The Last Day Read Online Free

had the ability to sketch what he saw, and faces were what he drew best.
    When he finished the sketch, she smiled. “Cool. Are you a professional artist?”
    He answered, “No. I do some light designing.”
    A confused look briefly took over her features. “Like what kind of lights do you design?”
    “Oh,” he said, smiling. “My company makes and markets NASCAR memorabilia. Cars, hats, T-shirts, mugs, key chains.”
    “No shit?” she said, too loudly. The word earned her a frown from the man beside her. “My mother is a race- car fan.”
    Ward reached down, took out his briefcase, and opened it, taking out the model car to show her.
    “You, what, painted it?” she asked, beaming.
    “My father had it made in Japan. Nowadays they're made mostly in China. See, we take pictures of a real car from several angles and a factory makes the model from the pictures, which they produce, box, and ship to us, and wedistribute them from our warehouse. We just change the art on the car depending on whose car it is, since every race team has different sponsors.”
    “This is so fucking cool. Could I get one?”
    “Well, not this one. This one is the first one my father had made,” he explained. “This is the prototype. He didn't have a lot of money and that car only raced one year. As it turned out, he made other models and they did sell and so he ordered more, but this one was handmade. Mostly he used it to show to bankers and investors, who weren't all that impressed. In those days NASCAR was only popular with relatively few people.”
    He started to tell her why he had it with him, but didn't. What he did say was, “I can get you a new one—driver of your choice.”
    “No shit?”
    “Absolutely none.” He took another note card and scribbled his office number on it. “Call and ask for Leslie, and she'll send one to you for your mother. We have thousands of them in our warehouse.”
    She narrowed her eyes, suspiciously. “How much will it cost?”
    “My treat.”
    “No shit? Thanks. That is so sick.”
    “Sick?”
    “Sick as in cool.”
    “Who's your mother's favorite driver?”
    “I dunno. I can find out.” She ran the wheels back and forth on her lap and made a motor noise as she did this. “Is this you on the card?” she asked, pointing at the card he'd given her with her inked likeness. “Ward McCarty That's you?”
    “It is,” he told her.
    “Why were you in Vegas?” she asked. “Gam bling?”
    “No. Work. You?”
    “I fly back and forth a lot,” she said. “My dad lives there and I live with my mother in Charlotte. You married?”
    “Yes.”
    “What's your wife do?”
    “She's a pediatric surgeon,” Ward said.
    “What's that mean?”
    “Pediatric means children,” Ward said.
    “I know that. So she like cuts little kids open?” Her eyes were wide, her mouth a circle.
    “Yes, but I think it's more complicated than making cuts.”
    “Y’all got any kids?”
    “No,” he said.
    “You're like too old?”
    “I expect you're right,” he said, trying to smile. This wasn't true … as far as he knew.
    When she handed the car back, Ward put the padded envelope back in his briefcase, closed it, and placed it under the seat.
    “I need to slip out past you,” he told her.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Visit the little boys’ room.”
    After the man beside the girl unbuckled his seat belt and stood in the aisle, she tucked her feet up in her seat so Ward could get out.
    After he'd finished in the tiny bathroom, Ward left the enclosure and found a man in Bermudas waiting his turn. When Ward returned to his row, the girl, who was back again listening to her iPod, smiled up at him and pulled in her feet to let him get to his seat.
    When the plane landed ten minutes later and parked at the terminal, the girl grabbed up her bag of toys and was off the plane before Ward got his carry- on and filed out.
    He thought about what the girl had said about him being too old to have children, and realized