An exhausted Keyes Dixon fought to stifle a yawn. He lifted a hand to his mouth, stopping just short of touching his face with his grime-covered fingers. Instead, he turned his hand over, wiping at an itch on the side of his nose with the back of his wrist while scanning the stacks of used automobile tires lining the back wall of his shop. He had to have something that might work to get this woman back on the road again.
“Pop, I got a pretty good-looking Dueler. Ask if she wants it until I can get her a new set in here in a few hours. If not, Louis can take her home or wherever she needs to go, and she can leave the car.” He shouted toward the front of the building while tugging tires off the top of the stack until he had cleared the rubber down to the possible replacement. Keyes removed the tire from its resting place, studying all sides, looking for any possible punctures as he started to roll the tire forward.
“She wants it and wants to order the others.” His old man’s smoke-roughened voice echoed over the sound of the air compressor, booming off the walls of the small warehouse. Seconds later, he got another shouted instruction. “Boy, get your ass movin’. The parkin’ lot’s fillin’ up.”
Of course it was. Their small tire shop, simply named Tires, sat in an older, rougher neighborhood of South Dallas and stayed busy from sunup to sundown. About three years ago, his old man had a pretty bad motorcycle accident, forcing Keyes to take over the day-to-day management of their family/club-owned tire business. Keyes had never done much more than change tires before then, but it turned out he had a knack for creating a buzz. With just a few small changes to the operation, some targeted advertising, and the help of the internet, he’d quickly developed a good service rating on Google and become known as the tire shop with the best service and lowest prices in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
His big advertising success didn’t come from social media like everyone kept pushing him to do. Instead, he spent his small budget on supermarket shopping cart ads. The ones that attached a picture and a sales pitch to each buggy. He was strategic in picking the grocery stores. He went with Whole Foods and Central Market—those uppity chains. Within hours of going live, his first targeted customer arrived—the much-coveted white-collar male who liked all those fancy, expensive tires. The shop had also gained a good reputation with the female consumer demographic, which was fine with Keyes.
For Keyes, he saw it as a win/win—real proud of his success. The minute his father found out about the ads, the hospital food tray was sent flying across the small room. All the buzzers hooked up to his old man went nuts as he did everything in his power to get his broken, battered body out of the hospital bed to kick Keyes’s ass for spending their hard-earned money on something so ludicrous.
Luckily, within the first week of those ads running, his old man and their business partners—his motorcycle club—had been forced to eat their harsh, skeptical words. Business had boomed from that moment forward. It had taken almost an entire year for his father to get back on his feet, and that was a little over two years ago. Not much had changed since then. Physically, his father was just the shell of the man he’d once been, but that didn’t stop the regular onslaught of demeaning insults or homophobic slurs, all designed to remind Keyes of his place, regardless of his success with the shop.
Keyes rolled the wheel out, passing the tire off to Louis, his trusty second in charge. He gave clipped instructions to change the tire before he stepped behind the counter to wait on the customer. He pulled his rag from his belt to wipe his hands before palming his cell phone to order the new set. “They’ll run a little less than three hundred dollars for two or five for a set of four. It’s a discount of about a hundred bucks on the four,” he said while using the app the dealer provided.
“And these are good tires? They’ll last awhile, right? I’ve had the ones on there since I bought the Tahoe in 2015.” The uncertainty in her voice forced Keyes to slow down and take a second to ease her doubt. He adjusted his gaze, looking at her instead of the phone screen. She had to be a foot shorter than his six-four, and she wore one of those crisp little well-tailored get-ups that business women wore.
She looked like one of those independent pushy types who lived for the next corporate board meeting. Keyes gave an internal sigh, hoping his observations didn’t slip out by accident. Women were uncomfortable in this environment. He got it, and he’d tried to change the approach his employees used with certain customers. He required everyone who worked there to take a moment to explain the sale, be reasonable and clear, and assure the customer they weren’t being scammed. That was the hardest part for Keyes. He wasn’t much of a talker—in any situation. The fewer words used, the better.