SUNDAYS WERE OUR busiest days. Not Saturdays like people think. On Sunday, people have been out to church, then lunch; they’re in the mood to do family stuff. Buying a new car usually falls under family stuff.

Sundays were my worst days. Usually, I was hungover from watching college football all day Saturday. But I had to go into work, because the dealership was almost always packed with families looking for a bigger vehicle or parents buying their kids something safe to drive to school.

I’d come in early on Sundays, right before we opened at ten. This was the quiet time. Families were singing hymns, deciding what they were going to order at the diner, or getting ready to watch the Colts game—something I wished I was doing. I’d go straight to my office, close the blinds, and nap in my chair until the crowds arrived.

Things didn’t typically get busy until twelve or one, then they’d stay crazy until around six, when the families would decide where to go for dinner or the more religious-minded would head back to church for Sunday night service. This was about the time I would head home, back to Amanda and whatever she’d prepared for dinner, then to the basement for some peace and quiet.

But today was different. Today was Wednesday. I hadn’t had a drink in several days and was still feeling on edge. I tried taking a nap but couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning.

That morning, I’d told Jennifer I’d stopped drinking, that I was trying to get healthy. I didn’t tell her how much I used to drink on a typical day. When I think about it now, it was a lot. I’d start with a beer around lunch, then another one at three, a whiskey when I got home, then about four beers between dinner and ten o’clock. I’d end the day with another whiskey, then off to bed for a nice, dreamless sleep. Double that for a Saturday.

I could have been honest with Jennifer, but I was worried if I told her the truth, she’d think I was a loser alcoholic and not worth her time, even though I knew women put up with a lot from men. Early Wednesday afternoon, we had this couple come in looking for a new car. It was a little after lunch, so most of my salespeople were still across the street at El Gallo Calvo getting their fill of jalapeño poppers and snickerdoodle martinis, leaving me to help the couple out.

I introduced myself and did my usual routine, asking them what had brought them in. The woman was Laura Davenport. She was a petite thing in tight, gray yoga pants. Her husband was Adam Pendergast, a bulky man who’d seen better days. His hair was thinning, and his clothes—a light gray suit, a purple striped shirt, no tie—were tight, like he used to be in shape but was denying the weight he’d put on. He had a bandage over his nose and redness under his eyes.

“We need a new car,” Laura said.

“What kind of car are you looking for?” Normally, I’d have turned on the charm, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“Something we can attach a Breathalyzer to.” Laura crossed her arms and glared at her battered husband.

“All our vehicles are compliant with current standards and regulations.” Even though Adam’s suit was tight, it was still expensive. I assumed he did something in sales. “Let’s start with the Dodge Durango.”

I showed them the top-of-the-line SUV—the Durango SXT with the Citadel Anodized Platinum package. This vehicle started around $60K but could go higher with all the upgrades. I had a feeling Laura would have taken the car with all the upgrades just to piss off her husband. I told them about all the features: the heated seats, the satellite radio, the Wi-Fi, everything. I was about to start talking about what was under the hood, but Adam had this glazed look in his eyes like he’d hit his head pretty hard and had a concussion, so I figured I should skip all that.

“This is the best vehicle we have on the lot,” I said.

“How is it in a crash?” Laura asked.

“Well, a vehicle this big has just about everything you’d need—even has a few things you don’t. It has a blind spot monitoring system to keep you aware of all the cars you can’t see. It even has electronic roll mitigation so you don’t roll over.”

“Does it have a function to keep you from hitting a tree at sixty-five miles per hour?” Laura asked. Adam headed over to some couches and sat down. She yelled after him, “Adam! Adam! Hey! Don’t fall asleep. The doctor said you aren’t supposed to fall asleep. Jesus, this guy.”

“I’m not supposed to do this,” I said, “but since it’s my name on the door, I can do whatever I like. Let me give you a bit of advice. Put this car in your husband’s name—the registration, the insurance, everything. That way, if he does get in a wreck, it’ll all be on him. In the meantime, you get to drive around in a luxury SUV.”

Laura thought it over. She didn’t need to say anything; I could tell she liked my idea. We got her some keys, and she went on a test drive while Adam took a nap on the couch. When she got back, she decided to take the car, just like I knew she would. She walked over to Adam and tugged on his arm.

“Come on, you. Time to buy another car.”

Adam pushed himself up, and Laura led him into my office. He was groggy, and his hand shook when he signed the papers, but I figured Laura would explain everything to him later.

Part of the deal was we’d take their car as a trade-in. When I walked outside to appraise their car, I realized why Laura had been so quick to sign. Their Cadillac sedan looked like it had been in a head-on collision with a tank. The front was all crushed in, and there was blood on the steering wheel, I’m assuming from Adam’s nose. I gave them $500 for it. We could sell it to a scrapyard and break even.

While we were appraising the wreck, Laura was on her phone talking to one of her friends.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” she said. “You know Jessica went through the same thing with Dave. Yeah, had too much to drink and wrecked their car. He was supposed to pick up their kid from the sitter. Jessica had to call their sitter and see if she could stay longer while she went down to the jail and bailed Dave out. I’m just glad Adam wasn’t seriously injured. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him.”

Laura helped Adam into the passenger seat. She was patient with him now, holding the door until he was all the way in. Adam’s eyes seemed to focus, like he’d just realized he bought a luxury SUV as an apology gift for his wife.

I didn’t want Jennifer to have to go through anything like that with me.

One of the things about not drinking is realizing how drinking all day is not normal. This thought hit me like a Cadillac against a tree. I was not normal. All I wanted to do was drink all day and not worry about anything. A normal person will have one drink a night, if that—not eight or more.

But that was over now. I’d never be a normal person. I knew that much. Even by not drinking, I wasn’t normal. Everyone I knew drank something, at least a drink here or there. But not me. I was now one of those losers who couldn’t control himself, who had to drink to excess, so I had to stop all of it. I wondered if Jennifer would be okay with being with someone who never drank.

Around 3:30 p.m., I came out of my office. There was only one set of customers milling about, looking at the SUV floor models. The mom was checking out the cargo space, and the dad was pretending like he respected the horsepower. Their three kids ran around the car, fighting over who would get to pretend to drive it. I could tell they couldn’t afford an SUV. The parents looked tired, like they worked multiple jobs. The kids were wearing hand-me-downs. Normally, I wouldn’t mess with a family like this. The commission on the car they would buy—if they bought one at all—would be too low to make it worth my time. But there was something about them; maybe it was the joy on their faces as they showed their kids how the seats reclined as if they were having the time of their lives.

“How are you folks doing today?” I asked.

They told me their names were Chris and Kristina Matthews, giggling when they said they were Chris and Kris, like it was the cutest thing ever.

“What kind of vehicle are you looking for today?”

“A family car,” Chris said, his hand resting on a Charger.

“We have a lot of those here on the floor, but let’s be honest—you’re a family on a budget, am I right? And the thought of spending $600 a month on a car isn’t very appealing. I know I can think of a lot of better uses for that kind of money.”

“Six hundred dollars a month?” Kris said.

“And that’s with a down payment.”

“I didn’t realize a new car would be that much.”

“Not all cars, ma’am. Just the ones on the floor. We put the most expensive ones on display to whet your appetite. We have a bunch of really nice vehicles out back that would suit your needs and your budget.” Let me just say, this was completely out of character for me. Normally, I’d try to keep them looking at the expensive models, not take them straight to the pre-owned cars. But for some reason, I felt like being generous.

We walked to the back of the car lot. I had a fleet of minivans back there—all used, bought at auction. They all had clean reports and were running well; all had low mileage. I left the family to look around. The kids ran between the rows of cars while Kris put her hands up to the windows and peered in. Chris, however, leaned up against a car, watching his kids run around.

“Everything all right?” I asked. “Would you like to see something else?”

“This is fine,” Chris said. “I’m sure one of these will work.”

“If you need any coffee or anything, we have some inside.”

“I’m good. Just feeling a little nostalgic,” he said. “My dad bought me my first car here—from your dad.”

“Did we go to high school together?”

“You were a senior when I was a freshman.”

I was always running into people I knew or people who knew me.

“When I got my learner’s permit,” Chris said, “I begged my dad for a car. He said if I started saving right then, he’d match whatever I’d saved up by the time I got my driver’s license. I worked my tail off to save up $1,300. The day after I got my license, we came here and found a 1989 Ford Taurus station wagon. Maroon with fake wood paneling.”

“That’s an unusual car for a sixteen-year-old. Didn’t you want something fast and flashy?”

“I didn’t really care about that. My friends and I went camping all the time. I just wanted something I could sleep in.”

“Sounds like you made some good memories in that car.”

“That’s what first cars are for, right? Building memories. Did you know that car had space for two full-sized spares?”

“They don’t make them like that anymore.”

“We took out one and put a cooler in its spot. We’d have to pull a sleeping bag over it any time the sheriff’s deputies dropped by our campsite. Man, I miss that car.”

Chris’s kids ran through the cars, asking which ones had Wi-Fi so they could play their games.

“You’re lucky,” I said. “Everyone deserves that first car they can fall in love with. I never had that. I was always switching up cars, year after year—one of the perks of having a dad who owned a dealership.”

“There must have been some car you had your eye on back then?”

“There was, but it was out of reach.”

“What was it?” Chris asked.

“It’s silly,” I said.

“Come on.”

“I wanted this rocket-powered stunt car so I could jump over a bunch of buses. It was a pipe dream. There’s no way a kid from Bloomington was going to get his hands on something like that. I would have blown myself up.”

“It’s good to dream, though.”

“You know it,” I said. “You’re not going to believe this, but I got an old Taurus wagon on the lot. I could show it to you, if you want.”

Chris’s kids had stopped running—his wife had corralled them—and the kids were now seated around a tablet. A song, happy and jingly, played from it.

“That was a good car,” Chris said. “The perfect car when all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends. But all I want to do now is hang out with my kids.”

Kris waved us over to a car she’d found—a used Dodge Caravan with sixty thousand miles on it. They bought the van that day and drove it off the lot as the kids tumbled over the back seats and Kris yelled at them to fasten their seat belts. Chris smiled, seemingly content with his crazy life.

As I waved to them, my phone buzzed with a text from Jennifer. I hoofed it to my office to read it. It was long, and I had to scroll through it several times to read the whole thing. Basically, she was fed up with her marriage. Her husband still drank like he did back in his frat days and ignored her. Jennifer said she’d asked him to stop drinking and his response was, “Why would I do that?” Then came the good part. She said she wanted to be with someone like me, someone who was trying to improve his life. Some kind of crazy energy shot through me, because when I read this last part, I started punching the air, like I was punching away all my misery. Jennifer, the girl I’d been in love with for I don’t know how long, wanted to be with someone like me.

Then I got a text from Harry, and all the joy I was feeling was replaced with frustration. I had to read Jennifer’s text again—the part where she said she wanted to be with someone like me—just to stop myself from pulling the bottle of Tennessee whiskey out of my desk drawer.