you to show me what colors you have on the one I drove. Besides burl.”
Kai got her a coffee and they sat and talked at his desk, in full view of the rest of the dealership, chatted for an hour about luxury packages and sound options, about the convertible cover, wheel coverings, rich high-gloss burl walnut. She noticed he had a battered paperback on his desk: The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Of all the books! “You’re reading that?”
He nodded. “Rereading it. Werther is so wretched and self-pitying, I love it.”
“Well, he is pining. That’s what happens to pining people.”
“Pining and self-pitying,” said Kai. “Such attractive qualities 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 conde-scending. 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 Saturday 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 god 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 god 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 thing …”
“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 damn 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 Saturdays he was all about the comfortable jeans and sweatshirts. He hadn’t shaved, his hair was shaggy. 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?”