Folded In A Triangle

"In the spring you told me my hands were too old for the new cars," Clem said to Brent. "They finished your big deal this morning."

Howard was still waiting for my answer. So was the whole floor.

"Don't fire him," I said.

Brent's head came up.

"An hour ago I was a con man in a rusted truck," I told Howard. "Now everybody on this floor wants him fired for my sake. Same scale he used, pointed the other way. What he did at 1:47 is what he answers for."

"And what does that get him?"

"A keyboard." I turned to Brent. "Put her name back. Yourself."

He sat down at Ivy's desk. Nobody helped him. He reopened the deal, deleted HARLOW, and typed ALBRIGHT one letter at a time while his whole floor watched.

"Now Clem," I said.

Brent stood and faced the old man. It took him a while. "Mr. Haverty, I moved you to the used lot because I didn't want customers seeing a man your age wiping down the new cars. That was wrong. I'm sorry."

Clem studied him. Then his gaze went to the wastebasket beside Ivy's desk, where his towel still lay, and back to Brent. He said nothing.

The Pembertons put their phones away.

Howard took Brent off the manager's desk before the day was out. I didn't ask him to, and I didn't ask him not to. Before I left, I wrote a job title and a salary on the back of my business card and set it on Ivy's keyboard. Treadwell Truck and Auto opens its first Colorado store in Aurora in November, and I needed a finance manager who won't log out when her boss tells her to.

Brent heard all of it. "Is there one of those for me?" he asked, very quietly. "I'm not asking for a desk."

"Floor job. Bottom rung," I said. "Ninety days probation."

"You'd put me on your own floor?"

"A man once gave me a warm van when he could have called the police. I'm told it works out sometimes."

He nodded. "I'll count the days."

The next morning I pulled onto the lot at seven. Clem was already out on the wash pad with a hose running, and he waved my pickup in before I could park her anywhere else. The convertible sat on the delivery drive where the porters had left it for him. He did not so much as glance at it.

"Her first," he said. "She earned it."

He washed her roof to rocker while I leaned on the fender. Somewhere around the tailgate he asked me how many lots I had now.

"Five, come November."

"You keep a van unlocked on any of them?"

"All of them," I said. "One van on every lot, heater working, door open. My managers think I've lost my mind."

He wrung out his chamois and looked across at the row of trade-ins for a while. "Now they'll know why."

Then the showroom door opened, and Brent walked out with something red in his hand. He had gone back after closing, fished the towel out of Ivy's wastebasket and run it through the wash-bay machine. It was folded into a triangle, a little lopsided. Not bad for a first try.

"Figured this was yours," he said, and held it out to Clem. "And I asked Howard to put you back in the new-car bay. You're on Monday's schedule, if you want it."

Clem took the towel and looked at the lopsided fold. "Corner goes under first."

Ivy was watching from the doorway, grinning.

Clem walked over to the white convertible. For thirty-one years he had laid a folded red towel on the seat of every car he finished, for somebody else to find. He laid this one down the same way, smoothed it once, and sat on it.

I got in beside him. He started the engine and looked over at me.

"Top down, Ro," he said.

And Clem Haverty drove off that lane in a car whose owner line finally had his name on it.