CHAPTER THREE

"As you can see here, sir, its mileage is actually above what the EPA recommends for bikes and cars. I don't mean to overstate things but," she lowered her voice. "If Al Gore were a biker, this is what he would ride."

 

The customer's eyes widened. "Is that so?"

 

Just as Ruby reached for the spec sheet to prove it to him, her eyes chanced over to a nearby desk. Instead of fixing on the spreadsheet he was innocently scrolling through, the glacier-blue eyes of her boss, Fox Keene, caught and held hers. She swallowed and stammered, stomach buckling, trying to direct her eyes away from his gaze. Anything would be better than that Hollywood-cool blond fauxhawk, or the way he balanced casually on the edge of his desk in his vintage maroon t-shirt, skinny black jeans, and Frye boots. This was her sale, and she was determined to complete it on her own. But like it or not, Fox Keene was a presence, even when he was silent.

 

The owner of the Harley-Davidson dealership was a biker born, and even though he'd left the Steel Jockeys, he wasn't ashamed of his outlaw-gang roots. He wore his tattoos with pride. He was in his mid-thirties and looked younger, tan, broad shouldered, and steel-eyed.

 

Now, noticing her glance, he parted his full lips in a cheeky smile and gave her a small thumbs up, and Ruby's breathing steadied. She could do this. She could make the sale. She'd done it before. Encouraged and just a little bit red, she turned back to the customer.

 

Suddenly, a door squeaked open, and Chace Pillard poked his head out of his office. With his receding hairline and a popped collar on his Izod shirt, he was the eternal frat boy at forty-three years old. He cleared his throat. "Ruby, Heather Albright will be here in a few minutes to pick up the donation for the Boys & Girls Club charity auction."

 

"Tell her I'll be with her in a minute," Ruby said smoothly, without a touch of irritation in her voice that Chace, the dealership's lead salesman, never resisted the opportunity to sabotage someone else’s deal.

 

Ruby took a deep breath as she shook hands with the man in front of her now, trying not to make it too obvious that she was sizing him up. He was short, probably in his early fifties, had a reddish goatee and thick dark-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a new-looking sport coat, tailored jeans, and deck shoes. She noticed that he moved uncomfortably in them, as if he found the clothes constricting. But glancing at his forehead, Ruby noticed something that gave her an idea. She returned to her desk and handed him a certificate from the EPA.

 

He paced around the bike one more time, his face reflected in its impossibly shiny black chrome. But he didn't need to have another look; Ruby noticed how his eyes had brightened. "How much?" he asked, reaching for his pocket. Ruby had sold enough bikes now to recognize that the fish was on the hook; all that remained was to reel him in, net him and gut him--or at least that was metaphor Chace always used. But Ruby still had one last trick up her sleeve.

 

She took a deep breath, braced herself, and swung one skinny-jean clad leg over the saddle, her red velvet ballet flat toeing the kickstand. Immediately, she felt the guy's eyes trained on her--nobody ever looked away. As always, she felt a little frisson of excitement as she fingers curled around the handlebars and she leaned down, as if facing a stiff wind, though she had a feeling it would evaporate quickly as soon as the motor revved. The first time she'd tried it, she had felt uncomfortable. She'd never driven one before, though Kyle had forever been offering to teach her, and she hadn't loved the idea of playing the part of the bimbo car-show model. She closed her eyes against the vision of the open road in front of her, the curves and tricks and switchbacks, the gravel crunching under the tires, the caress of the bike as it worked with her body as she leaned into a turn. For most of her life, she'd hated the fact that since she was child and Kyle had first developed his fascination with Harleys and the guys who rode them, these bikes were a part of her; they ran in her veins. But now, settling into the squeak of the brand-new leather, she knew, though she had run from that world, she couldn't outrun it. Not completely. Not ever. And so she might as well use it.

 

"A beautiful woman on a Harley. It's kind of like poetry, isn't?" said an approving voice spoke behind her. It was Fox addressing the customer, who agreed almost too eagerly, like he was embarrassed to have been watching Ruby so intently. She fell out of her daydream, hopping off the bike and beckoned the customer over to her desk. He followed like a lamb after its mother, and ten minutes later, he walked out with the keys swinging from his fingers, a dazed expression still on his face. Ruby followed him to the door, hands on hips. "How--?" Chace came up behind her. "I wouldn't have pegged that guy for a tree hugger."

 

"It was obvious. Didn't you notice how his thin his hair was up there?" She pointed to her forehead.

 

Chace frowned. "So what? He wouldn't be the first. Mid-life crises almost single-handedly keep us in business."

 

"Right," said Ruby. "But it wasn't standard male-pattern baldness. It was the kind of thinness right above the forehead," she pointed, "that comes after years of wearing a too-tight ponytail."

 

"In other words, up until quite recently, he was a long-haired, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating hippie," Fox's voice broke in. Ruby laughed.

 

“Even the most liberal among us aren't immune to mid-life crises." Ruby went on. "I'd bet you a shot he's recently divorced."

 

"There was no wedding ring line," pointed out Chace.

 

"Maybe he thought a ring was too square?" Ruby suggested. "In any case, I figure he's dating someone new, who wasn't down with the ponytail. Bottom line is, he may not be hugging trees anymore, but that doesn't mean he's not concerned about the size of his..." Chace raised his eyebrows. "Carbon footprint." She jumped up to sit on the desk, arms crossed modestly.

 

"Ruby, you amaze me," said Fox, high-fiving her. As their hands met mid-air, Fox clutched her small, olive-toned hand in his for a second longer than normal. Ruby looked down at her shoes.

 

Earlier at her desk, idly flipping through a spreadsheet but really listening to Fox go around in circles, it had only taken her a split-second to recognize his special signal: asking "What can we do for you?" instead of "What can I do for you?". He couldn't straight-out announce that he was handing the sale over to Ruby, because that would represent a lack of confidence. Instead, the key was for her to just casually step into the conversation.

 

Since she'd first started working at Fox Keene Harley-Davidson, she couldn't have imagined being so bold. Even back at the candle store, when a customer had asked her a question she couldn't answer, even one as simple as, "Does this come in French vanilla?" she'd usually turn it over to her boss. But that had been before she had met Fox, who seemed to not only recognize the dynamo that lurked within Ruby, but to open her up, scoop it out, and light the fuse.

 

It was the first thing she'd noticed about him when she’d finally come out of her daze of grief long enough to form an opinion of the man into whose care she’d entrusted herself after Kyle’s death. He was confident and cool, never hesitating for a second, but he didn't drip smarm the way Ruby had assumed all salesmen needed to. He never insulted his customers' manhood by implying they needed a Harley to pick up chicks or compensate for their obviously smaller-than-average genitalia. He simply was himself. Customers liked him because he was likeable. They laughed at his jokes because he was funny. They looked up to him because he was smart. They trusted him because, underneath it all, they knew he could be trusted. And all of that translated into sales. Even better, he didn't jealously guard his customers the way Chace did, clawing and scraping for every sale; he had a fundamentally generous soul. He never made anyone feel like they owed him--even when a customer was writing him a check for a quarter of a million dollars for a brand-new bike.

 

Ruby, for her part, wasn't a saleswoman; it wasn't in her job description, and she'd initially resisted the idea that she could do anything else for the dealership but file and answer the phone. Besides, her talent didn't necessarily lie in sales. It lay in reading people. At figuring out their motivations, fears, insecurities, and their deepest desires. She’d always had that ability; it made people want to make themselves vulnerable to her. It was much more difficult for her to make herself vulnerable to them. As far as she was concerned, her family had been the only ones worth revealing herself to, and they were gone. But since she’d met Fox, it seemed that had, at last, begun to change.