At the Kroger he stepped out of the car while she practiced pulling into a space between the lines, over and over, and he called Starla.
"Wesleyan father's coming in at five for the Maverick," he said. "I'm not going to make it."
There was a short silence on the line. "Where are you?"
"Kroger on Parrish. Mrs. Johnson's learning the backup camera. She's going to try parking between two actual cars in a minute. I don't want to leave her yet."
"You know what that is," Starla said. "That's twelve."
"I know what it is."
Another silence, longer. He could hear the showroom behind her, the Saturday noise, somebody laughing.
"I'll give it to Gert," she said. Then, before she hung up, in a different voice: "Kade. Stay as long as she wants."
He stayed until it was dark. Imogene drove them back to Locust Street herself, with her headlights on for the first time in her life, at twenty-two miles an hour, while children in costumes went up and down the sidewalks with pillowcases and a huge orange inflatable cat swayed in the yard across the street. Arvel was waiting on the steps in his corduroy jacket with a bowl of candy on his knees. When she parked, almost straight, she sat for a moment with her hands still on the wheel and did not get out.
"Thank you," she said to Kade. "Arvel said you'd explain it, and you did. You've got a gift for it."
"Your husband said that too."
"Well," said Imogene Johnson, "he's usually right, and it's very annoying."
The board said eleven on Monday morning.
Starla called him into the office at eight, before the meeting, and closed the door, and did not sit behind her desk. She stood by the window with her arms folded and looked out at the lot, where the porters were dragging the hoses out.
"You know what I'm going to say," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I wrote twelve on that board in front of everybody. If I take it back for you, I have to take it back for everybody, forever. And the next time it's somebody I don't like as much, I'll find a reason not to." She turned around. "Sixty days on the lot. Same as I'd do to anybody. You can come back to the floor after New Year's."
He nodded. He had known since the Kroger parking lot. It did not make his face stop burning.
"And I want you to know something," Starla said. "That was the best sale anybody on this floor made all month, and it doesn't count. Both of those things are true. I'm sorry they don't fit together. Most things don't."