Derek looked at her. At her grandfather's stubborn jaw. At the gold B on the door of the car behind her.
"The showroom's around the front," he heard himself say. "Through that gate. Along the side of the building. You'll see the doors." He swallowed. "I can walk you, if you want. It's slippery."
She looked at him more closely then. He saw her take him in. The navy suit, the red tie, the brass name tag on his pocket. The slicked-back hair, a little disarranged now where he had run his hands through it. His face, which he knew must look terrible.
"You're Derek Lawson," she said.
It was not a question. He did not know how she knew. Then he realized that her grandfather must have texted her. Must have told her. Everything. Of course he had.
"Yes," he said.
Nia Booker looked at him for a long moment through the open window, in the rain, with her briefcase in her hand and her phone in the other. He waited for her to say something. He waited for the anger, the contempt, the cold precise destruction that he could see she was more than capable of. He would have deserved it. He would almost have welcomed it.
She did not say anything like that.
"He told me you looked like a man who was about to lose his job," she said finally. "He said you looked scared to death."
Derek did not answer.
"He said you pointed at him." Her voice was very level. "Right in his face."
"Yes."
"Do you know how many times somebody's done that to him? In his life?"
"No."
"Neither do I. He's never told me. He's never told anyone. But I've seen it happen four times. Just the times I was there. Since I was six years old." She paused. "He's never once raised his voice back. Not once. I used to think it was because he was afraid. When I was little. I used to be so angry at him for not fighting back. And then I got older and I realized he wasn't afraid at all. He just didn't think it was worth it. He said anger is heavy. He said you only have so much room in your arms." She looked down at the phone in her hand. "I've never been as good at that as he is."
Derek sat in his car and looked at her and could not think of anything to say.
"I'm going to go inside now," said Nia Booker. "I'm going to sign some papers and buy twenty cars from a twenty-four-year-old who's sold one car in his life, because that's what my grandfather wants, and I've learned that my grandfather is almost always right about people. I'm not going to say anything to you. He asked me not to." She turned to go. Then she turned back. "But I want you to know something, Mr. Lawson. He chose your dealership for a reason. My grandmother used to get her hair done two blocks from here. Every other Saturday for twenty years. He used to sit across the street in his car and wait for her. And watch this place. He's been watching how you treat people for fifteen years." She paused. "He told me this morning he wanted to see what kind of people you had working here these days. I guess now he knows."
She walked away through the gate, along the side of the building, in the rain, in her gray trench coat, her heels clicking on the wet concrete, and did not look back.
Derek closed the window.
He sat there for another hour.
At ten past one, Rick Halloran came out of the back door of the service bay with an umbrella and walked across the employee lot and knocked on the passenger window of Derek's car, and Derek unlocked the door, and Rick folded his umbrella and got in and sat down heavily in the passenger seat, on top of Derek's phone, and swore, and pulled it out from under him, and put it on the dashboard. Then he sat there for a while, looking at the sign on the service bay wall, breathing through his nose.
"Twenty units," he said at last. "Two point six million. Wired. Cleared. Done. Biggest single sale in the history of this dealership. Biggest single sale in the history of the regional group, I think. Corporate's sending somebody down from Detroit to take a picture." He shook his head. "To take a picture of Eli Brooks. Five weeks on the job. One car. To his aunt."
Derek said nothing.
"I want to fire you, Derek," said Rick Halloran. He said it the way he said everything, mildly, without heat. "I want you to know that. I've wanted to fire you since about ten-fifty-five this morning. I've been in this business thirty-four years and I have never, ever, seen a salesman do anything as stupid as what you did on my floor today. Never. Not even close." He paused. "I went into my office and I picked up the phone and I was going to call HR. I had my finger on the button."