LEX4NAN

Simple and straightforward. Take the “us” off Lexus and the “cy” of Nancy, and you’re golden. Nothing hidden. Nothing witty. No hints. No mystery.

So I ask you, does that really sound like Nancy? I don’t think so. For a monster SUV like this, discovered in Vegas with Cali plates? No way. Sounds like a man dreamed up that wild plate.

I’m pretty sure this is the backstory:

Nancy’s husband, Chase, decided it was time to surprise Nancy. Maybe it was their seventh anniversary, and, well, Nan’s been great. So Chase pops over the Lexus dealer sometime in late 2007, just after checking on his soaring portfolio account. Feeling flush, and expecting a good payoff, Chase sits in a wood paneled office with nice leather seats at the Lexus car acquisition center and arranges for the biggest, shiniest, pearliest model they have to be delivered to their McMansion on anniversary morning, complete with a red bow wrapped around it.

And where else, but in that brilliant mind sitting on Chase’s shoulders, would the final touch emerge? The personalized license plate saying, “Now hear this: I picked up this beauty for my lady. And I can afford it.”

So Nancy wakes up that morning, and begins her walk down the front steps, headed toward the miniature house on the post at the street that holds their mailbox and newspaper slot (CC&Rs, of course) to get the OC Register, when she does a double take. What? Huh? That’s Gorgeous! That must have cost Chase a Fortune! She runs back in the house shrieking “Oh honey” so much that she’s reduced to tears. And she hasn’t even seen the plate yet.

After a little extra time in the bedroom – Chase knew how that part would go – they had coffee and sat in the car with its sumptuous Coach leather seating surfaces, and marveled at the walnut trim.

Chase knew he could squeeze in two rounds of golf after this feat, so he had already set up the tee times and foursomes. Nancy called her girlfriends to see who wanted to pop over to the day spa next to the Baja Fresh on PCH. She would pick them up, discuss exactly how much to get waxed considering the day’s events, and then sit and enjoy lunch with them afterwards, drowning the pain in a few glasses of Chardonnay. And after the wine, heading back to the truck, a tipsy friend noticed the plate for the first time. They all smiled. “Chase thinks of everything,” said Briana.

Fast forward a few months to when I saw the Lexistrosity on the freeway in Vegas. Chase and Nancy decided to take a trip in the new truck, and Chase suggested the Wynn – golf and gambling, all in one location. The good life. So they packed up far too much luggage and drove out of their brand new subdivision in a brand new city east of Irvine, and drove out. Chase is piloting the cream puff down the freeway, vaguely aware that everyone else expects a woman to be driving. But he’s excited, dying to see what his surgically-sculpted and enhanced wife will wear in the even-looser-than-the-OC Vegas. And, rolling into Vegas on that Friday night, I got them.

Chase, you're dreamy!

And now, many months later, I can picture the foreclosure sign on the house. Nan is living with her mother. And LEX4NAN sits in an auto auction lot underneath a freeway overpass in El Monte, awaiting better times.