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had all changed since then, of course, and when it did, Leonard had branched out.
    Mandelbaum Motors didn’t sell . That was Leonard’s other rule of business. Never use the hard sell. Customers didn’t trust car salesmen who chased them around the showroom, barking like carnival hucksters. Leonard purposefully kept the lot understaffed; he didn’t want his boys charging out the door with their hands out whenever some poor sap drove onto the premises. Just the opposite. You had difficulties finding a salesman at Mandelbaum Motors. You had to wait until someone had a moment to hand out a brochure, hop in for a test drive, quote you a price. Because Leonard Mandelbaum was no pitchman. You came into his office, he gave you his best price, you signed the papers, or not.
    For thirty-odd years Leonard had been the first to arrive on the lot every morning, newspaper in hand. Days off didn’t sit well with him. He’d find himself restless and fidgety, even at the country club sitting by the swimming pool with Myra and the kids. “Go already,” Myra would tell him. “You’re making everyone crazy.” So he would drive out to East Hartford, get behind his desk, work the phone.
    This went on into his golden years, even after Benjamin had taken the reins. His son knew the business from the ground up; he’d started in the car wash when he was thirteen. College hadn’t appealed to Benjamin. After two years in Pennsylvania he’d dropped out. His grades were so-so, even in economics classes, and Benjamin had always excelled in mathematics; his heart just wasn’t in it. He started full-time when he was twenty, and he’d married Judy a couple of years later. And ever since, father and son had worked side by side, through the difficult eighties, the roaring nineties. Afternoons they would lunch at Shelly’s Deli down the block, then return to their offices across the hall from each other. With his door open, Leonard could see Benjamin, feet up on his desk, fingers flying on the computer. Benjamin worked magic on that computer, bringing in out-of-state customers; once he even sold a fleet of Eldorados to Arabia.
    But it all ended when Myra got ill. Leonard nursed her himself and left the house only when she insisted. “Get out of my sight, Leonard,” she would say. “Stop hanging over me like a vulture.” Four years she battledthe cancer, holding on long past the time any doctor thought possible. Six months to a year, they’d given her. But they didn’t know Myra Mandelbaum. A stubborn woman, his wife. When it was over, finally, when she called it quits, the fight was gone from Leonard too. He hadn’t considered the possibility of outliving her. It had been a sticking point back when he’d courted her, their ten-year age difference. Her parents hadn’t liked the idea of her marrying an old man —he was thirty-seven at the time; they didn’t want Myra being left to fend for herself in her old age. They needn’t have worried. Leonard had planned well: life insurance, disability insurance, stocks and bonds. All that was irrelevant now. He’d cashed in the insurance policies and transferred the securities to Benjamin and Sissi. He hadn’t planned to survive Myra, and after she was gone he didn’t know what to do with himself.
    In time, he returned to the lot. But five years had passed and almost everything had changed. His first day back, he wandered the showroom, bewildered, looking for his office, which had been relocated when Benjamin renovated the building. His own familiar secretary had retired; new employees roamed the aisles, watching him with curiosity those first few days. Was he a customer? Someone’s uncle? There were new makes and models, new technology. But the biggest change was within Leonard himself: He had lost the desire to sell. What was the point? Benjamin had everything under control; the business was