the black sports car, the one nobody was ever going to buy, and instead of telling them to stop touching it he asked them what they knew about it, and it turned out they knew more than he did, and he spent forty minutes with them on the showroom floor talking about horsepower and torque and zero-to-sixty times, and they did not buy anything, of course, they were sixteen, and on their way out one of them said, thanks, mister, nobody ever talks to us in these places, and Derek said, come back when you're thirty and buy it, and they laughed. He went out to an old man in a golf cap and a cardigan who came in on a slow Thursday afternoon and sat down in the leather armchair beside Derek's desk, and Derek went over to him and said, good afternoon, sir, my name's Derek, can I ask your name? And the old man said his name was Walter. And Derek asked Walter what brought him in today. And Walter said, honestly, son? I just like to look at the cars. My wife and I used to come in and look at them every Sunday after church. She passed in March. And Derek sat down in the other armchair and listened to Walter talk about his wife for an hour and ten minutes, and Walter did not buy a car, and when he left he shook Derek's hand for a long time, and Derek went back to his desk and found that he did not feel he had wasted his time at all.
On the thirtieth, he was nine thousand dollars short of his target.
He went into Rick Halloran's office at five o'clock and sat down in the chair across the desk without being asked and said, I'm short, Rick. Nine grand. I'm not going to make it. I know what that means.
Rick looked at him over the top of his reading glasses for a long moment.
Then he took a sheet of paper from the corner of his desk and slid it across.
It was a printout of an email. From Calvin Booker, to Rick Halloran, with Nia Booker copied. It was very short. It said that Booker Executive Transportation had been extremely satisfied with the preparation of the first fifteen vehicles in its recent fleet purchase, which had arrived in what their head of maintenance described as better condition than any new vehicle he had received from any dealer in thirty years. It said that the company would be in the market for an additional twelve vehicles for its airport division in the spring, and would be happy to discuss them with Prestige Cadillac. And it said, in a final line, that Mr. Booker would appreciate it if the general manager would pass along his particular thanks to Mr. Lawson, whose personal attention to the vehicles had been noted.
Derek read it twice.
"That's not a sale," Rick Halloran said. "It's not on the board. It doesn't count toward your target. It doesn't count toward anything." He took off his glasses and folded them. "But I've been in this business thirty-four years, Derek, and I know the difference between a salesman who's in the rough and a salesman who's lost his swing. And you're not either one anymore. I don't know what you are." He set the glasses down. "Go home. See your kid. We'll talk about the target next month."
Derek went home. He did not see his kid that night; it was not his weekend. But he called her. And for the first time in a long time, when she asked him how his day was, he told her the truth.
* * *
The eighteenth was a Saturday. It was clear and cold and bright, the first real day of autumn, with a high blue sky and a wind off the lake that made the flags on the light poles snap.
The Booker Executive Transportation garage on Western Avenue took up most of a city block. It was an old building, red brick, three stories, that had once been a commercial bakery, and the words FREIHOFER'S FINE BREADS were still faintly visible in white paint high up on its side, beneath the newer sign, black with gold letters, BOOKER. The ground floor was one enormous open garage, with concrete floors painted gray and swept clean, and tall arched windows along both sides that let in the light, and rows and rows of black cars parked in perfect lines, sedans and SUVs and stretch limousines and a single vintage hearse, every one of them black, every one of them polished until it shone, every one of them with a small, discreet gold B on its rear door.