The Year Of Living Famously. Laura Caldwell

infraction” she blew the whistle. Lucky for me, and to Barbara’s chagrin, I passed by a hair. When I came into the waiting room, Declan was there, pacing like an expectant father.

      “I got it!” I said. I waved my little plastic rectangle of a license, on which, I must say, was a rather fetching photo of me.

      When we pulled into our parking lot at home, there was a car in our spot. A tiny, old, rusted, green convertible. I couldn’t have told you what type it was at the time; I still wasn’t so good at judging the makes or models of automobiles.

      “Should I call someone?” I said, staring at the car, annoyed. I wanted to get inside our apartment and celebrate. I wanted a glass of wine or three, and yet here was this car, delaying my intended intoxication.

      I glanced at Dec, who was staring at the car with a strangely fond expression. He reached into his pocket and took out a set of keys I’d never seen before.

      “It’s for you,” he said.

      “That car?”

      He nodded.

      “You got me a car?”

      He smiled.

      “We can’t afford that.”

      “I got my check for Tied Up.” Tied Up was the movie Dec had shot that summer in Manhattan, but I knew that money had been earmarked for other things—paying off credit card bills, new head shots—and I told him that.

      “That can wait,” he said. “My colleen has got to have her own wheels.”

      I glanced back at the car. It now looked not so much old and rusted as it did charmingly antique, not so much tiny as it did delicate, and not so much green as it did jade.

      I shrieked with delight, then crawled all over my new toy. Dec stood by, beaming.

      “Wait right here,” he said after a few minutes.

      He emerged from the house a moment later with two bottles of beer, and we sat inside my new car, top down, and toasted to us.