"Pining and self-pitying," said Kai. "Such attractive qual ities in a man." He pitched his baritone an octave higher. "*Oh, why did my greatest joy turn into my greatest misery? Wah.""
"Mmm." Larissa tried not to smile. Kai clearly thought he was being clever and amusing. "Then how come all the girls think he is a dashing romantic hero?"
"Who? Not the girl he"s pining for. And in real life, the girls wouldn"t come within a mile of him. Girls hate a whiner."
"Well," said Larissa, "perhaps you"re right. Otherwise, we wouldn"t have Werther"s sorrows." She stared away into his desk. He read. Why did that impress her? She didn"t want him to see that she was impressed; he might find it condescending. But reading Werther! Honestly. About a young man who falls desperately in love with a married woman and kills himself when he realizes he will never have her for his own. Blood rushed to her fingertips. Her fingertips blushed!
"So you like to read?" she asked slowly, sharply regretting giving away eight boxes of her unread books.
"Yeah, I inhale books," he replied. "So much better when you don"t read for school, don"t you think? Everything I read for school I hated. But I can"t hate a book now. I find something to like in all of them."
"You have a favorite?"
"Nah. I"m on a German run at the moment. I finished, The Tin Drum, then Faust, now this."
Larissa said nothing.
"Well, you want to take the car out one more time? I want you to be sure." Kai twirled the key on a ring around his finger.
"I"m pretty sure," she said. Pause. "Okay, one more time."
Afterward they got sushi by the cemetery.
That evening Larissa searched and found her old copy of Werther and reread it in one anxious gulp, (why was he reading that?) and the next day went to the bookstore and bought copies of some of the books she had recently donated, making sure they were all distributed among the shelves before Jared came home and had a chance to comment on the oddity of giving away books one week only to buy the same ones again the next.
On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Larissa returned with Jared. The dealership was busier than it had been during the week.
Jared and Kai shook hands. Kai seemed taller, if only because of his narrow lanky build. Maybe it was the biker boots he was wearing. Werther had disappeared, replaced with a dogeared Confessions of Felix Krull. Larissa kept her gaze firmly on the desk, and on Jared"s shoulder, or his chin, or the windows outside, on anything but the two men standing in proximity eyeing each other over Kai"s desk.
"Ah," said Jared, pointing to the book. "Felix Krull, the confidence man. I read that a long time ago. How are you enjoying that?"
"It"s pretty good," replied Kai. "It"s witty. I especially like Felix"s identification with Hermes, here, of course, in his capacity as the G.o.d of thieves."
"Yes." Jared studied Kai. Larissa studied the desk. "How does the management feel about you reading a book at the dealership about the G.o.d of thieves?"
"Lucky for me," said Kai, serious, sober, untwinkly, with a short polite nod, "the management is somewhat unfamiliar with the later works of Thomas Mann. Otherwise you"re right, I"d be in real trouble." He took the keys from the hooks on the wall. "Shall we?"
While Jared test-drove the two-seater convertible with Kai, Larissa remained in Kai"s cubicle, her eyes on Felix Krull, thinking of Werther and his poetic longings, and also about Krull"s shock at discovering how in much of all that he came into contact with, reality was an illusion and illusion reality. Snow was on the ground, they probably wouldn"t go far. It was too slippery to drive fast. Would Kai take Jared to Glenside? She wondered what they would talk about. Would Kai be chatty funny, like he was with her?
They were gone ten minutes. "I like the car," Jared said to her when he returned. "I love the car." She jumped up, excited. Kai went behind his desk to take a phone call. Jared pulled her away to the showroom. "Not at all sure about the salesman," he said quietly. "Has he been giving you the business?"
"No, of course not," Larissa said, taken aback. "Why would you say that?"
"I dunno. Something about him. A vibe I get."
"He"s a salesman, Jared," Larissa said. "This is what they do. They try to sell us something we don"t want at a price we don"t want to pay."
When he considered her, she said quickly, either misunderstanding him or not wanting to understand, "I do want the car, I do. Pricey, though, huh?"
"Forget that. If he"s such a fine salesman, let me ask you, why didn"t he say a single thing to me?"
"When you say not a thinga"
"I mean not a word. A syllable."
Larissa quietly chewed her lip. "You mean he didn"t mention the revolutionary aluminum body construction?"
"Oddly, no. And that might"ve been a good thing to mention. If you"re actually trying to sell the d.a.m.n thing." Jared stood close. "We can go somewhere else. We don"t have to get it here." He glanced over at Kai behind the desk.
Larissa tapped Jared to get his attention. "We can. But why? I like the car. Why don"t we talk to Chad, the finance guy? He"s Irish. Let"s see if the numbers add up."
"Oh, is that synonymous with good business sense, those two things? Irish and finance?"
They were in the middle of the dealership, talking in hushed spousal tones. Jared wasn"t dressed for success today; on Sat.u.r.days he was all about the comfortable jeans and sweatshirts. He hadn"t shaved, his hair was s.h.a.ggy. Larissa wished he were more formal. Might make negotiating easier. She didn"t want Jared to get squeezed. "We can go somewhere else if you want," she said in a resigned voice.
"You want to?" Why did he sound so hopeful?
"Look, I said from the beginning I didn"t want the car. You"re the one who insisted. Now that I found one I like, you"re getting cold feet. Why put me through that? Just get me a necklace or something. Take me out to dinner."
His hand went on her arm, on her shoulder. He drew her near. "You"re right," he said. "I don"t need my horse sense here."
"No, just a little sense."
"I don"t even know what it is."
"Is it something he said?"
"No! I told you. It"s all the things he didn"t say. He acted like he didn"t even have to sell me on it."
"And because of that you think he"s giving you the business?"
"Well, why else would he be sitting in that car as if it"s already a done deal?"
"I don"t know, Jared."
"Revolutionary construction my a.s.s. Okay, let me go try to talk to him. You think maybe he doesn"t speak English? Can"t be that; he was waxing all English major on me with that Felix Krull bulls.h.i.t. Hermes, the G.o.d of thieves. The arrogance." Jared snorted. "Wait a few minutes, okay?"
"You want me with you? For moral support?"
He squeezed her. "Let me deal with him my own way. I"ll be five minutes."
Jared returned to Kai"s desk while Larissa sat inside the snow-white sedan on the showroom floor and anxiously played with the controls. But the two men seemed to be actually speaking this time. Kai was measured, extremely still in his body, no twitching, jerking, no gratuitous movement of any kind, not even the drumming on the desk with a pencil. Just his mouth moved. They weren"t five minutes, more like forty-five. Back and forth, Kai getting up, coming back.
"Larissa," Jared finally called out to her, "what color were you thinking of?"
She slammed shut the white door and walked across the hush-hush cappuccino carpet over to Kai"s metal desk. She liked the sterility of the dealership. Cars were shiny, no dirt, no oil, no exhaust, no fumes, no black smoke. Just a glossy pristine hunk of steel. "I haven"t decided yet," she said. "I was looking at the green. Also porcelain."
"You didn"t like the indigo blue in the lot? He says he can give us a discount on it."
Larissa didn"t like the way Jared said he while referring to the man sitting across the narrow desk from him. Emily Post declared that rather rude. And it wasn"t like Jared; it was out of character for him, the mildest of men. Larissa made a dedicated effort not to glance at Kai to acknowledge either her husband"s incivility, or the familiarity of the topic of the car color between them. For that would imply that she and Kai chatted quite freely, perhaps even had raw fish together while sitting in a parked car listening to Nina Simone. "I would prefer not to have the blue," she said, her mouth tightening.
Kai and Jared leaned over the desk, studying the colors in the brochure while she stood over them. "What about Winter Gold?" said Kai.
"I was just about to say that," said Jared. "Winter Gold goes with your coloring, Lar."
She leaned over to contemplate. The color was darker than porcelain. More metallic ash. It matched her hair color. Gold and taupe blended in alchemy.
"Okay," she agreed. She didn"t know what it was, but it was true, Kai did not act with Jared in the same friendly and amiable way he acted with her. Jared himself was clipped and cold, and Larissa didn"t know what came first, whether the clipped Jared resulted in the silent Kai, or vice versa, or perhaps simultaneously, but all she knew was that both men behaved as they weren"t, instead of as they were. Which made Larissa wonder if she were behaving as she wasn"t, instead of as she was. Was she more silent herself? Jared was so sharply on guard. This was such a bad idea in hindsight. Getting the car, that is.
"You"re going to have to do better than that on the price," Jared said stiffly to Kai.
"Look, I"ve gone back and forth three times already. I"m trying to get you the best deal. Your wife likes the car."
"It"s not about how my wife feels about it. It"s about getting the best deal possible for your customers."
"Fine. Let me talk to Chad one more time."
"No." Jared stood up. "Where is this Chad? I"ll talk to him myself."
"Be my guest," said Kai coolly, also getting up. "I"ll take you to him." He strode out from behind his desk. "Coming?" That was to Larissa.
"Coming?" Jared whispered in an irritated mimic, poking her in the back.
Jared talked to Chad for over an hour negotiating the terms, while Larissa sat and chafed in the adjacent chair. The kids had been alone all day. The whole Sat.u.r.day. She would barely have enough time to cook dinner before Ezra, Maggie and Dylan came over. Emily must be going nuts. She never liked to be left to babysit, she was always on the phone or the computer. She liked to get paid, just didn"t like to do the work. Poor Michelangelo, the sweet boy alone with that cranky Emily. Dylan should babysit him. He was much nicer. Or even Asher, if he weren"t so easily distractable and liable to forget he even had a little brother in the house.
"Larissa?"
"Oh, what, sorry?" She hadn"t been paying attention. She had been catching, through the semi-private part.i.tions, the desks, the chairs, a glimpse of the tailored white shirt, the pressed jeans, the hand on the phone, the back turned to the dealership, wild hair slicked down.
"Chad wants to know if you"re interested in the advanced technology package?"
"A what?"
"A navigation system."
"No, thank you."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely." She didn"t want to spend a minute thinking about it. She tuned out but after a few minutes something in the conversation between the two men brought her back. Jared was asking Chad about Kai.
"Is he on the up and up?" Jared lowered his voice. "Seems awful young to be selling cars of this caliber."
"This is what we all thought," said Chad, also lowering his voice. "He"s new. Still on probation. But he"s impeccable. Punctual, hard-working, never a bit of trouble. And he"s been salesman of the month both months he"s been here."
"He"s only been here two months!"
"Exactly. And let me tell you, the runner-up sold one car. Kai sold seven."
"Seven?" Jared whistled. "Seven altogether?"
"No. Seven in one month. Yours will be eight."
"Noa"
"Eight this month, five last month. That"s over a million dollars to this dealership."
"Wow." Jared glanced over the cars to the cubicle where Kai stood working the phone, with an expression of surprised and grudging respect, as if for some reason Jared didn"t want Kai to be a successful salesman. "What"s his secret? How does he do it?"
"No one knows. He"s a bit of a loner, keeps to himself. Perhaps he"s got great closing game?" Chad grinned affably at Larissa. "How did he close it with you?"
Larissa shrugged. "He showed me a beautiful car. I was won over. What"s so hard about that?"
"Yeah. It does help that the cars are nice." Chad pointed to a middle-aged man behind the business office counter. "But Gary over there, our senior salesman, with us twenty years, with us as long as Kai"s been alive, sells the same merchandise. Yet, he can"t move *em."
Oh dear G.o.d, he was twenty!
"Must be the youth," said Jared.
Larissa looked down deeply into her lap, her fingertips not flushed this time but draining of blood.
"Must be." Chad leaned forward. "You know what I think? Kai just won"t take no for an answer. If he sees a potential sale, he will not quit. But he also doesn"t waste time on those who"re just window-shopping. Maybe that"s his gift. He can instantly tell the browsers from the buyers."
Now Jared shrugged. "He seemed shifty. Like he was trying to get one over on me."
"He wasn"t, though. You saw. He"s a superb closer. He"s got end game."
"No, I know. The price was fair. With all those options and packages, I was afraid were we getting snowed." Which was ironic, for how you can be snowed when the party doing the snowing wasn"t doing any talking? "But Kelley Blue Book said good price. I"m satisfied." Relaxed, Jared smiled at Larissa.
"It"s a great car, darling," said Larissa, glancing at her watch, forcing a toothy smile. "What wife wouldn"t want a 420-horse-power Jag convertible?"
They signed off on the terms of the lien, the amount of the down payment, the interest rate, the taxes and delivery charges. Before he left, Jared shook Chad"s hand. He did not seek out Kai, nor seek out his hand to shake. He didn"t even nod in his direction as he was leaving.
2.
Winter Gold