Christina wandered past an elegant silver coupe and a red convertible until she reached the central display. There it was, shining beneath the lights in the exact color she remembered from the little boy's drawing. Up close it looked less like an expensive machine than an animal resting just before it sprang, every curve purposeful, the roof low and the wheels set wide beneath the body. The paint changed shade as she walked around it, from navy in shadow to the intense blue of a clear sky after heavy rain.
On the stand beside the car were the year, mileage, model details, and asking price. Christina read everything carefully, even the smaller lines describing inspection status and service history. She had spent her life checking measurements twice before cutting good fabric and she did not intend to abandon that habit because a car had beautiful paint. She was studying the information when Richard Croft approached and asked whether she was lost.
The exchange unfolded as she would remember it later: her patient explanation, his increasingly open disdain, Anna's intervention, and the silence from employees who clearly understood the situation was wrong but were uncertain what speaking would cost them. After Croft suggested that she did not have enough money to buy anything in the room, Christina felt heat rise behind her eyes. She would have preferred anger. Anger was easier to put somewhere useful; hurt had a way of returning at inconvenient hours long after the moment was over.
Anna Morales came to stand beside her. She was forty-six, Latina American, wearing a tan field jacket over dark trousers, with a slim silver bracelet and a canvas tote containing a laptop. She had owned a design business for fifteen years, and one of her clients had been Sterling Motor Gallery during a previous ownership arrangement. She had come that morning to collect appraisal paperwork for a car she was thinking of trading, not to make a speech in front of strangers.
"I'm Anna," she said to Christina in a normal voice. "I was standing over there, and I heard everything. That man is out of line."
"Christina," the older woman answered. "I am sorry you got pulled into it."
"You didn't pull me anywhere. I walked over here myself."
Croft watched the introduction with visible impatience. He had a sales appointment scheduled at noon, a quarterly performance review next week, and a reputation for high numbers he protected as carefully as the cuff links his wife gave him after his last promotion. He considered time spent with someone who could not close a transaction to be time stolen from his career. Nothing in Christina's manner had persuaded him that his initial assumption might be wrong, and Anna's objections had turned an ordinary act of exclusion into a contest of authority.
"Miss Morales," he said, "we've done business before. I would think you understand that this isn't a public museum."
"I understand it is a business that invites people to walk through the doors," Anna replied. "If someone asks about your inventory, you answer."
"Not when they're clearly wasting time."
"How do you know she is?"
"Experience," Croft said, tapping the silver badge against his jacket. "It's my job to recognize serious buyers."