The license plate itself said DEALER, in the red-on-white of a dealer plate.
I noticed that later. At the time, all I noticed was that he had cut the line.
"Hey," said Mrs. Prochazka from her lawn chair, "there's a line, honey."
"I'm in a hurry, ma'am," Win said. He said it politely. He had the kind of manners that came from being taken to the Elyria Country Club since he was five. He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and looked down at me where I was kneeling by the Fairmont's back tire with a scrub brush in one hand and the knees of my jeans soaked through. "Haydu. Right? Rollie Haydu."
I said that was right. I did not know how he knew my name. We had never spoken. Elyria was not that big a town, but there were two Elyrias, the one with the country club and the one with the mill shift whistle, and we did not usually cross.
"Your mom came by the lot," he said. "Couple weeks ago. Looking at the Dart."
My face went hot. I had not known she had gone by the lot. She had not told me. I pictured her in her white aide's shoes, walking up and down between the rows of used cars on Route 57 in the afternoon heat, looking at a car she could not buy.
"Okay," I said.
"Eight-fifty, she was asking. My dad's sales guy told her eight-fifty was firm." He tilted his head toward the scrub brush in my hand, and then toward the sign. "Two dollars a car. That's, what. Four hundred and twenty-five cars?"
Behind me the hose was running into the gravel. Somebody in the line honked, just once, a friendly honk that meant hurry up.
"You missed a spot," Win said, and pointed at the Fairmont's tire. Then he looked at me, and something happened to his face that I would think about for a long time afterward, a kind of tightening, like a man stepping onto ice he did not trust. "Tell you what, Haydu. Do my car. Do it right, I'll give you five bucks. That's two and a half cars. Get your mom there faster." He took a five-dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and folded it in half the long way and held it out over the side of the door, between two fingers, the way you hold something out to a dog.
"There's a line," I said.