Red Mustang on the 405

By Gerry Mandel

The Red Mustang sits in the driveway, its top down, here in the Hollywood Hills. My daughter Holly circles the car, wearing a Christmas-morning expression I had almost forgotten. The Mustang, a ‘69, is seventeen years old and cooler than new. I hold the envelope containing the cashiers check in my right hand.

The owner of the Mustang, Richard, a trim, middle-aged man in shorts, strolls out of the house, holding the title and keys. He carries himself with that relaxed, confident attitude one must master in Hollywood. Richard produces TV game shows and is moving back to New York, but doesn’t want to take the Mustang. “It belongs in California,” he told me the first time we talked a week ago, when a mutual friend had connected us.

Holly made her mind up years ago that she wanted to go to California for college. That’s a long way from St. Louis, where I live and she grew up. Until now, her second year at the University of California at Irvine, she has managed without a car. Now she needs wheels to
get around Irvine, around the beach communities of Newport and Laguna and Huntington, to head north to explore L.A. and destinations beyond. She finds horizons irresistible. Never one to ignore life’s possibilities, she is, without a doubt, much gutsier than I.

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