BLUE

1 1 3 R B L U E R U S S E L L B A N K S Ventana steps o√ the number thirty-three bus at 103rd and Northwest 7th Avenue in Miami Shores. It’s almost 6:00 p.m., and at this time of year the city stays hot and sticky thick till the sun finally sets at 8:00. Everything’s a trade-o√: in summer you get the light late, but it stays hot till late, too. She walks quickly back along 7th, nervous about carrying so much cash, thirty-five one-hundreddollar bills. She didn’t want to pay for the car with a check and then have to wait till the check clears before she can drive it home – no way a used car dealer or any merchant who doesn’t know her personally will accept a check from her or any black woman and let her take the goods home before the check clears. She wants the car now, today, so she can drive to work in Aventura tomorrow and for the first time park in the employees lot and on Sunday after church drive her own damn car, drive her own damn car, to the beach at Virginia Key with Gloria and the grandkids. The credit union closes at four so she took the money – one hundred dollars a month secretly saved over nearly three years – out of her account during her lunch break and in the American Eagle ladies’ room stashed the packet of thirty-five bills in her brassiere. She’s wearing a high-necked rayon blouse, even though 1 1 4 B A N K S Y she knew the day would be hot as Hades and humid and the airconditioning in the buses would likely be busted or weak. The number thirty-three at seven o’clock in the morning leaving from her block in Miami Shores to the number three in North Miami all the way out to Aventura Mall and then back again over the same route in late afternoon, early in the day or late, air conditioner working or not, it doesn’t matter, she’d be in a serious sweat just from walking from the bus stop across the long lot to the entrance of the mall and back. And the day is hot from early to late, and she does sweat more than if she wore a sleeveless blouse or tee shirt, but she got through the afternoon with no one at American Eagle Outfitters knowing about the money she’s carrying and is relieved now to be walking up 7th and finally arriving at the gate of Sunshine Cars USA with the money still intact in her bra. She’s forty-seven years old and for twenty-five of those years has been a legally licensed driver in the state of Florida, but this will be the first car Ventana has ever owned herself. Her exhusband Gordon when she was still married to him leased a new Buick every three years and let her drive with him riding in the back seat as if she was his chau√eur; her son Gordon Junior when he went into the navy bought a new Camaro with his enlistment bonus and parked it on her driveway and let her drive it while he was at sea until he couldn’t a√ord to insure it anymore and had to sell it; and for a few years her daughter Gloria owned an old clunker of a van she let Ventana borrow from time to time to help friends move in or out, but then the finance company re-possessed it. In all those years Ventana did not have a car of her own. Until today. Well, she really doesn’t own it; she hasn’t even picked her car out yet. Most of the vehicles for sale by Sunshine Cars USA are out of her price range, but she knows from reading the listings in The Miami Herald that Sunshine Cars USA nonetheless has dozens of what they call pre-owned cars for $3,500 and under: cars with one previous owner...