Losing Stevie: A Love Story, Sort Of

I still remember the very first time I saw him. I was nineteen, giddy, and he fairly sparkled in the July sun. Not like that pussy Edward Cullen, mind; more like a young David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, shiny and full of promise and vaguely sexual in a weird way I didn't understand. I fell in love immediately.

Dad was there with me, and we were talking about car options. We were looking for something used (excuse me, "pre-owned") but relatively reliable. We were talking about a little Dodge Neon in front of us, which I thought of the same way I think of Tom Hanks. Sure, he's steady and nice enough, but he doesn't excite you and the thought of riding him day after interminable day just makes you feel resigned to a life of headaches. The Neon was okay, but Dad noticed how my eye kept wandering over to the silver Pontiac Sunfire. "You like that one?"

"It's alright," I lied.

Dad knew me better than that. I drove off in a silver streak an hour later, singing along with the stereo at the top of my lungs about teenage wastelands.

***

The first few months together, like in any new relationship, were blissful. Everything ran as smoothly as it was supposed to and we didn't ask much of each other. I can't even count how many times it was just me and him on the highway with no particular place to go but going anyway. I called him Stevie, for reasons once significant but now lost to history.

Winter presented the first challenge. Stevie was not built for snow and sleet and slippery roads, but he trundled on. One snowstorm found us just barely crawling toward home. He faltered a little, groaning in protest.

"Come on, baby," I pleaded, "We're almost home. Don't quit on me now."

The encouragement seemed to work. He gave one mighty roar and brought us back to the driveway and stopped with a flourish. I patted his icy bonnet when I got out and thanked him for a job well done.

***

One morning I was awoken early by my roommate's mother. As pleasantly as I could, I grumbled out the question of why she was stirring me from sleep.

"Someone hit your car outside. They're downstairs," she said.

My eyes widened and I put on pants as quickly as possible, my internal monologue going a mile a minute.

For fuck's sake, HOW do you hit a car parked on a residential street easily wide enough for THREE CARS? In broad DAYLIGHT? What level of bone-dense idiocy are we possibly working with here? Do you have the attention span of a squirrel on crystal meth? What the pissing fuck?

A guy in an SUV was down by Stevie, looking somewhat sheepish but not nearly as contrite as I thought was necessary. The side of my car was all banged up.

The side of my car is all banged up. MY CAR. You son of a bitch, I'll have your balls for this. I'll hang them from my rearview mirror like jaunty little testicular DICE. Just you god damn wait.

"Yeah, I dropped my cigarettes and leaned down to get them, and just... yeah. You know how it is." He gestured lamely at the damage with a chuckle. I gave him a deadpan glare, and his chuckle faded. He meekly offered his insurance information while I tried to kill him with my mind.

The rental car I drove while Stevie was getting repaired was all wrong. It was too big, too fancy. It felt like driving a yacht. I was so happy to get him back and promised that he'd never get dented again. A woman running a stop sign, another bad snowstorm downtown, and a mystery hit-and-run would break that promise.

***

The problems started to come a couple of years ago. First the alternator died (at midnight, like Cinderella's Fairy Godmother was somehow in charge) in the parking lot of my job the next town over. Then the engine sensors went crazy. Then the power steering line burst. Then the engine died. Then the transmission began hitching. Then the radiator fan blew up.

Little by little, I grew to resent Stevie. He was a drain on my tenuous finances, and after a few years of hard living, only barely resembled the shining opportunity I had seen on that first day. Where once there was excitement and affection, there was now only contempt and grim obligation. I grumbled at his noises of complaint, and he grudgingly took me from Points A to B when he felt like it. He gained the mocking nicknames of Chewbacca and Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, and I forgot why he was called Stevie in the first place.

When my mechanic explained how now I'd have to manually pop a fuse in and out to run the radiator fan from now on, giving me a look of sympathy, I knew it was time to let go.

***

As we went to different dealerships and test-drove new cars, Jamie couldn't understand why I wasn't excited.

"You know that thing has to be replaced," he said gently.

The thing is, Stevie isn't just "that thing" to me. For six years, he was a friend, and sometimes the best one I had. I was young and starting out, psyching myself up for interviews in that thing. I was depressed, antisocial and heartbroken, and I took that thing to deserted parking lots to smoke cigarettes and cry along with Fiona Apple. I made out with unsuitable boys (and a couple of suitable ones) in it, dug it out of snowbanks with friends after impromptu sleepovers, and had conversations in it that lasted until dawn on days I had to work, causing the windows to fog up and me to call in sick.

Tonight we're going to hopefully drive home a new Hyundai Elantra, and while it's really nice, it doesn't wow me in the same way that Stevie did. I know how crazy that is, because it's not like he's a nicer car, but I think he was there in the right place at the right time, at that period in your life where you fall so hard and so fast. It's like your first love and how it reminds you of who you were then, and how much you've changed.

Tomorrow Stevie is gone, and in his place will be just another broken-down old Sunfire, barely of use to anyone. Seeing him in the driveway in the sun, he doesn't sparkle anymore. Really, he's gone already, cruising around in some dusty memory, bass thumping wildly and going somewhere I can't follow.