Saltbridge · Meet the driver

Cocoa Bandit

At the wheel: Inez Duran

Chevy 1934 Master Coupe

The box waits by the door

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Inez Duran spent half a lifetime making luggage for other people's trips. An old box from her own shed brought back a Chevy she used to cover with a hotel towel.

Inez: that is my tape

The auction house had a box with OLD STUFF on it. Inez said she had written those words. The young person at the desk asked what made her so sure. Well, she had put tape over a nail she'd bent into a latch. Of course there was a nail under the tape. By the time Dev Harker from Midnight Midas came over, she had an argument ready for every object that might be in the box. Dev tipped it and read her name from a strip hidden under its edge. She hadn't thought to offer that.

Inez had left the 1934 Master Coupe at her brother's shed when she was clearing the house she used to share with a partner. She remembered taking a sewing machine, a copper pan and things she knew how to use. She had wanted to learn to drive the Chevy well enough to get it through a small closed circuit near town. That intention had been very urgent until it began to feel unreasonable to arrange everything else around it.

Lydia: wait, they had towels?

Inez's niece Lydia remembers hotel towels in the house years after the last hotel agreed to give her any more. Aunt Inez repaired luggage for the office that booked whole coach tours. There was a constant parade of broken zips, bags dragged along the wrong kind of floor and handles people had tried to tie down with ribbon. Where a pull was missing, Inez was adept at finding the only other thing a person could grip. Lydia sometimes came down to the bench to find Inez holding a suitcase at the wrong end over the floor, testing her own work.

Lydia was old enough to see what her aunt thought about the Chevy. Things that were ready to go had one towel. Things she wanted to protect from being spoken about had two. When the box came out of the shed, Inez transferred the car to a table and put a third towel down underneath. Lydia said nothing about this until Inez asked her whether she wanted to come to practice.

“I did write old stuff. I didn't write yours.”

Inez Duran · At the auction desk, asking about her box.

Inez: it was a very short turn

In the first practice couple of bends, the distant aim she'd carried around for years gave her almost no help. She had to let the car roll enough to learn which part of its turning took the most space. She could make her first motion sharp or large and still end up in the same place after the long edge loaded. What she could do differently was brake earlier and hold a less dramatic angle. She could only put it in words after she stopped driving.

Dev gave her the envelope with the lot details and asked about his Mercedes while she was there. Hettie from Blue Bruiser had asked nearly the same question during practice: could she hear a difference between something moving and something shaking loose? Inez used one of her old zipper pulls to make the distinction. Hettie borrowed it to take notes and returned it on a ribbon.

Lydia: no third towel

Inez wants to take the Chevy through the whole practice section in one go. She gets just enough of a feel for it before the first turn to find excuses for a pause at the second. Lydia has offered to drive her there rather than waiting by the gate. Inez has suggested they each come separately. They keep discussing it in front of an empty hook by the door where no one ever hung an extra key.

The box remains on a low shelf by that hook. Two towels are in it, both clean. Lydia uses the third to clean the salt off her bike.

“If I stop after the little bend, ask me what I learned. If all I learned is that I can stop, send me on.”

Inez Duran · To Lydia at private practice.

Mic at the pits

Number of towels

Mack What's under all that?

Inez Duran The Chevy was. I had it covered with two towels. Adding a third one is how my niece knew I meant to drive.

Mack Logical, for a towel.

Meet the voice behind the microphone