from I need to think about it to running across the street in ten minutes. Ethan had to think one step further. What if the bank came and towed the car before the contest was over? With three million people watching, the one breaking his word wouldn’t be Bob. It would be MrPelican.

Bob read the handwritten paragraph, and his face darkened by degrees. His jaw stopped working. His fingers drummed the desk twice, and his mouth was already open. He was about to blow.

Ethan said nothing and watched him. He wanted to see which it was: whether Bob was angry about the clause, or afraid of it.

That was when Kyle came out from behind his little desk, bent down, and said a couple of words in Bob’s ear, too low for anyone else to catch.

Bob’s mouth closed. He read the paragraph one more time, grunted, picked up the pen, initialed the bottom of every page, signed his full name on the last one, and tossed the pen down.

Ethan took the contract back, his face giving away nothing. A man on the verge of blowing up had signed after two words from his son-in-law, and the son-in-law was the same man Ethan had just turned down. Something about it was off. He just couldn’t put his finger on what.

Ethan put the contract away and brought up one more thing. "Those old cars out back that won’t sell. I’d like to use them in the contest as bait. Whoever lets go first drives one home."

"No." Bob had never answered anything faster. "One M3 already hurts plenty. Now you want me to throw in a few more? Don’t push your luck, kid."

Hurts. Ethan turned the word over in his head and let the subject drop.

On the bus back, Noah held the camera in his lap and played the signing from the top. Then he played it again.

"I still don’t get it," he said finally. "How did you know he’d put up the M3?"

"I didn’t."

Noah turned his head.

"Pointing at the M3 was me opening as high as I could," Ethan said. "Open high, and you’ve got room to come down. What I figured was, by the end, if he put up anything worth around fifteen grand, I’d take it."

"So what happened?"

"Then I walked in and knew the place was going under," Ethan said. "When things get like that, people feel losing a lot harder than they feel winning. It’s called loss aversion. Haggle with him, and all he can think about is how much he’s giving up, so he clenches tighter."

"So I didn’t talk price. I helped him add up what he was already losing. The interest, the bank’s principal, eighteen hundred a month on newspaper ads. Once he saw that hanging on to the car was a loss too, giving it away stopped feeling like one."

"The last step was letting him watch me walk into the Toyota store. Once a man thinks somebody else is about to grab what he’s got, he forgets how much it hurts to let it go."

"And if he hadn’t?"

"Then L.A. has a hundred other lots." Ethan looked out the window. "I went in ready for it not to work."

"And it went better than you thought."

"A little better," Ethan said. "Maybe a little too well."

Noah didn’t follow, and went back to the little screen. On it, Kyle was bending down beside Bob’s ear.

Back on campus, the corkboard in B14 was covered in sticky notes by the end of that night.

The first problem was cameras. Thirty hands on one car for two days and two nights, and every second a hand came off had to be on tape, or somebody would scream that it was rigged. All they had were the two HDV cameras Dana had signed off on.

"Two," Noah said, staring at the corkboard. "How many do we actually need?"

"About fifteen."

Noah laughed, then realized Ethan wasn’t joking.

The next morning, Ethan went to the media building. Sam heard him out, pulled off his glasses, and chewed on one arm of them while he thought it over. The department had a batch of old DV cameras it lent to students for assignments, and on weekends they sat locked in the equipment cage gathering dust. "Check them out as an admissions practicum project," Sam said. "Four. Any more and the chair starts asking questions."

"And six students who can edit."

Sam put his glasses back on. "What are you shooting, a war movie?"

"Two days and two nights, a new cut every hour. Three shifts, and you run them," Ethan said. "It counts as practicum hours, your name goes on the first line of the credits, and the Pelican pizza doesn’t stop."

Sam pushed his glasses up his nose. "First line. That’s what you said last time." He looked Ethan over from head to toe. "A freshman one month into school, and you boss people around smoother than the department chair."

"And last time I delivered."

Sam shrugged. "Fine. The kids in the department have all seen your video anyway, and now they treat you like some kind of legend."

Ethan and Noah filled the rest of the gap on foot. Over two days they hit seven pawn shops and met five sellers off Craigslist, and came back with ten secondhand Sony DV cameras, a little under a hundred bucks apiece. Ethan only bought one kind: models with NightShot, Sony’s infrared mode that could make out a hand in the dark without a single light on. The nights were going to run dozens of hours, and they’d be riding on it.

"What do we do with all of these when it’s over?" Noah asked, hugging a cardboard box full of cameras.

"Give them away," Ethan said. "Four go on the ground, one on each side of the car, shooting nothing but hands. The other six go to hand monitors, five contestants apiece. Work three full shifts, and the camera’s yours to keep."

Tape was another problem. One MiniDV cassette held an hour, and a dozen-plus cameras running two days and two nights would eat through hundreds of them. They couldn’t afford it. Ethan pinned a new rule to the corkboard: when a tape fills up, rewind it and record over it. Only a tape where something actually happened comes out of the camera, and that one gets DO NOT ERASE written on the label.

That night, Ethan drew the camera positions on a sheet of paper and walked Noah through them one by one. A camera was Noah’s, on his shoulder, going wherever the story went. B camera stayed put in a corner of the showroom as the confessional, where contestants would take turns talking straight into the lens. C camera went up on the showroom roof for a time-lapse every few hours. Noah took notes, and halfway through he looked up. "Have you done this before?"

"Watched a lot of people do it badly," Ethan said. "You learn fast that way."

The rest got handed out. Kevin took the schedules, the walkie-talkies, and the tape runs, and put the yellow Student Government polo back on to do it.

Hendricks heard he’d be refereeing for two days beside a BMW and said yes on the spot. He was bringing two retired buddies from his old precinct to split the shifts. None of them wanted a dime, just Sal’s pizza.

The campus EMT squad needed duty hours, so they’d send two people per shift. All thirty contestants would sign a waiver and get their blood pressure checked before they set foot on the lot. Last time, on the lawn, Ethan had paid for skipping the releases. This time, not one piece of paper was getting skipped.

Maya had the website. She was building two things: a page that would post a new clip every hour, and a voting system so viewers could pick the next temptation. She hadn’t set foot in B14 all week. Whenever Ethan messaged her, whatever he asked, the answer took a long while to come back, and when it did, it was a few words at most.

"She says the voting system will be ready tomorrow." Noah stuck his head in the door that night. "Ran into her at the computer lab."

"Tell her thanks for me."

Noah stayed in the doorway. He held out as long as he could, and then he couldn’t. "What is going on with you two? I say your name and she looks at the floor, and you message her like you’re sending telegrams."

"I don’t know either." Ethan pressed a sticky note onto the corkboard, a little harder than he needed to. "Leave it. This is what matters right now."

The temptation list went up in the middle of the corkboard. The tutoring company and the used textbook store were pooling cash, a bigger offer every round. Subway would send sandwiches every six hours. The sports bar was putting up a big-screen TV. The last line on the list said Old cars, with a line drawn through it.

It still needed a showstopper. Ethan paid a visit to Caruso Wireless.

Vince looked the same as ever, hair gelled to a shine, the Bluetooth earpiece blinking blue on his ear. This time he didn’t point Ethan to the door. What he said was, "Knew you’d be back."

"I need a few RAZRs to use as bait. Pink ones."

Vince laughed. "Two hundred and change apiece. You paying?"

"You pay, but it doesn’t come out of your pocket," Ethan said. "Every quarter, Cingular gives its authorized dealers co-op advertising money. This quarter’s got two weeks left, and whatever you don’t spend goes back, right? Buy them with that, and Cingular’s picking up the tab. All you do is stand in front of the camera and say the name of your store."

The smile slowly went out of Vince’s face. He reached up and switched off the blinking earpiece. "Who told you about co-op money?"

"My uncle runs dealer channels for a carrier," Ethan said without missing a beat. "Every quarter-end he rants about it at dinner. Says the dealers sit on that money and never know how to spend it."

There was no uncle, of course. Before he ever woke up in 2006, Ethan had spent three years running dealer promotions for a carrier himself, and at the end of every quarter he’d watched store after store scramble to spend that money before it vanished.

"Five," Vince said at last. "Any more, and it’s coming out of my pocket."

Ethan didn’t wait for Maya’s site to take sign-ups. He posted it straight to his own Facebook: thirty spots, one BMW M3, last hand on drives it home.

It hadn’t taken long after the first video for somebody to dig up that the guy slapping cash on the speaker was Ethan Cole, a media freshman. Ever since, the profile with the gray silhouette had been buried in friend requests from strangers.

Less than an hour after he posted, the comments had passed a thousand, and his wall was scrolling faster than anyone could read it.

Sign-ups closed with more than eleven hundred entries. Maya drew twenty-six names according to the rules, and with four familiar faces added, Mac, Tyler, Dylan, and Sierra, that made thirty. Everyone who got picked had to come down to B14 to sign a waiver and fill out a paper questionnaire.

When the questionnaires came back, there were two Ethan spent a little longer on.

One belonged to Owen Price, a freshman who roomed with Mac. On the line that asked Why do you want this car, he’d written something and then crossed it out, so hard the pen had nearly gone through the paper, and left nothing in its place.

Mac happened to be in B14 that day and leaned over for a look. "Owen?" He scratched his head. "That’s my roommate. We’ve been living together a month, and he’s said maybe twenty sentences to me, total."

The other belonged to Gus Lindqvist, a junior in mechanical engineering. He’d filled the same line and kept going down the whole page, and the last sentence read: Give me any BMW engine and three seconds with my eyes shut, and I’ll tell you exactly what it is.

Noah laughed so hard he slapped the desk. "We need to give this guy his own camera."

Two days before the start, they went down to the lot to set up. Kevin had his Student Government volunteers stringing caution tape, Sam was running cables in the office beside the service bay, and Noah had climbed onto the showroom roof to find a spot for C camera.

Ethan was crouched by the car, working out how high the hand cameras should sit, when someone called out behind him.

"Mr. Busy."

It was Chloe, in sunglasses, with a bag of donuts that she set down on the roof of the car. "Heard you’re spending two days and two nights out here. Came to see if you’re still alive."

"Still alive." Ethan stood up. "But don’t put anything on the car. Right now it’s worth more than I am."

Chloe picked the donuts back up, pushed them into his hands, and brushed the dust off his sleeve while she was at it. "There. Now you’re worth more. You’ve got donuts."

Ethan laughed. "You come out here by yourself?"

"Somebody drove me." She tipped her head toward the curb. "An upperclassman. He insisted, and I wasn’t about to stop him."

A black Porsche Cayenne sat at the curb with the engine running. The driver’s window was halfway down: early twenties, a Sigma hoodie, sunglasses pushed up on his head. He didn’t get out. From halfway across the lot, he just kept watching the hand Chloe had used on Ethan’s sleeve.

"Preston Hale." After Chloe left, Kevin came over from the caution tape and dropped his voice. "Junior. Sigma. His dad builds half the South Bay. Word is he spent all of last semester chasing Chloe."

Before the Cayenne pulled away, it paused at the lot entrance. Preston’s eyes moved off Ethan and landed on the silver M3, and didn’t move.

Inside the showroom, Kyle set down his ledger and looked out the window too.