My husband Donnie has two kids, and I mean has them. Last year Betty Ann, his ex, ran off with a trucker from Wichita. Donnie said the last he saw of Betty Ann was her hanging out the window of a purple eighteen-wheeler yelling, “You keep the kids.” So before I said yes to Donnie’s proposal I read all the self-help books about blended families. I may have been past thirty, not a beauty, and well aware that single women in my town outnumbered single men by three to one, but I wasn’t about to commit to hell on earth just for a gold ring and a new last name.
    The stepfamily books were helpful, but I’d have fallen in love with Sherri and Little Donnie anyway. Those kids were sweet as they could be. Beside, I never wanted to actually physically birth kids, so Betty Ann had saved me the trouble and given me an instant family. And my cat Arthur got along fine with Donnie’s bloodhound Frisky, so things should have been perfect. But they weren’t.
    It was my stepcar that was troubling my marriage, my stepcar that none of the blended family books warned me about. See, every day Donnie drove to his construction job in an old ford pickup. Pieces could have fallen off onto the road and Donnie wouldn’t mind so long as it got him to work and back. But he babied his car, a red ’57 Chevy, like it was his first-born. I knew trouble was coming when that car rolled over my foot all by itself the first time I went near it.
Donnie tried to claim he accidentally left it in neutral. That didn’t make my foot feel any better. While I was still hopping around and whining, the Chevy squirted oil on my new limel green pantsuit.
    “You hateful car!” I screamed, slapping the hood. “Oil won’t wash out of polyester, I just know it won’t.”
    Donnie leaped across a spare tire and grabbed a clean rag off his workbench. He polished the hood where I’d touched it, while I tried to wring the oil out of my outfit.
    “Shoot, Corinne. You got to be careful about touching the Princess,” Donnie said, concern furrowing his brow.
    “Yeah, I might leave fingerprints,” I spat out. I stomped back into the house. Donnie took me out later and bought me another pantsuit, but I was still not over my anger. That car, A.K.A. the Princess, had to go.
    The first thing I did was communicate with my spouse the way they tell you to do on all the talk shows. You’re supposed to quietly explain your point of view, with no screaming or chair-throwing, and this is supposed to work miracles in your relationship. I waited a few days till Donnie was in a good mood. After supper I brought him some beers and put the kids to bed early. Then I put on my new black nightie, the see-through one with lace that I bought with my bonus from my job at the bank.
    The nightie billowed around me like a dark cloud as I shimmied down the hall into the living room. I looked really fine.
    “Donnie,” I said, plopping onto the couch next to him, “we have to talk.
    “Now, sugar? The sports is coming on.” He put his feet up on the coffee table and just about knocked over the fish-shaped ceramic ashtray I’d made him for a wedding gift.
    I grabbed the remote off the floor and powered down the set. “Now,” I said, still communicating calmly.
    Donnie grinned. He’d just noticed my nightie. “You feeling romantic, sugarbritches?”
    I smiled seductively. “Maybe. What I wanted to say, honey, is that you’re spending too much time in the garage.”
    Donnie looked perplexed--but then he usually does. “Honeypot, I got to. That’s where I keep the Princess.”
    “That’s what I mean. You spend too much time and money on that car and not enough on me and the kids.” My voice got whiny. I didn’t add that I was convinced the car was out to get me.
    “A man’s got to have a hobby.” Donnie poked his lower lip out so far it almost reached his beer gut.
    After that he clammed up. Well, it’s useless to argue with someone who won’t talk. I felt like braining Donnie with the nearest frying pan. I settled for flouncing into the bedroom and locking the door. Donnie had to sleep on the couch.
    We argued about the Princess off and on for the next month. Actually, I did all the talking. Donnie continued to childishly refuse to argue.
    I marched out to the garage one day to have it out with the car. Donnie was still at work, and I hadn’t yet picked up the kids from Shirley’s World of Daycare Fun. I stood in front of that Chevy with my hands on my hips. I narrowed my eyes down into a mean frown and let my cigarette dangle out of the corner of my mouth. “It isn’t over yet, sister. You’re just an overrated pile of tin.” My cigarette fell. Without thinking, I grabbed for it and burned my fingers.
    The car sat staring at me, unmoving in the half dark of late afternoon. I sucked on my burned fingers and called her bad names. Still no reaction. But as I walked past on my way to the door, she bopped me on the knee with her bumper.
    A huge blue bump rose up. I had to lie to Donnie and tell him Frisky had jumped on me and knocked me down and everyone in town knows that bloodhound’s about as lively as a sloth. I guess when I told that story, that was when I first decided to kill the Princess.
    But I am not stupid. I read, I watch TV, I go to movies. I know that whenever someone gets murdered, the first suspect is the one with a motive. Since I’d already let Donnie know how much I hated the Princess, he’d know it was me the minute the boys at the body shop gave him the sad news about his car’s fatal accident. Then it would be no more marriage, no more stepdog, and no more sweet kids who called me Mama.
    It seemed clear that the first thing I had to do was to eliminate myself as a suspect. I started by fixing Donnie’s favorite dinner. I had my sister-in-law, Reva, come get the kids for the evening.
    “What’s that you’re cooking?” Reva asked, the minute she waddled into the kitchen.
    “Blackened roast beef.”
    Reva bent down to peer nosily into the oven. “Looks burnt to me, Corinne. She snickered. “If you’re planning to love up on Donnie tonight, you ought to start with a decent meal, not something I’d be ashamed to serve my cat.”
    “It’s not burnt, it’s supposed to look that way. It really gets Donnie in the mood.”
    Actually, I’d invented the recipe by accident one day when I got to talking on the phone too long. Donnie was mad to find supper burned, so I made up the story about it being a real recipe and after that he shut up about it.
Reva was entirely too nosy for her own good, so I wasn’t stupid enough to tell her my plan. I let her think I just wanted a romantic evening with Donnie.
When Donnie got home, he slid his lunchbox down the countertop and it splashed into the sink. I smiled and didn’t say a thing about him being clumsy or making a mess for me to clean.
    “Where’s the kids?”
    “At Reva’s. Honey, this is a special evening just for the two of us.” I pointed dramatically toward the dining room, at the real tablecloth and the table set with glass dishes and metal silverware instead of paper and plastic. I knew all that extra class would get to him.
    Donnie’s eyes seemed to get bluer and bluer and even sort of round. Usually they’re almost square, like his face. “Corinne, you’re a doll.”
    Donnie went to wash up while I lit the candles. All I’d been able to find were the ones left over from Little Donnie’s birthday, but I’d arranged them strategically in groups, so it wasn’t too awful dark. Then I put on Donnie’s favorite music, the soundtrack from “Oklahoma.” We could dance after dinner.
    “Donnie,” I said as he came in and started sawing the roast beef apart. “I’ve been wrong about the Princess. If you love her, then I love her, too.”
    Donnie put his knife down and tried to rub the circulation back into his hand. “Gosh, sweet sugar, I don’t know what to say. I sure am lucky to have a woman who knows how to be good to a man.”
    Obviously, Donnie’s idea of me being good was to have me do what he wanted. But that was okay as long as he believed I loved his stupid car.
I waited a month, making sure to talk nice about the Princess every day, even though she was still attacking me whenever I went out to the garage.
    Then it was time for murder. The first thing I did was to take the Princess out for a little spin. I had an awful time unlocking her door and then the door popped open all at once and hit me in the face. She drove fine, though, until I left her straddled across the Oak Street tracks ten minutes before the freight train was due.
    I got out and hobbled all helpless and slow in my red high heels to a gas station. “Help. My car is stalled on the tracks!” I flapped my hands and made damsel in distress sounds.
    The station attendant called the police. Unfortunately, they notified the train conductor in time for him to stop the train. Meanwhile, the helpful station attendant roared down the street in a tow truck and yanked the Princess out of harm’s way.
    Naturally, I didn’t tell Donnie. After that, I took the Princess out twice more. I left her parked in front of the post office with the keys in the ignition. No one took her. I tried to push her down a hill and off a cliff. She kept stopping, as though someone was mashing the brakes hard. On the way home, she bucked and snorted like she wanted to toss me out, so I banged my mouth against her steering wheel.
    The unaware Donnie, now under the impression he’d won the argument, spent even more money and time on that heap. Spare car parts littered our house like stadium debris after a football game. I got tired of tripping over radiator hoses every time I walk out of the bathroom.
    Little Donnie said his first sentence, “Where’s my daddy?” and Sherri said she wished she was a princess like Daddy’s car. As for me, I spent a lot of time in front of the TV cramming handfuls of stale popcorn in my mouth when I wasn’t sucking on cigarettes.
    One night Donnie was out in the garage polishing the Princess while I watched a gangster movie. That’s where I got the idea to hire a hit man.
    I told Donnie I was working late the next day and got Reva to mind the kids again.
    “Working late? Hah! She put her hands on her ample hips. She looks a lot like Donnie—curly red hair, dimpled chin, short and stocky build--only on him it looks better.
    “Guess I won’t tell my dim-witted brother. If another wife runs off and leaves him, maybe he’ll learn to leave that car alone.”
    “You hush right now, Reva. I’m working late.”
    “Hah!”
   
Lake Boulder was a small town. The gold rush and the lumber rush were long over, and the town fathers were talking about starting a gambling rush. But tiny as it was, Lake Boulder was big enough for me to find what I was looking for in only three days.
    Bull “don’t-ask-my-last-name” was a scrawny, criminal type who looked like he’d do just about anything for a few dollars. He said he lived in the bad half of a duplex across town, but he didn’t tell me exactly where and I didn’t ask. We settled on a hundred and fifty down and a hundred and fifty after the job was done.
    I wanted Bull to get rid of the car as soon as possible and he said he would. Two weeks later the Princess still ruled, serene and shiny, in her garage palace. I resolved to hunt up Bull and prod him a little.
    I found him at his usual evening location—a bar sporting the Statue of Liberty in green and pink neon on the roof. Bull had deteriorated noticeably since our last meeting. He had a black eye and assorted facial scrapes. His left arm was in a cast from wrist to elbow.
    “What happened?” I held out a pack of cigarettes and he took six, plus my new Bic lighter.
    “Lady, that car hates me. I been by your place three times. You see what happened?” He pointed out his visible wounds. When he started fumbling with his belt buckle, I figured I’d seen enough.
    “Look, I paid you to do a job. I don’t care if you crush it, burn it, or put it down a garbage disposal one bolt at a time. Just get rid of that car.”
    “Sure, but maybe this is worth a little more than we agreed on,” he whined.
    “We’ll talk about it later.” I stood and tapped my watch to let him know the interview was over.
    Donnie and the kids and me drove to his mama’s house two days later to visit. Donnie’s mama is a confused woman in polka dots who insists on calling me Betty Ann, so I don’t see her that often. But this was an occasion for Bull to make his move. I swallowed my pride.
   
    He made his move all right. Cop cars and fire engines were blocking both ends of our street when we got back. Flames roared up from our garage and licked at the wall on the kitchen side of the house.
    “Oh, honey,” I said, turning tenderly to Donnie. “The garage! Your Princess must be all burned up. What a sad day.”
    Donnie clamped his right hand over his heart. He started gasping for breath. “Flowerblossom, tell me it ain’t so.”
    Little Donnie and Sherri started crying in stereo. I told them to take care of their daddy. I jumped out of the car and practically danced down the block toward the house. My troubles were over, the tormenter melted to scrap.
    My glee turned to gloom when I saw the wicked stepcar squatting untouched at the curb. An interfering neighbor bragged about how he’d heroically braved the flames and pushed the car to safety.
    Donnie walked up with a kid under each arm, his face a study in pure joy. I instantly went into my “I love this car” routine, dancing and laughing hysterically. I even leaned over and kissed her shiny red hood. I was immediately sorry because a hot ember had landed right where I kissed. My lips blistered up like overcooked bacon.
    But that was nothing compared to the condition of the hit man, I discovered the next day. He was now minus his eyebrows and had a new hairstyle that I could only call blackened stubble.
    He pounded the table with his one good hand. “Don’t ask me to go after that evil tin monster again. She’s too smart. Besides, I done figured out a better moneymaking plan.”
    “What’s that?” I squeaked, suspicion dawning.
    “You wouldn’t want your insurance company finding out how that garage fire started, would you? From now on lady, you’ll give me a regular paycheck. He picked some crud off his cast and flicked it my way. He smirked, ignoring my distress, and stood. He tapped my watch to let me know the interview was over. I drove home in a sick daze.
    That was before I had time to think. Bull’s expecting his first paycheck next week, and he’ll get it all right. Only it figures to be his last payment, too. I have a new hit man. Or should I say, hit car. You see, the Princess and I had a long talk and now we’re the best of friends. Bull will be fatally struck and killed by a ’57 Chevy. After that, I won’t go into the Princess’s new garage and she won’t come into my house.