He tried to make it into something else. He tried very hard. He told himself he had been under pressure. That anyone would have snapped. That the old man had been sitting at his desk without an appointment, in the chair meant for his eleven o'clock. That the old man had dressed like that on purpose, to trap him, to make a fool of him, the way the man in the three-piece suit had made a fool of him the week before, only in reverse. That it was a setup. That it was not fair.
None of it worked. Every time he got close to believing it, he saw the old man's face. The small calm smile beneath the gray beard. The patient eyes. I didn't ask what you think I can afford.
He hadn't asked. That was the thing. He had not asked a single question. Not one. Not can I help you, not what brings you in today, not what are you looking for. He had looked at the beret and the loafers and the bare ankles and decided. In one second and a half. The way he had decided about the couple in sweatpants, and the surgeon in scrubs, and a thousand other people over twelve years. He had decided, and then he had stopped looking.
Read the lot, he thought, and it tasted like ashes.
He took out his phone. He did not know why. He scrolled to his daughter's name. Lily. It was eleven-forty on a Tuesday, she was in school, in fourth grade, in a classroom in Naperville with a teacher named Mrs. Ochoa whom Lily said was the nicest teacher in the whole world. He could not call her. He did not know what he would have said if he could. He looked at her picture, which was the one from her ninth birthday, her face covered in chocolate cake, grinning, missing a tooth. And he thought, for no reason he could understand, about the last time she had stayed with him, two weekends ago, and how she had stood in the doorway of the little rented house and looked around at the living room with its one couch and its television on a cardboard box and said, Daddy, why is your house so small? And how he had said, because I'm saving up for a big one, sweetie, and she had said, okay, and then, after a minute, it's nice, though. I like it. It's cozy. And how he had gone into the bathroom and run the tap so she would not hear him not crying.
He was thirty-eight years old and he had eleven hundred and forty dollars and he had just pointed his finger in the face of the most successful Black businessman in Chicago and told him he could not afford a car.
He put the phone face down on the passenger seat and put his forehead on the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
At four minutes past twelve, a dark blue SUV with the small gold B on its rear door pulled into the space beside him.
He heard it. He lifted his head. He saw it through the rain-streaked side window, the gold letter on the door, and his stomach turned over. He watched the driver's door open and a young woman get out. Tall, thirty or so, in a dark gray trench coat with the collar turned up against the rain, sharp-featured, with her hair pulled back tight, carrying a black leather briefcase in one hand and a laptop bag over her shoulder and a phone pressed to her ear. She was talking fast. He could hear her through the glass. No, I have the confirmation number. I have it right here. It cleared at eleven-fifty. Two point six one million. Tell him to check again.
She turned toward the dealership, still talking, and then stopped, and looked around the employee lot, and frowned. She had parked in the wrong lot. The customer lot was on the other side of the building. She looked at the back wall of the service bay with its hose and its sign. She looked at Derek, sitting in his car.
She tapped on his window.
He stared at her for a second. Then he pressed the button and the window slid down, letting in the cold damp air and the sound of the rain.
"Sorry to bother you," she said, lowering the phone. "Do you work here? I think I came in the wrong way. I'm looking for the showroom. My grandfather's inside. Calvin Booker."