“Damn, man,” Brian said.“I get it.Sometimes you just need to nut.”
Brian had minoxidil hair and wore a white shirt and black trousers every day like a fucking mortician.Brian had six kids, all girls, and a wife who picked him up from work every day by pulling up at the service entrance and laying on the horn.The last time Brian had nutted, it had probably been his birthday.
Little Dick poked his head over the cubicle.“Is that a thing with gay guys too?Like, you just need an easy fuck, so even if he’s a fatty, you know?”
A soft chime, barely audible over the air conditioning and the magnified echoes of dozens of tiny sounds, signaled that someone had come through the front door.Jem stood and saw an old man in a saggy sweater.He was looking around, blinking, like he was lost.
“Nope,” Jem said.
“Fuck off,” Little Dick said with a laugh.“You guys will pound anything that moves.”
“I meant, nope, I’m not talking to you about this,” Jem said as he moved out of the cubicle.“I’m going to go sell a car.”
The old man had his phone in his hand, and he was peering at it as he tapped the screen with a trembling hand.
“Good morning,” Jem said, plastering on his best smile.“How can I help you?”
The old man turned, bringing into view a bandage on the side of his head that hadn’t been visible before.“Oh.Hello.Yes, I’m looking for—” He fumbled with the phone again, squinted at the screen, and held it up.“I’m looking for this one.”
It was an Impala—three years old, under thirty thousand miles, and priced a couple thousand below Blue Book.It was a great deal.The perfect affordable sedan.It brought people through the door every day.It was also complete bullshit.
Okay, maybe notcompletebullshit, because there was, technically, a car on the lot with that VIN, and yes, it was even an Impala.Butthatcar had close to ninety thousand miles on it, and it was missing a side mirror and the rear bumper.Thatcar was alwaysin the shop.
But Jem had to say, “Let’s see if we can track that one down,” and then he pulled upHole.ioon his phone and died twice before he made a disappointed sound and said, “I’m so sorry, that car is in our shop right now.But I can show you a few others—something similar, maybe?”
The old man’s bleary eyes didn’t seem entirely focused.“Hmm?”
“It’s in the shop,” Jem said more loudly.“Let me show you what else we have.”
Nodding, the old man said, “I was in an accident.Young guy.On his phone.”He touched the bandage.“They said they couldn’t even use my car for scrap, that’s how bad it was.Nobody’s ever told me that.”
Jem whistled.“Hey, anything you can walk away from, though—right?”
The old man nodded and blinked as he fingered the bandage again.
Instead of looking at a car in the same price range as the bait, Jem steered the old man toward one that was almost twice as much.When the man—Walter—fretted about the price, Jem talked about insurance checks, payment plans, the magical wordaffordability.Just to tilt the scales, Jem showed him two junkers that looked like they’d fall off their wheels before they made it out of the lot—these two around the same price as the magical bait car that would never, ever reappear.
The worst part was how easy it was.Walter wasn’t happy, but he didn’t make it hard, either.He talked a lot, and Jem listened and nodded and answered appropriately.About the accident.About his kids.About his grandkids.None of whom, Jem noticed, could be bothered to help a man who’d just been in a bad car accident buy his next car.More than the car, what Walter really wanted was to tell somebody about it.That was true more often than people realized.In that way, selling cars wasn’t any different from selling anything else.The people did the work for you, if you let them; you just had to stay out of their way.
“It’s a lot more than I wanted to spend,” Walter said, looking at a five-year-old Impala that was a good seven grand higher than what he’d walked in hoping to pay.
“It’s a tough market,” Jem said.“Used cars are in high demand.I’d offer to hold on to this one for you, give you a day or two to decide, but my manager would wring my neck.We can’tkeepcars like this on the lot right now.”
And that did it.
Jem went to type up the paperwork, which meant telling Diane in finance the price they’d settled on.And then he slunk into the breakroom.
He sat at the table.He flipped open the lid on the box of today’s donuts.On the wall, signs stared back at him: DO YOUR PART TO KEEP THE BREAKROOM CLEAN and LIMIT: FOUR PEOPLE IN THE BREAKROOM and YOU ARE VALUED IN THIS WORKPLACE—this last one on a checkerboard background with a smiley face.Jem closed the box of donuts.His stomach hurt.His head hurt.He closed his eyes and tried to rub away the smear left by the fluorescent lights.Get back out there.Tell him his credit came back lower than we thought.Adjust the rate, not the payment amounts, you’ll still be able to afford it, but then add on another six months.Or maybe he’d swing for the fences, see if Walter would even notice that the payments were different from what they’d discussed.Sell another car.And another car.And another car.So he could live in that damn house.
The thought came in sideways, through a door in his head he hadn’t even known was there.
He had his phone in his hand and was placing a call to Tean before he could think about what he was doing.
“What’s up?”Tean asked.“Is everything okay?”
No, Jem almost said.He blinked once, hard, and the fluorescents left tracks across the backs of his eyeballs.
“Yeah.Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out.”Jem stopped.The only thing he could think to say was “I guess I should have texted.”