The first thing Derek Lawson noticed was the color. The second was the sound: an old diesel engine laboring with the stubborn, uneven rhythm of a machine that had spent more years on the road than most of his sales team had spent alive.
Beyond the glass frontage of Eastside Premier Motors, a yellow school bus turned slowly into the customer parking lot, its once-bright paint weathered by sunlight and its chrome mirrors shining with the careful polish of someone who refused to let age become neglect.
It occupied a single marked visitor space near the end of the row, where the owner eased it into position with the precision of a professional driver. Derek lowered his coffee and stared as though someone had deposited a farm tractor in the center of a jewelry store.
"Kelsey," he said, without taking his eyes from the window, "tell me that isn't an old school bus pulling up outside our showroom." Kelsey Brooks, standing behind the reception counter with her phone in one hand, craned her neck to look. A woman in faded dark trousers and a blue work shirt was climbing down from the driver's seat, carrying a worn leather folder beneath her arm. Her gray hair was tucked into a simple scarf, her shoes were practical, and there was a streak of black grease along the side of one hand. Kelsey laughed before the woman had even closed the bus door.
"Maybe she wants us to trade it for something that starts without a prayer," Kelsey said. Derek gave her the indulgent smile he reserved for jokes that confirmed his own opinions. Inside the showroom, fourteen new vehicles stood beneath a ceiling of white lights: luxury SUVs, polished sedans, and several silver passenger vans prepared for commercial buyers. The floor smelled faintly of leather conditioner and new rubber, with music drifting so softly from the overhead speakers that the smallest sound of heels on tile carried across the room. The dealership's advertising promised a personal buying experience, but the sort of person Derek believed deserved that experience usually arrived in an expensive car.
The woman paused just inside the entrance, long enough to wipe her shoes on the mat and glance toward a display of commercial vehicles. She was sixty-four years old, though neither Derek nor Kelsey made any effort to learn that. Her name was Gloria Hayes, and she had spent the morning at a transportation depot on the eastern edge of the city, helping a mechanic free a stubborn hose fitting from the engine compartment of the first vehicle she had ever owned. The grease on her hand had survived two washes with industrial soap. She did not regard it as a badge of honor or something to be ashamed of; it was simply what remained when she had finished a job.