The first thing Amos noticed about Ridgeline Cadillac was the flags. He stood beside his truck in the wind with one hand on the hot dusty fender and looked at them. There were a great many of them. They were all moving at once, cracking and snapping and rippling, white and red and blue, and the big one at the corner of the lot was making a sound like somebody beating a rug. It seemed to him a great deal of noise for a place that sold cars. Vernon's lot had had one flag, on a pole made out of a length of drill pipe, and a hand-painted sign that said HARMON'S — GOOD USED CARS — FAIR DEALS, and that was all the advertising Vernon had ever done. The second thing he noticed was the deck. It ran along the side of the big glass building, raised up off the ground, with a wide set of wooden steps leading up from the lot. And on it, in a long straight row, were seven black Escalades. He looked at them for a long time. They were enormous. Bigger than he had expected. He had seen pictures, of course — Nora had shown him the website on her laptop at the kitchen table, scrolling through colors and trims and options with her reading glasses on, saying things like Grandpa, this one has massaging seats, and Grandpa, this one has a refrigerator in the console, until he had put his hand over the screen and said, " Black. That's all they asked for. Black. " But the pictures had not prepared him for the size of the things, or for the color. The black did not look like paint. It looked like deep water at night. The late sun ran along their flanks and pooled in their chrome and could not find a single flaw anywhere to stop on. He thought about the bank president's car. That black Sedan de Ville, 1985, parked crooked in the handicapped space in front of the First National Bank of Enid every Monday morning. It had seemed to him then like the most beautiful and most hateful thing he had ever seen. These made it look like a toy. He thought: Hank would have liked these. Hank would have walked right up and kicked the tires. He brushed the front of his vest again, uselessly, and started across the lot.
He was perhaps halfway to the deck steps when a young man came around the corner of the building with a glass bottle of water in each hand and nearly walked into him. " Oh — sorry, sir. Sorry. I didn't see you. " " No harm done. " The young man was slim and dark-haired, in a navy polo shirt with the dealership's name on it, and he had stopped short with the bottles held out at his sides like a waiter. They were fancy bottles, tall and clear, with blue labels in a language Amos did not recognize. One of them was beaded with cold. " You looking for somebody, sir? Service is around the other side, if you've got an appointment. The entrance is by the big bay door. " " I'm not here for service. " " Oh. " The young man looked at him — a quick look, up and down, the work boots and the jeans and the sale-barn dust and the mended vest and the cap — and Amos waited for the thing that usually happened next, the little flicker behind the eyes, the decision. He had been watching for that flicker his whole life. He could see it in a person's face a full second before they knew it was there themselves. It did not come. The young man just nodded and said, " Okay. Well, it's hot out here, and that wind's no joke. You want some water? " He held out one of the fancy bottles. Then he seemed to remember something, and hesitated, and pulled it back. " Actually, hang on, not this one. This is for a customer. Let me —" He set both glass bottles carefully down on the hood of a nearby used Escalade, ducked around a corner, and came back a few seconds later with a plain plastic bottle from a cooler, sweating with ice-melt. " Here you go. This one's better anyway. That other stuff tastes like it came out of a rock. "
Amos took it. It was very cold. He had not realized how thirsty he was. He cracked the cap and drank half of it in one long pull, standing there in the wind, and the young man waited, not hurrying him. " Thank you, son. " " No problem. " " What's your name? " " Luis, sir. Luis Ortega. " " Amos. " He held out his hand, and Luis shook it. Amos noticed the young man's grip — firm, a little damp from the cold bottles, the palm already callused across the top from steering wheels and buffers. He noticed, too, the battered paperback book sticking out of Luis's back pocket, folded open on itself, the cover half torn off. Oklahoma Motor Vehicle Commission — Salesperson License Examination Guide. " You sell cars, Luis? " Luis glanced down at the book and laughed a little, embarrassed. " Not yet. I'm a porter. I wash 'em and move 'em. I'm studying for the license. Test's in three weeks. " " You going to pass? " " I'm going to try. " " That's not what I asked. " Luis looked at him. Something in the old man's voice had changed, become sharper, and for a second Luis did not know how to answer. Then he straightened a little and said, " Yes, sir. I'm going to pass. " " Good. " Amos took another long drink of water. " Those black ones up there. The big ones. Who sells those? " " The Escalades? Mr. Brooks. " Luis tipped his head toward the deck. " Tyler Brooks. He's up there right now. He's got a big appointment at six-thirty, so he's kind of — he's kind of busy this afternoon. But I can let him know you want to look, if you want. " " I'll let him know myself. " " Okay. " Luis looked like he wanted to say something else. He glanced up at the deck, where a man in a gray suit