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within earshot and asked what was so funny.
    ‘Randy Winston was telling me you and Molly bought the farm with Chrysler stock your old man got in the late seventies.’
    I smiled with supreme satisfaction. ‘I wonder where he heard that.’
    ‘He said Buddy Elder got it straight from you!’
    ‘I knew a great liar once,’ I said. ‘I sold cars with him for a couple summers. Larry the Liar. I don’t think I ever even knew his last name. I remember one time seeing Larry standing by this big-chested Baptist girl at the back bumper of a two-year-old LeSabre. Larry was slinging his arms around and dancing a little, and she had her arms locked around herself, shaking her head at everything Larry told her. Tubs was managing the floor that afternoon and walked over to me and said, “Twenty bucks if you get that lady on a demo drive.’’ Me? I could get her in the car. I could get the devil himself on a demo drive, but I sure didn’t think she was going to buy it! But twenty bucks is twenty bucks, so I walked out, started the car, pulled it back and opened the passenger door.’
    ‘That easy?’ Walt asked me dubiously.
    ‘For a demo drive, you don’t ask. You pull the car out and open the door. As that particular technique didn’t involve lying, Larry wasn’t very good at it. Now the minute that Baptist girl and her family got into the car, I stepped out and let Larry drive them off.
    Larry did great demo drives. Tubs had the twenty in hand for me when I got back to the showroom.
    ‘About fifteen minutes later they all came back laughing. Everybody loved Larry. Tubs told me to manage the deal because they were going to buy, and he was right. The thing went perfectly. Larry shut up like he was trained to do. I got their signature. The easiest sale I ever made. They loved the car. They loved us. Everything was perfect. Then right at the end, the family all tucked away in their brand new two-year-old Buick LeSabre, Larry leaned into the car and said in his squeaky little Southern drawl, ‘Oh! And I forgot to tell y’all! When y’all bring this in for service, we got a limousine out back with a driver that wears white gloves, and he’ll take you anywhere you want to go.’
    Walt laughed. ‘White gloves?’
    ‘That’s exactly what he said. The lady goes, “Hey, that’s wonderful, Larry! Why don’t the other dealerships do that?” And Larry goes, “I told you, darling, we’re special!”’
    ‘The minute they drove off, I asked Larry why he had to go and tell a lie when it didn’t even matter! I said it was just asking for trouble down the line. You know what he said? He said, “A little lie just makes ’em feel good, Davey. That’s all!”’
    Walt considered this for a moment. ‘That’s why you lied to Buddy? To make him feel good?’
    ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I lied because I don’t like the son of a bitch.’
     
    SOMETIME THE FOLLOWING WEEK one of my students in Introduction to Literature came up to me after class. She said she wanted to make an appointment to talk with me. I was heading back to my office just then and said I could talk to her right away, if that was good for her. That would be okay, she said.
    Did she want to walk along with me or meet over there? She said we might as well walk together.
    At that point, I had already asked her name. Denise Conway. So as we started across campus I inquired about where she came from. Different places. Was she a freshman? Did it show? She looked like a senior, I said, but most of the advisers encouraged their people to get the one-hundred level courses out of the way early. That seemed to satisfy her and we walked in a comfortable silence for a while. She was a nice enough young woman, I thought, lacking confidence maybe, and, except for a trim, perky build, not especially interested in her appearance. To be fair, a lot of the kids dressed down for class: raggedy sweatshirts, loose jeans, no makeup, hair unwashed and pulled back