I've read my Haynes guide and scoured the Web to see if this is a simple
problem involving a fuse - something I can fix - before bringing the car to
my mechanic. I can't find anything. Has anyone experienced this or something
similar? Aside from being unable to ferry passengers in the passenger seat,
since it no longer has a functional shoulder belt, the seat belt warning
signal keeps beeping and beeping.... It's driving me crazy!

Several odd things: If I manually force the shoulder belt anchor up on its
track six inches or so, opening the door makes it immediately slide down
back to its 'passenger unloading' position. So it's not the retracting motor
per se; and it's not a matter of the car not being able to sense whether the
seat belt should be up or down.

So, even if I can't figure out the problem exactly, what *general area* does
this problem sound like it falls into?