Richard Killian had his eighty-seven Firebird running like warm honey, but as he rolled past the pricey SUVs and luxury sedans parked around the McNabb Group’s corporate campus in Naperville, he wondered if its age and rust and dents might undermine his credibility. Like a shabbily dressed tailor, he thought, and resolved to add the image to his notebook.

He parked and entered a building with a sign in front that said PERSONNEL.

“My name’s Richard Killian,” he told a receptionist. “I have a ten-thirty appointment to interview for the fleet mechanic’s job.”

She consulted a calendar on her desk and said, “I’ll let Mr. Pace know you’re here."

A moment later a man in his early thirties in a business suit strode briskly out of the office behind the receptionist, with some papers on a clipboard.

“Mike Pace,” he said, offering his hand.

“Richard Killian.”

Pace checked the clipboard.

"Everything looks good, Richard, and we’re pretty much ready to offer you the job. The only question we have concerns your schooling. You have a degree in English, but I don't see any formal training in auto mechanics."

"I didn’t go to trade school, but I’ve been working on cars since my dad put me to work in his shop when I was a kid."

Pace nodded. "It's the references we pay the most attention to, and the people in Springfield spoke highly of you. The actual interview part will come later with Mr. McNabb. Let’s go look at the job.”

Pace led the way out to the compound, a cluster of old, red-brick buildings, shaggy with ivy and shaded by tall trees. People moved about on foot and in small, motorized carts, some in professional attire, others dressed as laborers.

Pace said, “This was a small private college until it folded in the mid-seventies. It sat idle for a while, then Harold McNabb, Rex McNabb’s father, bought it and converted it into a combined corporate headquarters and private residence.”

They arrived at a five-bay garage with an upper story. Vehicles filled three spaces.

Pace led Richard into an empty bay on one end, lined with built-in drawers and cabinets.

"The carriage house,” Pace said. “Used to be, anyway. Your job would be to maintain the McNabb's personal vehicles. The BMW and the Navigator are Mr. McNabb’s. Hers are the Land Rover, down at the end, and the Lexus, which isn't here now."

"Hers?"

"Mrs. McNabb. Her first name is Nadine. We're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars on wheels. That's an investment they’re interested in taking good care of, and Mr. McNabb has decided he wants his own man for the job so we went headhunting. Your name came up from our contacts in Springfield, and we traced you to Iowa City, in case you were wondering how we found out about you."

Pace pulled a ring binder from a shelf under a workbench and opened it to some sheets in plastic coverings.

"Maintenance schedules for each vehicle," he said. "Your main responsibility will be keeping up with these." He closed the binder and put it back on its shelf. "The tools and everything else you'll need are here. Keys are on those hooks over there. Washing and waxing go with the job.

"There are just a couple more things. First, the living quarters we mentioned in the letter are part of the deal; you’ll be one of a rotation of guys on call twenty-four-seven, but with you as the primary. It’s twenty-four-seven because now and then—and it might be three in the morning—Mr. McNabb can’t sleep and likes to be driven around. Sometimes he'll bring along a laptop or spreadsheets to work on. That doesn't happen often, but you'd be expected to be good to go in five minutes.”

Richard started to speak.

"Before you answer," Pace said, "I should add that we haven’t run a study on this job, but we’re guessing you'll have a fair amount of down time. And it's not like you'll be chained to the place. If you need to take care of business away from the compound, the mechanic out at the tractor shed can fill in here short term for certain things. And of course after you've been on board awhile, you'll get vacation and personal leave."

"Okay by me," Richard said.

Pace checked his watch. "Terrific. Let's go see Mr. McNabb."

On the way, Pace gestured to his left. "The health club, yours to use at no charge on your free time. Same goes for the outdoor courts.”

They went into a two-story building. Once inside, Pace spoke with the receptionist. He then went through a door, leaving Richard to wait. After a moment, he leaned through the doorway and signaled for Richard to come. They walked past a secretary and through another door.

As they entered, Rex McNabb was at his desk, writing. He raised his left hand, in which he held a lit cigar, to signal that they must wait until he was done. He finished with a flourish, set the pen down and stood. He was tall and big-boned and heavy without quite being obese, with sparse red hair and a florid complexion.

"Rex McNabb," he said, crushing Richard's hand and blowing smoke off to the side.

"Richard Killian."

"A good Irish name," McNabb said with blustery good cheer.

Inasmuch as Richard’s heritage held no meaning for him, he had no ready reply, but the moment passed.

McNabb sat and gestured for Richard to do the same. He extended his right arm toward Mike Pace and rubbed his thumb and first two fingers together. "Let's see the paperwork, Mike."

He puffed on his cigar as he studied Richard's application. He laid the cigar in an ashtray, encircled his coffee mug with the thumb and fingers of his right hand and stroked it up and down. He looked at Richard.

"What the hell does a B.A. in English do?"

“Apply for work,” Richard said with a little laugh.

McNabb looked back down at the file. “There’s a gap after the Springfield job, nothing for two years before you started full time at Larson Ford.”

Richard sat forward in his chair and folded his hands between his knees in what he hoped would be taken for a show of earnestness.

“I was working on my M.F.A. in that time. It's bad enough applying for a job as a mechanic with a B.A. in English—it looks like I'm unqualified or out of my field. I figured the M.F.A. would look even worse, so I didn't put it down."

"I know what an M.B.A. is," McNabb said. "This place is crawling with them. But I'm damned if I've ever heard of an M.F.A."

"Would you believe it stands for mighty fine auto-mechanic?"

McNabb beamed in seeming appreciation of the joke. Richard was relieved apparently to have deflected the issue.

“I didn’t go to trade school,” Richard said, “but as I told Mr. Pace, I've been working on cars since I was a boy. My dad had me helping out around his shop almost since I could walk. By the time I was in high school I could diagnose by ear and fix almost anything. I paid for college with gas station jobs and freelance repair work."

McNabb leaned back in his chair and looked at Mike Pace. "Have you gone over the package?"

"We touched on it," Pace said. "We haven’t talked about compensation or seen the living quarters."

McNabb’s phone rang. He answered, said “Bring it back,” and hung up. His secretary came and deposited a folder of papers on his desk and left. She was young, attractive—fetching came to Richard’s mind—and with a figure that her conservative gray suit couldn’t hide. McNabb and Pace exchanged a look.

"This is probably a good time to go over Rule Number Two," McNabb said. "Mike?"

Pace flashed a quick, ironic smile that Richard took for a sign of both reluctance and resignation. "You don't screw the help," he said.

"Ever," McNabb said, stabbing the air with his cigar. "You break it, you're gone." He leaned back in his chair and puffed on his cigar. “Mike says it nicer than I would, so I let him tell it.”

"Rule Number Two," Richard said.

McNabb puffed and blew smoke. "That’s right. Rule Number One is that you work for me. Not for my company, not for Mrs. McNabb. For me.” He thumbed his chest. “And any time you're on the grounds, you're on call." He looked at Pace, who had raised a hand. "You covered this? Good. Anyway, what it all comes down to is that the job doesn't pay a whole hell of a lot, but we like to think the perks make up for it."

He was apparently finished. Richard wasn’t sure if he was expected to reply.

McNabb stood. "Mike, show Dick the rest. He looks like a sensible fellow; I’m sure he'll make the sensible decision.”

Richard stood. "Actually, I prefer Richard."

McNabb reacted like he'd been slapped. "What?"

"I prefer Richard to Dick."

"Whatever,” McNabb said. He sat in what seemed a huff, swiveled, and looked out a window. “Show Richard around, Mike," he said to the lit end of his cigar.

Pace took Richard by the elbow, turned him toward the door, and ushered him out. Richard sensed that he was being rescued.

When they got outside, Pace said, "Try to be less concerned about what he calls you than with being ready when he calls you."

Richard didn’t reply.

They returned to the carriage house. Pace went to an outside set of stairs at one end and began to go up. "Your living quarters," he said back over his shoulder. “You’ll be right above your work."

Richard hesitated at the bottom, then, reluctantly, began the climb with the dull feeling that he had come full circle.

Richard had been raised at the base of a wooded hill on the outskirts of Peoria's gritty southwest side. In the concrete-block double garage under that house, his father eked out a living as a mechanic for a lower working-class clientele whose battered cars and pickups littered the front yard. His father put him to work at an early age, and Richard at first thought that it was only to help out; when he realized that he was being trained, that his father had no more vision for his future than to have him follow in his footsteps, he began planning his escape. But it was not until after high school that he managed it, when he enrolled in college less than an hour's distance away but removed enough in every other way to be out of the gravitational pull of the place he had never considered home and the people—those people, as he had come to think of them—that he had never really considered family. “Don't look back,” one voice in his head insisted, while he coolly ignored another that spoke to him of the obligations of blood. He majored in English, and when some stories he turned out in a creative writing class were published in the department's undergraduate literary journal, he found that he had been bit by the writing bug. That bite would never heal. From then on it was all he could do to keep from neglecting his studies and spending most of his waking hours writing. In the meantime, to make ends meet, he worked part time as a mechanic. (His distaste for the work notwithstanding, his skill and aptitude were considerable.) By the time he earned his B.A. in English, he received his diploma into hands as indelibly grease-stained as his father's. Unsure of which way to turn and knowing only that he wanted to write, he took a job as a fleet mechanic for the Secretary of State in Springfield. After eighteen months, there came what he hoped might be the break he had hoped for: Based on the merits of some stories he had placed in small literary magazines, he was accepted into the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. Two years later, now with his M.F.A., Richard began looking for jobs teaching creative writing and came up against a fiercely competitive and glutted job market. So he stayed put and took a full-time position at Larson Ford, turning wrenches by day, scribbling in notebooks and pecking at his computer keyboard by night, in the hope of somehow, someday, liberating himself exclusively to write, to write, to write, to build a ladder with words and climb it to some place where the light was clear and clean and intense enough to burn the grease stains out of his hands and out of his memory. And here he was instead, climbing stairs to living quarters above a garage in which he would labor at work that he had spent the better part of the last ten years trying to escape.

At the top of the stairs, Mike Pace unlocked and led the way in.

"It's not much," Pace said. "We have some furniture in storage that you're welcome to use. You'll have maid service—some cleaning and a change of bed linens and towels every other day. You might run short of hot water on occasion. There's no air conditioning, so you'll probably need a fan, at least until summer’s over.”

Richard barely heard him. Pace’s “not much” was about fifteen by thirty feet of mostly open space, with plank floors, exposed brick walls and timbering, operable windows on three sides, simple and spare with an abundance of natural light. Not much? As he looked around, it occurred to Richard that to have such a space in which to set up shop as a writer he’d commit high treason and sell his mother into sexual slavery.

“There's no kitchen,” Pace said, “but you won't need one; three meals a day in the cafeteria are part of the package. We furnish the phone, but you'll have to pay for any long-distance calls.

"As for salary," Pace said. He cleared his throat. "The pay is seven-fifty a month." He seemed apologetic.

Richard listened as Pace defended the amount in terms of the value of the room-and-board allowances and other benefits like medical coverage and free use of the gym.

Richard looked around the room then back at Pace.

"When do I start?"

"How's today sound?"

"I wasn't counting on this working out quite so fast. I’ll need to return to Iowa City for my things, but I can probably get by for a day or two with what I brought with me.”

Pace checked the time. "I've got ten of twelve. Let's go over to the cafeteria. I'll let them know you're on the payroll, and you can grab some lunch. When you're done, come back here, downstairs that is, and familiarize yourself with the layout and maintenance schedules. Today's Thursday. Stay through tomorrow and set us up for the weekend. Then make your trip to Iowa City, come back Sunday evening, and hit the ground running on Monday. You can have the key to the upstairs here. I’ll get you a cot and some towels and whatever else you need to see you through until you take off. Deal?"

They shook hands. Pace fished in his pocket for the key and gave it to him with an air of ceremony.

After showing Richard to the cafeteria, Pace went off to inform Rex McNabb of his acceptance. Richard ate lunch, then went to retrieve the Firebird, still over at Personnel. He drove through the compound and parked behind the carriage house.

Richard took the overnight bag he had brought with him up to the apartment then went back down and spent the rest of the day as Pace had suggested. Around four-thirty, Pace reappeared to remind him that he could eat supper in the cafeteria. A while later, Richard did, then went up to his new digs.

A mattress, sheets, and a pillow had been delivered, along with some towels and washcloths and a bar of soap. Richard paced the length and width of the place, sounded the plank floor with his foot and the lower reach of the ceiling timbers with his knuckles, looked out at the pines through the windows. He showered and spent the rest of the evening writing, seated cross-legged on the floor with his notebook in his lap, and retired around eleven o'clock.

The next day Richard awoke and rose around six. He went to a window and looked out on the compound. Some laborers were already about. He went down and to the cafeteria for breakfast. As he ate, he made some entries in his pocket notebook.

Back at the carriage house, all four of the McNabb’s vehicles were in place. Beginning with the Navigator, he climbed into each in turn with a notepad and recorded the mileage, started them and listened as they idled, and then as he pumped the accelerator. The maintenance schedule showed that the Lexus was due for an oil change. He backed it up and drove it over to the work bay. He got out, jacked it up, and got underneath on a creeper. He had no sooner set the oil to draining than he heard a voice from outside.

"This is certainly handy."

Richard looked out from under the Lexus. A large woman—tall, heavy and shapeless—with pale blue eyes stood with hands on hips and an unamused smile frozen across her broad face.

"Ma'am?"

"I had wanted to use the Lexus this morning."

"I expect to be done here in two shakes," Richard said. He got to his feet and wiped his hands on a shop rag. "You must be Mrs. McNabb."

“I suppose I must. Two shakes isn’t quick enough. I’ll take the Land Rover." She got in and backed out. "In the future," she said through the open window, "ask before taking one of my vehicles out of commission."

"But . . ."

"But what?"

"But of course."

She drove off.

A few minutes later Mike Pace came by. Richard reminded him of their short-term arrangement. Pace gave him a thumb-up sign and began to walk off. A few steps away he stopped and looked back and said, “You met Mrs. McNabb.”

“Yes.”

Pace flashed a wry smile. “Don't forget Rule Number One."

During the rest of the day Richard rotated the tires on the Navigator, studied the maintenance schedules, inventoried the tools. He was pleased to note that he seemed to have considerably more time than he needed for that day’s tasks and recalled what Raymond Carver had once said about the virtues of a solitary job that allowed time for writing. In the early afternoon he took a walking tour of the compound and found that he enjoyed the cloistered esthetic of the place. When he returned, he spent some time in the garage area of the carriage house writing in his pocket notebook and reading, more or less out of sight behind the vehicles. Later he showered, then went to the cafeteria for supper.

That night he sat with his full-sized notebook on the floor of his apartment and wrote: “Her blue eyes are the kind that give blue eyes a bad name.”

He wrote some more until around midnight. Before retiring, he looked out a window. Across the way, on the second floor of another building, someone stood behind sheer curtains in dim light, facing the carriage house. From the shapeless bulk, he guessed it was Mrs. McNabb. After a moment, she disappeared.

Richard set off early the next morning. As he put miles between himself and Naperville, he realized that he was far from certain that, once he got to Iowa City, he wanted to pack up and leave it and take the job as Rex McNabb’s personal mechanic.

He liked to think he was still energized by Iowa City—by the campus, the bookstores and coffee shops, the serious minds, all laced with a caffeine and nicotine intensity—and questioned if he could be content living anywhere else than in close proximity to such an atmosphere. But in his time there he had not quite succeeded and not quite failed. He had got his M.F.A., published more stories, even had them collected into a book issued by a small press—none of which had proven to be worth much more than the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Instead of ending up either teaching creative writing or supporting himself as a writer, he was making a comfortable living at Larson Ford and, lately, writing less and less. Far from realizing the ambitions he had come to town with, he wondered if he was doomed by some inexorable fate to follow in the steps of his father, only with an impressive-sounding set of initials at the end of his name.

At his apartment in Iowa City, Richard went through his mail. It included responses from schools at which he had interviewed for teaching jobs. All but one expressed regret that he was not chosen. The exception, from Southern Iowa Community College, was an offer for a full-time instructorship in composition.

Richard was floored. He had all but given up hope of landing a job in academia, and, by then, all but decided to take the job as Rex McNabb’s personal mechanic. Now he had the choice of putting his education to work and of at least partly redeeming all the time and money and energy he had expended in acquiring it. Some choice. In reality it would mean the comp grind, of which he had had a taste as a teaching assistant at the Writer’s Workshop: five classes of eighteen-year-olds, more than a hundred of them, only a handful of whom would have any interest in literature or writing and from whom he would collect and labor over stacks of poorly written papers every week. The demands of such a job would allow him almost no time to write, except in the summers. Working for Rex McNabb, if he read the situation clearly, he would have not only time to write but that magnificent space in which to do it, and, when all was accounted for, perhaps be more generously compensated than as a community college instructor. He decided to sleep on the decision.

He awoke the next morning still unresolved, despite which he began loading his clothes, books, computer and other things—all that he’d take no matter which job he accepted—into the trunk and seats of the Firebird. Still undecided, he drove off.

At the point at which he must either turn south to the teaching job or get on Interstate 80 and head east to Naperville, he stopped at a red light. A car pulled up in the lane next to him, throbbing with high-volume bass notes that rattled the Firebird’s windows: dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum. Its driver was a young male with chin stubble and wearing a ball cap turned backwards, an earring, a heavy stainless steel chain around his neck. His head bobbed mechanically to the beat. His sneer signaled to the world that he had attitude. The light changed and the car peeled away, leaving blue-gray smoke and the smell of rubber. Richard saw a decal in its back window: SICC. He got on the interstate and pointed the Firebird toward Naperville.

One late morning a couple of months later, as he scribbled in his notebook in the carriage house, a quiet rain falling through the pines outside his open windows, a carafe of cafeteria coffee at hand, it occurred to Richard that were he given to corny gestures he might pinch himself to test if he was dreaming the agreeable circumstances into which he had fallen.

Rex McNabb’s assurance about money had been borne out: Richard had spent almost nothing since hiring in, putting virtually all of his salary into a McNabb Group savings account. Owing to his frequent use of the health club and the outdoor basketball court, he was in as good a shape as he had been in years. The cafeteria food was acceptable, its coffee nearly as good as the stuff at his favorite place back in Iowa City. The work was what it was, but Richard finished on most days by early afternoon, and sometimes earlier, leaving long stretches of time for reading and writing and workouts. His greatest challenge, in fact, was to avoid the appearance of slacking off. And his worst fear wasn’t realized—that in numerous insidious ways he would be expected to toe the line in a buttoned-down corporate culture. Far from it, in fact. He hardly ever saw his boss, which he took for tacit approval. Except for Mrs. McNabb, his infrequent encounters with whom made him thankful for Rule Number One, he never felt the cold breath of scrutiny or disapproval. And he was writing in earnest.

He had set up shop in his apartment with a big old oak desk procured from storage, and had finished and sent off to his agent the book he had more or less abandoned in Iowa City. He hadn’t come with much idea of what writing project he’d take on next, but as it happened, he found ample grist for his literary mill in the circumstances on the compound.

Among the domestic service and maintenance personnel there thrived a culture of gossip and rumor-mongering that Richard was able to tune in to simply by keeping an ear cocked. Some of the talk concerned incompetence and shady dealings in the McNabb Group’s business practices. And fragrant hints wafted about that certain parties separated vertically, as it were, by class—the men who met in the boardroom and the women who cleaned up after—found secret times and places to share each others’ company horizontally. Not that Richard believed everything he heard, but for his purposes as fictionist and plot maker, the literal truth was beside the point.

All things taken together, then, on that morning Richard was feeling well situated in ways he'd have never guessed possible working as a mechanic for a corporate CEO.

He put down his pen, closed his notebook and turned to a pile of mail that had accumulated over a few days. One item was the envelope containing his most recent paycheck. It was fatter than usual, and he opened it to find a cover letter accompanying some sheets with graphs and charts. The letter was an invitation to invest in a McNabb Group stock options program by automatic payroll deduction. It spoke of the bright future of the American economy in general, the McNabb Group in particular, and of the wisdom of getting "on board" now. Separate sheets explained and charted the virtues of dollar cost averaging and what an investment of $1,000 made twenty years ago in McNabb stock would be worth today. The letter ended by noting that someone would be in touch to answer questions and to help employees choose funds and a contribution appropriate to their income level. The suggested monthly minimum was $100.

Richard refolded the sheets, stuffed them into the envelope, and tossed it back onto the pile. But the matter nagged him. All things being equal, he’d have dismissed the offer without a second thought; he had no head for the stock market or inclination to be in it, even if he could be convinced he could do so without risk, and if some of the rumors going around the compound were based even partly on truth, more risk might be involved than he cared to take on. Yet now, with cause to wonder if his good standing as an employee might depend on his signing up, he felt the chill of coercion on the back of his neck.

Later the same evening he perused the materials again, this time keying on the term “suggested minimum." He swallowed hard, not so much pride as distaste, and decided what to do if approached on the matter.

He didn’t have long to wait. Two days later, as Richard ate breakfast, a young African American man appeared across the table from him with a briefcase and a mug of coffee. He wore rimless glasses and a business suit. He set his coffee and briefcase on the table.

"Jacoby Wells. Mind if I join you?"

Richard could see what was coming but didn’t feel he could very well say yes, he did mind. In arming himself against a sales pitch for the stock options plan, he hadn’t anticipated its coming from the only minority professional he had seen on the compound. Now he had to wonder if the cold eye he had planned for whoever made that pitch might be construed as racism. If Rex McNabb had calculated for that in picking Wells for the job, Richard had to credit him for more savvy than he thought he had.

"Be my guest," Richard said without a welcoming smile.

"I wanted to follow up on the information you got in your last pay envelope,” Wells said. “Make sure you understood everything. Answer any questions you might have." He pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I don't have any questions," Richard said.

"Terrific!" Wells popped the latches on his briefcase. "If you'd like we can decide right now what level you want to come in at and get you signed up."

"I've already decided," Richard said. “Put me down for twenty-five dollars a month.”

Wells looked puzzled. "I'm not sure I understand. The suggested minimum is a hundred dollars.”

"Suggested minimum," Richard said. "I take that to mean I can go lower."

"Of course, but . . ."

"Put me down for twenty-five dollars a month."

Wells wrinkled his nose. He seemed to be consulting his repertoire of responses and finding none for this situation.

"I'm not going to force you to go higher," he said, "but this barely covers our administrative costs, and there's no better time than now to get in at a level that makes sense. If you read the sheet on dollar cost averaging you'll have to agree that . . . Let me show you something that wasn't in the packet you got."

As Wells reached into his briefcase, Richard fought the urge to point out that in saying he wouldn't force Richard to go higher, he was suggesting that he could if he wanted to, and had thus spoken nonsense. Wells set a sheet of paper in front of Richard, and with an immaculately manicured finger directed his attention.

“This chart shows how baby boomers looking to jack up their retirement will be fueling the market in the next ten to fifteen years."

Richard looked out the window and sipped his coffee. Wells’s face registered part exasperation, part resignation.

"You're sure about this," he said.

Richard brought his attention back and nodded. "Twenty-five dollars.”

"I guess you know your mind," Wells said. He pulled a form from his briefcase, penned some entries onto it and pushed it across the table. Richard scanned it, signed and pushed it back across.

"Here's my card,” Wells said. “You can up the amount any time.”

Wells left and joined two men at another table.

Richard watched him go off with mixed feelings. He suspected Jacoby Wells might be in a tough spot—the minority guy in an otherwise white corporate culture assigned the dirty work to pay his dues. But that was his problem. Richard only hoped that his attempt to be with the program but at the same time assert his independence wouldn’t be viewed as somehow insulting and thus worse than outright refusal.

Richard finished his breakfast and left. As he approached the carriage house to start work, he saw Grace, the maid who serviced his apartment, enter his place with an armful of sheets and towels. He went up.

When he walked in she was bent over the bed, changing sheets. She turned in surprise and spoke something in Spanish that seemed a question. Richard went to the computer on his desk and pointed to the keyboard.

“Please be careful over here,” he said. “I often leave this on when I’m working downstairs, and a few times I’ve come back up to find things not as I left them. It’s better if you don’t dust it or try to clean over here at all.”

She seemed not to understand, so he started again with deliberate slowness.

“Por favor . . .”

Incipient panic came to her face, and it occurred to Richard that she thought he was accusing her of something. She shook her head and looked as if she might break into tears. Her dark hair came undone and tumbled in soft curls to her shoulders.

That tumble of hair caused Richard for the first time to see her as he hadn’t before. She was small and shapely, with deep brown eyes and a rosebud mouth. Just like that, he was flushed and tumescent, and it was all he could do to resist putting his fingers into her lovely hair. He backed up and sat.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to upset you.”

She rushed out the door and down the stairs.

The next day, as Richard was reading in a carriage house work bay behind the Navigator, its hood raised to shield him from view, he heard someone approach and stop outside. He set his book down behind a tool chest, picked up a shop rag and came out wiping his hands. Nadine McNabb stood as if waiting for him.

“Hard at it, I see,” she said.

“Always.”

“Reginald thinks highly of you. He’s pleased with your work and seems to believe you’re a fine fellow.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I on the other hand think you’re a scheming bastard.”

Richard waited for the rest.

“A while back Reginald heard of some CEO out east that had acquired a personal mechanic, and decided he had to have one too. Thus your presence among us. Thus the deaf ear he turns when I ask him why you go about writing in a little notebook, or why the carriage house light is on at all hours of the night as you peck away at that computer of yours, or why your answering machine takes messages from someone calling herself your agent.”

Richard watched her without replying.

“Being Mexican, Grace’s command of English isn’t the greatest, but she says she’s sure of what she heard in this case.”

“That’s personal business,” Richard said.

“Everything you do on this compound is our business. Maybe Reginald will be inspired to put you in your place when he hears of your following Grace upstairs yesterday and of the state she was in when she came down. Forgive me for interrupting your reading,” she said, and walked off.

That night, Richard didn’t know if his inability to sleep derived from his encounter with Nadine McNabb or from too much coffee; whichever was the case, when his phone rang at one-thirty in the morning, he was still up and working at his computer. For three rings he pondered who it could be at that time and considered not answering. Then he remembered being on call at all hours. He picked up the receiver. Rex McNabb's voice came over the line.

"Come around with the Land Rover in five minutes."

"The Land Rover? That’s . . . "

The line went dead.

Still dressed, Richard had only to slip into shoes. He pulled up in front of the McNabb's private quarters with two minutes to spare.

Rex McNabb got in the far back seat. "Drive to the other end of the compound.”

In front of the building that housed some female domestic staff who lived on site, McNabb told him to stop. A small figure emerged from the dark, recessed doorway. McNabb opened the back door. Richard watched in the rear-view mirror as the dome light came on. It was Grace.

"We're going to make a circle,” McNabb said. “Drop down to I-55 and take the Stevenson to the Loop, then swing up and catch the Eisenhower for the trip back. Don't stop and don’t get off the expressway."

As Richard drove, he used the mirror to check on the action in the back. Taking Grace’s arm, McNabb drew her to his side and spoke to her in low, amorous tones. Richard couldn't make out the words, but the message was clear. McNabb forced a kiss upon her reluctant face.

They drove through the West Side. Grace protested meekly as McNabb’s tone grew more commanding. Then she disappeared from the mirror.

McNabb’s breathing grew shallow. “This is . . . ooh . . . Grace's old neighborhood. I happen to know that she’s thankful to be out of it and grateful for the job that makes that possible." His head rolled back. "I wish every employee of mine had that kind of gratitude.” His chin dropped to his chest. “That kind of . . . hoo! . . . loyalty.”

Grace reappeared in the mirror. She pinned her hair back into place.

For the remainder of the trip, Grace and McNabb sat in silence, looking out opposite windows.

When they arrived back at the compound, McNabb instructed Richard to take Grace home first. Before she got out, he said to Richard, "Grace has the day off tomorrow. If you need fresh towels or sheets, you can pick them up at the laundry.”

Back at the carriage house, Richard lay awake wondering what he would say if Nadine McNabb demanded to know why he had driven off in her Land Rover in the wee hours of the night.

But he didn’t see her until a few days later. He had the Navigator out, wetting it with a hose preliminary to a wash and wax, when she approached and stood nearby. He at first pretended not to notice, but when ignoring her was no longer possible he shut off the water and faced her.

"Morning, ma'am."

“You can cut the deferential crap. I’ll get right to the point. After our little conversation the other day I decided to follow a hunch. Sure enough I made an interesting discovery on Amazon dot com.”

She reached into the large handbag slung over her shoulder, drew out a slender, dust-jacketed book, held it in front of her at eye level and read: "Trickle Down, and Other Atrocities from the Class War—Stories by Richard Killian.”

She flipped it and read from the back cover. "‘Richard Killian’s tales constitute an unflinching indictment of the moral and ethical poverty of the money-making class.’ Nice picture. You clean up well."

"A friend blurbed it for me," Richard said.

She held the book by a corner between two fingers like some noisome thing.

"I could give this to Reginald,” she said, “or I could put it on a shelf in our library, the least likely place for him to find it. Would you like him to know what a versatile and talented fellow his mechanic is?” She dropped it into her handbag.

Richard didn’t answer.

She pointed her chin at the Lexus. "My car needs to be washed and vacuumed. Try to spare time from your writing to have it ready by tomorrow morning."

Later, up in his apartment, wondering if the ax was poised to fall, Richard sorted the day’s mail. It included, among other things, what appeared to be his first earnings statement since he signed up for the stock options plan. He tossed it aside with other junk mail and opened two envelopes he had addressed to himself—replies from magazine publishers to whom he had sent a story—and a letter from his agent. The self-addressed envelopes contained form rejections. His agent had written to say that she found the opening chapters of his latest work too slow; that, frankly, she couldn’t see a way to make the piece marketable; that she had come to wonder if he might be better represented by someone else.

Richard retrieved and opened the earnings statement he had tossed aside. His meager investment had yielded a thirty percent return during a fierce bull run. He couldn't help but wonder how much he’d have made if he had signed up for the suggested minimum, or even more. Certainly he could afford to, as he was spending almost nothing. At this stage in his life and circumstances he was more interested in writing than in making money—he wondered when he had come to think of its being one or the other—but if he could make money by doing nothing more than moving it around on paper, then why not? But of course he could do that only if the ax he imagined poised over his neck didn’t fall.

A few weeks later on an early September mid-morning, as Richard came down the steps from his carriage house apartment, he saw Rex McNabb and some other men shooting baskets on an outdoor court. One was Mike Pace, but Richard didn't recognize the others; he presumed they were McNabb Group employees in for a weekend conference. They stopped and Pace approached Richard.

"We need a sixth," he said. "Mr. McNabb wants you to play."

McNabb stood watching them and waved him over. Richard gestured toward the carriage house then made a megaphone with his hands.

"Mrs. McNabb wants me to . . ."

"Get your butt over here, Killian," McNabb yelled back. He turned away without waiting for a reply.

"I'll change," Richard said to Pace.

He went up to his apartment and moments later came back down dressed to play.

On the court, McNabb introduced Richard around as “my mechanic” to those he didn't know, then designated teams: Richard, Mike Pace, and a guy named Tom were to play McNabb and the other two.

It took Richard a while to find his game, and his team lost to McNabb's in a contest to fifteen baskets.

"Best of three," McNabb declared.

Richard was troubled in the first game by what he perceived as his teammates’ deference to McNabb, whose skills were clearly limited—a reluctance to guard him closely or take advantage of his slowness of foot when he was on defense. Before the second game began, Richard called for a huddle and suggested a switch in defensive assignments, with the result that he and McNabb ended up guarding each other.

By this time, Richard had found a groove. After the second of two jump shots he scored over McNabb, he wondered if that were an admonitory look he got from Mike Pace.

With his team ahead and one basket from winning, Richard had the ball at the top of the key. McNabb defended him closely, crouched over spread legs, his open hand near Richard's face. With a combination head and ball fake, Richard got McNabb off his feet. When Richard started to drive around him and toward the basket, McNabb tried to adjust on his way down and landed awkwardly. The chink of the chain net as Richard laid the ball in off the backboard was covered by McNabb's cry of pain.

The others huddled around him. McNabb held his ankle and rocked, his face contorted. After a couple of minutes, Mike Pace and one of McNabb’s teammates helped him get to his feet and to a bench. Richard tried to pitch in, but McNabb slapped his hand away. Continuance of play was out of the question, and McNabb finally allowed himself to be helped off the court.

For the rest of that day and night, Richard found himself waiting once again for the ax to fall.

Mike Pace stopped by the carriage house the next morning as Richard worked.

"You might as well know,” he said, “that if you’re allowed to stay on it may be only because he needs you around in order to cut you down to size. But if you survive this, never, ever show him up like that in front of other people." He left without waiting for a response.

At lunch that day, Richard noted that the McNabb Group stock price, posted on a cafeteria chalkboard, was rising again after a brief lull. He made a mental note to tell Jacoby Wells to increase his payroll deduction to $150 a month. If he was still on the payroll.

After lunch, Richard walked toward the carriage house, intent on filling some pages of his notebook. It was another in a string of cool days, a harbinger of autumn, the time of year when he always enjoyed the most energy and inspiration, and he had already begun to anticipate spending the free hours of that season at his writing desk.

As Richard reached the steps, McNabb approached on crutches, his right foot and ankle heavily wrapped. Richard stopped.

"How's the ankle?” he said.

McNabb planted the crutches and his good foot, holding his injured foot above the ground. He looked at Richard with anger and puzzlement.

"You play like a nigger," he said.

Richard’s first impulse was to thank him for the complement, but, on the hunch that smart-assed irony added to injury might cost him his place, he checked himself and said nothing.

"Don't ever forget whose nigger you are," McNabb said.

McNabb turned, pivoting on the tip of his right crutch, and hobbled off. Richard climbed the stairs.