“Well, we might be back,” Lorna said.
“I’ve no doubt,” I said. I wasn’t in a hurry to deal with her again, so I said, “Just to be sure, you might want to check out the Mitsubishi dealer. And have you seen the new Saturns?”
“No,” Lorna said, suddenly alarmed that she might have overlooked something. “That first one-what was it?”
“Mitsubishi.”
Dell was giving me dagger eyes. I didn’t care. Let Lorna torment some other salespeople for a while. Under normal conditions, I’d have tolerated her indecision. But I hadn’t been myself since Syd went missing.
A few seconds after they’d left the showroom, my desk phone trilled. No reason to get excited. It was an inside line.
I picked up. “Tim here.”
“Got a second?”
“Sure,” I said, and replaced the receiver.
I walked over to the other side of the showroom, winding my way through a display that included a Civic, the Odyssey, a Pilot, and a boxy green Element with the suicide rear doors.
I’d been summoned to the office of Laura Cantrell, sales manager. Mid-forties with the body of a twenty-five-year-old, twice married, single for four years, brown hair, white teeth, very red lips. She drove a silver S2000, the limited-production two-seater Honda sports car that we sold, maybe, a dozen of a year.
“Hey, Tim, sit down,” she said, not getting up from behind her desk. Since she had an actual office, and not a cubicle like the lowly sales staff, I was able to close her door as she’d asked.
I sat down without saying anything. I wasn’t much into small talk these days.
“So how’s it going?” Laura asked.
I nodded. “Okay.”
She nodded her head in the direction of the parking lot, where Lorna and Dell were at this moment getting into their eight-year-old Buick. “Still can’t make up their minds?”
“No,” I said. “You know the story about the donkey standing between two bales of hay that starves because he can’t decide which one to eat first?”
Laura wasn’t interested in fables. “We have a good product. Why can’t you close this one?”
“They’ll be back,” I said resignedly.
Laura leaned back in her swivel chair, folded her arms below her breasts. “So, Tim, any news?”
I knew she was asking about Syd. “No,” I said.
She shook her head sympathetically. “God, it must be rough.”
“It’s hard,” I said.
“Did I ever tell you I was a runaway myself once?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I was sixteen, and my parents were ragging on me about everything. School, my boyfriends, staying out late, you name it, they had a list. So I thought, screw it, I’m outta here, and I took off with this boy named Martin, hitched around the country, saw America, you know?”
“Your parents must have been worried sick.”
Laura Cantrell offered up a “who cares” shrug.
“The point is,” she said, “I was fine. I just needed to find out who I was. Get out from under their thumb. Be my own self. Fly solo, you know? At the end of the day, that’s what matters. Independence.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Look,” she said, leaning forward now, resting her elbows on the desk. I got a whiff of perfume. Expensive, I bet. “Everyone around here is pulling for you. We really are. We can’t imagine what it’s like, going through what you’re going through. Unimaginable. We all want Cindy to come home today.”
“ Sydney,” I said.
“But the thing is, you have to go on, right? You can’t worry about what you don’t know. Chances are, your daughter’s fine. Safe and sound. If you’re lucky, she’s taken along a boyfriend like I did. I know that might not be what you want to hear, but the fact is, if she’s got a young man with her, already she’s a hell of a lot safer. And don’t even worry about the sex thing. Girls today, they’re much savvier about that stuff. They know the score, they know everything about birth control. A hell of a lot more than we did in our day. Well, I was pretty knowledgeable, but most of them, they didn’t have a clue.”
If I’d thought any of this was worth a comment, I might have said something.
“Anyway,” Laura said, “what I’m working up to, Tim, is you’re going to come in this month at the bottom of the board. I mean, unless there’s some sort of miracle in the last week of the month. It’s already the…” She glanced at the wall calendar that showed a Honda Pilot driving over a mound of dirt. “It’s July 23. That’s too late to pull one out of the hat. You haven’t sold a car yet this month. You know how it works around here. At the end of the day, it’s all about selling cars. Two months at the bottom of the board and you’re out.”
“I know how it works,” I said. She’d only said “at the end of the day” twice in this conversation. Most chats, regardless of duration, she managed to get it in three times.
“And believe me, we’re taking into account your situation. I think, honestly, it would take three months at the bottom of the board before you’d be cut loose. I want to be fair here.”
“Sure,” I said.
“The thing is, Tim, you’re taking up a desk. And if you can’t sell cars from it, I have to put someone in there who can. If you were sitting where I am, you’d be saying the same thing.”
“I’ve been here five years,” I said. Ever since my bankruptcy, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. “I’ve been one of the top-if not
“And don’t think we don’t know that,” she said. “So listen, I’m glad we had this chat, you take care, good luck with your daughter, and why don’t you give that couple a call, tell them we can throw in a set of mudguards or something? Pinstriping, hell, you know how this works. At the end of the day, if they think they’re getting something for nothing, they’re happy.”
Bingo.
TWO
I DIDN’T TURN OFF ONTO BRIDGEPORT AVENUE on the way back from work. I usually got off Route 1 there, went half a mile up to Clark, hung a left and drove over the narrow bridge that spans the commuter tracks, hung a left onto Hill, where I’d lived the last five years after Susanne and I sold our mini-mansion, paid off what debts we could with the proceeds, and got much smaller places of our own.
But I kept going up the road until I had reached the Just Inn Time on the right, turned into the lot, and parked. I sat in the car a moment, not sure whether to get out, knowing that I would. Why should today be any different from every other day since Syd vanished?
I got out of my CR-V. I got to drive this little crossover vehicle for free, but if and when Laura canned me I’d be on my own for wheels. Even though it was after six, it was still pretty hot out. You could see waves of humidity coming off the pavement just before Route 1 went under 95 a little farther to the east.
I stood in the lot and scanned as far as I could see in all directions. The HoJo’s was up the street, and beyond that the ramp coming down from the interstate. An old movie theater complex a stone’s throw to the west. Hadn’t we taken Sydney there to see
There were a couple dozen other businesses that, if I couldn’t actually see from standing in the lot here, I could see the signs for them. A video store, a clock repair shop, a fish-and-chips takeout place, a
