Premium Luxury Platinum, the long-wheelbase model, every option checked. Its sticker was taped inside the rear passenger window, and the total at the bottom had six figures in it. Tyler walked the deck at five-fifteen with a clipboard under one arm and a key fob in each hand, checking. He liked the deck. He liked the way it sounded under his dress shoes, a solid wooden knock with every step. He liked the way you could stand up there and look out over the whole lot and the frontage road and, beyond it, the long flat sweep of the plains rolling off toward the horizon under that huge sky. It made him feel like a man on the bridge of a ship. " Luis! " A young man in a navy work polo with RIDGELINE CADILLAC stitched on the breast came around the end of the building at a half-jog. Luis Ortega was twenty-two and had been a lot porter at Ridgeline for eight months, which meant he washed the cars, moved the cars, fueled the cars, vacuumed the cars, and stood beside the cars holding things for salesmen while the salesmen talked. He was slim and quick, with a careful haircut and a face that was always about to smile. He wanted, very badly, to be a salesman. Everybody knew it. He had been studying for the state license on his lunch breaks with a battered paperback guide propped against the napkin dispenser in the break room. " Yes, sir. " " The Platinum. Kessling's car. I want it washed again. " " I washed it at four. " " I know. Wash it again. Look at it. " Tyler pointed. A fine haze of red dust had already settled on the black hood, faint as breath on a mirror. " This wind. By six-thirty it'll look like it's been driven to Amarillo. " " If I wash it now, sir, it'll look like that again by six. " " Then wash it at six. " Luis looked at the sky, at the flags, at the long red veil of dust moving across the field beyond the frontage road. He opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it and said, " Yes, sir. Six o'clock. " " And leave it running after. AC on high. And go get one of those glass waters from the fridge in Dale's office. " " Mr. Harmon's fridge? " " He won't mind. It's for Kessling. " Luis hesitated just long enough to make it clear that Mr. Harmon would, in fact, mind. Then he said, " Yes, sir," again and went. Tyler watched him go. He liked Luis, more or less. The kid worked hard. But there was something about him that set Tyler's teeth faintly on edge, some quality of patience or friendliness, a way of talking to customers on the lot — even the ones who were obviously never going to buy anything — as if he had all the time in the world. Tyler had seen him spend twenty minutes once explaining the infotainment system to an old woman who had come in to get her late husband's car serviced and had no intention of ever buying anything. Twenty minutes. On the clock. Tyler had said something to him about it afterward, and Luis had just looked at him with that half-smile and said, " She seemed lonely," and gone back to work. That was the thing about Luis. He thought the job was about people. Tyler had thought that too, once, his first year. Then he had learned the truth, which was that the job was about time. You had a certain amount of it, and every minute you spent with somebody who was not going to buy a car was a minute you were not spending with somebody who was. People were not the job. People were the weather the job happened in.
He checked his phone. Five-nineteen. Two units. Fifty-four hours and forty-one minutes.
The rest of the dealership went on around him. Inside the service bay at the north end of the building, three technicians in gray coveralls were working on a customer's CT5 that had come in with a transmission warning, and the sound of an impact wrench came in short bursts through the open bay door, brrrrap, brrrrap, and then a radio playing old country, Merle Haggard, half-drowned by the wind. A detailer named Marcus was on his knees at the edge of the deck with a rag and a spray bottle, working on the chrome of a wheel that already shone like a mirror. Two salesmen Tyler did not like very much — Brent and Josh, who sat at the desks on either side of his and talked about fantasy football all day — were standing in the shade by the showroom door, drinking coffee and watching a young couple with a baby stroller walk the used lot. " Lookers," Brent said, as Tyler came past. " Could be buyers. " " Stroller's from Walmart," Josh said. " Diaper bag's from Walmart. Shoes are Skechers. They're looking at the 2019 XT5 with ninety thousand miles. They're gonna ask what the monthly is, you're gonna tell 'em, they're gonna say they need to think about it, and you're never gonna see them again. " He sipped his coffee. " You want 'em, they're yours. " Tyler looked at the young couple. The man was in a sweat-stained ball cap and work boots. The woman was holding the baby on her hip and pointing at the car's back seat, measuring something with her hand. Josh was right. Tyler could see it from here. You learned to see it. It was the first thing you learned. You learned to read the shoes and the watch and the phone and the keys and the