Yes, ours is a city of car rental outlets. Everyone here takes a great interest in car rentals.
Will I fit in? I've come here to Prester to open a Baptist Church just outside of town. I'm not particularly interested in renting cars.
Not now, not yet. But we have many great bargain packages here. You'll get familiar with the weekly specials soon enough, and then you'll be sold. Why, there was a Compact Ford Focus at Avis yesterday being leased out for just $25 a day with unlimited mileage! I almost rented it myself, even though I'm a confirmed bachelor and am generally driving alone. The immediate problem, however is: where are you going to live, young lady? Most people live in the car rental offices themselves. I have a few lofts in the repair bays that I can show you. What price range were you thinking of?
They turn a corner and pass Herz, Enterprise, Avis, Alamo and Dollar
I can go up to 110. Do you have any buildings here that are not car rental outlets?
None. Of course, many of our car rental offices also do double duty as something else. The Avis location houses the board of education. National Rent-a-car across the street there houses the barber shop.
Do many people go to church here -- or would they, if there was a nearby church to go to?
No, young lady: I'm afraid when we're not renting cars, we mostly just stay home and dream exciting sexual dreams.
Indeed, Mr. Phillips? (Humph!)
Besides, to go to church would imply that there was something missing in our lives, and when you've got an ever-ready set of wheels at your beck and call 24 hours a day at any of a good dozen car rental outlets in town, you can overcome even the slightest hiccup in your emotional life by merely tooling off, say, to a five-star resort or to a nice cottage by a lake, or even to a therapist's pad in one of your so-called 'normal' cities in the territories on west.
The territories on west?
No, if I were starting a business in the greater Prester area, it would definitely not be a church -- still, I'm sure you'll do just fine, young lady. (Don't ask me how, however, but I'm sure you'll do just fine. Tee-hee! Ahem. Just kidding, of course.)
There, that is American Rent-a-Car. Nice bunch of people over there. They have a great weekend special on luxury Cadillacs.
Do you think it's healthy to have so many car rental agencies in one place? Surely, it's not economically sustainable, for starters.
We are famous for our car rent outlets. They are harmless. Here, follow me through this dusty hallway. We've got a nice room right in here.
Ta-da! See, young lady: you've got your bed, you've got your lamps, you've got your bookcases, you've got your microwave --
Yeah, but what's this over here?
Oh, that's the hydraulic lift that the return rental-cars are checked out on.
Do they actually use this thing?
Three times a day: morning, noon and night -- just to keep it in proper working order, though.
I see.
Of course, they lift it more than that, if and when any actual rent-a-cars come in for service.
But not to worry: You'll likely be off at that church of yours, praying or some such nonsense, when they're operating that admittedly somewhat noisy gismo.
This town is a little creepy.
It's not for you to say, is it -- you're new here. But come: if the hydraulic lift is spooking you, there's a nice, roomy basement apartment at Thrifty Car Rental on Broad Street.
I was hoping to share an apartment: you know, to cut down on expenses.
Share an apartment? That's not usually done around here, young lady, unless, of course, you're somehow related to your fellow lodgers.
But I can't afford a place by myself: I want to share.
It's very unusual.
Do you have any such places?
I guess there are a few...
But first humor my curiosity: which sorts of cars do you think you'll be renting from the outlets around here in order to drive about Prester and vicinity? I usually drive a Honda Civic myself.
I don't drive cars.
What?!
I can go by bus: I can ride by taxi: I can ride by train.
I see. Hmm... And what do you go by, usually, might I ask?
Mostly by bus.
Brrr! Prester is not that type of a town, young lady. We don't even have a mass transit system (thank God!) Now if you'll follow me over to Thrifty Rent-a-Car.
Phillip and Cecilia walking out into outlet-lined street
By the by, princess: everyone here already belongs to Agnostic Association of America.
True?
Yes. No one here has any need for a church.
Then I won't stay.
Oh, but you must. There is already a temporary sanctuary erected for you near the county line. There is a pulpit and a narthex and everything!
I won't stay. Not if there's not any sound religious reason to do so.
We want you -- we want you standing behind the pulpit of the soon-to-be-built Prester Baptist Church, absolving sinners like there's no tomorrow. It will make the town complete.
I won't. Not me.
You must! It's essential.
I'll ride a bus, a bus that runs on natural gas, I mean -- you can't stop me.
Okay, fine: Ride your eternal bus! But be our local pastor! We are discontented here. Terribly discontented.
Somewhere in the back of our minds, we're tired of our excessive fascination with cars which, at some level at least, we know is destroying the ozone layer and causing global warming. You must stay on so that we can feel that there's someone out there, theoretically at least, who is absolving us and our town of our great and ongoing environmental sins.
You can't make me! Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh!
We need a church, I tell you: Someone must stand behind that pulpit.
I'll preach about natural gas-powered automobiles and hydrogen cars.
Whatever! Just be our baptist minister: you must. There's nothing you can do about it.
Wait and see! (I'm sure the EPA under Linda Jackson would love to hear about your anti-environmental tendencies out here in Prester. They'll be scolding you on national television before a Senate subcommittee faster than you can say 'vroom-vroom!')
Vroom-vroom?
You'll never rent another automobile repair bay to another naive newcomer again!
c.2010
Brian Quass, Alexandria, VA USA
