Always Be Closing

Always Be Closing

I staple contracts with barbed wire and fill the fountain pens with blood. In the buyers’ lounge, I sprinkle the complimentary pastries with arsenic, add bleach to the coffee creamer. Lizzie says, if they can’t handle our showroom, they can’t handle our cars.

And yet—or because of this—Bathory Luxury Motors is the top high-end vehicle dealership in the region. One wall is covered with brass plate awards like a columbarium of crematory niches.

Lizzie’s heels whip-crack against the porcelain tile of the showroom. Her perfume is agarwood and almond blossoms, smoky, distractingly sweet. She taps her fingernail on my desk nameplate. There’s a smudge on the d in Sandrine. I wipe the plate with my cashmere sleeve. Lizzie gave me the name Sandrine at my employee orientation ceremony. I can’t remember my real name while I’m at work. I think it begins with a G.

I do remember that my last lover sold stolen PlayStations. Another was imprisoned for arson. Both of them tried hacking into my bank account. Lizzie believed my lust for troublemakers suited me to this job. My sales record disputes that.

“I noticed you aren’t pushing the ten-year service contract,” she says. She checks her watch, a gold Patek Phillipe with a dial that matches her glittering onyx eyes.

“But customers like the five-year option.” Sweat blooms in my armpits. My sales technique is sour, like I’d bathed in spoiled milk, and my boss can smell it on me.

  “Look, if our clientele can afford a six-figure car, they can afford parts and labor. But that’s not the point.” Lizzie tucks her dark hair behind her ear, revealing a gold Victorian-era hatpin driven through the upper cartilage. “My ancestors back in Hungary cornered the royal carriage market because of their exceptional customer service. I won’t have that legacy tarnished.”

I scramble to straighten everything on my desk. “Sure, I’ll do ten-year contracts from here on out.” Lizzie nods and glides away for her ten o’clock. Our customers are appointment-only. Nadia, our office manager, assigns them according to our year-to-date sales, an astrology ephemeris, and the throwing of bones. 

Lizzie welcomes a pair of gym influencers. She escorts the couple to a Lamborghini Huracan in Arancia, an orange so luscious I want to lick the paint. They’re more interested in the Mercedes-Maybach SUV—more practical, they argue. But we’re not selling Toyotas or Kias. We offer rumbling twin turbo engines, glossy exteriors, headlights like shark teeth, leather, chrome, power, speed. We offer the buyers’ lounge and all the temptations within.

One desk over, Kara uncrosses her legs. I have a hazy memory of my cheek against Kara’s shoulder, soft as Nappa leather, blood-splattered except for where my head blocked an aortic spray. 

Kara glances at me and blushes. I lower my head and prep for the eleven o’clock. A tech bro courtesy of Nadia’s machinations. Okay. I’ll show Tech Bro the McLaren 765LT Spider convertible, $549,995. Tech Bro will drop hints about the buyers’ lounge. I’ll take him there, show him what we do, close the sale. 

Another image flashes in my head: the hot glow of pillar candles, Lizzie wiping blood from her bare clavicles, announcing, Don’t forget your ABCs, team. Always be closing.

But Tech Bro isn’t interested in a test drive. I roll my desk chair over to Kara and unravel. “It’s got to be the economy. I couldn’t get him to bite. My sales are trash this quarter.”

Kara’s brown eyes widen. “Just like Evelina.” She bites her lower lip. 

The memory solidifies. The entire sales team, drug-soaked, kneeling in the candlelit conference room. Our arms laced together, our skin hungry for warmth. Evelina had failed to improve her sales over a three-month probationary period. She had disappointed the ancestors. Naked, clutching an antler-handled Magyar knife, Evelina submitted her resignation. With ecstatic howls, cupped hands, we accepted.

Kara’s fingers are tight around mine. “I had a guy yesterday in the buyer’s lounge,” she says, “he asked to drink our coffee from my shoe.” Kara swivels to show me her stiletto heels. “I don’t remember buying these.”

Lizzie leads the couple to the buyers’ lounge. For a moment, her skull is visible through her skin, gray and hollow, crumbling like castle ruins. The air smells like burning rubber and rancid almonds.

I’ve heard the rumors. Other auto dealers believe Lizzie is descended from a medieval countess who supposedly murdered hundreds. Some say she is that countess, a wraith feeding on power and high credit scores. I dismissed it all as professional jealousy. 

Lizzie’s decaying skull lingers in the angles of her cheekbones. I imagine my own skull, stripped clean, sitting behind my nameplate on my desk. Would I recognize it as mine? Or would I stick my fingers into Sandrine’s empty eye sockets, click her jaws together in a mock sales pitch? 

Another memory: I was accepted into nursing school, but I couldn’t afford the tuition. And then a lover stole my car. In desperation, after a midnight oath, I started selling cars.

Kara and I huddle behind a monitor and pretend to research prospective clients. Kara tells me what she recalls of her life outside. Her father waking up after heart bypass surgery. Her cat perched on the table near a pile of medical bills.

At lunchtime, Lizzie wants sushi. She craves the pop of salmon roe between her teeth. She invites the rest of the staff, but Kara and I decline. “Taking inventory,” I say.

I find a gas can in the garage. Kara carries a candle and lighter from the conference room. We drench a stack of vehicle titles in high octane and trail the gasoline across the showroom. Kara drops the lighter. 

I click the key fob to the orange Lamborghini. Kara revs a chalk-white Porsche 911 GT3, pale and smooth as bone. The showroom’s glass walls shatter around us. My nameplate rests on the seat next to me. Sandrine. A name I will forget.