Good Christian Bitches by Kim Gatlin Page B

she had to do was show some cleavage and the world was hers. Most men would say that Sharon had a great body and a face to guard it with. Most women just considered her hard-looking. One particularly disenchanted suitor had told his buddies that without makeup, Sharon looked rougher than a truck stop waitress. But even he couldn’t deny that she had a great body.
    And she knew it could get her places. As she arrived at the Mercedes dealership the morning after her and Heather’s chat with Darlene, Sharon wore a revealing, scoop-necked electric-blue Dolce & Gabbana top she had “borrowed” from a Hillside Park friend. She didn’t want to buy a car—she was determined to find out who the gentleman was who had bought Amanda her car.
    She parked her four-year-old BMW, a gift a boyfriend had given her in a fit of perfect-body-inspired generosity, power-walked across the parking lot, and approached the first salesman she could find and asked for a manager.
    “Dean,” the salesman said, “she needs your help.”
    With his eyes focused squarely on Sharon’s chest, Dean dropped his jaw. He found himself unable to speak for a moment.
    “She doesn’t need anything,” he finally said. “She’s perfect the way she is.” And then to Sharon, brightly, “How may I help you, ma’am?”
    “I’m from the head Mercedes office in Stuttgart,” Sharon said authoritatively. “Could we talk in your office for a moment, please?”
    Dean blinked several times, trying to reconcile the idea that this most attractive woman had anything to do with the head office.
    “I left all my business cards on the plane,” Sharon lied. Somehow the comment galvanized the still-awestruck Dean into action.
    “Right this way, ma’am,” he said, leading her past the longing glances of the other car salesmen to his private office.
    Once seated, Sharon thought about doing the Sharon Stone “crossing and uncrossing of legs” thing, but Dean was obviously already so flustered that that might have sent him over the edge.
    “How are—how are things in Stuttgart?” he asked.
    “Great.” Sharon tried to think for a moment about how things really were in Stuttgart. She’d never been, but she’d once dated a German. In her time, she’d covered most of the categories. Her German ex had been scrupulously hygienic, and come to think of it, he had pitched a fit about the dangers of air pollution.
    “Smoggy,” she added as an afterthought. “Very smoggy. Especially this time of year.”
    Dean nodded knowingly, as if intimately familiar with the subject of seasonal smog in Stuttgart. “We have that same problem here in Dallas, ma’am,” he said, groping for common ground.
    “Mmm, I’m sure you do,” Sharon murmured. Then she got to the point. “Well, I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m doing here. Basically, Stuttgart sends me around to all the dealerships as kind of a secret shopper, but not really.”
    Dean struggled both to simultaneously follow what she was saying and keep his eyes off her chest, neither of those an easy task. “Well, I’m not really a secret shopper, in the sense that I’m not shopping for a car.” Sharon’s explanation served only to pitch Dean into a greater state of confusion and despair.
    “What I’m trying to say is . . .” Sharon started to think that maybe she should have come up with a simpler story. “. . . Is that I’m supposed to look at a random transaction y’all have completed in the last twenty-four hours? And just make sure everything was up to the standards that we at Mercedes try to instill in our dealerships.” Dean and Sharon exchanged a look of great relief—Sharon delighted that she had actually gotten her story straight, and Dean grateful because he finally understood, at least on some level, what she was talking about.
    “You just want to make sure that we’re satisfying our customers,” he said, translating Sharon-speak into something that he could understand and explain to