Chapter 8: Rate of Exchange

The alarm sounds at 5:47 AM.

I rise. I shower. I do not dress. I make coffee. I drink it standing at the counter. I drive to work. I run the numbers.

The rhythm continues.

But the rhythm has changed. The numbers have changed. The season has changed.

I know this because I calculated it. I noted the date. I noted the time. I ran the numbers.

October passed. The dry season settled into its rhythm: lower humidity, milder temperatures, the kind of weather that brings the snowbirds south and the locals out of their air-conditioned hibernation. The days grew shorter. The angle of the sun shifted. The mornings grew cooler.

November arrived on a Saturday. I noted the date. I noted the time. I ran the numbers.

And then the dealership decorated it for Christmas.

I know this because I arrived at work on Monday morning and found the showroom transformed. There is a Christmas tree in the corner, a plastic tree, eight feet tall, decorated with ornaments that have been reused for fifteen years. There are garlands draped over the desks. There is a wreath on the front door. There is a mechanical Santa Claus that waves his arm and says “Ho Ho Ho” in a voice that is both too loud and too slow.

I have calculated the cost of these decorations: the electricity, the maintenance, the storage. I have determined that the cost exceeds the benefit. But this is not my decision to make. The decorations are Warren’s decision. Warren believes in Christmas. Warren believes in the arithmetic of the holiday season, the increased foot traffic, the year-end deals, the customers who are motivated by the approach of a new year.

I do not argue. I do not question. I simply note the decorations and move on.

The holiday season brings a rush of customers.

This is not unexpected. I have calculated this variable. The last two weeks of December are always busy with people buying cars with year-end bonuses, people trading in leases before the mileage limits are exceeded, people desperate for a deal before the calendar turns. The numbers are predictable. The arithmetic is stable.

What is not predictable, what I have not fully calculated, is the effect of my nudity on the holiday customers.

The holiday customers are different from the regular customers. They are more stressed. They are more distracted. They are more focused on the transaction than the atmosphere. They are buying cars for their children, for their spouses, for themselves. They are buying cars as gifts. They are buying cars as statements. They are buying cars as arithmetic, the calculation of what they can afford, what they can justify, and what they can present to the people they love.

And I am naked.

I have calculated the reactions. The holiday customers react in different ways. Some stare openly, unapologetically, the way they would stare at a display in a store window. Some avoid looking at the floor, at the ceiling, at the paperwork, anywhere but at me. Some accept—they conduct the transaction the way they would conduct any transaction, efficient and unremarkable.

I do not acknowledge the stares. I do not explain. I do not apologize. I simply do my job.

The first holiday customer of the month is a woman named Cynthia Hollingsworth.

She arrives at 9:30 AM on Monday, the third of November. She is forty-five years old, recently divorced, and buying her first car on her own. She is nervous. I can see it in her eyes, in the way she holds her purse, in the way she keeps checking her phone as if waiting for a message that has not arrived.

I greeted her in the showroom. She sees me. She does not stare. She does not avoid it. She simply looks at me the way she would look at anyone.

“Ms. Hollingsworth?”

“Call me Cynthia.”

“Cynthia. I’m Henrietta Winter. We spoke on the phone.”

“I remember.”

She extends her hand. I shake it. Her grip is tentative—the grip of a woman who has not shaken many hands, who has spent twenty years of marriage deferring to a husband who handled the arithmetic of the world.

“Let’s go to my office,” I say.

We walk. She follows. We sat.

I opened her folder. I reviewed her credit application, her income, her assets, her debts. She is not wealthy. She is not poor. She is a woman who has spent twenty years of marriage and is now rebuilding the arithmetic of her life.

“The Subaru Outback is a 2020 model with 41,000 miles. The asking price is $24,500. With your down payment of $5,000, the financed amount is $19,500. At 6.4% APR for 60 months, your monthly payment will be $381. That includes tax, title, and license. Does that work for you?”

She nods. “That works.”

We review the paperwork. She asks questions about the warranty, about the maintenance schedule, about the interest rate. I answer them all with precision. She signs the documents.

Then she pauses. She looks at me, really looks at me for the first time since she entered the office.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Doesn’t that bother me?”

“Being naked. In front of strangers. In front of customers. Doesn’t it bother you?”

I consider the question. It is the same question everyone asks me. It is the question I cannot answer—or can answer, but will not. But Cynthia is different. Cynthia is a woman who has just emerged from twenty years of marriage, who is learning to live on her own, who is calculating the arithmetic of a new life. Cynthia deserves an answer.

“Sometimes,” I say.

She blinks. She was not expecting this answer.

“Sometimes?”

“Yes. Sometimes it bothers me.”

“Then why do you do it?”

I consider the question. It is a new variable. I have not calculated it.