OH, ROB.

The morning smelled of bacon, warm biscuits, and the faintly scorched coffee Lucinda insisted was a characteristic rather than a defect. October sunlight lay across the Grounds for Divorce in long rectangles, illuminating the sugar somebody had spilled beside Chad’s elbow and a fly that had survived more attempted executions than a Tennessee prisoner on death row.

Across the street, RUSTY HAMMER HARDWARE had its door propped open. Rusty had come over to explain why the purchase of one crescent wrench did not constitute ownership of a complete toolbox. Chad, who had made that purchase, was receiving the information with the injured patience of a man who had expected a warranty to include silence.

“You can round off almost anything with one,” Rusty was saying, when the Plymouth arrived.

It came down the street with a low, expensive rumble, passed the window, and settled at the curb. Conversation stopped without anybody voting. Even the fly landed.

The car was black in the way a grand piano was black, with the suggestion that touching it without permission might expose shortcomings in your upbringing. Red upholstery glowed beneath the open sky. Chrome caught the morning light along a body that seemed to have been designed by somebody who regarded restraint as a medical condition. At the rear, two fins rose with the assurance of a woman leaving a beauty shop knowing her husband would complain about the bill and follow her through every room in the house anyway.

Rusty watched the driver climb out and cross toward the hardware store carrying a list.

“Mary Tyler Moore,” he said.

Chad turned around. “That’s a man.”

“The car.”

“That’s a Plymouth.”

Trixie lowered her fork. Her auburn bouffant had already established a commanding presence at the table; she merely supplied the voice beneath it.

“We may need to start Chad on something easier. Colors, perhaps.”

Rusty ignored them. “Mary Tyler Moore between Richard Diamond, Private Detective and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Right there. That exact moment.”

Lucinda approached with the coffee pot, her chestnut hair catching the light and the red piping of her white dress doing its usual efficient work.

“Before or after you discovered television required both hands above the blanket?”

“I’m discussing American design.”

“Then sit up straight.”

Rusty sat up. He did so automatically, which weakened his position before he had begun defending it.

He explained that Mary had played Sam on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, a woman whose voice and legs did the work while her face remained unseen. David Janssen handled the detective business. Several million American men handled the speculation. Television sets had rabbit ears, pictures occasionally rolled, and fathers who couldn’t remember their wedding anniversaries could locate that particular program without consulting a newspaper.

“Then Laura Petrie,” Rusty continued. “Same woman, whole different proposition. That Plymouth belongs right between them.”

Outside, its curved windshield held a pale reflection of the sky. The black canvas top was folded beneath a red cover. Dual mirrors stood on the fenders like two small witnesses prepared to testify that the driver had been looking behind him for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Trixie considered the evidence.

“Already Laura,” she said. “Those fins are the flipped hairdo. I could set that rear end with a round brush.”

“You’d need a stepladder,” Chad said.

“And you’d still need an appointment.”

Rusty shook his head. “Laura was wholesome.”

Lucinda stopped pouring.

“Rusty, that woman could cross a living room in black pants and make a man forget why he’d put on his own.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying wholesome like somebody disconnected the electricity.”

Chad looked between them. “Was she the one who threw her hat?”

“Later,” Lucinda said.

“How much later?”

“After these two finish puberty.”

The kitchen spatula scraped the griddle. Delgado set another plate in the pass-through, and the smell of melted butter and yeast arrived before Lucinda brought the biscuits. Outside, a pickup slowed beside the Fury. Its driver studied the car, looked forward just in time to avoid becoming a municipal event, and continued with his morning rearranged.

Trixie saw him go.

“That,” she said, “is what Laura Petrie did to pants.”

Rusty preferred pedal-pushers. Trixie preferred capris. Chad wanted to know whether they were mechanically different. Lucinda told him the distinction would not affect his ability to disappoint anybody wearing either.

Trixie remembered women bringing pictures to beauty shops, pointing at Mary’s hair and asking for the flip. Some had the hair for it. Some had optimism, which was harder to work with. They wanted that lightness, that movement, the impression that a woman could turn her head and have everything fall neatly into place.

“Took rollers, setting lotion, time under a dryer, and knowing what you were doing,” she said. “Men thought she woke up that way.”

“Rob woke up in a separate bed,” Rusty said.

“The network put him there. Don’t confuse furniture with lack of interest.”

Chad glanced toward the Plymouth again. “The seats look separate, too.”

“And yet,” Lucinda said, “civilization continued.”

The owner returned from the hardware store with a little paper sack. Rusty recognized Eddie Mercer, who had recently moved back to the area and possessed the dangerous combination of retirement income and no supervisor. Eddie spotted Lucinda through the window, lifted the sack, and came inside.

“Morning, Eddie,” she said.

He took off his cap. “Morning. Got my screws.”

“There’s a phrase Rusty doesn’t hear often,” Trixie said.

Eddie accepted coffee and a chair. Asked about the Plymouth, he answered willingly, having purchased a car that made anonymity impossible.

Top of Plymouth’s line in 1960, he said. New unibody platform that year. One of 7,080 convertibles. This one had been refinished in black in 2006. The cabin had been redone in 2023, following the factory style: red vinyl, patterned inserts, white accents.

Trixie leaned to see past Rusty’s shoulder.

“Somebody understood the assignment.”

Eddie said the front seats swiveled.

Lucinda looked interested. “Toward the door?”

“Makes getting in easier.”

“Imagine,” she said. “Something designed to help a woman get into a car instead of a man trying to help himself.”

Rusty asked about the engine, grateful for a subject whose moving parts could be named without inviting rebuttal.

Eddie said it had an Imperial-sourced 413 installed around 2003, with a cross-ram intake and two Carter four-barrels. The carburetors had been rebuilt in 2023. A replacement three-speed TorqueFlite handled the shifting.

Rusty’s expression softened into reverence.

“Four-thirteen.”

“Is that good?” Chad asked.

“It’s considerable,” Lucinda said, watching Rusty. “Apparently we’ve reached the religious portion of breakfast.”

Eddie offered to raise the hood. Rusty stood immediately. Chad followed, unwilling to remain ignorant of anything that might eventually be used against him. Trixie and Lucinda stayed inside, where their coffee was warm and the discussion had already supplied enough men demonstrating enthusiasm over exposed machinery.

Under the hood, the intake runners reached across the engine, each carburetor stationed out toward the opposite side beneath a round red air cleaner. Chad stared at the arrangement as though somebody had opened a suitcase containing two trombones.

Rusty explained the general idea. Chad absorbed perhaps a third of it, mostly the part involving more air and gasoline.

“A regular engine wouldn’t do?”

“A regular car wouldn’t do,” Rusty said.

Through the window, Trixie watched him bend over the fender.

“There’s Buddy Sorrell,” she said.

Lucinda followed her gaze. “Buddy had better material.”

“Chad could trip over the ottoman.”

“Chad would order another ottoman so nobody felt singled out.”

They smiled. For a few minutes the café belonged to its ordinary sounds: cutlery against plates, the refrigerator humming, Delgado moving behind the pass-through. Lucinda wiped the table where Eddie had set his sack. Trixie watched the Plymouth’s red seats shine in the sunlight.

“I did that haircut once,” she said.

“On somebody?”

“On me. Before I knew enough to charge people.”

She had watched reruns, studied Mary’s head when she turned, and attempted the result in a bathroom with one good mirror and a second held at an angle. One side had flipped beautifully. The other had developed a grievance.

“My mother said I looked like I’d slept beside a fan.”

“Did you fix it?”

“Eventually. But I wore it downtown first.”

Lucinda understood that part. There were ages when getting yourself seen felt urgent enough to forgive imperfect workmanship. Later came years when people saw you constantly and noticed remarkably little.

She lifted the coffee pot and checked the room.

Outside, Eddie lowered the hood. Rusty walked around the back, studying the Sport Deck faux spare-wheel cover on the trunk.

“Spare’s under there?” Chad asked.

“That’s decoration,” Eddie said.

Chad examined it with renewed respect. Fort Stockton contained numerous things whose appearance implied useful contents. He had not realized automobiles participated.

The replacement fifteen-inch wire wheels wore whitewall tires. Eddie mentioned power steering and the upgraded brakes, discs in front and drums behind. Rusty approved. Admiration was one thing; stopping a large supply of it before reaching the next intersection was another.

When they returned, Chad had accumulated enough information to ask whether any part of the car was still from 1960.

“Plenty,” Eddie said. “But it’s had a life.”

“So has Trixie,” Rusty said. “We don’t ask her for matching numbers.”

“You couldn’t survive the inspection.”

Eddie sat down. The odometer showed seventy-three thousand, he said, about fourteen hundred added during his ownership. He had records for a replacement radiator, stainless exhaust fitted in 2019, three plug wires replaced in 2025, and a starter installed this year.

“Only three wires?” Chad asked.

“Those were the ones needed.”

Rusty nodded. “Good maintenance.”

Lucinda placed his bill beside his cup. “You could apply that principle to some of your sentences.”

Chad had located a photograph of Laura Petrie on his phone. He laid it beside the salt shaker, then looked out the window.

“All right,” he admitted. “I can see it.”

Trixie smiled. “There may be hope.”

“But why her? Plenty of women were pretty.”

That gave Rusty pause. He looked at the picture longer than his original thesis required.

“She seemed like fun,” he said at last.

Trixie let him have that. Mary could dance, get flustered, laugh, and make an expression carry the scene. You wanted to see what she would do next. Laura could be embarrassed without becoming small, and funny without anybody needing to make her look foolish first.

“Sally Rogers was funny, too,” Lucinda said. “Worked all day keeping up with those men. Sometimes ahead of them.”

“You’d be Sally,” Chad told Trixie.

“Because I’m funny?”

“Because you’d tell Alan Brady what to do.”

Trixie accepted the promotion.

Rusty remembered Rob falling over the ottoman, Mel getting insulted, and a room full of walnuts. Chad wanted to know why walnuts. Rusty began explaining, discovered that a sensible description made the episode sound like a neurological emergency, and advised him to watch it.

Eddie listened with a comfortable smile. His coffee had cooled, but he seemed in no hurry to replace it.

“Clock doesn’t work in the Plymouth,” he said. “Neither does the radio.”

“A car that won’t tell you the time or the news,” Trixie said. “Worth more than I thought.”

Rusty considered the silent radio a defect. Eddie considered it something he would get around to. Lucinda thought a ride without a man turning the volume up halfway through her sentence might be an interesting experiment.

Eddie looked at her.

“You ready?”

Rusty raised his head. “Ready for what?”

“He promised me a ride,” Lucinda said.

“When?”

“Yesterday. During one of the hours when things happened without you.”

She had admired the car while Eddie was buying coffee to go. He had asked whether she liked convertibles. She had told him about riding in one when she was young, before every drive involved somebody needing something at the other end.

“Figured we’d go out a little way,” Eddie said. “Back before lunch.”

Lucinda looked toward the kitchen. Delgado lifted the spatula in acknowledgment. Arrangements had been made. Rusty seemed troubled by how smoothly the world operated when it neglected to consult him.

She untied her apron, folded it over the counter, and handed Trixie the coffee pot. Without the apron she was still Lucinda, in the same dress she had been wearing all morning. Somehow the room understood it differently.

Trixie reached up and freed a small section of hair flattened by the apron strap.

“There.”

Lucinda touched it. “Wind’ll undo it.”

“Let it.”

At the door, Eddie stepped aside and waited for her. The bell sounded above them, then the door closed and left the table watching through the window.

He opened the passenger door and showed her the swivel seat. Lucinda laughed, turned, and settled into the red upholstery without the usual negotiation between knees, hem, and steering-wheel-adjacent male advice. Eddie swung the seat into position. She rested her arm along the door.

Inside, Chad pushed his plate away for a better view.

The refurbished Aero steering wheel glittered in front of Eddie, squared off as though even a circle had been sent back for something more interesting. Above the tiered dash sat the Teleview speedometer, its scale offering a hundred and twenty miles an hour to people who might only be going to lunch. Eddie touched a transmission button. The engine answered beneath them, and that deep exhaust note reached the café as a pleasant disturbance in the glass.

Lucinda looked back toward the window. Trixie raised the coffee pot in salute.

Then the Plymouth moved off, carrying its fins, its improbable steering wheel, its transplanted Imperial muscle, and a woman whose coffee cup tattoo everyone could describe but whose favorite kind of afternoon nobody had thought to ask about.

Rusty watched until the car turned the corner.

“Never knew she liked old cars,” he said.

“You never asked,” Trixie answered.

I had been at the end of the table all morning, enjoying the sort of argument that improves considerably when you don’t contribute to it. Now I looked at the spot beside the counter where Lucinda’s apron lay. We knew which biscuit she’d give somebody having a bad day. We knew when she was tired by the way she set down the pot. We knew the things she did for us with a precision we mistook for knowing her.

Outside, a little dust stirred where the Fury had been. October light reached the curb without finding any chrome to catch it.

“So which Mary Tyler Moore was it?” Chad asked.

Trixie poured his coffee. “Ask Lucinda when she gets back.”

Rusty glanced toward the corner again.

“Eddie married?”

“Widowed.”

“How long?”

“Long enough to ask her what she likes.”

I reached for the last biscuit. From the kitchen came the sound of Delgado starting lunch, which appeared likely to occur on schedule despite the temporary absence of our leading lady.

Rusty checked his watch, then looked at Lucinda’s apron.

Trixie followed his eyes. Her smile started slowly.

“Oh, Rob.”