The Big Cat Nap

following her.
    Tucker stopped, because the intruder was Cooper in the squad car. Tucker adored Coop.
    “Hey.” Harry walked out, determined not to bitch and moan about the John Deere. It was more than thirty years old, so how much could she complain?
    “I want to show you something.” Cooper pulled out her laptop and headed toward the screened-in porch.
    Within minutes, she and Harry sat at the kitchen table, cold drinks in hand, as Cooper brought up pictures on the screen. Harry had told her about her clean mammogram, which made Cooper happy for her friend.
    “Look at these. You’re a motorhead.”
    Startled, Harry demurred, “Yeah, but not like that.”
    “Bear with me.” Cooper scrolled up photo after photo of naked women in old cars.
    The women, quite lovely, might wear a tool belt or have a wrench in their hands. A few bent over engines, their bottoms exposed.
    One photo showed a truly beautiful woman leaning over the opened hood, her breasts falling just over an impressive twelve-cylinder engine, which had been chromed.
    “Sure hope the engine’s not hot,” Harry quipped. “Why are you showing me naked women?”
    “Okay. This was on Walt’s home computer. No hard-core porn or anything like that. A lot of mechanical information showed up—no surprise there; he kept up with his profession. But then we found these pictures. Can you tell me anything about them? Here, I’ll go through them again. Forget the women. Look at the machines.”
    Harry, hands folded, tried to block out the naked beauties. Fortunately, easier for her than for a man.
    A mint-colored DeSoto, resplendent with white leather interior, passed, then a restored 1939 Buick. Image after image of beautiful women and beautiful cars filled the screen.
    “Hmm.” Harry unfolded her hands. “Go back one.” She pointed to a golden Studebaker Avanti, a design way ahead of its time. “Most of these cars are orphan cars.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “No longer in production. The companies are dead. Packards. Nashes. Franklins. Well, now Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, but most of these pictures are of old grand cars. You know, like Packard. The other thing is, all the cars are roadworthy. Also, no trucks, no sports cars, and what I’ve seen runs from after World War One up to the mid-fifties. There was one more-recent car, again good design, and not an orphan car: the Buick Riviera from the early 1960s. But this is quite a collection of marvelous restorations and some awfully good bosoms and bottoms.” She laughed.
    “A car is out of production. What happens?”
    Harry, picking up on Cooper’s intensity, responded, “At first, nothing. People run them until they become outdated. We’re primedto buy new things in America. So they sell the cars, which often wind up in the hands of kids, who can only afford an aging Hudson as their first car. Then they get wrecked or are sold for scrap, and a lucky few wind up sitting in garages. There are beautiful cars left to rust. Cars that had marvelous engines for the times. Or design, like the Auburn.”
    “If you find one, how do you fix it?”
    “Oh, gee.” Harry flopped back in the kitchen chair. “Well, you can’t get parts. Although large companies are supposed to always keep in stock the parts for anything they have manufactured, they don’t. A carmaker that no longer exists means spare parts that no longer exist. Think what it takes to bring back a 1959 Edsel Corsair.”
    “Wasn’t that a bad car?”
    “Not really. The Corsair was a pretty good design, but Ford misread the market. So it only lasted about three years before it tanked.” She leaned forward again. “Murphy, don’t.”
    The cat was patting the screen.
    “She’s okay.” Cooper petted the cat.
    “There are special companies that deal in parts for orphaned cars. There are others that specialize in one brand only—say, Chevy, which of course isn’t orphaned, but just try to get a steering wheel for a 1957 Bel Air.”
    “I see. Can these parts be built?”
    “Someone would really have to be good. You can build engines, carburetors, the heavy-duty stuff, but one would need access to a … I don’t know, small foundry, plus you’d have to have the specs—another problem.”
    “But with computers, surely that has to be easier. I mean, to create images and blueprints.” Cooper could use a computer with the best of them.
    “Yeah, but you’d still need the engineering knowledge. You can’t be off more than