"I said I'd consider it," said Augie.
"You did not say that."
"It was implied by my tone."
She looked at him—a long, measuring look, the look of someone deciding whether a machine was worth repairing or should go back to the warehouse for parts. Then she sat down on a bar stool and patted the one beside her.
"Sit down, Augie Nyquist," she said. "I'm going to tell you about a Buick."
IV.
He listened to the story of the Buick without interrupting, which Frankie would learn later was a thing Augie Nyquist almost never did. When she got to the part about the DMV parking lot he looked down at the bar. When she got to the part about room 214 and the tape stretching, he picked at the label on her Grain Belt until it came off in one piece.
"I'm sorry about your grandmother," he said at the end. He sounded like he meant it.
"Thank you."
"I'm still not playing it."
"Augie."
"You don't understand what that song is to me."
"So explain it."
He opened his mouth and closed it. On the television over the bar, a band in leather was pretending to play guitars on a rooftop. "Not here," he said, and put a five on the bar for her beer, and left.
---
That Thursday, at 1:14 a.m., the request line at KHLC rang for the first time in recorded history.