The mechanic calls me up to tell me the check engine light was nothing more than an evap code that he has cleared but adds that he needs to speak to me and it is not something he can discuss over the phone.

I am in a conspiracy with the man who works at the chain oil change shop down the road.

I know immediately what this is about. "He wants to buy my car," I tell Amber.

She looks up from her book indifferently. "Oh, yeah. Probably."

Technically, I am in the market to buy a new car because my present car is a psychological weight. It seems inevitable that there will come a time soon when it breaks down on the side of the road and is not worth fixing. Not that I will say this within earshot of the car, but I do not think my car is presently worth any repair more than a new fuse. (I have a superstition about tools with which I have spent a lot of time -- cars and computers predominating -- that they are able to sense my intentions and will respond by committing suicide at inopportune times to spite me.)

When I brought the car in, I told the mechanic that I wanted a new car. He made an act of being upset that I would let go of this car, but the secondary market for 2003 Chevrolet Cavaliers is not robust. I think it is that I have wasted so much of my money at this shop keeping this car afloat. Though I may not put the manager's kids through college, I have at least helped them buy all their books and meal plans.

When I get to the shop, the mechanic is already jutting out his chin to tell me to stay outside that we might have this secretive conference on the other side of the glass windows.

"I want to buy your car. Not for me. I know a kid, a seventeen-year-old, whose dad wants to get him a first car. How much do you want for it?"

I had, days before (and, again, outside the sight of my car so it will not be suspicious) looked up the Kelley Blue Book value for my trade-in, which varies from $11 to $600. I was not aware that trade-ins can be in the low double digits, can be worth much less than the gas it took to drive it over. "I don't honestly know."

"I don't want to embarrass you," he says, which embarrasses me.

I motion for him to continue.

"I can give you $300."

The cost of the last repair, a new alternator and battery, was double that. I tell him I will have to think about it and take down his number.

I imagine my car sad, which is not helpful. I want it to have a happy life after me, as much as a fifteen-year-old car on which I have put more than a hundred thousand more miles and bought it twice over factoring in repairs can be said to have either been happy or had a life. It has seen far more highways than beaches.

"If it comes between a dealership offering you $350 and you selling it to that kid, I think you should still sell it to the kid," Amber says when I get home.

I agree if purely because I had complained to this mechanic, in part warning him not to try to saddle me with an expensive repair because I would respond by never picking up the car. Maybe that was Destiny putting things there they belong. I don't like the idea of my car disassembled or sold for scrap. It would be a good starter car, in that I do not think it would survive the year either mechanically or because a kid will crash into something.

My goal is to have a new car by the end of the month. Originally, it was by the end of the summer, but a few dashboard lights -- three I attribute to the chain shop screwing up a wheel balancing and damaging a rear wiring rig -- pressed my hand.

We've looked online at cars. I found one I liked, then the women in my life systematically told me that it was not made suitable simply because it was a nice shape, red, and under $6000. Amber bumps my price point up to $10,000. My mother tries to proselytize near double that, with a sun roof, but I thank her for her advice and promptly ignore it for my mental health. Though I have savings, I would rather not have any more debt than I must. On the other hand, I do not want to constantly worry that my car will die and strand me. I need to be able to get to work on time, at least through the end of the month.

I have intentionally bought cars twice. Once, it was because Emily did not think I should keep driving the purple beater I referred to lovingly as the Grape Ape, which I sold for a pittance to a friend who swore he needed a car (and who immediately sold it for a profit). Then, I bought a used blue Saturn and had almost paid it off when I crashed it trying to get Melanie back to her dorm in a snowstorm. I then got my current car, the Cavalier, which does mean I've had it since 2008, longer than I have had any car (or partner).

The idea of a new car is financially worrisome, though I am aware that I could buy it outright and could at least severely reduce my payments with my last tax refund; I don't need to worry about the monetary aspect, which doesn't imply I won't. I do not like the whole atmosphere of car dealers, always on the upsell. I am given to understand that the prevalence of pocket computers had reduced their bluster, since a consumer can immediately pull up the Blue Book values and other cars in the area. I wish simply that the car I will drive for the next decade (I hope) will be introduced to me with the minimum of pain and drama. I would not be averse to someone saying, "I have done all the research. Here is your car. It costs this much. It is midnight blue. Here is a paper affirming we are not cheating you in any way. Please pick it up."

Running later, the cars surrounding me take on a fullness from which I usually deprive them because they do not usually have relevance, except when they are threatening to plow me under for the sin of exercising outdoors. I consider their shapes and colors, peek inside to see what the panels look like. For the most part, this is an acceptable appreciation, aside from the couple of times when the driver thinks I am either casing the joint or am interested in a stick that is not connected to the transmission. I can grasp only the basics of the aesthetics; I do not know what years these cars are and, unless there is visible body damage, their condition.

The last time I bought a car from a dealership, my mother sent along one of her friends, who played the role of the aggressor against the dealers who were certainly trying to bilk me out of all the cash they could for headlight polish and plush paper floor mats. This was a wise move on her part because I became so anxious in the presence of anyone trying to get my money by tricking me that I all but shut down the conversation in a pout. This is not the way to get things done.

Now, in the age of the internet and its lack of obscurity, I have a better leg on which to stand. I can, and likely should, become a passing expert on any car I might want to purchase instead of pointing at the color and shape that I like.

I had hoped I would be able to hold out on buying a new car until self-driving, electric ones had become affordable to the buying public, but progress lags.

Amber shows me a few secondhand Priuses. I am apparently a Prius sort of man, noticeable at a distance. I have requisites and preferences. I would prefer to put them all into some program that would spit out the mechanical conveyance that meets as many of these as is possible. Instead, it seems that I need to choose a car and lot I like, then act as though I wandered off the street looking for a bathroom and, oh, it seems you have cars here! I've never thought much of them. I simply can't imagine why I would want one, certainly not at these prices. We live in an era where I can buy anything online without having to deal with medieval marketplace haggling. I don't see why that cannot apply to the car buying process, why one can't buy a vehicle without having to be on guard for cheats. It is a ridiculous paradigm where salespeople buy their own cars just to keep the dealerships numbers up so corporate keeps bonuses flowing. I want no part of it, but I do not live in a place with feasible public transportation.

Soon in Xenology: Mummies. The interview.

last watched: Arrested Development
reading: The City and The City
listening: Mindy Gledhill