Читать книгу A Song in the Daylight - Paullina Simons - Страница 25

“Mrs. Stark!” Kai was in a white shirt and tie, neat, and beaming. “How nice of you to drop by. To what do we owe this pleasure?”

Larissa had walked through the doors fifteen minutes earlier and asked the receptionist for a salesperson to help her, and the receptionist, a chirpy young thing named Crystal, tried to hook her up with a Gary, and Larissa said, actually I was looking for Kai, and Crystal said, no, no, he’s busy today. Gary is very good, and has a lot more experience, he’ll be glad to help you. Larissa frowned. Was she wearing too much or too little? Under her brown suede jacket, she wore jeans, high-heeled Fryes and a simple maroon sweater. Her makeup was light (20 minutes), her hair casual (40 minutes). “If he’s not available today, I’ll make an appointment and come back.” She said this while glancing around the spotless cream-colored dealership. It was eleven on a Monday morning, and there was no one on the floor except the salesmen, the receptionist and the business people. She was the only customer. Crystal said Monday was Kai’s day off, so he wasn’t even supposed to be in, and tomorrow he was all booked. “I don’t think he’ll have enough time to take care of you properly, Mrs ….?”

“Stark. Larissa Stark. Please let him know I’m here, and if he’s too busy, he’ll direct me to someone else.”

Finally Crystal, out of excuses (WTF?) rang Kai’s extension, and in three seconds he was at the center of the showroom beaming at her.

He even shook her hand gently, Emily Post notwithstanding, because in front of other people it was easy to be polite. Hand out, her hand in. His was wiry and warm, hers fashionable and cool, the pink nails freshly buffed.

“I’m interested in finding out a little bit about your sports models,” she said, mock laid-back like her hair. “Not to purchase. Just to shop around.”

“Of course. No one comes in here ready to purchase.”

“But Crystal here,” Larissa continued calmly, “tells me today might not be a good day for you. I can always come back.”

“No, today is perfect,” said Kai, throwing the flustered Crystal a quizzical look. “I’ll stay as long as I need to take care of my customers, Crystal, you know that. Come.” He guided Larissa with his fanned-out hand on the back of her suede.

He showed her two models on the floor, a sedan and a white coupe. She didn’t like either. “Is that the price tag?” she said, astonished.

Glancing at her with a “How much did you think a Jag cost?” expression, he put on his leather jacket and out they stepped into the windy bitterness to look at the models on the lot. She found a tiny sporty thing she thought looked kinda cool, and Kai said, “Oh, sure, you would pick that one.”

“I didn’t pick it. I don’t like the color.” It was Metallic Indigo.

“We can either get you a discount on the color you don’t want or for full price any color you prefer straight from the factory.”

“Discount on something I don’t want?” Larissa smiled. “Kai, you drive a hard bargain.”

“Thanks. That’s my specialty. You can’t say no.” He grinned back. He was well groomed today, respectable with his thin black tie, his white shirt and unripped, ironed jeans. His unruly longish hair was gelled off his forehead and moussed back, neat, presentable. He looked older.

“You’re all cleaned up,” she said.

“The other me is my motorcycle-chic costume.” He laughed. “This is my take people’s money costume.”

“You’re right, the shirt should be ironed for that.”

“Even the jeans,” he said.

She wanted to ask who ironed his jeans, but of course didn’t. Larissa walked around the car, her hand on it, to feel the lines, to touch the cold glass. Too cold. She put her gloves on. “What’s so special about this one?”

“This is the XKR supercharged sports convertible. Our most expensive model.”

“Really?” She studied it with slightly more interest. “What else is great about it? Can’t be the color.”

Handing her a pair of keys, he opened the driver door. “Get in and see for yourself.”

“I’m driving?”

“Well, I could drive, but what would the point be? I’m not buying it.”

“I’m not buying it either.” She got behind the wheel. Car smelled new and leathery. “What’s the interior color? It’s a nice combo.”

“Isn’t it, though? Color of the leather is caramel. The dashboard accents are burl.”

“Burl? What the heck kind of color is burl?” She touched the smooth pebbly leopard-looking dashboard with her fingers.

“This color.”

Gingerly Larissa drove out onto Main Street. She was going twenty miles an hour. “Drives nice in traffic,” she said after a silence. “Stops at red lights. Makes lefts. Signals work. It shifts from park to drive almost as if it has an automatic transmission.”

Kai blinked at her. “You’re making fun of my sales pitch that I haven’t had a chance to make yet?”

“I’m not making fun. It actually does do all these things. I’m not being ironic.”

“Ironic, no. Mocking, yes.”

“Mocking, no. Questioning, yes. As in, what’s here that’s worth somebody’s annual salary?”

“Four hundred and twenty horsepower. Tell you what. Make a left at the college and drive till you hit the open road. Glenside Avenue runs around the Watchung Reservation on the way to Deserted Village. Let’s go see what this baby can do.”

“It brakes beautifully.”

“All righty now.”

“And the seatbelts work. No, it’s excellent. Your best, you say? Clearly a superior model.”

“Didn’t you notice how everybody on Main Street was eyeballing you?”

“What, you think it’s the car?” Larissa chuckled. “You think they were impressed with the way a Jag sat five minutes at a red light?”

“Maybe they were just admiring the driver. Make a left here and go straight for a mile.”

“Oh! It goes straight so well!” They drove in unruffled silence. She resisted the urge to glance at her eyes in the rearview mirror, to catch a glimpse of herself after he said people might be eyeballing her. Also resisted the urge to comment on how noticeably straight up he was sitting, with Buddha-like tranquility, his entire back flush and composed against the seat.

“This model has a supercharged 420 horsepower 4.2 liter engine. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Um—no?”

“You can’t imagine power like this. It’s like a rocket.”

“You want me to demonstrate its rocket-like qualities on Glenside?”

“It’s an empty road. And clearly, until you do, you will not cease the snarky comments.”

“Oh, no, those will continue.” Glenside, which ran in a long straight line along the edge of the protected national wildlife reservation, was deserted. No main streets ran through it, no exits to shopping areas, no gas stations, no small towns. It had the forest on the right and forest on the left. The sun was shining.

“Not too far,” Larissa said, stepping on the gas. The car soared forward.

“As far as you want.”

They were gone forty minutes. Maybe forty-five.

“So … what do you think?” He was grinning at her after she slowed down to get on the Interstate. Slowed down to get on the Interstate.

“It’s nice,” she said noncommittally.

“Don’t pretend. Car’s incredible,” Kai said. “Handles beautifully. Has great power.”

She revved up, smoking a Mercedes 550SL in the right lane. “Yes.”

“The XKR goes from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds.”

The snark had gone. Rockets couldn’t be as fast as this. He was right. It was unbelievable. Like nothing she’d ever driven.

“You might not need this much power,” said Kai, as Larissa gripped the leather-clad wheel with her leather-clad hands. “It’s more money than the regular XK. Which is also a very fine car at 300 horsepower, and it may be all the power you need. Did I mention it’s less money?”

“Some salesman you are.” Larissa sped to eighty. Then ninety.

“Slow down, this isn’t Glenside. You don’t want to get a ticket,” Kai said. “I know. I’ve gotten two.”

Reluctantly she slowed down. “How fast were you going?” she asked.

“Buck twenty. The cops weren’t happy. I just went to court for it. Ticket cost me a week’s pay.”

She slowed down some more. “You’re probably right. I don’t need this much power.”

“Right.” He paused. “Though it’s great for getting on the highway. You never have to worry.”

“That’s good, not having to worry,” said Larissa. “I like to not worry. But I never go on the highway. Do I really need a supercharged Jag convertible to drive to Stop&Shop?”

“You tell me,” said Kai.

When they were almost at the dealership parking lot, Larissa was surprised to discover it was after one.

“I have to run,” she said. “But I like it. I like it very much.”

“Yes,” was all he said. “I thought you might.”

She didn’t know what to say next. Does she call him? Does he call her? Does she fill out a sheet with her details on it? Does she shake his hand? Does she say how this is going to end, or say, I’ll talk to my husband, maybe call back in a couple of days. What does she do?

“I’m starved,” he said. “Drive on to Stop&Shop. I’ll buy us some sushi.”

“They sell sushi you can eat at Stop&Shop?” This surprised her.

“It’s not bad. It’s fresh. The sushi chef knows me. Makes me an excellent rainbow roll. You like sushi?”

Larissa didn’t want to say she’d never eaten sushi. She hesitated. “Come,” he said. “We’ll get you a tuna roll. You like avocado and cucumber? You like spicy?”

“It’s the raw fish I have a problem with,” she said to him. “Make it medium well, and I’ll eat it.”

Kai laughed. “Regular stand-up today, aren’t we?”

She parked, and they walked in together through the automatic doors, she first. As it should be, she thought. Age before beauty. In the back of the store, she met Al, a friendly wide bald Japanese man with a thick accent and an even thicker goatee. She didn’t understand him at all, but he and Kai spoke a secret language. Kai asked him for something special, while Al nodded and smiled. “It really is surprisingly good here,” Kai said while they waited. “Good enough for a Maui boy who ate sushi before he drank milk.”

She hurried off to buy some sirloin for dinner.

Kai paid for the sushi, they walked out, and got inside the Jaguar, where he turned up the heat and the radio. “I can’t believe you’ve never had sushi,” he said, opening up her plastic container. “Do you like wasabi?”

“I might if I knew what it was.”

“What about soy sauce? Do you know what that is?”

“Oh, who’s the comedian now?” She watched him skeptically as he used chopsticks to spread a little green paste over one of the sushi balls or rolls or whatever the heck it was, then deftly pick it up with the chopsticks and …

Well, it wasn’t like the sushi was on a fork. He couldn’t hand her the chopsticks. Once embarked on a course of action, they had no choice but to see it through; it was a good thing he was so unselfconscious. He brought the chopsticks with the sushi to her, she leaned forward, and put the whole roll in her mouth.

“Well?” He was excited. “What do you think?”

Her eyes teared up from the spice. “What is that? It’s going right to my nose.”

He laughed. “That’s the wasabi. It’s Japanese horseradish. Good?”

“Well, sure.” She swallowed. “If you think eating Vicks VapoRub is good, then yeah, absolutely.”

He handed her the plastic tray, and she put her own wasabi on the sushi, just a drop, not a teaspoon. It was marginally better. She couldn’t believe she was eating raw fish. Forty years and never once. Now suddenly in a Jag, with chopsticks.

“In Maui,” Kai said, eating happily, drinking his Coke, “there was a place near our apartment where the guy caught the tuna in the morning and made the sushi for me two hours later. It was most outrageous. I lived on tuna morning, noon, and night. Then one day, Charlie, the guy who owned the joint, asked me to go fishing with him, and I got all excited, until we went out in his boat at dawn and I saw the size of the tuna. Mamma mia! I thought tuna were tiny little fish, you know, big enough to fit into a 6-oz can.” He laughed. “But they were like whales! Three times the size of our boat. I said to him, Charlie, you bastard, you tricked me. He was laughing so hard he peed himself. I couldn’t catch a thing, they scared the shit out of me, excuse my French.”

“If you’re expecting plankton and you get whale, yeah, I can see how that might have an impact.”

“But good, right?”

“It’s not bad.”

“There’s a place nearby in Madison, they make really good special roll. Crab, salmon, tuna, avocado, cucumber, and a spicy sauce. Pretty awesome.”

“I bet.” She was busy trying to gingerly carry the large roll between two wooden sticks to her mouth before it fell.

“If you buy the car, I’ll take you there for lunch as a thank you. You’ll love it.”

“Well, you’re very kind. But no thanks will be necessary.”

They sat facing the gravestones and had their sushi out of plastic containers with the car running and the classical jazz station playing Nina Simone singing, “If He Changed my Name.”

“I hope you don’t have ice cream in the back,” he said when they were done eating.

“No ice cream today. Just meat.” Damn, they’d had steak last night. She pulled out of the parking lot. They were a minute away from the dealership. She had to jet. It was after two, and Michelangelo was getting out in a half-hour.

“So you love the car?”

She pulled into the Jag lot, to the front, put the car in park, idled.

“I love it. But I have to go.”

“Come back tomorrow,” Kai said. “I’m here in the morning. I can show you two other models. The flagship of our line, the XJR.”

“Is the flagship a convertible?”

“No, a sedan.”

Larissa pursed her lips. Sedans were so middle-age.

He smiled. “Okay. Only quad tailpipes with polished chrome for you.”

Quad tailpipes? What would Jared think of that? “The heated leather seats might come in handy.”

“Oh, for sure. And the leather is hand-selected.”

“What other kind would I ever want, Mr. Passani?”

“Exactly.” He grabbed the brown paper bag of empty sushi boxes. “But that’s not why you buy a Jag, Miss Stark.”

“No,” she said, “you buy it for the body-colored spoiler and the four tailpipes with bright finishes. And it’s Mrs.”

His smile was wide. “So you’re going to stop by tomorrow?”

For some reason he wasn’t getting out of the car.

“Kai, I really have to run. I’ve got to pick up my son from school.”

Still not moving.

She looked at him. He looked at her. “Um, car’s not yet yours, Mrs. Stark,” he said, keeping the teasing grin away. “Would you like me to walk you to your own vehicle?”

“Oh God!” Larissa flipped off the ignition. “Sorry.” Idiot.

“Feels like yours, though, doesn’t it?” They both got out. He did walk her to the Escalade, even shook her hand gently. “Almost like you already own it.”

Larissa came back the next morning. When he saw her, Kai Cheshire-grinned. She couldn’t help it. She smiled back.

“I don’t want to see another car,” she said. “I want you to show me what colors you have on the one I drove. Besides burl.”

Kai got her a coffee and they sat and talked at his desk, in full view of the rest of the dealership, chatted for an hour about luxury packages and sound options, about the convertible cover, wheel coverings, rich high-gloss burl walnut. She noticed he had a battered paperback on his desk: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Of all the books! “You’re reading that?”

He nodded. “Rereading it. Werther is so wretched and self-pitying, I love it.”

“Well, he is pining. That’s what happens to pining people.”

“Pining and self-pitying,” said Kai. “Such attractive qualities in a man.” He pitched his baritone an octave higher. “‘Oh, why did my greatest joy turn into my greatest misery? Wah.’”

“Mmm.” Larissa tried not to smile. Kai clearly thought he was being clever and amusing. “Then how come all the girls think he is a dashing romantic hero?”

“Who? Not the girl he’s pining for. And in real life, the girls wouldn’t come within a mile of him. Girls hate a whiner.”

“Well,” said Larissa, “perhaps you’re right. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have Werther’s sorrows.” She stared away into his desk. He read. Why did that impress her? She didn’t want him to see that she was impressed; he might find it conde-scending. But reading Werther! Honestly. About a young man who falls desperately in love with a married woman and kills himself when he realizes he will never have her for his own. Blood rushed to her fingertips. Her fingertips blushed!

“So you like to read?” she asked slowly, sharply regretting giving away eight boxes of her unread books.

“Yeah, I inhale books,” he replied. “So much better when you don’t read for school, don’t you think? Everything I read for school I hated. But I can’t hate a book now. I find something to like in all of them.”

“You have a favorite?”

“Nah. I’m on a German run at the moment. I finished, The Tin Drum, then Faust, now this.”

Larissa said nothing.

“Well, you want to take the car out one more time? I want you to be sure.” Kai twirled the key on a ring around his finger.

“I’m pretty sure,” she said. Pause. “Okay, one more time.”

Afterward they got sushi by the cemetery.

That evening Larissa searched and found her old copy of Werther and reread it in one anxious gulp, (why was he reading that?) and the next day went to the bookstore and bought copies of some of the books she had recently donated, making sure they were all distributed among the shelves before Jared came home and had a chance to comment on the oddity of giving away books one week only to buy the same ones again the next.

On Saturday afternoon, Larissa returned with Jared. The dealership was busier than it had been during the week.

Jared and Kai shook hands. Kai seemed taller, if only because of his narrow lanky build. Maybe it was the biker boots he was wearing. Werther had disappeared, replaced with a dogeared Confessions of Felix Krull. Larissa kept her gaze firmly on the desk, and on Jared’s shoulder, or his chin, or the windows outside, on anything but the two men standing in proximity eyeing each other over Kai’s desk.

“Ah,” said Jared, pointing to the book. “Felix Krull, the confidence man. I read that a long time ago. How are you enjoying that?”

“It’s pretty good,” replied Kai. “It’s witty. I especially like Felix’s identification with Hermes, here, of course, in his capacity as the god of thieves.”

“Yes.” Jared studied Kai. Larissa studied the desk. “How does the management feel about you reading a book at the dealership about the god of thieves?”

“Lucky for me,” said Kai, serious, sober, untwinkly, with a short polite nod, “the management is somewhat unfamiliar with the later works of Thomas Mann. Otherwise you’re right, I’d be in real trouble.” He took the keys from the hooks on the wall. “Shall we?”

While Jared test-drove the two-seater convertible with Kai, Larissa remained in Kai’s cubicle, her eyes on Felix Krull, thinking of Werther and his poetic longings, and also about Krull’s shock at discovering how in much of all that he came into contact with, reality was an illusion and illusion reality. Snow was on the ground, they probably wouldn’t go far. It was too slippery to drive fast. Would Kai take Jared to Glenside? She wondered what they would talk about. Would Kai be chatty funny, like he was with her?

They were gone ten minutes. “I like the car,” Jared said to her when he returned. “I love the car.” She jumped up, excited. Kai went behind his desk to take a phone call. Jared pulled her away to the showroom. “Not at all sure about the salesman,” he said quietly. “Has he been giving you the business?”

“No, of course not,” Larissa said, taken aback. “Why would you say that?”

“I dunno. Something about him. A vibe I get.”

“He’s a salesman, Jared,” Larissa said. “This is what they do. They try to sell us something we don’t want at a price we don’t want to pay.”

When he considered her, she said quickly, either misunderstanding him or not wanting to understand, “I do want the car, I do. Pricey, though, huh?”

“Forget that. If he’s such a fine salesman, let me ask you, why didn’t he say a single thing to me?”

“When you say not a thing …”

“I mean not a word. A syllable.”

Larissa quietly chewed her lip. “You mean he didn’t mention the revolutionary aluminum body construction?”

“Oddly, no. And that might’ve been a good thing to mention. If you’re actually trying to sell the damn thing.” Jared stood close. “We can go somewhere else. We don’t have to get it here.” He glanced over at Kai behind the desk.

Larissa tapped Jared to get his attention. “We can. But why? I like the car. Why don’t we talk to Chad, the finance guy? He’s Irish. Let’s see if the numbers add up.”

“Oh, is that synonymous with good business sense, those two things? Irish and finance?”

They were in the middle of the dealership, talking in hushed spousal tones. Jared wasn’t dressed for success today; on Saturdays he was all about the comfortable jeans and sweatshirts. He hadn’t shaved, his hair was shaggy. Larissa wished he were more formal. Might make negotiating easier. She didn’t want Jared to get squeezed. “We can go somewhere else if you want,” she said in a resigned voice.

“You want to?” Why did he sound so hopeful?

“Look, I said from the beginning I didn’t want the car. You’re the one who insisted. Now that I found one I like, you’re getting cold feet. Why put me through that? Just get me a necklace or something. Take me out to dinner.”

His hand went on her arm, on her shoulder. He drew her near. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t need my horse sense here.”

“No, just a little sense.”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“Is it something he said?”

“No! I told you. It’s all the things he didn’t say. He acted like he didn’t even have to sell me on it.”

“And because of that you think he’s giving you the business?”

“Well, why else would he be sitting in that car as if it’s already a done deal?”

“I don’t know, Jared.”

“Revolutionary construction my ass. Okay, let me go try to talk to him. You think maybe he doesn’t speak English? Can’t be that; he was waxing all English major on me with that Felix Krull bullshit. Hermes, the god of thieves. The arrogance.” Jared snorted. “Wait a few minutes, okay?”

“You want me with you? For moral support?”

He squeezed her. “Let me deal with him my own way. I’ll be five minutes.”

Jared returned to Kai’s desk while Larissa sat inside the snow-white sedan on the showroom floor and anxiously played with the controls. But the two men seemed to be actually speaking this time. Kai was measured, extremely still in his body, no twitching, jerking, no gratuitous movement of any kind, not even the drumming on the desk with a pencil. Just his mouth moved. They weren’t five minutes, more like forty-five. Back and forth, Kai getting up, coming back.

“Larissa,” Jared finally called out to her, “what color were you thinking of?”

She slammed shut the white door and walked across the hush-hush cappuccino carpet over to Kai’s metal desk. She liked the sterility of the dealership. Cars were shiny, no dirt, no oil, no exhaust, no fumes, no black smoke. Just a glossy pristine hunk of steel. “I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “I was looking at the green. Also porcelain.”

“You didn’t like the indigo blue in the lot? He says he can give us a discount on it.”

Larissa didn’t like the way Jared said he while referring to the man sitting across the narrow desk from him. Emily Post declared that rather rude. And it wasn’t like Jared; it was out of character for him, the mildest of men. Larissa made a dedicated effort not to glance at Kai to acknowledge either her husband’s incivility, or the familiarity of the topic of the car color between them. For that would imply that she and Kai chatted quite freely, perhaps even had raw fish together while sitting in a parked car listening to Nina Simone. “I would prefer not to have the blue,” she said, her mouth tightening.

Kai and Jared leaned over the desk, studying the colors in the brochure while she stood over them. “What about Winter Gold?” said Kai.

“I was just about to say that,” said Jared. “Winter Gold goes with your coloring, Lar.”

She leaned over to contemplate. The color was darker than porcelain. More metallic ash. It matched her hair color. Gold and taupe blended in alchemy.

“Okay,” she agreed. She didn’t know what it was, but it was true, Kai did not act with Jared in the same friendly and amiable way he acted with her. Jared himself was clipped and cold, and Larissa didn’t know what came first, whether the clipped Jared resulted in the silent Kai, or vice versa, or perhaps simultaneously, but all she knew was that both men behaved as they weren’t, instead of as they were. Which made Larissa wonder if she were behaving as she wasn’t, instead of as she was. Was she more silent herself? Jared was so sharply on guard. This was such a bad idea in hindsight. Getting the car, that is.

“You’re going to have to do better than that on the price,” Jared said stiffly to Kai.

“Look, I’ve gone back and forth three times already. I’m trying to get you the best deal. Your wife likes the car.”

“It’s not about how my wife feels about it. It’s about getting the best deal possible for your customers.”

“Fine. Let me talk to Chad one more time.”

“No.” Jared stood up. “Where is this Chad? I’ll talk to him myself.”

“Be my guest,” said Kai coolly, also getting up. “I’ll take you to him.” He strode out from behind his desk. “Coming?” That was to Larissa.

“Coming?” Jared whispered in an irritated mimic, poking her in the back.

Jared talked to Chad for over an hour negotiating the terms, while Larissa sat and chafed in the adjacent chair. The kids had been alone all day. The whole Saturday. She would barely have enough time to cook dinner before Ezra, Maggie and Dylan came over. Emily must be going nuts. She never liked to be left to babysit, she was always on the phone or the computer. She liked to get paid, just didn’t like to do the work. Poor Michelangelo, the sweet boy alone with that cranky Emily. Dylan should babysit him. He was much nicer. Or even Asher, if he weren’t so easily distractable and liable to forget he even had a little brother in the house.

“Larissa?”

“Oh, what, sorry?” She hadn’t been paying attention. She had been catching, through the semi-private partitions, the desks, the chairs, a glimpse of the tailored white shirt, the pressed jeans, the hand on the phone, the back turned to the dealership, wild hair slicked down.

“Chad wants to know if you’re interested in the advanced technology package?”

“A what?”

“A navigation system.”

“No, thank you.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” She didn’t want to spend a minute thinking about it. She tuned out but after a few minutes something in the conversation between the two men brought her back. Jared was asking Chad about Kai.

“Is he on the up and up?” Jared lowered his voice. “Seems awful young to be selling cars of this caliber.”

“This is what we all thought,” said Chad, also lowering his voice. “He’s new. Still on probation. But he’s impeccable. Punctual, hard-working, never a bit of trouble. And he’s been salesman of the month both months he’s been here.”

“He’s only been here two months!”

“Exactly. And let me tell you, the runner-up sold one car. Kai sold seven.”

“Seven?” Jared whistled. “Seven altogether?”

“No. Seven in one month. Yours will be eight.”

“No …”

“Eight this month, five last month. That’s over a million dollars to this dealership.”

“Wow.” Jared glanced over the cars to the cubicle where Kai stood working the phone, with an expression of surprised and grudging respect, as if for some reason Jared didn’t want Kai to be a successful salesman. “What’s his secret? How does he do it?”

“No one knows. He’s a bit of a loner, keeps to himself. Perhaps he’s got great closing game?” Chad grinned affably at Larissa. “How did he close it with you?”

Larissa shrugged. “He showed me a beautiful car. I was won over. What’s so hard about that?”

“Yeah. It does help that the cars are nice.” Chad pointed to a middle-aged man behind the business office counter. “But Gary over there, our senior salesman, with us twenty years, with us as long as Kai’s been alive, sells the same merchandise. Yet, he can’t move ’em.”

Oh dear God, he was twenty!

“Must be the youth,” said Jared.

Larissa looked down deeply into her lap, her fingertips not flushed this time but draining of blood.

“Must be.” Chad leaned forward. “You know what I think? Kai just won’t take no for an answer. If he sees a potential sale, he will not quit. But he also doesn’t waste time on those who’re just window-shopping. Maybe that’s his gift. He can instantly tell the browsers from the buyers.”

Now Jared shrugged. “He seemed shifty. Like he was trying to get one over on me.”

“He wasn’t, though. You saw. He’s a superb closer. He’s got end game.”

“No, I know. The price was fair. With all those options and packages, I was afraid were we getting snowed.” Which was ironic, for how you can be snowed when the party doing the snowing wasn’t doing any talking? “But Kelley Blue Book said good price. I’m satisfied.” Relaxed, Jared smiled at Larissa.

“It’s a great car, darling,” said Larissa, glancing at her watch, forcing a toothy smile. “What wife wouldn’t want a 420-horsepower Jag convertible?”

They signed off on the terms of the lien, the amount of the down payment, the interest rate, the taxes and delivery charges. Before he left, Jared shook Chad’s hand. He did not seek out Kai, nor seek out his hand to shake. He didn’t even nod in his direction as he was leaving.