As Gene Catlow tiptoed from his house, a beat-up navy Ford Grenada two-door pulled up. A chunky, muscular lynx wearing a shirt that had "Wild Side Wrestling Federation" written on the front in bright red and black jeans got out. "Yo, Longtail!" called out Jack Krowfight, a semi-famous professional wrestler. "Where ya goin?"
"Sh! Sh! Sh!" said Gene, gesturing for the lynx to be quieter. "I'm trying to avoid CatsWhisker for a bit."
Jack laughed. "I see, old buddy. Well, hop in and I'll get you out of here. Maybe we can hang out a bit."
Gene eyed the lynx suspiciously—Jack had snitched on him once before—but nodded, and came down to the old car. "Alright," he said, deciding that he could maybe trust the lynx this once.
Once Gene had gotten in and buckled up, Jack drove off. The lynx glanced in his rear-view. "Ah, she ain't out yet. I think you made your getaway."
Gene breathed a sigh of relief, and went to turn on the radio. Unfortunately, he got absolutely squat, not even static.
Jack grinned. "Oh, sorry. Radio doesn't work. If you want music, you'll have to sing it yourself." At Gene's look, he shrugged. "Hey, it's no surprise. Car only cost me a buck, so you make a FEW sacrifices."
Gene eyed the lynx. "Only one dollar," he said suspiciously.
"Yeah. Dad was gonna scrap it, but we found out it still ran, so I bought it from the former owner for a buck. It's my kinda car: Old, cheap, and hideous."
It certainly made sense that the wrestler would buy a car this way; although Jack earned quite a bit of money wrestling, he was notoriously thrifty, even bordering on miserly. Indeed, Gene had heard of a match that turned into a real fight because of that; one of Jack's colleagues shared a hotel room with the lynx and had a case of fleas for the next two weeks.
"So where are we going?" asked Gene.
"Gotta pick up some stuff at the Sally Anne," Jack replied. "Being a hardcore wrestler means I run out of shirts on a regular basis, which means I can't spend much on them."
"And after that?" asked Gene.
"I can take you on any errands you'd like to go. Despite my oh, so charming looks I'm not a complete ignoramus about computers." He grinned. "I trained as a programmer too, so at least we've got something in common." He grinned. "We can even talk about why COBOL is a better language than HTML." He glanced over at Gene's face. "Man, I wish I had a camera."
After dropping by the Salvation Army Thrift Store, Jack put his shirts in the cluttered back of his car. "Gotta clean this thing out one day," he said.
"So, once I'm done with my errands," Gene wanted to know, "What do you want to do?"
"There's a indy pro wrestling show tonight," said Jack. "Gonna check it out. Why don't you come with me; who knows, you might like it." He grinned broadly. "And after that, I can make sure CatsWhisker is nice to you."
"How are you gonna do that?" asked Gene.
Jack grinned broadly as they sat in the car, closed the doors and buckled up. "Simple," said Jack as he backed out of the parking space and drove out onto the street. "I'm sure she'll feel sorry for a poor old tomcat that this evil lynx hauled into a pub crawl."
"A pub crawl?" Gene asked weakly.
"Sure! I know of all the bars that brew their own moonshine!" The lynx laughed devilishly. "You, Longtail, are gonna get STEWED!"