"You still want it?"
He looked at her. He looked out the window, past the tablet, at the silver van in the gravel with its dressed tires, at the light going amber on its windshield.
"Push the button," he said.
She pushed it. Across the room, an old laser printer on a stand woke with a groan and pulled a sheet of paper into itself and pushed it out again, warm, and she got up and got it and held it up to the light and checked it, and then she trimmed it with a paper cutter to the size of a license plate and slid it into a clear plastic sleeve. It was a plain sheet of paper with a large number on it, a barcode, the words GEORGIA TEMPORARY OPERATING PERMIT across the top, his name, the VIN, the make and model, the date of issue, the expiration date forty-five days on, and in small type along the bottom, PHAN MOBILITY & PRE-OWNED, and the dealer number. The time stamp said 5:47 PM.
They went outside together and she fixed the sleeve into the rear plate bracket with four screws and a cordless driver she took out of the pocket of her cardigan, which made him smile for the first time all afternoon, and then she showed him the van.
She showed him how the remote on the key fob opened the passenger-side sliding door and how the van, when the door opened, let out a long hydraulic sigh and knelt, the whole body settling two inches nearer the gravel on its suspension, like a big animal lowering itself to be mounted. She showed him how the floor in the doorway split along a seam and the ramp slid out from underneath the floor itself and unfolded and touched down on the gravel at a shallow angle, so shallow you could have pushed a grocery cart up it without trying. She showed him the manual release under a carpet flap in case the motor ever died, and made him work it himself with the hand crank, twice. She showed him how the front passenger seat came out entirely, on quick-release pins, so the chair could roll all the way forward and sit up front, and how the docking plate bolted to the floor there would catch the bracket on the underside of Quincy's chair with a click and hold it, and how the button by the window would release it. She showed him the dash light that warned when the door was not latched. She made him sit in the driver's seat with the door open and run the whole sequence twice: door open, kneel, ramp out, ramp in, rise, door closed.
"He's going to want to do it himself," she said, standing in the gravel with her arms folded. "Let him. It has a switch at hand height inside the door. He can work it with the side of his hand. Show him once and then let him."
"I will."
"And don't let anybody park on the ramp side at the grocery store. You need eight feet. People don't know. Make them know."
"I will."
The light was going long and orange now, laying the shadows of the cars across the gravel in stripes. A boy on a bicycle went past on Hollis Street and looked at them. Down the block somebody was cutting grass. Thuy Phan took the key fob out of her cardigan pocket, the only one, and held it out to him on her open palm.