We Lived The Bonfire of the Vanities!

There’s a scene in The Bonfire of the Vanities (great book by Tom Wolfe, bad movie with Tom Hanks) where our hero is driving a Mercedes convertible in New York City and takes a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood.
Pretty unlikely scenario for a couple of kids from the Midwest to relive.
But it happened, albeit in a different city. Right down to the convertible Mercedes.
Here’s what happened.
We had this licensing agent who lived in San Diego.
For those of you who don’t know, a licensing agent used to be just about the only way a creator could make their intellectual property available to manufacturers and distributors. In our case, Gina and I had successfully published a comic strip (and book) starring a cartoon character named Emma Davenport.
Our agent, an old guy named Frank, had secured a deal with a toy company to produce dolls based on the characters, and we were in sunny San Diego to go over the deal.
Frank was an old school jet-set swinger who’d played the licensing game since the ‘60s. Everything about his ostentatious life was for show—from the clothes he wore to his big house in its gated community—to his vintage Mercedes.
Naturally, we were taken in by his charms.
As it turned out…as it almost always turns out…Frank was all sizzle and very little steak.
But that’s another story.
That morning, the plan was for Frank to pick us up at the hotel around 10:00 am.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we sipped Venti sized vanilla lattes on lounge chairs outside the place while we waited.
When Frank wheeled in before the doors with the black Mercedes convertible and his pretty girlfriend in the passenger seat, I wondered where we were supposed to sit.
Frank bopped around the front of the car, gave Gina and me each a hug, then dropped the car keys in my hand.
“The car is yours,” he said. “Enjoy the city for a while.”
Huh? I didn’t know what to say.
We weren’t exactly strangers, having met Frank in person twice before. But I didn’t think we were at the stage of a relationship where you handed over the keys to a car.
Obviously, Frank thought we were.
He kissed Gina on the cheek, winked at me through groovy Ray Ban shades, and explained that his friends were picking he and his gal pal up for a movie.
Right on cue, a gorgeous new BMW pulled in and honked.
“We couldn’t get out of it,” he explained. “You know the address for the house, right? The key is on the car fob.” He handed me a slip of paper with numbers on it. “That’s for the keypads.”
“Keypads?”
“For the gate,” he said. “And the home security system. See you later.”
And just like that, Frank and his friends were gone, leaving us set up like characters in a Ferris Beuller movie.
The car was ours.
The city beckoned.
What could possibly go wrong?
As often works best in big cities, Gina drove while I navigated.
Now this was in the days before GPS navigation. Our cell phones were of the non-smart variety, and we had only been to San Diego once before.
We took the first exit onto the freeway.
Young, adventurous, and completely ignorant of our surroundings, we sped along.
Sorta aiming for the Zoo.
Bumper to bumper. A zillion miles an hour.
When we saw a sign that said: Los Angeles – 36 miles, we decided we were lost.
That first exit we took was fine. No problem. Off, swing around, and back onto the freeway headed straight into the city the way we’d came.
But with our enthusiasm dimmed, and our caffeine in short supply, we opted to drive straight to Frank’s address.
“Maybe there’s a fast food place close to his house. We can have lunch, then wait for him.”
I checked the map.
And made a mistake.
“There’s a street that cuts straight across to his house from here.”
“From here?” said Gina.
“Yeah. We’re only six or seven miles from his place.”
“I’m not sure we should leave the freeway.”
“Look,” I said, pointing at the paper map, knowing full well she couldn’t look in the heavy traffic, “This next exit will take us right across town to his neighborhood.”
To her credit, she was skeptical. And we might’ve avoided the upcoming unpleasantness had not the Mercedes cast its own vote.
Remember what I said about all sizzle and no steak?
Half a mile from the exit she planned so skip, the Mercedes started choking and sputtering.
“That’s not good,” said Gina, lurching forward, then back.
“Take the exit! Take the exit!”
And so we did.
Puttering along, belching black smoke.
“What’s wrong with this thing?”
“Gas line or filter.” I sniffed. Gas for sure. “Carburetor,” I guessed. “Who knows?” At the top of the ramp, the green light beckoned us forward while a ratty Lincoln town car behind us honked impatiently. “Turn left, turn left.”
We made it two blocks.
And the first red light we encountered the Mercedes coughed to a stop.
The intersection was a war zone.
One corner was home to a burned out brick building covered in spray-paint gang tags. The lot across the chipped and broken gray asphalt street was a weed filled jungle.
Beside me, nearly within arm’s reach, an unhealthy young man laid face down on the sidewalk next to a pile of garbage bags like a living welcome mat for a brown brick barber shop with barred windows.
The bars hadn’t kept all the glass from being broken.
The stench of the garbage wafted over the Mercedes cab, pushing out the gasoline smell.
Gina turned the key. Cranked the engine. Pumped the accelerator.
“Don’t pump it,” I said. “I think it’s flooded. Hold the peddle down flat. Clear the line.”
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
“Sure.”
“No. I mean. We have to get out of here.” I followed her eyes front and center and saw three young men jay walking across the way toward us.
They looked a lot healthier than the guy on the sidewalk. Biceps and shoulder muscles covered in tats rippled in the sun.
“Where’d they come from?” I said.
“Who cares?”
Crank, crank, crank. The engine turned over and over.
How long until the battery died?
One of the young men spoke up. “What we got here?” he said.
Crank, crank, crank.
“Dunno,” said his friend.
“Check it out,” said the third.
“Call the cops,” said Gina.
Crank, crank, crank.
“Cops?”
“Cell phone?”
“I don’t think—”
“You all need some help?” said the first guy—in a way that wasn’t too helpful.
“We’ve got it. No problem,” I said.
“Oh, I think you got a problem.” His smile showed three missing teeth. “You driving a rich boy car. You a rich boy?”
“He’s really not,” said Gina.
Crank, crank, crank.
“I think he is.”
And then…just like that, the engine caught and fired off.
The Mercedes shot ahead.
“Hey, watch out you—” yelled our new friend as the fender brushed against him.
Seriously. We couldn’t have been two inches away from him.
“Ohmigod, did I hit that guy?”
I cranked my head around and peered through a cloud of black smoke.
All three of the guys stood in the street watching us go. One of them showed us his middle finger.
“They’re doing fine,” I said.
“Better than the car.”
Gina had the thing floored, the engine roaring like crazy, yet we were only going half as fast as we should’ve been.
“Just keep going.”
“Red light coming up.”
Two more guys sat on a bench near the light. They wore dirty T-shirts and had a paper bag between them.
“Run the light.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Run it, run it!”
And she did.
And we ran all the lights from then on.
Eventually…miraculously…the barred windows gave way to strip malls, and the sleeping junkies became happy Sunday window shoppers.
The map had been accurate. Frank’s place was just around a couple turns.
“Had we not taken that exit, we might be stranded on the freeway,” I said as we pulled into his driveway.
“Had we not taken that exit, I might’ve lived five years longer than I will,” said Gina.
“We must’ve looked pretty silly, driving through the hood in this thing.” I got out and kicked the tires.
“Next time, I navigate,” said Gina.
“The important thing is, we made it.”
“And now we can relax,” I said, unlocking the front door to Frank’s house and pushing in the door.
And we did too…right up until we realized the key code he gave us was wrong.
And the security system started howling.