Chapter 4: Ruth's Boots
The alarm went off at five thirty, same as it had for forty-nine years, and Walter Sterling sat up before it could ring twice.
He padded to the kitchen in socks and put the coffee on. Two cups. He still made two cups. Every morning he poured the second one down the sink and said, "Waste of good coffee, Ruth," to an empty kitchen.
Ruth had been gone five years. He just made the two cups now. Some habits were load-bearing.
He opened the closet. On one side, pressed suits hung in dry-cleaner bags, the armor of a chairman. On the other side, flannel shirts in faded plaids, worn soft at the elbows, and jeans that had given up pretending to be blue. He chose flannel, red and gray, the one Ruth had patched at the shoulder with thread that did not quite match.
"You look like a scarecrow," she used to tell him, smiling.
"Scarecrows work hard," he would answer.
"Scarecrows scare people, Walter."
"Nobody's scared of me, Ruth."
"Nobody should be. That's the point of you."
He heard her voice so clearly that he answered out loud. "Still not scared, I hope."
The boots waited by the door. He sat on the bench to pull them on, the way he had done since 1977. The leather was cracked at the creases and polished thin at the toes. The left sole had been resoled twice.
A man had given him those boots. He was nineteen, a lot attendant at Desert Motors on Van Buren, and his sneakers had split open in the August heat. An older salesman named Gus had gone to his locker and come back with the boots, broken in and sturdy. "These were my brother's. Too small for me. They fit you, they're yours. Rule one of this business: respect the customer, and respect yourself enough to stand up straight while you do it."
Walter had worn them to his first day as a salesman, his first day as a dealer principal. He had worn them the day he bought the bankrupt Scottsdale lot that became the flagship. Ruth had tried to retire them for his sixtieth birthday with a pair of Italian leather shoes.
"They squeak," she had said.
"They've earned the squeak."
She had laughed until she cried, and the Italian shoes had gone into the back of the closet, and the boots had stayed by the door, where they belonged.
He stood, stamped each foot once out of superstition, and checked his wallet. Driver's license, insurance card, and behind the plastic window, Ruth's photo. She was thirty-eight in the picture, laughing at something off camera at a company picnic in 1989. He had carried it through three wallet replacements. The edges were soft as cloth.
"Tuesday, Ruth," he said. "Scottsdale store. The letter. Respect is the first sale. I remember."
The pickup was fourteen years old with 212,000 miles on it. He had bought it new the year Ruth got sick and had never seen a reason to replace it. The air conditioner rattled. The passenger door stuck unless you knew the trick, which was to lift while you pulled, a trick Ruth had discovered first.
He backed out of the driveway at six forty. The desert morning was cool and gold. He took the surface streets instead of the freeway. A bakery on Thomas Road was pulling its shutters up, and he thought about stopping, and then he thought about Edith Larson's letter, folded in his jacket pocket, and he kept driving.
Carla called at seven fifteen. He answered on the third ring, hands-free.
"Morning, Walter," she said. "Your nine o'clock with the Nevada group. Do you want me to push it?"
"Push it to Thursday."
"Thursday is the board prep."
"Then push the board prep."
A pause. Carla had worked for him eleven years and knew his tones. "Walter," she said carefully, "is this about the letter?"
"I'm going to Scottsdale," he said. "Unannounced. Don't tell anyone."
"How long?"
"Long enough to see something true."
Another pause, shorter. "Do you want me to clear your afternoon?"
"Clear the whole day, Carla."
"Consider it cleared." She hesitated. "Walter. Be careful in there."
He smiled at the windshield. "I'm always careful."
"No," she said. "You're always kind. There's a difference, and today it matters."
He drove on. The flagship store sat on Scottsdale Road like a jewel box, all glass and chrome, and somewhere inside it a young salesman named Chad Merrick was probably already deciding which customers deserved his time.
Walter patted his jacket pocket, where the letter rested. He thought of Ruth's photo, and Gus's voice, and the squeak of old boots on polished tile.
"Respect is the first sale," he said to the empty cab. "Let's go see if anybody remembers."