from the west, so that for a second, from where Tyler stood, he was only a dark shape, a silhouette with light pouring around its edges. Then he started up the steps. Tyler put his phone in his pocket. He tucked the clipboard under his left arm and took the two key fobs in his left hand, and he walked toward the head of the steps — not fast, not slow — and he felt his face settle into the expression he wore for people like this, which was polite, and friendly, and completely closed. It was a door with a smile painted on it. Behind him, at the far end of the deck, the detailer Marcus looked up from the wheel he was polishing. In the open service bay, the radio was playing Merle Haggard. Down on the lot, Luis Ortega had stopped walking, with a glass bottle in each hand and an empty plastic one tucked under his arm, and was standing perfectly still, watching. The wind came across the deck in a long gust. Every flag on the lot cracked at once. And the old man's boot came down on the first plank of the deck, solid, with a hollow wooden knock, and he stood there at the top of the steps for a moment, catching his breath, in the full force of the wind and the light. He brushed a little more dust off the front of his vest with the back of his hand. Then he looked up and saw the salesman coming.
" Afternoon," the old man said. Then he looked at the sky, at the long gold slant of the light, and corrected himself. " Evening, I guess. " " Evening, sir. " Tyler had stopped about six feet from the top of the steps. It was a distance he had arrived at over three years without ever quite deciding on it: close enough to be polite, far enough that the customer would have to come to him, and squarely in the middle of the deck, so that the long row of black Escalades stood behind him like a wall he was guarding. The wind came across the planks between them and flattened the cuffs of the old man's jeans against his boots and tugged at the hem of Tyler's suit jacket.
The old man did not come to him. He just stood at the top of the steps and looked past Tyler at the cars. " Those are something," he said. " They sure are. " " Bigger than I figured. I've seen 'em on the road, but you don't really see 'em on the road. You see 'em go by. " He took a step forward onto the deck, and then another, his boots knocking on the dark wood, his eyes still on the Escalades. " I'd like to have a look, if you don't mind. " Tyler did not move. He did not decide not to move. That was what he would tell himself later, lying awake at three o'clock in the morning with Kayla asleep beside him. He would tell himself that he had not decided anything, that it had just happened, that his body had done it before his mind caught up. But that was not quite true either. His mind had caught up a long time ago. It had caught up somewhere back on the lot, when the old Ford with the bungee cord on its tailgate had rolled in at five miles an hour and parked across two spaces. It had been waiting for him ever since. The old man took a third step, toward the end of the row, toward the long black flank of the ESV Platinum, Kessling's car, with its six-figure sticker in the window. And Tyler stepped sideways into his path, smooth and easy, and lifted his right hand. He did not touch the old man. He would remember that, too, later, and hold on to it as if it mattered. He did not touch him. He just put up his hand, flat, palm out, between the old man and the cars, at the height of the old man's chest — the gesture a crossing guard makes at a corner, the gesture that says not you, not here, not now. In his other hand, the left, he held the clipboard and the two key fobs together, pressed against his side, the fobs dangling from his fingers by their leather loops and swinging in the wind. The sunlight caught the chrome Cadillac crests on them and threw two small points of light across the deck. And he shook his head. Not once, but over and over, a quick, tight, impatient side-to-side, the way you shake your head at a dog that has gotten into the trash. He did it without thinking. His face had a smile on it still, sort of, but the smile had slid, and underneath it something sour and tired was showing through. He looked the old man up and down. He did not even try to hide it. The cap. The vest with its torn pocket and its green thread. The red dirt on the knee of the jeans. The boots. And then he let out a breath through his nose, short and dry, a sound that was not quite a laugh and was not quite anything else either. " Let's be honest, you can't afford anything in here. " The wind took the words and flung them down the length of the deck. Somewhere behind Tyler, a flag snapped, loud, like a whip. Then another. The long row of triangular pennants strung over the used lot flickered and chattered in a rising gust, and the big flag at the corner of the lot went whump — whump — whump against the sky. From the service bay, faintly, came the sound of Merle Haggard singing about a working man. Tyler heard himself say it. He heard how it sounded. And for half a second, maybe less, some small voice in the back of his head said that was too much, and he almost walked it back — almost said I mean, these are pretty high-end, sir, you might want to look at the pre-owned — the soft way, the way Craig had taught him to turn people around without them ever knowing they had been turned. But then he thought about the text from Brianna. Eight-thirty. Full dark. He thought about Craig in the Fishbowl. He thought about two units, and fifty-four hours, and Kayla's listings, and the house on Larkspur Drive