"And Charlie really gave you the green light?"
"Sure; he kind of shrugged. With you gone he had the new cars to manage, and this whole shipment came in early -"
"Yeah. I saw. That close to the road they'll pick up all the dust."
"- and anyway Charlie's not my boss. We're equals. I told him Mom-mom had thought it was a good idea."
"Oh. You talked to Ma Springer about this?"
"Well not exactly at the time, she was off with you and Mom, but I know she wants me to plug into the lot, so it'll be three generations and all that stuff."
Harry nods. Bessie will back the kid, they're both black-eyed Springers. "O.K., I guess no harm done. How much you pay for this crate?"
"He wanted forty-nine hundred but I jewed him down to forty-two."
"Jesus. That's way over book. Did you look at the book? Do you know what the book is?"
"Dad of course I know what the fucking book is, the point is convertibles don't go by the book, they're like antiques, there's only so many and there won't be any more. They're what they call collectibles."
"You paid forty-two for a '76 TR that cost six new. How many miles on it?"
"A girl drove it, they don't drive a car hard."
"Depends on the girl. Some of these tootsies I see on the road are really pushing. How many miles did you say?"
"Well, it's kind of hard to say; this guy who went to Alaska was trying to fix something under the dashboard and I guess he didn't know which -"
"Oh boy. O.K., let's see if we can unload it for wholesale and chalk it up to experience. I'll call Hornberger in town tomorrow, he still handles TR and MG, maybe he'll take it off our hands as a favor."
Harry realizes why Nelson's short haircut troubles him: it reminds him of how the boy looked back in grade school, before all that late Sixties business soured everything. He didn't know how short he was going to be then, and wanted to become a baseball pitcher like Jim Bunning, and wore a cap all summer that pressed his hair in even tighter to his skull, that bony freckled unsmiling face. Now his necktie and suit seem like that baseball cap to be the costume of doomed hopes. Nelson's eyes brighten as if at the approach of tears. "Take if off our hands for cost? Dad, I know we can sell it, and clear a thousand. And there's two more."
"Two more TRs?"
"Two more convertibles, out back." By now the kid is scared, white in the face so his eyelids and eartips look pink. Rabbit is scared too, he doesn't want any more of this, but things are rolling, the kid has to show him, and he has to react. They walk back along the corridor past the parts department, Nelson leading the way and picking a set of car keys offthe pegboard fastened next to the metal doorframe, and then they let themselves into the great hollow space of the garage, so silent on Sunday, a bare-girdered ballroom with its good warm stink of grease and acetylene. Nelson switches off the burglar alarm and pushes against the crash bar of the back door. Air again. Brewer far across the river, the tip of the tall courthouse with its eagle in concrete relief peeking above the forest of weeds, thistle and poke, at the lot's unvisited edge. This back area is bigger than it should be and always makes Rabbit think somehow of Paraguay. Making a little island of their own on the asphalt, two extinct American convertibles sit: a '72 Mercury Cougar, its top a tattered cream and its body that intense pale scum-color they called Nile Green, and a '74 Olds Delta 88 Royale, in color the purply-red women wore as nail polish in the days of spy movies. They were gallant old boats, Harry has to admit to himself, all that stretched tin and aerodynamical razzmatazz, headed down Main Street straight for a harvest moon with the old accelerator floored. He says, "These are here on spec, or what? I mean, you haven't paid for them yet." He senses that even this is the wrong thing to say.
"They're bought, Dad. They're ours."
"They're mine?"
"They're not yours, they're the company's."
"How the hell'd you work it?"
"What do you mean, how the hell? I just asked Mildred Kroust to write the checks and Charlie told her it was O.K."
"Charlie said it was O.K.?"
"He thought we'd all agreed. Dad, cut it out. It's not such a big deal. That's the idea here, isn't it – buy cars and sell 'em at a profit?"
"Not those crazy cars. How much were they?"
"I bet we make six, seven hundred on the Merc and more on the Olds. Dad, you're too uptight. It's only money. Was I supposed to have any responsibility while you were away, or not?"
"How much?"
"I forget exactly. The Cougar was about two thousand and the Royale, some dealer toward Pottsville that Billy knows had it but I thought we should be able to offer, you know, a selection, it came to I think around two-five."
"Two thousand five hundred dollars."
Just repeating the numbers slowly makes him feel good, in a bad kind ofway. Any debt he ever owed Nelson is being paid back now. He goes at it again. "Two thousand five hundred good American -"
The child almost screams. "We'll get it back, I promise! It's like antiques, it's like gold! You can't lose, Dad."
Harry can't stop adding. "Forty-two hundred for the little chop-clock TR, four thousand five hundred -"
The boy is begging. "Leave me alone, I'll do it myself. I've already put an ad in the paper, they'll be gone in two weeks. I promise."
"You promise. You'll be back in college in two weeks."
"Dad. I won't."
"You won't?"
"I want to quit Kent and stay here and work." This little face all frightened and fierce, so pale his freckles seem to be coming forward and floating on the surface, like flecks in a mirror.
"Jesus, that is all I need," Harry sighs.
Nelson looks at him shocked. He holds up the car keys. His eyes blur, his lower lip is unsteady. "I was going to let you drive the Royale for fun."
Harry says, "Fun. You know how much gas these old hot rods bum? You think people today with gas a dollar a gallon are going to want these eight-cylinder inefficient guzzlers just to feel the wind in their hair? Kid, you're living in a dream world."
"They don't care, Dad. People don't care that much about money anymore, it's all shit anyway. Money is shit."
"Maybe to you but not to me I'll tell you that now. Let's keep calm. Think of the parts. These things sure as hell need some work, the years they've been around. You know what six-, sevenyear-old parts cost these days, when you can get 'em at all? This isnit some fancy place dealing in antiques, we sell Toyotas. Toyotas."
The child shrinks beneath his thunder. "Dad, I won't buy any more, I promise, until these sell. These'll sell, I promise."
"You'll promise me nothing. You'll promise me to keep your nose out of my car business and get your ass back to Ohio. I hate to be the one telling you this, Nelson, but you're a disaster. You've gotta get yourself straightened out and it isn't going to happen here."
He hates what he's saying to the kid, though it's what he feels. He hates it so much he turns his back and tries to get back into the door they came out of but it has locked behind them, as it's supposed to do. He's locked out of his own garage and Nelson has the keys. Rabbit rattles the knob and thumps the metal door with the heel of his hand and even as in a blind scrimmage knees it; the pain balloons and coats the world in red so that though he hears a car motor start up not far away he doesn't connect it to himself until a squeak of rubber and a roar of speed slam metal into metal. That black gnashing cuts through the red. Rabbit turns around and sees Nelson backing off for a second go. Small parts are still settling, tinkling in the sunshine. He thinks the boy might now aim to crush him against the door where he is paralyzed but that is not the case. The Royale rams again into the side of the Mercury, which lifts up on two wheels. The pale green fender collapses enough to explode the headlight; the lens rim flies free.